Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Justlikethat, he was out the door.
The butler paused and cleared his throat, as if he wanted to make some kind of a polite excuse for the Smith & Wesson exclamation point that had just been put in her puss. But then he seemed to abandon that impulse.
“I shall bring your male home to you, mistress,” he said. “I promise you. But the sire is right. It is safer for you here. Please remain.”
Then he was gone as well, shutting the door behind himself.
Heart in her throat, Anne raced over and looked through a window. Within seconds, one of the detached garage’s bays started to open, and then a black box van shot forward down the driveway like whoever was behind the wheel had punched the accelerator. Its headlights were off, and as it ripped by her, she could see only Fritz in the glow of the dashboard. Maybe the other one, with the gun, was in the back.
Moving quickly, tripping over her feet, she tracked the red taillights through the house, jogging down the kitchen, passing through a connecting room, jumping out into the dining room. The windows on the far side of the grand and glossy table looked into the front yard, and she raced for them, just catching a glimpse of the van as it disappeared down the hill on the road.
Leaning against the window’s jamb, she stared into the street. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, only one other car going by… now a second. And then nothing.
Except for the pounding of her heart. Thump, thump, thump…
She glanced back at the formal table. Two beautiful place settings had been arranged at the other end, the china and crystal and sterling silver flatware like something out of a book on royalty. There was even an arrangement of fresh flowers, and a matched set of candlesticks, and silver salt and pepper shakers…
It was the promise of a lovely evening that would not be fulfilled.
Because Darius must have been hurt in some way. Seriously.
As worry threatened to consume her, time slowed down, but not in the way it had when he’d been kissing her. This crawl of minutes was not something to relish, not a brush of the forever that was found in the magical moments when two people explored a sexual charge. This was torture. She felt as though she was going to be here for the rest of her life, waiting for bad news.
What the hell had happened—
Combat.
From out of her panic, the word burst into her brain, and brought along with it the preamble “field of.”
The man in leather had used the term. But why were bodyguards going into a field of combat? That was for military people in active war zones. And where the heck was a war zone in Caldwell, NY?
Maybe she’d misunderstood.
As the silence of the mansion bore down on her, there was no one she could call for advice, and not just right now but also tomorrow, the day after, in the future at large. She had no family, no real friends.
Like Penny at the law firm was an option? And Charlie had been helpful with the Bruce problem as it related to work, but she was not about to go to him with her personal life.
A third car went by, the glare of its headlights illuminating the undersides of the trees that crowned the road. She imagined the sedan was a Mercedes. Or maybe another BMW like Darius’s boss’s. Maybe it was even fancier, something with an exotic name and an astronomical price tag—
They shouldn’t bring him back here if he was hurt badly. Darius needed to be taken to a hospital, especially considering his collapse earlier…
It was hard to pinpoint exactly when she realized that she wasn’t alone. The awareness was so gradual, it was as if someone had turned up the temperature in the room degree by degree, the warmth rising gently, imperceptibly. Eventually, however, that which was not noticed became readily apparent, and Anne straightened from her lean. Turned her head. Searched the well-lit dining room, from that twenty-five-hundred-foot-long table, to the sideboards with their gleaming silver accessories, to the hearth with its carved marble contours.
“Hello?” she said.
With a frown, she checked the street again… except no, that was not where the sense of a presence was coming from.
Someone was in the house.
“Hello.”
As her heart started to thunder again, her ears rang in alarm. The mansion had struck her as deluxe and elegant from the moment she’d walked in… but suddenly, it seemed like a labyrinth of hidden spaces concealing threats.
Walking off from the window, she passed through the archway of the foyer—
Anne gasped and put her hand to her throat.
Across the way, in the peach-colored parlor with its portrait of a lady over the mantel and its flanking floral silk sofas, a figure…