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“No. This one is big. Sinister-looking. And he’s always around.”
“Sorry, but I think you’re just looking for attention,” he scoffed. “There’s no one around here who’s out to get you.”
“Except you,” I shot back.
He halted, and I stopped too. “I don’t like liars, I don’t like teases, and I most certainly don’t like you.” The heat in his eyes belied every word, I wanted to throw them back in his teeth. They hurt, because they applied to me just as much as Bella, at least in the liar department.
What Would Bella Do? I summoned my most seductive smile, my sexiest drawl as I gave him Bella’s sultry look. “Sure you don’t.”
I thought he would touch me then, though I wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss me or hit me. Probably both, but Ian would never hit someone smaller than he was, and he towered over me. A moment later, that flash of emotion was gone, and he gave a shaky laugh. “You do like living on the edge, don’t you?” he said. “Someday you’re going to go too far.”
“You’d never hurt me,” I shot back, sure of it.
“Darling,” he drawled, “I would break your fucking heart.”
I froze, mesmerized. I knew it was the truth, not that he could break Bella’s ice-encapsulated heart, but Katherine Whitehead was a different matter. Because I knew the devastating truth. In the midst of this charade, with enemies all around and people threatening to kill me and not an ally in sight, I had fallen in love with the least loveable creature of all. I’d fallen in love with Ian the Wretch, with the heat that burned between us, with the years when he’d been a better friend than a lovelorn Podge recognized. I’d been so besotted with Marcus that I hadn’t even noticed that all my good memories involved Ian.
And now he hated me, with good reason. I was lying to him, even though he didn’t know it, lying to Granda and Marcus and Maldonado, and it seemed I might have returned to Mariposa with Bella’s enemies on my trail.
I wanted to burst into tears. I wanted to tell him the truth, get it all out in the open. He’d really despise me then, but I knew he would help me. Ian was all bark, at least where I was concerned.
Instead, I simply smiled up at him. “You can but try,” I said, and walked past him, down to the great house, shoulders straight.
“Who have you been wrestling with?” Mary Alice greeted me from the kitchen, the last person I wanted to see.
I glanced down at my rumpled self and shrugged. “I climbed to Pinnacle Point.”
Mary Alice looked at me oddly. “You’ve always despised going up there,” she said. “It’s not like you.”
I recovered quickly. “I wanted to see if anything had changed.”
“In rock? Not likely.” She peered more closely at me. “You’re the one who’s changed.”
Danger, Will Robinson. “Everyone changes, Mary Alice,” I said lightly.
“I don’t.”
Unfortunately, I could agree with that. To my relief, Mary Alice lost interest in my anomalies. “Valerie and I are having dinner with Granda tonight, so you’ll have to fend for yourself. You’ve been hogging him for far too long, and tonight’s our turn.”
I raised an eyebrow. “He’s willing to eat at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty?”
“We’ll push it till eight for his sake, though I consider it terrible for the digestion. You can manage to entertain both Ian and Marcus, can’t you? If some of the stories I’ve heard are true, you’d be quite adept at it,” she sneered.
“I wouldn’t touch Ian with a ten-foot pole.”
“No one ever faulted your taste.” Mary Alice sniffed.
So, the cousins preferred Marcus to Ian. Another point in Ian’s favor, even though I wished him at the bottom of a cliff. There was no need to check Valerie’s opinion—she always echoed Mary Alice.
Which meant Ian was on his own in this checkered household, with Granda and Maldonado on his side. At least, I assumed Granda was on his side. With the irascible old man, it was hard to tell.
I could see Ian approaching the kitchen door, and I’d had enough. “I’ll eat in my room,” I said hastily, heading for the back stairway that led up from the kitchen.
Granda was asleep when I dropped by, and I tiptoed away without bothering him. I could go down and find something for dinner later on, once Mary Alice and Valerie were closeted with Granda. I had no idea if Marcus was returning today, and I didn’t particularly care, as long as I didn’t have to deal with him or anyone else. I pushed open my windows to the soft summer breeze and curled up with my book, happy to turn the outside world off for at least a brief time.
Chapter Fifteen
I slammed into wakefulness, blinking in the darkened room. Something was very wrong. There were noises, footsteps racing along the corridors, and I quickly pulled on the silk robe over my utilitarian boxers and T-shirt, tying it as I pushed open the heavy door. There was no one in sight, but I could hear people talking excitedly, and all my instincts were firing on ten.
