Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream 1)

“I have an event next week that will keep me rather busy,” she explained as she handed me the card and closed the clasp on her bag with a pop. “After next weekend, my schedule opens up. I would be happy to take you to tea, talk about your plans for the future.”

“Wow,” I said, before I could curb the impulse, blushing badly at my gaucheness. “This is incredibly kind of you.”

Her smile was thin but beautiful. “Yes, well, anything for a…friend of the family.”

Without another word, she stepped away and moved around to the other side of the car. The driver got out to open the door for her, then shot me an apologetic look.

“Sorry about hitting you,” he muttered.

“Sorry about hitting your car,” I quipped, sliding off the hood, then giving it a little pat. “This thing is definitely worth more than I am.”

He made a funny face at me. “If Caroline Constantine just paid you the time of day, I wouldn’t underestimate your worth. At least to her.”

Before I could question his odd statement, he ducked back into the driver’s seat and took off, pulling the car through the gates and up the winding hill to the palatial oceanside mansion beyond.

I blinked at the Constantine Compound, the place my dad had bought and made his palace, a home suffused with his history and memories. I yearned to go inside, to touch the walls and stand in the same places he’d once stood.

Instead, I clutched Caroline’s card in my hand, put my fallen earbuds back in my ears and started a slow walk back to the gloomy, troubled halls of Lion Court.

Chapter Twelve

Bianca

It got dark quickly.

It was early November in New York now, the nights getting long, blackness falling like a shroud by five-thirty in the evening. There were old-fashioned iron lampposts dotting the streets of Bishop’s Landing, but they did little to orient me. Every block looked the same, big houses tucked behind great big fences like the rich were worried the outside world would contaminate their charmed lives.

I got lost.

Horribly so.

My phone had lost battery just after the crash at the Constantine Compound, so I couldn’t call Lion Court or look up directions. Instead, I wandered, hoping to bump into someone who could give me directions, but it seemed the entire town was locked up tight after dark. A cold wind blew off the ocean, briny and dense. I shivered in my skimpy workout clothes, unable to run to keep warm because I was too sore.

I was about to give up and buzz at one of the gates along the street to beg for directions or the use of a phone when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Awareness prickled down my spine like needles through the flesh, digging straight to the bone.

Slowly, I turned my head to look over my shoulder and spotted a dark smudge moving down the street toward me from the other side of the road.

I picked up my pace, ducking around a corner.

Minutes later, thinking I’d lost whoever it was or that I was just being a silly paranoid girl, I considered an intercom at the end of the street. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something dark split off from the shadows and come toward me.

I hesitated, trying to decide if running was better than asking for help. Finally, I decided to do both. The intercom buzzed under my finger as I took out an earbud to hear the response.

The dark figure drew closer, only a block and a half away now.

“Good evening,” someone finally answered. “We aren’t expecting a delivery at this time.”

“Please, my name is Bianca Belcante and I just moved to the area. I’m lost and I think someone may be following me.”

A pause. “We don’t want any trouble here. Please move along.”

I gaped, heart racing as the figure started to move quicker, cutting down the distance to one block. “I’m seventeen. I go to Sacred Heart Academy and live here in Bishop’s Landing. Please let me in, even just beyond the gates so I can get away from the person following me.”

“You should call the police.”

“I don’t have a phone!” I cried in frustration.

The line went dead.

“Fuck!” I hit the wall beside the intercom, then sucked in a deep breath and forced my aching body to run.

I darted down the street toward the ocean because I knew at some point along the peninsula, Lion Court roosted at the top of the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic.

Acid filled my chest as I ran hard, legs and arms pumping, torso angled to cut through the wind. My entire right side blazed with pain, but panic muted the sensation.

It was the fight-or-flight response.

Behind me, ears straining, I could hear the telltale thump of feet against asphalt.