Trusting a Stranger (3 page)

The two women had altogether too much in common. Most importantly, they shared a propensity for getting into trouble. For all he knew, they shared a dangerous love of adventure too. It was indulging her love for scuba diving that had killed Erica, two years ago.

Ethan caught up with himself then. What did he mean, thinking ‘for all he knew'? Of course he knew that Hayley shared Erica's dangerous passion for adventure. Nothing else could have brought her here.

He showed her to one of the chairs and found himself shaking his head. How long had it been since a woman had last been in here? Years, probably. There was his daughter Katy, of course, but no adult female since the last time Erica had been here, a year or so before she died. And yet the room seemed warmer with Hayley in it.

That was why he shook his head. The last thing he needed was another woman around. Any sort of woman would be a distraction. He had serious trouble coming after him, was in serious danger, and needed to keep alert at all times if he wanted to keep Katy safe. A woman like this, sniffing out danger that was entirely unnecessary to her, was exactly the sort of person he needed to avoid.

‘You have a piano?' Hayley sounded wistful.

‘It was my mother's,' Ethan said. He reached his hand towards her. ‘Give me your camera.'

Hayley's hand closed over the bag at her waist. She had fine, long fingers, he noticed.

‘What do you mean?' she demanded. ‘Why would I want to do that?'

‘I'm about to leave you alone in this room. I want to make sure we're quite clear about what I'll allow before you start taking any photos.'

She looked hopeful. ‘You'll let me know what you'll allow?' she repeated. ‘That means you'll let me take photos after all?'

Ethan wasn't fooled. What he was going to allow was precisely nothing. But he didn't believe that Hayley was really after something as simple as photos, and he had something to prove to her before they talked any more. Some little piece of information that she could take back to whoever it was that had sent her here.

‘We'll talk when I come back down,' he said. ‘I'll only be a few minutes. Give me your camera.'

Her fingers shook a little as she undid the catch to her camera bag and passed it over to him. Indecision flickered too, in the slight, slight movement of her full lips. He left her to wonder while he took the camera with him and, taking care to leave the door open behind him, walked back through the hall and up the stairs.

‘It's all right, Katy, I'm coming,' he called as he walked out of the room.

There was a rustling noise in the sitting room behind him. Hayley had moved in her seat. He imagined her now, leaning forward, craning her head to see what he was up to. Perhaps she would even stand and walk towards the door.

Ethan took care that his footsteps were heavy on the stairs. He wanted to make this easy for her. He paused for a moment as though waiting for an answer, then, in an encouraging voice, called out.

‘Almost there!'

There was a closed door near the first landing. He knocked on it and turned the handle. The room beyond was empty apart from a narrow single bed and a white-painted chest of drawers. This room was closest to the centre of the house and it was where Ethan himself usually slept.

‘How are you going, Katy?' he asked, in a too-loud voice, directing the question towards the empty bed.

Of course the bed had nothing to say to him. And Katy was hundreds of miles away, safe in a convent in the north of Italy. It was important that the woman downstairs not know this.

‘That's good,' he said. He left another pause. ‘She's just a photographer. She won't be here for long. Then we can go for that walk, okay?'

Something in his chest hurt because of the pretence. He would like nothing more now than to be about to take Katy for a walk out in the sunshine, perhaps towards the vineyards he had been tending earlier.

How desperately he wished that circumstances were different! Katy could have charmed Hayley, perhaps then they could all have gone for a walk together…

Then he steeled himself. He could not appear weak in front of the woman downstairs. It was because his enemies were able to hire people like her to do their dirty work — or at least, their spying work — that he had to keep Katy hidden so far away from him.

‘All right. I'll be back in a few minutes. Bye now,' he said, backing towards the door. ‘Love you too, Katy.'

He pulled the door towards him, closing it on an achingly empty room.

Once upon a time, this had been a family house. He and Erica and Katy had been happy here, or so he had believed way back then. How was he to have known how badly Erica was craving something more? That the quiet family life that had meant so much to him, when he'd thought he'd found it for the first time in his life, had so little meaning to Erica? She had been willing to risk it all just for the sake of adventure. She had been foolhardy. And she had paid the ultimate price in the end, dying far from Ethan and Katy.

His footsteps were heavy again as he walked back downstairs, but this time because he was thinking how unfair it was that Katy, too, was paying the ultimate price for her mother's foolishness.

Women who cared for adventure more than family were the very worst sort of human beings in Ethan McDonald's eyes. Erica's cravings for adventure had made sure that his daughter grew up motherless, as he had. And right now he had to concentrate on getting this new adventuress, this Hayley Wolfe, out of his house.

But it wasn't as simple as forcing her to leave the villa. It could only have been someone connected to Alvaro Tomasi who had sent her here, and Ethan knew the real reason that Tomasi wanted information about the interior of his villa. Perhaps Hayley actually believed that her photographs were wanted for some sort of magazine. She certainly couldn't imagine what the truth was.

Ethan shuddered, considering that truth. Alvaro Tomasi was an evil and dangerous man. When Hayley left the villa without the images she had been sent for — and she would leave without them, Ethan would make sure of it — she would be walking into serious danger herself. Ethan had lost count of how many former employees had disappointed him and wound up dead.

It seemed pretty clear to him that Hayley had no idea who she was dealing with. No doubt she wasn't even aware that the very first question she would be asked on her return was if he, Ethan, had been alone in the house. That was, if Alvaro Tomasi's goal in sending her here was as straight-forward as spying on him — and something told Ethan that the truth was a lot more complicated than that.

‘We need to talk,' he said, returning to the sitting room and resting Hayley's camera on the table between them.

What would Ryan Michaels do? The older man had been his boss and his mentor for a long time. Ethan had taken over his position when the older man retired a couple of years ago, but Ryan had been happy to step back into the role when Ethan needed time off to sort out his personal problems with Alvaro Tomasi. Ryan was like a father to him. Ethan would talk to him about all of this as soon as he could.

Hayley reached out for her camera, but Ethan waved her hand away.

‘Do you want to know what I'll do with the photos?' she asked. ‘I can give you the phone number of the magazine editor if that would be —'

‘No phone number. That won't help at all. I know how easy phone numbers are to arrange.'

Before taking a seat himself, Ethan moved towards the drinks cabinet along the side wall. Several bottles of Chianti from grapes grown in his villa's own vineyard were arranged, ready to open. He reached for one of those and a bottle opener and turned to face her.

‘I know your scooter is parked not too far from the villa, but you will be safe to drive after one small glass of this.'

Hayley's mouth dropped open, revealing two rows of small, pearly teeth. ‘You know about my scooter?'

They really were lovely teeth, in a lovely, lovely mouth. Ethan clutched the wine bottle closer to his chest and pushed the corkscrew in with a particularly hard shove. Was there one part of this woman that he didn't admire?

‘How long ago did you discover I was here?' she asked.

He poured her a generous glass and turned, passing it to her. ‘You mean did I know about you while you were out in the vineyards, snapping photos of the villa from a distance, or was I really sleeping while you were trying to take photographs through my windows?'

She accepted the glass, her mouth still open.

‘A particularly unlikely attempt, by the way,' Ethan continued. ‘I couldn't see in those windows myself and I'm probably a foot taller than you.'

‘Why did you let me —'

‘I wanted to know what you were up to.'

‘You could have asked.'

Now she looked annoyed. And beautiful. She had taken a sip of the wine and her lips were red with it.

‘You wouldn't have told me the truth,' Ethan told her.

‘Why were you so sure about that?'

‘You haven't told me the truth so far.'

‘I've…' Her voice trailed off.

Hell, she was the most talentless liar he had ever come up against. And he had come up against many. She obviously had no experience with deception at all. This settled things. Ethan couldn't let her leave here without letting her know about the sort of people she had become involved with.

‘You might think you've told me the truth,' he said, although he wasn't sure that she did.

Her blush soon told him he had worked her out. She knew she had been lying about the expats magazine article. But this didn't mean she was misguided enough to have fallen in with the Tomasi family entirely.

‘I've told you —' she began.

And then, ‘What makes you think what I said wasn't true?'

‘Because you don't know what the truth is.'

***

Hayley gaped at him. He dared say that she didn't know about the truth? Who was he to make judgements like that? This man, who might well be responsible for ruining her father?

How tempted she was to come right out with it and tell him what she knew! Just the thought of it made her blood boil. Here he was, living in this fine big house in this beautiful countryside, living here in such style, on the proceeds of stolen money. Everything here, every pale leather sofa, every crystal vase upon every shelf, every Persian rug upon every polished floorboard, was stolen.

How dare he, the thief, sit there and offer her this stolen wine made from stolen grapes and served in a stolen glass?

‘The people that you're working for don't want photos of my house for any magazine,' Ethan said.

He was staring deeply into her eyes. The expression demanded that she believe him. Hayley felt herself becoming hotter still. She was in danger now of a different kind than had threatened her outside. Then, she had simply been frightened of a gun. Now she was in danger of believing a man whom she already knew to be a thief, whose words she already knew would be lies. Because he was looking at her in a way that asked her to trust him and because her eyes were responding even if her mind wasn't.

He looked trustworthy and she wanted to trust him. But she knew she could not.

‘You've been hired by one of the Tomasis. You probably think it was by Alvaro Tomasi. But I'm not so sure.'

Hayley held his eye, refusing to speak.

‘He's young but he's dangerous,' Ethan continued. ‘They're at war.'

‘What makes you think it wasn't Alvaro himself?'

Ethan pushed his fingers back through his hair. ‘The plan was just a bit too haphazard,' he said. ‘I think there's more going on.'

‘All right.' Hayley paused, considering. ‘Tell me, just who exactly is Alvaro Tomasi?'

‘He's my former wife's brother,' Ethan told her. ‘He wants to find out where my daughter is.'

Finally, he broke eye contact as he raised his glass to his mouth and took a long sip.

Hayley tried to force herself to laugh, tried to force herself to believe that he was joking.

But he wasn't joking. Everything from the solid set of his shoulders to the controlled stillness of his legs confirmed that, whether he was lying or appealing to her sense of justice, he was deadly serious.

‘Katy is your daughter?' Hayley pointed towards the staircase.

Ethan nodded. ‘Her mother was a Tomasi. The family want Katy back.'

‘Let me get this straight. All this,' Hayley began counting on her fingers, ‘the security codes, the photos I was meant to take, the gun… You're telling me all this is to do with a child custody dispute?'

‘In a manner of speaking.'

‘Your ex, Erica, she wants Katy back, and you have her?'

‘It's not as simple as that. Erica is dead.'

‘Oh!' Hayley felt an absurd sense of déjà vu. She wanted to say how sorry she was but could already hear the sarcastic response that it was obvious Ethan usually gave to such platitudes. She changed tack. ‘Your mother and your wife are both dead? You're…'

What was there with this man? Her sentences were trailing off all over the place. She wasn't usually like this.

‘I'm not very lucky with women.'

Ethan thumped his wineglass on the table beside him so firmly that Hayley was surprised the stem didn't break. Then he clenched his hands into tight fists. She watched as the veins bulged.

‘That's why I'm determined nothing will happen to Katy,' he said. ‘I'm very protective. Outside of her school, the only person who has been allowed to look after her recently is Elspeth, my personal assistant — personal friend.'

Hayley put her own glass down. She had drank enough. Ethan had been right. Her scooter was parked quite close to the house, beside a brace of trees just a few hundred yards away. Obviously not as well hidden as she had thought. She couldn't drink more than a couple of sips because she wanted it to be safe for her to ride to her
pensione
back in Montepulciano.