Caught Off Guard

So why was he sitting outside Anne’s house?

Marie Prescott’s warnings had niggled in the back of his brain until he couldn’t concentrate for worry that the woman might be right. Marie had told him Anne refused to believe the threat was real and was ignoring her edicts to return home where she would be safe on the family compound.

That he could believe. Admittedly, he didn’t know Anne all that well, but what he’d gleaned from their one night together was that she had an independent streak a mile wide and was unafraid and adventurous. Not the sort of person to be easily cowed.

However, the more he’d thought about it the more he’d worried. If Marie was telling the truth and something bad happened to Anne he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

He hadn’t agreed to help Marie just yet. Why had she called him? Her answer when he’d asked had been that she thought his personal ties through Karyn might help in persuading her. That perhaps Anne would listen to someone she trusted more than she’d apparently listened to her mother. Little did the woman know he was likely the last person Anne wanted to see … or trust. But he couldn’t simply ignore the situation if she really was in danger.

So he’d take a look around for anything suspicious. He’d ask her if she’d noticed anything unusual. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to the interview but life wasn’t always pleasant. And, in truth, he really wanted to see Anne again. Maybe it would help him get her out of his head.

He glanced down at the clock on the dashboard—two o’clock. He had at least three or four hours before she’d be home from work, and he had no desire to corner her there. She’d made it clear she didn’t want to see him, and his reason for being here wasn’t likely to change her opinion. His showing up at her office would only add to the unpleasantness, not to mention her resistance. No sense in putting himself at a disadvantage before the conversation even began.

So it looked as if he had some time to kill.

Maybe he should go back and visit more with Karyn. Maybe she’d have some suggestions on how he could soften Anne up … Ideas that wouldn’t involve the use of his tongue and hands—as much as that disappointed—because something told him that he’d had his shot at her warming his bed. Unfortunately, it was all his deprived mind could come up with at the moment. Seducing her into submission.

ANNE PULLED into her parking spot, turned the key in the ignition and leaned her head back against the headrest. Home. Finally. A headache throbbed at the center of her skull, the result of skipping lunch and a meeting from hell.

She’d been excited to receive a promotion to VP of marketing right after the wedding. It had been a confirmation of her talent and a direct result of the hard work she’d put in at Walker Technologies over the past several years. She’d come to college late—starting at twenty—and had gone to work for Walker when she’d graduated four years later. Six years more and she was working her way up the corporate ladder.

Product placement, ad campaigns, market research, sales projections and tracking. She loved every minute of her job—although developing media campaigns had to be her favorite. It gave her a chance to use her media history for something other than bad memories.

The ironic thing was that it was precisely the kind of position she could have held at Prescott Hotels if her mother had ever thought she had the intelligence. Funny how she’d had to leave to find her success. Lucky for her that she’d also found contentment. Too bad for her mother, who still couldn’t admit she’d been wrong about her daughter.

Thinking about her mother made the pounding in Anne’s head increase to brain numbing. Marie had been the only parent—and Anne used the term loosely—in her life since her father had died in a car accident when she was four. She barely remembered him now—nothing but a fuzzy idea of what might have been.

She’d kept in contact with her mother over the past ten years, although that contact had been infrequent and as brief as possible. But suddenly that wasn’t good enough—Marie had called her every day this week. What was making her mother so desperate?

Marie had been trying to get her back to the family estate for months, but something had obviously happened to increase the intensity of her machinations. The week had started with another edict, something Anne found easy to ignore. But then the cajoling had started. That was different. The concern over Anne’s safety, a revelation that Anne was in danger from a stalker—something Anne had seen no proof of—and finally the claim that Marie was ill.

She wondered what lie her mother would come up with next. And as much as she didn’t want to, she wondered what the truth was.

Not that it mattered. When would Marie realize that nothing she offered or threatened could bring Anne home to New York? Birmingham was now her home. She had a job she enjoyed and was usually good at—apart from screwing up a report last week and prompting the meeting from hell this afternoon. She still had no idea how it had happened… .

She was independent and happy. And she was going to stay that way. One trip home and her freedom would end. She knew it to the soles of her feet. She’d needed every bit of strength and determination she had to escape the world of excess and privilege. If her mother got her hooks into Anne again she’d never let go. The only reason she’d gotten away the first time was because her mother had counted on Anne’s inability to live without money and things and people at her beck and call.

Marie had been wrong, something that made Anne smile every time she thought of it. It wasn’t often her mother was wrong and she delighted in being one of the only people who’d never fallen into line.

Really, running away ten years ago had been Anne’s final step in a lifelong quest to thwart her mother’s fight for control.

Those first few months when the transition had been difficult, she’d used that thought to get her through. Her mother wouldn’t win. She wouldn’t let her. Not after what the woman had pushed Anne’s brother, Michael, to do.

If Marie had shown one ounce of warmth or maternal concern when Michael had gone to her, Anne knew in her heart her brother never would have hung himself.

Pushing back the unwanted memories, she walked inside her house, flipping switches as she went. There was something about light in the first gloom of dusk that always made her feel warm and safe. The tension that had tightened her shoulders began to ease. But the place was freezing. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around her middle and huddled further into her coat. She didn’t remember turning down the heat before she’d left this morning. Maybe the unit had finally given up. She’d been fighting with it for over a year but had hoped to baby it along until her tax refund came in sometime next month.

Depositing her purse and briefcase on the hall table, she headed through the open-plan living room toward the thermostat and stopped dead in her tracks.

The back door at the end of the long hallway stood wide open. The doorjamb surrounding the lock plate was shredded. The door wasn’t much better, a half-moon of splinters was all that was left of the knob.

Oh hell. Panic rushed into her, squeezing her lungs and making her heart beat against the suddenly too small walls of her chest. She reached down and grabbed the first thing her hand settled on, the back of a well-loved recliner. She gasped for air, but couldn’t seem to get enough of it.

Stop it, she told herself. Hyperventilating won’t get you anywhere. Glancing quickly around her, she took stock. A couple of the bottom doors on her built-in were hanging wide open, books and papers falling out in a messy pile to the floor. Shards of glass glittered against the carpet. Who knew which knickknack they’d once been. But her expensive TV still sat on the stand on the far side of the room. Too heavy to carry out?

Something long, slender and glinting silver lay in the hall at the archway to her kitchen. Big, sharp, dangerous knife or the handle to her frying pan? She wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

Anne backed slowly toward the front door, snatching her purse and cell phone off the hall table as she went. Outside to call the police. And Karyn. And possibly stay with her … and her brand-new husband of four weeks when they’d just returned from their extended honeymoon a week ago. Yeah, probably not. She’d figure something out.

Reaching behind her, Anne felt for the doorknob, letting out a silent sigh of relief when her searching fingers finally touched it. But a single sound stopped her.

Mrreow.

“Shit!” Slapping a hand over her mouth to hold in any other sounds, she stood with her back pressed tight against the door and waited … for what she wasn’t sure. For some masked man to come barreling into the room and throw her to the ground? For ninjas to erupt through the back windows? For her cat to silently pad from the kitchen to wind her skinny, wrinkled body around her ankles.

“Prada.” The name pushed out of her lungs as she leaned down, grabbed her cat and buried her face in the hairless skin.

Okay. If Prada was fine she could deal with the rest of it. After finally exiting the house, Anne raced to the safety of her car, slammed all the locks shut, placed Prada on the seat beside her and called the police.

Pressing the phone to her ear, Anne tried to calm her breathing so she could hear through the harsh in and out. “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

“I’d like to—” Her words were cut off midstream by a scream so loud it echoed off the windows and bounced through the car. The response was involuntary, a knee-jerk reaction to someone tapping loudly on the window next to her head.

“Ma’am? Are you all right? Ma’am? What’s wrong?” The voice on the other end of the line sharpened with concern.

“I’m sorry.” Anne’s eyes narrowed as she looked through the driver’s side window of her Miata to find Blake Mitchell staring back at her. What the hell was he doing here? Now? At the exact moment she needed him?

No, that wasn’t right. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone. She was fine.

Glaring at him, she turned away and continued talking to the dispatcher. “Someone just scared me. I need to report a break-in at my town house.”

“Are you in any danger? Are you inside the home? Is the intruder still there? “

“No, I’m fine. I’m outside in my car. I’m not sure if anyone is still inside. I didn’t stick around to find out.”

The dispatcher took her address and said an officer would be there shortly. After assuring the woman that she didn’t need to stay on the phone with her until their arrival, Anne shut off her phone and sat staring through her windshield for a moment. Her pulse was finally dropping, which was good because she wasn’t sure her heart could handle any more ups and downs in one day.

Taking a deep breath, she turned her head to find Blake right where she’d left him, leaning against the side of her car, one arm propped on the roof, positioned slightly behind the window so he’d been out of her line of sight. She wasn’t entirely certain that had been an accident.

His dark-chocolate eyes stared down at her, watchful, assessing. She wasn’t sure she liked that at all. It gave her the sensation of being weighed and measured, as if he could see everything inside her even if she didn’t want him to.

Definitely not pleasant. She much preferred when his eyes smoldered.

She dug in her purse for keys, then popped them into the ignition and cranked the car for power before rolling down her window. For some reason, she wanted to keep the closed door firmly between them. His eyes narrowed and one eyebrow lifted. She had the distinct impression he found her caution amusing.

Cold January air gushed through the opening. Another reason to keep her butt firmly in the car. She turned the heat up.

“What are you doing here?”