LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      THE sound of the doorbell rang loudly through the silent house, making Catherine tense instinctively. She froze in the middle of the room, her bright blue eyes wide with apprehension as her heart lurched into a heavy, painfully accelerated pounding so that she found it difficult to breathe naturally.

      ‘Who is it?’

      She struggled to form the words but her voice failed her, becoming just a thin thread of sound that wouldn’t reach whoever was on the other side of the door.

      ‘Who are you?’ she tried again, with a little more success than before, but still not loudly enough to gain any response.

      She would have to look through the peep-hole that her father had had installed, she told herself, ruthlessly squashing down the fear that held her paralysed. Only then would she know.

      Know what? her mind flung at her, forcing her to face the brutal truth. How would she know if the caller at the door was the man she feared when she didn’t even know his identity, had no idea what he looked like?

      She had only hesitated a moment or two, struggling to regain enough control to be able to turn and move towards the hallway, but that short time was quite long enough for a key to be inserted in the lock, and she had just taken a couple of steps towards the hallway when the door swung open.

      ‘Only me!’

      Catherine’s slim shoulders slumped under the impact of the sudden wave of relief that broke over her at the sound of her father’s reassuring voice, her heart lifting in instinctive response, and the sense of dread vanishing like the mist before the sun at the sight of his smiling face. But almost immediately all her new-found ease fled as another man, big and dark-haired, stepped into the hall behind him, and all her tension and fear revived at the realisation that there was someone with her father— someone she neither knew nor recognised.

      ‘Dad!’

      Her voice was tight with the panic that the sight of an unknown face—particularly an unknown male face— could spark off in her so easily these days.

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry darling.’ Recognising her fear, Lloyd Davies’ expression changed abruptly, apologetic concern showing in the blue eyes that were so like his daughter’s. ‘I should have thought—I asked Evan to come back with me, but I should have rung you first—’

      ‘No—it’s all right—’ If her father could vouch for him, then surely she had nothing to fear.

      But her voice lacked the conviction of truth, betraying her uncertainty in the way that it shook revealingly, and her state of mind was not made any easier by the disturbing realisation that the man called Evan was studying her with an interest that was positively laser-like in its intensity. His eyes—strange coloured eyes, neither blue nor green, but with the cold changeability of the sea on a winter’s day—were narrowed assessingly as he watched her, and a frown creased the space between straight, dark brows.

      ‘H-hello-’

      Her weak attempt at a smile met with no response, and she was further unnerved by the way his considering gaze raked over her, from the top of her shining ash-blonde head to the toes on the bare feet that peeped out from beneath the ragged hems of the well-worn denim jeans that she wore with one of her father’s old shirts, the faded pink cotton untucked at the waist and hanging loose around her narrow hips.

      Her smile fading, she met that narrowed stare head-on, hiding behind a display of defiance the fact that she was quailing deep inside, her nerves twisting into tight, painful knots. She was used to public attention—in her job it was par for the course—but she certainly wasn’t used to being subjected to such a deliberate scrutiny— particularly not when it was accompanied by such a frowningly disapproving expression.

      ‘Evan who?’ she asked, her voice more in control this time, though the determined effort she was making to smooth out the earlier unevenness made it sound cold and distant, earning her another of those swift, critical glances.

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