For Love Alone (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 8)

Carlotta threw him a dark look. ‘What I am doing here is none of your concern.’

Before Phillip could answer her he was interrupted by a series of heavy thumps on the front door. Carlotta froze and looked at the door with wide, terrified eyes.

‘You have a visitor,’ Phillip informed her as if she didn’t already know it.

It was only when the young woman eyed the drawer containing the large knife that Phillip became wary. He watched with growing alarm as she hurried across the kitchen to the dresser and slid open the drawer. It was then that he noticed several large red marks on her arm. His brows shot up when she turned around with the knife in her hand. Phillip’s brows shot up when he saw the knife in her hand.

‘Do you know something? I get the impression that you are not supposed to be here either.’ He pointedly looked at the front door which was visible through the kitchen doorway. Neither of them went to answer it.

Carlotta glared at him. ‘They are not here for me,’ she snapped.

‘Nobody knows you are here,’ Phillip murmured with a thoughtful nod.

Carlotta glared at him only to blink in surprise when he suddenly left the kitchen and began to walk toward the front door. Horrified that he might think to answer it, she hurried after him. ‘Don’t,’ she ordered.

Phillip stopped at the bottom of the stairs and threw her an askance look. ‘Are you supposed to be here or not?’

‘I am and am not,’ she replied warily.

Phillip sighed heavily and muttered something that sounded distinctly like an epithet beneath his breath before disappearing into the study.

Curious to see what he was going to do, Carlotta followed him. She watched him stand next to the window closest to the front door. Dressed completely in black he was almost invisible as he slid the shutter open just enough so he could see who was on the front steps.

Phillip studied the two men thumping heavily on the door. He suspected they were Smidgley’s men. Both were armed and looked to be the kind of disreputable thug Smidgley would employ. Slowly, carefully, Phillip replaced the shutter and moved away from the window. His gaze immediately returned to the woman who was watching him intently from the doorway.

‘Is everywhere in this house locked and shuttered?’ he asked as he stepped past her into the hallway. He studied the locks on the front door and satisfied himself that they were indeed going to stop the thugs from breaking in.

‘Yes. Or they were until you broke in.’ Carlotta daren’t tell him anything else. She was curious to know who he was hiding from. ‘Are they here for you?’

Phillip didn’t answer. Instead, he returned to the kitchen.

Carlotta watched him until he disappeared. She took a moment to gather her wits about her. It felt ridiculous to stand in the hallway with a knife in her hand. He hadn’t posed any danger to her. He had scared her out of her mind but hadn’t physically harmed her. What she needed to know was if he had hurt someone else.

Like the man with the scar on his face.

She wondered if it was the magistrate’s men at the door, or the thugs her father had sent after her. With a worried look at the kitchen, Carlotta went into the study and lifted a hand to slide the shutter open a little.

‘Slide that open and they will see you,’ Phillip warned from the doorway.

Carlotta gasped and threw him a dark look. She hated the way he could move about without making a sound. ‘You did it,’ she hissed, trying hard to ignore just how handsome he was.

Dressed completely in black, the stranger was powerfully sinister but still incredibly handsome. It was concerning that while she knew she should run for her life all Carlotta wanted to do was find out everything about him.

Like what he is doing here, where he has come from and who he is hiding from.

It was startling to realise that he seemed to be in the same situation she was in. What she needed to know now was whether he was running from the same people or working with them.

‘But he wasn’t standing in front of the window trying to see inside then,’ he mumbled around a mouthful of bread.

Carlotta stared at him. When she looked at the shutters again the shadows had indeed changed. She watched as the light filtering around the edges of the shutters lifted again, as if the person outside had moved on and in doings so allowed the natural flow of light into the room to resume. Carlotta opened her mouth to ask how he knew about things like that o

nly to realise the stranger had disappeared again.

‘And I didn’t hear him move,’ she murmured in disgust.

By the time she reached the hallway he was on the landing. Staring up at him she wondered if he was searching for something and did indeed intend to steal something. But she also knew that anything of any real value had been removed by the house’s owners not long after the previous owner had died. There was no possibility she was going to tell this man that, though. He could search everywhere and find out for himself that he was not going to find any valuables.

‘He wouldn’t believe me anyway.’ Rather than follow him and see what he was doing, Carlotta returned to the kitchen. Within just a few minutes, the stranger appeared in the kitchen again.