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The bright glow of a cigarette end and the smell of tobacco wafted across the lawn, and she froze, reaching up to pull the ski mask down and obscure her face. Claire watched as the burning cigarette illuminated the face of someone she’d never thought to see again—well, not in person anyway. Evangeline stood outside the door to what Claire remembered was one of the sitting rooms. The woman had caused her incalculable pain and torment in their younger days.
She hadn’t seen Evangeline for years, but she would never mistake the cold, highborn beauty for anyone else. How had Fletch ever fallen for this woman? To hear him tell it, it had been more of a business arrangement with benefits. Evangeline must have had one hell of an itch if she’d chosen to scratch it with her assistant. Claire had seen the man—he had nothing to compare to the perfection and big dick of Ryland Fletcher.
Fletch.Even thinking about him made her heart skip a beat. Oh, who was she kidding, it made her pussy clench in desperate need to feel him inside her again. Claire had never believed in love at first sight; hell, most of the time she didn’t believe in love at all, but something about Fletch had drawn her—not like a moth to a flame, but more like a moth to a warm porch light on a summer night with the wind and the rain storming outside.
Evangeline had been her tormentor throughout most of her life. They had mostly avoided each other after boarding school, but the seething resentment had always been there. The thing that always perplexed Claire was that the resentment was mostly on Evangeline’s side, and Claire could never figure out why. Claire had never felt anything but dumbstruck awe and admiration for Evangeline. She was something Claire could only aspire to, but never achieve. Claire had wanted nothing more than to be just like Evangeline. But Sir Godfrey’s daughter had hated Claire for as long as she could remember. She understood some of it—Claire excelled at things Evangeline didn’t but mostly because Evangeline didn’t put in the time or effort.
It always struck Claire as odd that the patrician beauty with the model’s body and perfect hair felt so much animosity toward her, but she did and had never taken any pains to hide it unless her father was present. Even then she managed to look down on Claire. After they had parted ways, Claire tried to tell herself that she gave no thought to Evangeline, but it wasn’t true. She scanned the society pages of the newspapers and routinely looked her up online—mostly when she was bored or feeling down. She told herself it was foolish, but she couldn’t seem to help it. It was as if she and Evangeline were two atoms caught in some kind of weird magnetic entanglement, perennially circling each other but never coming into contact.
So, Evangeline and Gemma were already here—no doubt to start work on the Clarion Necklace. She knew she should turn and walk away. Return to the cottage and pretend like she’d never been gone, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. Perhaps if she hadn’t seen her old nemesis she might have walked away, but she had.
What the hell? She was already here, and it seemed as if serendipity had supplied her with the perfect time.Here goes nothing…
CHAPTER12
CLAIRE
And nothing was right… as innothingwent right. As soon as she touched the window she meant to climb through into the manor, everything went to hell in a hand-basket. Floodlights came on, illuminating the entire inner lawn area. Lights began to flash as strobes began spinning. The whole place was lit up like some kind of demented holiday display.
An alarm sounded, bellowing its knell into the darkness. How the hell had they missed that? The plans they’d downloaded showed nothing like this. Claire covered her ears but it didn’t help. The sound was not only deafening; it pounded into her brain like a jackhammer attacking the pavement. Claire leaped away from the building, allowing her knees to buckle as they absorbed the shock of her impact with the ground. There had been no time to even enter the room, much less break the combination of the safe that had to be in there.
She’d failed. It was the only time in her career she had ever tripped any kind of alarm, and now over the continued cacophony of the alarm, she could hear men running and shouting—some of them looking for the dogs. Claire thought about diving for cover, but realized there was nothing substantive enough to make hiding an option. Instead, she gathered herself and made a mad dash for one of the gates less frequently used, the hedge, and the trees beyond.
Claire was beginning to think she might actually get away when Evangeline Robbins stepped into the opening of the iron gate, right in front of her path. Claire was glad she had pulled the mask portion of her knitted ski hat down to cover her face.
“Who are you?” shouted Evangeline over the blaring alarm.
Police sirens sounded in the distance. Claire thought about asking herself what else could go wrong but was worried the universe might answer with a bullet. Evangeline reached out and grasped Claire’s arm.
“Over here! Over here!” Evangeline yelled.
Claire jerked her arm away and Evangeline made a lunge for her throat.Was the woman possessed? Who tries to strangle an intruder?Claire blocked Evangeline’s outstretched hands and knocked them away. Evangeline screeched like some kind of frantic banshee from the depths of hell, trying to steal not only Claire’s life, but her very soul.
Wanting to shout at her, Claire reminded herself that while the ski mask might keep Evangeline from recognizing her, her voice would surely give her away. Claire lashed out, but Evangeline persisted, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.
“Who are you? You bloody thief! How dare you!”
The two women grabbed each other, grappling to try and get the upper hand, but they were fairly evenly matched. Claire kicked out, but Evangeline side-stepped the blow and tried to deliver a kick of her own which Claire also managed to avoid, but which brought Evangeline in close enough that Claire could land a sharp head bump to Evangeline’s nose, making the other woman turn her loose.
Evangeline reached for her nose with one hand and a concealed knife with the other. Blinded by the blood spray from her nose, Evangeline slashed at Claire, trying either to keep her away or cut her deeply. When she dragged her sleeve across her eyes to clear her sight and lunged again with the knife, Claire realized it was the latter.
Her nemesis and would-be attacker was caught off balance by her unbalanced attack. Claire gave her a shove to keep her stumbling forward and then dodged around Evangeline and ran for the tree line. She had to get away and get back to the cottage. If the police came calling, she needed to appear to have been in bed the entire time. She charged past the edge of the forest until she was sure the trees and foliage had hidden her black shape amid the darkness that was provided both by the trees and the night itself.
Leaning against a tree, she bent over, dragging in huge lungfuls of air and trying to still her wildly beating heart. She fished out her phone from her bra in order to call Mia to see if she could ditch their security team and pick her up somewhere off of the Robbins’ estate.
A strong hand closed around her upper arm and Claire whirled and swung blindly at this new assailant. The hand jerked her toward a brick wall of a body, and she found herself hauled up into Fletch’s embrace.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he growled. “Do you want to get caught?”
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, not knowing if she was annoyed with his being here or more relieved than she’d ever been about anything else in her life.
“Trying to save your miserable ass,” he said, snatching her phone from her grasp.
“Give me that,” she said, grabbing for her phone.
“No. I told you there would be heavy security. Did you think I made that up or was just making idle conversation?” He stopped and looked towards the manor house. “How did you get rid of the dogs?”
“Well, I didn’t kill them if that’s what you’re asking.”
