She drove slowly along the tree-lined street, reaching for the knife and keeping it tight in her left hand. The warmth of the ivory comforted her. Odd, but true. The shadowy road wound its way down a steep hill. People were out walking their dogs, washing their cars, enjoying the afternoon.
The houses she passed were amazing. Some were just cottages, probably had been there for fifty years. But others had blossomed and grown into mansions—of every different type. There were Tudors cuddled alongside Spanish style. There were brick homes and clapboard and even one with a conical tower that made Erin think wistfully of fairy tales.
She followed the curve of the road, going slowly, knowing she was close. She’d been so intent on getting here, she hadn’t really planned on what she’d say to the man once she was face-to-face with the mysterious Santos. Her stomach was jittery and the palms of her hands were damp. If he couldn’t help her, she didn’t know what she would do.
With a sudden sense of certainty, she parked her rental car across the street from the house she knew belonged to Santos. Number twelve.
“He will help,” she told herself, taking a quick look in the rearview mirror. She pinched her pale cheeks, fluffed her shoulder-length, dark red hair, and then sighed. She’d been awake and on the run for twenty-four hours. No way was a pinch and a fluff going to make her presentable.
“So stop stalling already.” She nodded. “Right.”
She tossed a quick glance at her goal. The house behind number twelve sat far back from the road, protected by more trees. There were several other houses here and lots of cars parked on the street. So she should be safe enough. Even if her stalker had followed her, he couldn’t have gotten here before her.
“Just do this, Erin. Go see the man. Tell him what’s going on. Make him help you.”
She grabbed her purse off the passenger seat, tossed the knife inside and stepped out of the car. With her gaze fixed on the house in front of her, she shut the car door and started across the street.
From a distance, she heard a car engine fire to life and shriek as the driver gunned it hard. Heart racing, she gulped in air, turned her head toward the sound and froze. A low-slung red car hurtled toward her. Tires squealing, engine roaring, it raced forward.
Erin tried to move. She really did. But it was as if she were hypnotized. Not just by the car. But by the latest in a series of attacks. How many more times could she survive? How much longer could she remain alert?
And how could she defend herself against an enemy that went unnamed?
“Look out!” A man’s voice. Close by.
She’d hardly registered his presence before he was charging into her. His momentum carried them both out of the path of the car as he wrapped both arms around her and pushed her to safety.
She hit the asphalt hard.
Her hip took most of it, but her shoulder, too, screamed with pain. The car raced by them, never slowing, never stopping.
“Thank you.” She turned her head on the street to face her rescuer. But he was gone. Twisting painfully, she caught a glimpse of him—a tall man with blond hair—running down the street and disappearing around a bend. “What the hell is going on?”
“That, madam,” another deep voice sounded out from above, “is what I would like to know.”
Chapter 3
Erin looked up.
Way up.
Her gaze traveled the length of long muscular legs, wearing black slacks with a knife edge crease. Up past a flat abdomen and a broad chest covered by an open-throated, long-sleeved white shirt. Up beyond a square, hard jaw, a proud nose that had been broken at least once and into flat, dark eyes that stared, unblinking, down at her.
“Santos.”
He frowned, glanced up and down the street, then shifted his gaze back to her. “You again. How do you know my name? Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Erin pushed herself into a sitting position, dusted the palms of her hands together to get rid of the gravel biting into her skin, then glared right back at him. “I’ve come a long way to find you.”
“That explains nothing.” He set fisted hands on his hips.
She was tired, dirty, sore and oh, yes, terrified. So she wasn’t exactly feeling polite when she said, “I’ll explain everything. Later. Right now, I’d like to recover from someone just trying to run me down in the street.”
He nodded and shot a look in the direction the car had disappeared. “I saw it. I couldn’t reach you in time—”
“Someone did,” she pointed out.
“I saw that, as well.”
“You had quite the view, then.”
“Who are you?”
“Erin Brady,” she said and held one hand out toward him.
He looked at it for a long moment before grabbing it and yanking her to her feet in one smooth motion. “And I am Ricardo Esteban Amadeo Santos.”
“Wow.” She’d known the Santos part, but his whole name was magical and musical and…back on track, Erin.
“You have told me your name, woman. Not who you are.”
But Erin hardly heard him. At the first touch of his hand on hers, her mind had erupted with images. Visions rushed through her brain and she held her breath as she experienced them all in a heartbeat of time.
She and Santos. In bed. Limbs tangled on ivory sheets. His mouth on hers. His hands caressing. She felt the need swell within and heat filled her center, making her knees weak and her breath catch in her throat.
She tried to pull free, but his fingers tightened on hers. And in the space of a breath, the sultry, sexual images faded. Terrifying images swamped her. Darkness. Shifting shadows. Glittering knives. A palace of black stone that shone like obsidian under the light of an orange moon. Memory? One of his memories? They didn’t feel like memories though, and that scared her.
Erin swayed with the power rocketing through her.
“Woman?”
She couldn’t hear him.
Couldn’t hear anything but the screams rising up from the shadows in her mind.
Santos watched the woman’s eyes roll back in her head. Moving quickly, he caught her before she smacked down hard against the street. He heard each wrenching breath torn from her lungs and knew he couldn’t ignore her. Though truth be told, he would not have left her on the street anyway. Not until he discovered just who the hell she was and how she had come to haunt him, not only now but five hundred years before.
He looked down into her face and felt the strength of the connection that had been forged long ago. On the night of his death. When she had appeared to him on the heaving deck of the Niña, he’d thought at first she was an angel. A portent of death. And since he had died only moments after seeing her, that seemed a reasonable assumption.
Her features had danced through his dreams for centuries. Taunting, teasing, smiling at him in a way a woman does when desire takes her.
Santos swept the woman into his arms and simply held on to her for a long moment. His heartbeat hammered in his chest. His breath rushed in and out of his lungs. The woman from his dreams. Impossible to believe she was here. Warm and real and in his arms. The woman he’d seen the night he died. The woman who only yesterday had appeared before him on a city street.
He held her closer and narrowed his gaze. Instinct had him searching the area with a slow, thorough scan. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. The man who had saved her from the speeding car had disappeared as quickly as the threat.