‘You’re welcome to wait here for your husband,’ Grace said, hating the thought of anyone being outside in such awful conditions.
‘No. I need to go. He won’t be long.’
‘Are you sure? It’s horrid out there.’
The woman backed up to the front door and reached for the handle. ‘I’m sure. Thank you.’ She opened the door and headed off down the driveway without so much as a goodbye.
Perplexed, Grace stared at the rapidly retreating figure for a few seconds before shutting the door and relocking it.
She shivered.
The hairs on her arms were standing to attention again.
It took a few beats before she recognised the coldness in her bones as a warning and not a pure physical reaction.
Something was off...
Standing stock-still, she strained her ears. The only noise she could detect was the thundering of her own blood careering through her at the rate of knots.
Stupid, paranoid mind.
All the same, something about the stranger’s demeanour played on her mind. As she padded back to the kitchen, all she could think about was the way the woman had rushed off...
The shock of the doorbell ringing a short while earlier was nothing compared to the floor-rooting terror of finding the tall, darkly handsome man in her kitchen, a man flanked by two gorilla-resembling goons.
‘Wait in the car for me,’ he said to them, not taking his eyes off Grace.
The goons left immediately, departing through the back door, the same door that had been locked just ten minutes earlier...
‘Good morning, bella.’
Bella. The way that one particular word tripped off his tongue like a caress paralysed her. The drumming in her heart was instantaneous, a memory flickering back to life at the first sound of his voice. A beautiful, velvety rich voice with a heavy Sicilian accent that made his English sing.
The drumming became a loud pump. The paralysis was replaced with a fizzing energy that cleared her head of the fog that had filled it. Without taking her eyes off him, she slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the gun.
‘I’m going to give you five seconds to get out of my house.’
Only by the tiniest flicker of a thick black eyebrow did Luca react to having a gun aimed at his chest. His firm lips twitched as he lazily placed his hands in the air. ‘Or what? You’ll shoot me?’
‘Don’t move,’ she snapped, her eyes widening as, hands held aloft, he took a step towards her. ‘Get back!’
It could almost be described as humorous that Luca, unarmed, was utterly unfazed while she, holding a lethal weapon in her hands, was cold with fear.
She doubted he had ever felt a solitary jolt of fear in his life.
She must not let panic control her. She had always known this day would come. Mentally and physically she had prepared for it.
‘I said get back.’ She tried to steady her grip on the gun but her hands were trembling so hard she had to use all her concentration to keep the aim straight.
‘Is this how you greet all your guests, bella?’ He cocked his head to one side and took another step towards her, then another, his deep-set eyes not moving from her face. At some point she had forgotten how mesmerising they were, how the thick black lashes framed eyes so dark she had once believed them to be black. Only upon the closest of inspections could a person see they were in fact a deep, dark blue, like a clear summer’s night. And once you knew their colour you never forgot.
How vividly she recalled the first time she had seen those eyes close up. That had been the point when every cell of her body had come alive. That had been the point she had fallen helplessly in love.
But that had been a long time ago. Any love she felt for him had died ten months ago when the truth about him could no longer be denied.
‘Only the uninvited ones.’ Deliberately she made a big show of slipping the safety catch off the gun. ‘I will tell you one last time, get out of my house.’
He had inched close enough for her to see the pulse in his temple throb. She had to get him out of the house right now.
‘Put the gun away, Grace. You have no idea how to handle such a dangerous weapon.’
* * *
Having a gun pointed at him had not figured in any of the welcomes Luca had been expecting. His heart thundered beneath his chest and, while he did not believe she would shoot him, the last thing he wanted was to panic her into doing something beyond either of their control.
He could hardly credit that he had found her. Finally.
As soon as he had positively identified her photo, he had boarded the jet kept on permanent standby for this very purpose, and travelled straight to England.
Grace’s face was void of expression. ‘You have no idea what I’m capable of handling. How did you find me?’
Somehow he managed to quell the spike of rage her toneless words provoked. She could be speaking to a stranger for all the emotion she conveyed. ‘With great difficulty. Now put the gun down. I only want to talk to you. Nothing more.’
She made no attempt to hide her incredulity. ‘You came all this way and went to all this trouble just so you could talk to me? If you just wanted to talk, why not knock on the door like a normal person rather than get a stooge to distract me so you can break in through the back door?’
‘Because, my clever, deceitful Grace, you have led me on a merry dance around Europe. You have gone to incredible lengths to hide from me.’ So successful had she been in keeping one step ahead, he’d been ready to believe she had a magic portal to vanish with whenever he got too close. Even before he’d verified the picture was truly her, he had insisted his men keep a close watch on the house with instructions to follow her if she went anywhere. Just in case. He would not let her slip through his fingers again.
‘I haven’t led you anywhere. If I had wanted you to find me I would have given directions.’ Keeping hold of the gun with her right hand, she wiped her left down the side of her thin dressing gown, the movement pulling it open.
Her detachment was all on the surface.
A heavy thickness settled in his blood. The long pyjama bottoms and matching vest top showed off her slender, almost androgynous figure beautifully. Yet there was something softer than he remembered about her physique, a softness not matched in the coolness of her unwavering hazel eyes.
His mouth ran dry. Wetting his lips with his tongue, he continued to scrutinise her.
She had changed so much. If he had crossed her in the street he would have likely not recognised her. This, undoubtedly, had been her intention.
He had almost disregarded the photo. It had been taken mere minutes after his men arrived and strategically placed themselves out of sight of her security cameras. She had left the house for a few moments to collect her post from the box at the bottom of her driveway, bundled up in a thick, shapeless coat. They had managed to fire off a couple of shots before she had gone back inside but only one had captured part of her face.
The angle of her head had caught his attention. As he’d studied it closely a flicker in his belly had ignited. It was Grace. It was the same angle she always tilted her head when thinking, the same angle she would strike when standing in front of a large canvas with a paintbrush in her mouth. Of course, in those days, her hair had been long. And blonde. Not the short, red pixie haircut she now sported. It was a style he should find abhorrent but on Grace he found strangely compelling. Sexy.
Very sexy.
‘How was I supposed to know you didn’t want to be found?’ he asked coolly. ‘You