“Damnation!” he said in a deep, raspy voice that sounded as though it had come off a horror movie.
The voice and the fact that they were now on the floor wrapped about each other made Sara fight harder. He was half on top of her as she twisted and kicked to get him off.
“Would you stop it!” he said in his odd voice. “I’m already in pain. You don’t need to add to it.”
“Get off of me!”
“Gladly,” the man said and rolled to one side, his back on the floor.
Instantly, Sara stood up. The only way out of the room was to step across him, but she had one foot in the air when he grabbed her ankle, paralyzing her in place.
“Not so fast,” he said. “I think you should explain to the police what you’re doing in here at this time of night.”
What he’d said was so preposterous that Sara stopped moving and stared down at him—even as he was holding her ankle above his chest. It was too dark in the room to see clearly, but he had on a white shirt that she knew cost quite a bit. It was not the normal dress of a thief. “Police?” she whispered. “You want to call the police on me?”
He let go of her ankle and in an easy move stood up in front of her. “All right then, tell me what you’re doing in here.”
“Tell you?” Sara felt that she’d entered some comedy act. “I live here.”
The man leaned to one side to switch on the floor lamp, and when Sara started to move toward the bedroom door, he caught her wrist. He didn’t hold it tightly, but she knew she couldn’t break his grip. “I know that’s not the truth,” he said as he pulled her forward, then deftly set her in the only chair in the room. “Now, young lady, start talking.”
Sara looked up at him. He wasn’t an especially large man, certainly not as tall as her cousins Luke and Ramsey, but he was quite handsome—in a street thug sort of way. For all that his hairline was halfway back on his head, he had a heavy growth of very black whiskers. All in all, she did not like being alone in a poorly lit room with him.
Her very ordinary life in a small town hadn’t prepared her for such an encounter as this, but then she, like everyone else, had seen a lot of movies. She put her shoulders back and took a breath—and wished she weren’t wearing a nightgown of semitransparent Irish linen. And it was too bad her hair was down about her shoulders. She would have liked to look more “tough.”
“The question,” she said as calmly as she could manage, “is who are you?”
He bent down to close the open door in the floor, and when Sara shifted in the chair, he looked back at her. “I’m the brother of the renter of this apartment and you are trespassing.”
Sara’s mouth came open in astonishment. “Tess? You’re Tess’s brother? You don’t look like her.”
The harsh expression left his face, and when he gave a little smile that showed a dimple in his left cheek, he no longer looked frightening. “She got the beauty, but I got the brains.”
Sara had to work not to smile at that. His insinuation was that Tess was a brainless beauty, but Tess was one of the smartest people Sara’d ever met. She wasn’t going to let him make her overlook the issues. “Until I see some proof, I don’t believe you.”
He reached into the pocket of what she could tell were qu
ite expensive trousers, removed a thin wallet, and flipped it open to a driver’s license.
Sara didn’t look at it. “I would only trust Tess.”
“Sure. Let’s call her.” He pulled a cell phone from his front pocket and pushed a button.
“She won’t answer,” Sara said. “In case you don’t know, she happens to be on her honeymoon with my cousin.” If he didn’t know that, he couldn’t be Tess’s brother. Everyone knew that Tess talked to her brother every Sunday afternoon, and she readily admitted that she told him everything.
When it rang once with no pickup, Sara glanced toward the doorway. Could she make it? If she screamed really loud, would Luke hear her through the walls? Could she scream loud enough to wake him up?
She glanced at the man, and he had such a smug look on his face that Sara wanted to hit him.
Tess picked up in the middle of the second ring and with an annoying little smile, he handed the phone to Sara.
“Hey big brother!” Tess’s unmistakable voice said, but she was clearly upset. “Are you all right? Has anything happened?”
“Tess, it’s me, Sara.”
“Sara?” Tess’s voice rose. “Why are you on my brother’s phone? Oh God! Has he been injured? I’ll be there—”
“No!” Sara said. “I just need to know if this man who broke into my … I mean, your apartment is actually your brother. It’s obvious he has his phone, but he’s not how I pictured your brother to look.”