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Yet that was all conjecture. He had nothing solid to explain how Rose and her husband had developed such a deep connection with her that they’d invite her to be their equal partner in their life’s crowning achievement. She’d made herself so invisible, her past so untraceable she’d fallen off Murdock’s radar until now, when she was about to be fully lodged into their lives.
He’d torn over here once Murdock had informed him they’d finished dinner and coffee, expecting to intercept her soon afterward as she left. That had been—he flicked a glance at his watch—two and a half bloody hours ago.
Every minute of those he’d struggled with the urge to storm inside and drag her out.
He hadn’t stayed out of his sister’s life only to let that siren infect it with the ugliness of her past, the malice of her intentions and the exploitation in her blood.
Suddenly the front door of Rose’s two-level, stucco house opened and two figures walked out. Isabella first, then Rose. His every muscle tensing, he strained to decipher the merriness that carried on the summer night air through his open window. Then they kissed and hugged and Isabella descended the stairs. At the bottom she turned to wave to Rose, urging her to go in, before she turned and crossed the street, heading to her car.
The moment Rose closed her door he got down from his car.
In the dim streetlights, Isabella’s figure seemed to glow in a light-colored summer coat unbuttoned over a lighter dress beneath, its supple material undulating with her brisk walk. Her hair was a swathe of dark silk swinging over her face, her eyes downcast as she rummaged through her purse.
Then feet before he intercepted her, he stopped.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Isabella Burton.”
Her momentum came to a startled halt, her alarm a sharp gasp that echoed in the night’s still, humid silence. Then her face jerked up and her eyes slammed into his.
A bolt struck him through the heart.
His sudden appearance seemed to have hit her even harder. If a ghost had stopped her to ask her the time, she wouldn’t have looked more shocked...or horrified.
“What...where the hell did you...?”
She stopped. As if she found no words. Or breath with which to say them. He was almost as shocked as she was...at his reaction. He’d thought he’d feel nothing at the sight of her. He didn’t know what he did feel now. But it was...enormous.
And it wasn’t an overwhelming sense of familiarity. It was her impact as she was now.
She’d changed. Almost beyond recognition. It made it that much stranger he’d recognized her in that video so instantaneously. For this woman had very little in common with the younger one he’d known in total, tempestuous intimacy.
Her face had lost all the plumpness of youth, had been chiseled into a masterpiece of refinement and uncompromi
sing character. If she’d been irresistible before, even with shock still seizing her every feature, the influence she’d exuded had matured into something far more formidable.
But her eyes had changed the most. Those eyes that had haunted him, eyes he’d once thought had opened up into a magical realm, that of her being. They looked the same, glowing that unique emerald-topaz chameleon color. But apart from the familiar shape and hue, and beneath the shock, they were bottomless. Whatever lay inside her now was dark and fathomless. And far more hard-hitting for it.
Her lids swept down, severing the two-way hypnosis.
Gritting his teeth at losing the contact, his own gaze lowered to sweep her body. Even through the loose clothes, it still had his every sense revving. Just being near her had always made him ache.
Then a puff of breeze had her scent inundating him and his body flooded with molten steel. That was the one thing about her that hadn’t changed. This distillation of her essence and femininity that had constantly hovered at the edge of his memory, tormenting him with craving the real thing.
And here it was at last. What he’d once thought an aphrodisiac nature had tailored to his senses. That belief was renewed in full force.
Hard all over, he returned his gaze to hers, eager to read her own response. She poured every bit of height and poise into her statuesque figure, made him feel she was looking him in at eye level when even in three-inch heels, she stood seven inches below his six-foot-six frame.
“Richard.” She gave a formal nod as if greeting a virtual stranger. Then she just circumvented him and continued walking to her car.
He let her pass him, one eyebrow rising.
So. His opening strike hadn’t been as effective as he’d planned. She’d gotten over her shock at seeing him faster than he had and had decided to dismiss him.
Surely she considered anyone who knew her real identity a threat to her carefully constructed new persona. But if there were levels of danger to blasts from the past, she must think his potential damage equivalent to a ballistic missile. She couldn’t end this “chance” meeting fast enough.
Which proved she hadn’t tied him to Rose, wasn’t here because of anything concerning him. But that changed nothing.
Whatever she was here for, she wasn’t getting it.
