The Stranger's Secrets

by Beth Williamson

  “For a lady,” Sam growled, “you’re pretty damned free with that gun.”

  She glanced down at the weapon in her hand, then tucked it into her skirts. Proper young women did not carry pistols. Certainly not during the day, and most assuredly not in the middle of the night while lurking in deserted stonemason yards.

  “Pistols are all the rage this season,” she said. She could not tell Sam anything about her mission, bound by a code of silence, as well as for his own protection.

  Although, she amended, gazing at Sam, he seemed perfectly capable of protecting himself. If forced to use only one word to describe this man, the word she must choose would be lethal. She’d never met a man who held such dangerous intent in his body, including the most seasoned Blade field agents. He did not even offer a veneer of a smile at her attempt at humor.

  “Nothing good brings a woman out at night,” he rumbled. “Some kind of assignation, then. A husband? Lover?” He raised a brow.

  Cassandra wondered what kind of lover necessitated having a gun. “I might not be the same girl who collected spiders in jars,” she said, “but I’m not the sort of woman who arranges moonlight trysts.” However, she wasn’t a maiden anymore. She’d seen to that a few years ago, though she wasn’t about to tell Sam.

  Truthfully, she did not know what to say to Sam. She’d so often dreamt of this moment, how she would greet him upon his return. She had even contemplated something as frivolous as the dress she would wear. It would show him she was no longer a girl with dirt under her fingernails, but a grown woman, with a grown woman’s desires. And he would see her as if for the first time, a slow smile of wonder illuminating his face, and realize that what he had been searching for had been at home all along. Her nails, too, would be clean. She curbed the impulse to check them now—for often, after touring factories and inspecting conditions, her fingernails did get dirty. But that was a minor detail compared to seeing Sam again.

  Her dream of their reunion had ended two years ago, but she remembered it vividly, an imprint of abandoned hope burned into an afterimage on her heart.

  Yet this…fierce, dangerous man…was entirely unlike the Sam she’d longed for, resembling him only in the most superficial way. He burned with a deep, profound coldness that seeped into her own bones.

  She realized that it had been Sam, stalking the darkness. Moving with an eerie fluidity. More at home within the realm of unnatural shadow than light and life. But how could that be possible?

  “I’ve no idea who you are anymore.” Sam’s voice glinted like a knife in the darkness.

  “That feeling,” she said, “is mutual.”

  Truthfully, she had no idea who he was. Or, her mind whispered, what he was. She tried to push that thought away, but it would not be staved off.

  Unfamiliar, this terror. Something clammy and frightened uncoiled in her stomach as she stared up at his impassive face. The changes wrought in Sam went beyond the shift from youth to maturity, from civilian to veteran soldier. Yet she did not know what, exactly, was different, was deeply, profoundly not right.

  A burst of noise careened out of the tavern. Both Cassandra and Sam shot alert glances toward it, but no one exited the building. As Sam continued to rake the tavern with his gaze, Cassandra could feel the waves of anger and purpose emanating from him, palpable as frost. The gentling of his expression was gone. Nothing gentle in him now.

  Sam had been a soldier, a major, the last she’d heard, and still held himself with a soldier’s vigilant, capable presence. He wore civilian clothes, yet carried, she saw at that moment, an officer’s sword and wore tall military boots. The war in the Crimea ended two years ago. What had become of him since then?

  “This makes no sense,” she said. “I was told….” Her words dried as he swung his gaze back to her. Even in the weak light from the tavern’s windows, she saw his eyes were the same palest blue, edged in indigo, only now his eyes did not dance with humor or mischief. They were…haunted.

  “I was told,” she began again, “that you were dead.”

  He stared at her with those anguished, cold eyes. And said, “I am.”

  Here’s a sneak peek at Donna Kauffman’s HERE COMES TROUBLE, out next month from Brava!

  The hot, steamy shower felt like heaven on earth as it pounded his back and neck. He should have done this earlier. It was almost better than sleep. Almost. He’d realized after Kirby had left that he’d probably only grabbed a few hours after arriving, and he’d fully expected to be out the instant his head hit the pillow again. But that hadn’t been the case. This time it hadn’t been because he was worried about Dan, or Vanetta, or anyone else back home, or even wondering what in the hell he thought he was doing this far from the desert. In New England, for God’s sake. During the winter. Although it didn’t appear to be much of one out there.

  No, that blame lay right on the lovely, slender shoulders of Kirby Farrell, innkeeper, and rescuer of trapped kittens. Granted, after the adrenaline rush of finding her hanging more than twenty feet off the ground by her fingertips, it shouldn’t be surprising that sleep eluded him, but that wasn’t entirely the cause. Maybe he’d simply spent too long around women who were generally over-processed, over-enhanced, and overly made up, so that meeting a regular, everyday ordinary woman seemed to stand out more.

  It was a safe theory, anyway.

  And yet, after only a few hours under her roof, he’d already become a foster dad to a wild kitten and had spent far more time thinking about said kitten’s savior than he had his own host of problems.

  Maybe it was simply easier to think about someone else’s situation. Which would explain why he was wondering about things like whether or not Kirby was making a go of things with her new enterprise here, what with the complete lack of winter weather they were having. And what her story was before opening the inn? Was this place a lifelong dream? For all he knew, she was some New England trust fund baby just playing at running her own place. Except that didn’t jibe with what he’d seen of her so far.

  He’d been so lost in his thoughts while enjoying the rejuvenation of the hot shower, that he clearly hadn’t heard his foster child’s entrance into the bathroom. Which was why he almost had a heart attack when he turned around to find the little demon hanging from the outside of the clear shower curtain by its tiny, sharp nails, eyes wide in panic.

  After his heart resumed a steady pace, he bent down to look at her, eye-to-wild-eye. “You keep climbing things you shouldn’t and one day there will be no one to rescue you.”

  He was sure the responding hiss was meant to be ferocious and intimidating, but given the pink nosed–tiny–whiskered face it came out of, not so much. She hissed again when he just grinned, and started grappling with the curtain when he outright laughed, mangling it in the process.

  He swore under his breath. “So, I’m already down one sweater, a shower curtain, and God knows what else you’ve dragged under the bed. I should just let you hang there all tangled up. At least I know where you are.”

  However, given that the tiny thing had already had one pretty big fright that day, he sighed, shut off the hot, life-giving spray, and very carefully reached out for a towel. After a quick rubdown, he wrapped the towel around his hips, eased out from the other end of the shower, and grabbed a hand towel. “We’ll probably be adding this to my tab, as well.” He doubted Kirby’s guests would appreciate for a bath towel one that had doubled as a kitty straitjacket.

  “Come on,” he said, doing pretty much the same thing he’d done when the kitten had been attached to the front of Kirby. “I know you’re not happy about it,” he told the now squalling cat. “I’m not all that amped up, either.” He looked at the shredded curtain once he’d de-pronged the demon from the front of it, and shuddered to think of just how much damage it had done to the front of Kirby.

  “Question is…what do I do with you now?”

  Just then a light tap came on the door. “Mr. Hennessey?”

  “Brett,”
he called back.

  “I…Brett. Right. I called. But there was no answer, so—”

  “Oh, shower. Sorry.” He walked over to the door, juggled the kitty bundle and cracked the door open.

  Her gaze fixed on his chest, then scooted down to the squirming towel bundle, right back up to his chest, briefly to his face, then away all together. “I’m—sorry. I just, you said…and dinner is—anyway—” She frowned. “You didn’t take the cat, you know, into—” She nodded toward the room behind him. “Did something happen?”

  “I was in the shower. Shredder here decided to climb the curtain because apparently she’s not happy unless she’s trying to find new ways to terrify people.”

  He glanced from the kitten to Kirby’s face in time to see her almost laugh, then compose herself. “I’m sorry, really. I shouldn’t have let you keep her in the first place. I mean, not that you can’t, but you obviously didn’t come here to rescue a kitten. I should—we should—just leave you alone.” She reached out to take the squirmy bundle from him.

  “Does that mean I don’t get dinner?”

  “What?” She looked up, got caught somewhere about chest height, then finally looked at his face. “I mean, no, no, not at all. I just—I hope you didn’t have your heart set on pot roast. There were a few…kitchen issues. Minor, really, but—”

  “I’m not picky,” he reassured her. What he was, he realized, was starving. And not just for dinner. If she kept looking at him like that…well, it was making him want to feed an entirely different kind of appetite. In fact…He shut that mental path down. His life, such as it was, didn’t have room for further complications. And she’d be one. Hell, she already was. “I shouldn’t have gotten you to cook anyway. You’ve had quite a day, and given what The Claw here did to your—my—shower curtain—I’ll pay for a new one—I can only imagine that you must need more medical attention than I realized.”

  “Don’t worry about that, I’m fine. Here,” she said, reaching out for the wriggling towel bundle. “Why don’t I go ahead and take her off your hands. I can put her out on the back porch for a bit, let you get, uh, dressed.”

  Really, she had to stop looking at him like that. Like he was a…a pot roast or something. With gravy. And potatoes. Damn he was really hungry. Voraciously so. Did she have any idea how long he’d been on the road? With only himself and the sound of the wind for company? Actually, it had been far longer than that, but he really didn’t need to acknowledge that right about now.

  Then she was reaching for him, and he was right at that point where he was going to say the hell with it and drag her into the room and the hell with dinner, too…only she wasn’t reaching for him. She was reaching for the damn kitten. He sort of shoved it into her hands, then shifted so a little more of the door was between them…and a little less of a view of the front of his towel. Which was in a rather revealing situation at the moment.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it. I’ll go down—be down—in just a few minutes.” He really needed to shut this door. Before he made her nervous. Or worse. I mean, sure, she was looking at him like he was her last supper, but that didn’t mean she was open to being ogled in return by a paying guest. Especially when he was the only paying guest in residence. Even if that did mean they had the house to themselves. And privacy. Lots and lots of privacy. “Five minutes,” he blurted, and all but slammed the door in her face.

  Crap, if Dan could see him at the moment, he’d be laughing his damn ass off. As would most of Vegas. Not only did Brett happen to play high stakes poker pretty well, but the supporters and promoters seemed to think he was also a draw because of his looks. And no, he wasn’t blind, he knew he’d been relatively blessed, genetically speaking, for which he was grateful. No one would choose to be ugly. A least he wouldn’t think so.

  But while the looks had come naturally, that whole bad boy, cocky attitude vibe that was supposed to go with it had not. Not that he was shy. Exactly.

  He was confident in his abilities, what they were, and what they weren’t. But confidence was one thing. Arrogance another. And just because women threw themselves at him, didn’t mean he was comfortable catching them. Mostly due to the fact that he was well aware that women weren’t throwing themselves at him because of who he was. But because of what he was. Some kind of quasi-poker rock star. They were batting eyelashes, thrusting cleavage, and passing phone numbers and room keys because of his fame, his fortune, his ability to score freebies from hotels and sponsors, and, somewhere on that list, probably his looks weren’t hurting him, either.

  Nowhere on that list, however, did it appear that getting to know the guy behind the deck of cards and the stacks of chips was of any remote interest.

  And there lay the irony.

  BRAVA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2010 Beth Williamson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Brava and the B logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7582-5613-3