Intimate Betrayal (20 page)

She saw several cars parked in narrow driveways, but no
elderly Chevys. Had she lost Vico on one of the turns and ended up following some innocent resident of Pacific Heights?

Damn! It was a good thing she wasn’t trying to support herself as a private detective! She certainly hadn’t acquitted herself
very well so far.

Annie wasn’t sure, afterward, what had alerted her. The neighborhood was generally considered safe, so she wasn’t paying quite
as much attention as she would if she’d been walking in a rough area south of Market. But as she was standing there, puzzled,
a chill touched the hair on the back of her neck, and she whirled around to see a dark sedan coming down the street toward
her. Then the car accelerated, heading straight at her.

The street was narrow, and Annie dived to the side. But the cars were parked so closely together that there was no clear way
through to the sidewalk. And there was no time! The dark car was coming too fast….

Annie threw herself at the obstacle in her way: an ancient, round-hooded Volkswagen. Some miraculous spurt of adrenaline lifted
her up and over its hood just as the dark sedan roared by with only inches to spare. Annie’s momentum kept her going and she
rolled off the VW and landed hard on the sidewalk. She heard the screech of brakes. He had missed, but he was coming back!

Stumbling, she jumped to her feet. Her hip and thigh, which had taken the worst of the impact of her fall, were crying out
in agonized protest. The dark sedan had reached the end of the block, and its white back-up lights were illuminated. He was
turning around. He was going to make another pass at her. Perhaps this time he’d get out….

Panting, Annie darted between two parked cars and
streaked across the street. Adrenaline was controlling her now, and without stopping to think, she ran headlong into a narrow
alley between two large houses.

The alley was lush with window boxes and flowers. Annie slowed up a little, her common sense reasserting itself. The alley
was too narrow for the car to enter. But the driver could certainly follow her on foot.

Someone was trying to kill her.

Or at least to frighten her badly.

Goddammit! Who? Vico? Had he swung around and gotten behind her somehow? Or someone else? Had somebody been following her
while she followed Vico? What if it was the crazy person who’d been writing the threatening letters?

“Entered into rest, Anne Jefferson, designer of church interiors. Suddenly.”

We’ll see about that,
she thought grimly. She was operating on instinct now. And memory. Those long-ago days when she’d lived on the streets and
survived with her quick thieving fingers and her fists came surging back to her.

That’s what they don’t know about me. They think I’m some clueless interior designer who’s liable to faint at the thought
of violence. They don’t know who they’re dealing with here.

The guy in the dark sedan—who was he?

A friend of Paolina and Vico?

An enemy of theirs?

The poison pen?

Or Giuseppe’s murderer?

Annie jogged to the end of the alley, then warily checked out the street ahead of her before venturing forward. It looked
very much like the last one—neat rows of luxury houses on
both sides, and cars taking up every parking space. There was no sign of the lethal speeding car.

“Damn,” she muttered.

To the left she saw a gloomy bank of overhanging trees on the edge of a larger-than-usual property lot. She stopped, staring.
She knew this spot. She was standing outside the grounds of Matthew Carlyle’s home.

Situated on the top of a hill, his home was slightly above her. There was a five-foot-high wall on the south edge of his property,
and a set of brick steps leading up through the garden to the house.

Annie was suddenly conscious of the increasing pain in her left side and thigh. She must have hurt herself more than she realized
when she’d landed on the sidewalk.

Matt would help her. He had to.

Annie was limping up the garden steps to Matt’s house when she saw headlights approaching slowly down the street. Still jumpy,
she squatted behind a shrub until the car had passed the house.

She heard a faint whirring sound near the end of Carlyle’s driveway and realized that it was the metal gate, opening. The
car from the street turned into the driveway and proceeded up the incline toward the house. He’d been out, obviously. He was
returning home, thank goodness. Good timing.

She was about to stand up and wave to him when something about the headlights niggled at her. Headlights were headlights.
Two bright bulbs, widely spaced—they all looked alike. Well, almost all. These were unremarkable. The headlights on the car
that had tried to ram her had been unremarkable.

She stayed down.

From her position she saw the car pull past her. There was another whirring sound as the garage door was activated,
probably from a remote control inside the car. She recognized Matt’s profile as the floodlights in the front garden shone
on his face as he pulled the car into the garage.

The car was a dark, late-model, two-door sedan. She couldn’t swear what make or what model, but she could swear that it looked
very similar to the car that had just attacked her.

“I don’t forget and I don yt forgive. Sooner or later, I even the score. “

Crouching, Annie turned and ran back across the small square of lawn that led to the steps. She felt thoroughly spooked and
very vulnerable. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but this wasn’t the time or the place to try to figure it out.

Was
Matt Carlyle a killer after all?

Had he just tried to kill
her?

Her heart rejected the idea, but her mind kept throwing up contradictory fragments—things he’d said, things other people had
said about him. Could she trust him? How well did she really know him? Suppose everything he’d told her about himself had
been a lie?

The streets were safe now, surely. He and the car were home. She’d get back to the street and find a phone or pound on some
neighbor’s door or simply scream as loudly as she could until somebody called the police. That’s what she should have done
in the first place—screamed. To hell with this trying-to-be-brave nonsense. To hell with self-control.

The fog had rolled back in and now shrouded the small garden. For a moment she was disoriented, unsure where the staircase
started. The steps had beenslippery, she remembered;
she shouldn’t run, shouldn’t rush—she didn’t want to fall and be stuck here. He didn’t know she was here. He’d given up, at
least for tonight.

Annie had just found the top of the stairs when she heard growls and then loud insistent barking. He must have let the dogs
out. The furious barking stopped abruptly, followed by an ominous silence. She remembered a stray scrap of information: Attacking
dogs do not make a sound

Stressed out and totally confused about who were the good guys and who were the bad, Annie did the worst possible thing. She
ran.

She knew that she couldn’t outrun attack dogs, but she had seen a tree just a few yards back—thick and sturdy, and with branches
low enough to climb.

Annie stumbled and fell as she reached the tree and grabbed at the lowest branch. She let out an involuntary cry as she cracked
her head on the tree trunk and her knee on something hard. As she heard the whoosh in the bushes behind her, she knew that
the dogs—which Matt had locked up the last time she’d been here—were almost upon her.

Annie’s palms were sweating as she clambered to her feet and snatched at the branch overhead. With a powerful heave, she pulled
herself up just as the dogs burst out of the brush behind her. Seizing the next branch, heart hopping, she climbed another
few feet and then another, hugging the tree trunk as two enormous hounds from hell—or so they appeared in the fog—barked and
leaped against the bottom of the tree.

So much for escaping quietly.

It was only a couple of minutes before she heard him coming. First was the blinding beam of a powerful flashlight, then the
low voice she recognized. He spoke to the dogs,
which, with obvious reluctance, backed away from the tree. As they vanished into the fog, Annie heard the jangle of chains.

“Okay. Get down,” he said in a voice that was clearly accustomed to being obeyed.

“The dogs…?”

“I have them under restraint.”

He was at the base of the tree now, peering up at her. “Jump down,” he ordered.

Annie stumbled as she landed and ended up sprawled at his feet. He was wearing running shoes, she noted. Black running shoes.

His legs were clad in jeans. A billionaire in jeans.
Absurd,
she thought,
the things you notice when you’re scared to death.

Looking up at him, blinking against the light, she felt her terror shift tohumiliation. What must she look like—scruffy and
wild, her clothing orn, her hair wild, her body still trembling with exertion and adrenaline and fear

He made a sound. Recognition. Real or fake, false or true? Even if he had been the driver of the dark sedan, he would be surprised
to find her here. He wouldn’t have expected that.

The worst of the bright light moved, sliding on down her body, and she could see him once again as she lay there looking up,
a tall, dominant figure silhouetted against the night sky. He held the two dogs on short chain leashes. They were panting,
drooling, still looking as if they’d like to rip her to shreds.

“Annie?”

He sounded truly surprised. And no wonder. If he
had
tried to run her down, he must have been cursing himself for
missing her, and now here she was delivering herself directly into his hands.

She saw that he was holding an automatic pistol. Dear God! Her fear took a giant leap. With the gun in his hand, he looked
more like a desperado than a wealthy, sophisticated businessman.

As they stared at each other, gazes locked over the gun he held, the skies opened and the rain came pouring down, its swift
and sudden violence plastering Annie’s hair against her skull. She closed her arms around her body, shivering, even as she
expected at any second to feel the violent impact that would end her life.

“Christ!” The word exploded out of him. “What kind of stupidity is this? I took you for a burglar. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot
you.”

He reached down and hauled her to her feet. She stumbled, feeling as if her legs wouldn’t hold her weight. The surges of adrenaline
that had sustained her so long seemed now to have been exhausted. She felt as if she was crashing, unable to fight any longer,
unable to do anything more in her own defense.

Matt ran the flashlight over her again. “Shit,” he said softly. “You’re hurt.”

Annie looked down and saw the blood on her knee. It must have happened when she fell against the tree. “It’s just a scrape,”
she whispered.

He released the dogs, who were docile now that their master obviously knew the intruder. Matt shoved the gun into the pocket
of his jeans and took Annie’s hand. “Come with me.”

He pulled her along behind him as he started back up the stairs. She made atoken attempt to free herself, but he was
too strong. When she stumbled again, he stopped, turned, and shifted his grip on her, then picked her up in his arms. He carried
her the remaining few steps to the back garden of his mammoth house.

With rain pouring down on them and thunder growling in the distance and an occasional flash of lightning piercing the fog,
Annie felt as though she were entering an unreal world. Her brain felt sluggish, but all her senses were alive. She could
hear each individual raindrop as it struck the earth and the stones underfoot. The rustle of leaves, the sighs of the flowers
as their stems bent in the wind. The combined smells of herbs and grasses, Matt’s faintly musky, masculine scent, a lemony
whiff of her own perfume.

He was holding her, carrying her, straining a bit—she could hear it in his breathing; but he was strong and fit enough to
do this—stronger than she was—male, ruthless, indomitable. He had just tried to kill her. Now he was taking her inside his
huge house, where the rooms were gloomy and the walls were thick and he would be able to do anything he wanted to her. She
wouldn’t be able to stop him any more than she could stop the storm.

She closed her eyes, letting her head rest against the hard flesh and bone of his shoulder. She could feel the steady, if
slightly rapid, beating of his heart. It reminded her of another day, another time. London. The rain. His arms around her,
his hands sliding under her clothing to find her hot, slippery skin. Yearning. Pleasure. Need.

I must be totally out of it,
Annie thought vaguely, because for some reason, she wasn’t afraid.

Matt Carlyle had no idea why Annie Jefferson had been darting about his property, dashing precipitously down his garden steps.
It was one more mystery among too many. But he didn’t know, and didn’t care.

The point was, she was here.

He had her.

Her body was wet and slick, and by some miracle she felt as light as feathers as he carried her. He knew that tomorrow, surely,
he would ache all over from this madness. But that didn’t matter. Where Annie was concerned, he’d been aching all over for
years.

No more. The chase had gone on long enough. This would be the night that ended it. He was going to settle things between them
once and for all.

He reached the house and shouldered his way in through the half-open door. The dogs followed, still excited, still uncertain
about this stranger and what was going on. He kicked the door shut, snapped on the lock. The woman in his arms shivered at
the sound, and he knew she was as confused as he was.

That didn’t matter, either. The confusion would soon end. There was one way to end it, and he should have done it long ago.

He carried her through the dark kitchen, through the pantry and the dining room, out into the hallway and up the grand staircase
to the second floor. He was breathing hard now; his heart was straining. His arms and back felt numb with stress. She was
far smaller than he, but she wasn’t
that
small. He figured that she weighed about 120 pounds.