“Are you still afraid of me?”
She clutched her camera in one hand, staring up at him. Then she tossed her head.
“Why would I be afraid of some Spanish playboy?”
“If you’re not afraid, prove it,” he whispered. His gaze fell to her lips.
With a gasp, she jumped back two steps. Stefano wondered if she even knew she’d done it, or if it had been pure reflex.
The beam of morning light from the door illuminated Annabelle’s hair, making it a million shades of gold. She licked her pink, heart-shaped mouth, staring up at him with her big gray eyes.
Stefano swallowed. He’d never felt desire like this before. It was magic. He was caught, ensorcelled by desire.
“You’re so beautiful, Annabelle,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen your equal.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes wide. Then she clenched her hands.
“Just because you comforted me last night, I won’t fall at your feet now.” She shook her head fiercely. “I won’t let you seduce me.”
Beneath her defiance, Stefano saw the increasing tremble of her body. He saw her nervousness and fear. He knew if he came closer to her, even a single step, she would flee. Even now, her feet were inching back toward the stable door. It was only the knife’s edge of pride that held her.
“Why are you so afraid?” he asked in a low voice.
“I’m not!”
“You’re trembling. You’re so afraid of me, that if I take one more step toward you, you’ll bolt for the door.”
She tossed her head, but he saw the desperation hidden beneath the bravado. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
Slowly, deliberately, Stefano raised his black leather boot above the rough wood floor in a single step.
With a hoarse intake of breath, Annabelle stumbled back, dropping her camera with a clatter as she turned and fled the stables.
Annabelle had barely taken a dozen pictures so far that morning, testing the early light, before she’d found him in the stables. The last person on earth she wanted to see.
Stefano.
He’d seen her at her worst last night when she’d screamed in her recurring dream, the horrifying nightmare that always clung to her like cobwebs after she awoke. Annabelle could never awake from it completely. She’d lived it.
“Please don’t hit her! Stop it, stop it!” her little brothers had screamed and cried over the rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of the whip cutting her flesh as her drunken, enraged father savagely beat her in Wolfe Manor. Annabelle was curled up in a ball on the floor, too weak to protect herself from the continuing blows. She knew her father wanted her to cry and beg for mercy, but she couldn’t do it. If she did, she feared his anger would turn on the little boys crying behind him.
She could barely see little Sebastian and Nathaniel through the sheen of blood as she gasped to them, “Stay away! Run, get out of here!” But they wouldn’t abandon her, even at such risk to themselves.
Then Jacob had burst into the hallway. Her eldest brother, so tall and strong at eighteen, had knocked their father aside with a shout, snatching up the whip as he punched their father away from her with a single resounding blow. Annabelle saw their father fall, fall, fall as if in slow motion. She heard a loud terrible bang as his head hit the bottom step of the staircase, and their father’s violent life had come to an abrupt end.
It was always the same nightmare when she was under stress, ending with the same shocked look in her father’s eyes.
His death hadn’t been her fault. She’d told herself that again and again. But she didn’t quite believe it. He’d stared straight at her as he’d died. Whenever Annabelle had the dream, she always woke with a sob, woke to loneliness and despair.
But last night, like a miracle, she’d woken to find Stefano’s arms around her. She’d felt safe. Comforted. With him beside her, she’d fallen back asleep, knowing nothing bad could happen when he was keeping watch over her.
Then she’d woken up and he was gone. Her embarrassment that he’d seen her in a vulnerable stat
e was bad enough. Then she’d wondered if he’d seen the scar on her bare skin in the morning light, and it had been her ugly face that drove him away.
You’re ugly beneath that makeup, Annabelle. A hideous monster.
Rising from her bed, she had showered and dressed. She’d pulled back her hair and applied her makeup with a trembling hand. Then, not wanting to face Stefano at breakfast, she’d gone straight outside. She’d tried to focus on taking pictures, but amid the silence of the morning, his low, husky voice invaded her soul.