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“It takes a lot to kill me,” he said. He was standing too close, and she started to step back, away from him, when he caught her arm in an iron grip. She fought back, instinctively, but he simply lifted her up, setting her down out of the way of the broken glass. She’d forgotten that her feet were bare.
“You might want to get dressed,” he said. “I’ll clean up the mess while I wait.”
“I don’t need to get dressed,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere, you are. You can leave, right now. I don’t know why you suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but I don’t want you here. Go away.”
“The necklace.”
“What?”
“I came for the diamond necklace,” he said in a calm voice. “You left Paris wearing it, remember? It has a certain value, and I came to get it.”
She stared at him in shock. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“I was…incapacitated.”
“Why didn’t you just call me and ask me to send it to you?”
“It’s not something I would trust to the mails, or even to a courier. I’m sorry if my presence distresses you, but I had no choice but to come myself.”
She felt nothing, Chloe told herself. It was like prodding a wound, only to discover it had healed. She looked into his dark, unreadable eyes and was certain she felt nothing at all.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go get it, and then you can leave. I really have nothing to say to you.”
“I didn’t expect you would,” he said, leaning back against the counter. “Just get me the necklace and I’ll be on my way.”
She stared at him for a moment longer. He didn’t belong in her mother’s kitchen. He didn’t belong a few feet away from her, while she was wearing nothing but a loosely tied terry robe. She didn’t feel a thing for him, not hatred or passion—she was totally numb, the blessed numbness that had protected her during those last few days in Paris. And she had to get him out of there, fast, before that numbness faded.
“Stay right there,” she ordered, moving past him, holding herself out of reach as she headed toward the kitchen stairs. He made no effort to touch her, and she felt stupid, but she couldn’t help herself. The closer she got to him the shakier she felt.
Most of her clothes were in the guest house, but there was some clean laundry in the dryer upstairs. While the selection didn’t provide her with much choice, she managed to find a pair of old gray sweatpants, a baggy gray T-shirt and a thick pair of wool socks. Her hair had begun to grow again, and she’d pulled it back in a low ponytail, refusing to look at her reflection in the mirror. She knew what she looked like and she didn’t care.
She’d actually forgotten about the necklace. She’d taken it off, halfway across the Atlantic, and her father had locked it up in the safe once they got home. If only she’d remembered she could have figured out some way to send it back to him.
Or could she? She didn’t know his name, who he worked for, where he lived. She knew absolutely nothing at all about him. Except that he killed.
The evening light was an eerie blue-gray, and she glanced at the window, wondering where his car was. Wondering how he’d managed to get past the alarm system. Silly question—he could probably materialize through stone walls if he wanted. A commercial security system would be child’s play for him.
She watched with stunned disbelief as a few flakes of snow began to fall. It shouldn’t snow in April, not with the daffodils and the rest of the beautiful landscape about to bloom. He must have brought the storm with him, like the coat of black ice surrounding his heart.
He’d cleaned up the broken pie dish by the time she arrived back in the kitchen, and he’d made coffee. It annoyed her, but not enough that she refused the mug he handed her, rich with cream and no sugar, just the way she liked it. She wondered how he knew. In their time together she couldn’t remember having time for a leisurely cup of coffee.
“Here,” she said, dumping the diamonds into his outstretched hand, careful not to touch him.
He put the necklace in his pocket. Black, he was always wearing black, and today was no different. Whose blood was he hoping to hide?
She was being ridiculous. She took a sip of the coffee and couldn’t quite stifle her soft sigh. She hadn’t had as good a cup of coffee since she’d left Paris.
He was sitting at the breakfast bar, looking oddly at ease among the clutter. He didn’t belong there, she reminded herself, and she took another sip.
“How did you get past the security system?” she asked.
“Do you really need to ask?”
She shook her head. “I suppose that means it won’t be any protection at all if someone wants to come after me?”
“And why would they?”
“I don’t know. But then, I never understood why they wanted to kill me in the first place.”
