AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When he reached her front gate, he tried calling her again. And when she didn’t answer, he stabbed in the security code, jaw tightening.
Moments later, he pulled up in front of Chiara’s house and saw her car parked there. His gut clenched. Why isn’t she answering her phone?
Noticing the patio door open at the side of the house, he strode toward it...and then froze for a second when he realized there was broken glass on the ground.
Stepping inside the house, he could sense someone was there. Then he saw a man reflected in a mirror down the hall. The intruder crouched and ducked into the next room.
Rick’s blood pumped as he raced forward. Damn it, he’d be lucky if this was an ordinary street burglar. But the brief glimpse he’d caught said this guy resembled Chiara’s stalker.
* * *
Chiara came out of the marble bath in her bedroom suite and then walked into the dressing room. She pulled underwear and exercise clothes from a dresser and slipped into them.
In order to help her relax, she’d just taken a shower—and intended to take another after her workout. Her doctor had cleared her for moderate exercise in her first trimester.
After her argument with Rick earlier, she’d been torn between wanting to cry and to wail in frustration. Her life had been a series of detours and blind turns lately...
She went downstairs to her home gym, and then glanced out the window at the overcast day. It suited her mood. Even the weather seemed ready to shed some tears...
Suddenly she spotted a hunched figure darting across the lawn. Frowning, she moved closer to the window. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She had a regular cleaning service, and a landscaper who came once a week, but she didn’t employ a live-in caretaker. There was no reason to, since she was often away on a movie set herself. Still, thanks to her fame, and now a sometime stalker, she had high fences, video cameras, an alarm system and a front gate with a security code. Even if she no longer had a bodyguard...
How had he gotten in?
As Chiara watched, the intruder slipped around the side of the house and out of view. Moments later, she heard a crash and froze. She ran over to the exercise room door and locked it.
Spinning around, she realized how vulnerable she was. Her workout clothes didn’t have pockets, and she’d left her cell phone upstairs. She’d also never put a landline extension in this room, because there’d seemingly been no need to. The gym was on the first floor and faced a steep embankment outside. While it would be hard for someone to get in, it also meant she was trapped.
She heard the distant noise of someone moving around in the house. Her best bet was to stay quiet. She hoped whoever it was wouldn’t look in here—at least not immediately. In the meantime, she had to figure out what to do... If the intruder wandered upstairs, perhaps she could make a dash for freedom and quietly call 911.
She heard the sound of a car on the gravel drive and almost sobbed with relief. Whoever it was must have known the security code at the front gate. Her heart jumped to her throat. Rick?
He didn’t know about the intruder. He could be hurt, or worse, killed. She had to warn him.
Only a minute later, voices—angry and male—sounded in the house, but the confrontation was too indistinct for her to make out what was said.
“Chiara, if you’re here, don’t move!” Rick’s voice came to her from the rear of the house.
She heard a scuffle. Something crashed as the combatants seemed to be fighting their way across the first floor.
Ignoring Rick’s order, she wrenched open the door to the exercise room and dashed out in the direction of the noise. The sight that confronted her in the den made her heart leap to her throat all over again. Rick was pummeling Todd Jeffers, and while Rick appeared to have the upper hand, his opponent wasn’t giving up the fight.
She looked around for a way to help and found herself reaching for a small marble sculpture that her interior decorator had positioned on a side table.
Grabbing it, she approached the two men. As her stalker staggered and then righted himself, she brought the sculpture down on the back of his head with a resounding thud.
Jeffers staggered again and fell to his knees, and Rick landed a knee jab under his chin. Her stalker sprawled backward, and then lay motionless.
Rick finally looked up at her. He was breathing heavily, and there was fire in his eyes. “Damn it, Chiara, I told you not to come out!”
As scared as she was, she had her own temper to deal with. “You’re welcome.” Then she looked at the figure at their feet. “Sweet heaven, did I kill him?”
“Heaven is unlikely the place he’ll be,” Rick snarled.
“So I killed him?” she squeaked.
Rick bent to examine Jeffers and then shook his head. “No, but he’s passed out cold.”
She leaped for the phone even though what she wanted to do was throw up from sudden nausea. “I have to call 911.”
