Baddest Bad Boys(68)

She stifled another groan. Good Lord, had she honestly thought that’s all it would take to purge him from her system? One night?

Yeah, she had. Hair of the dog, and all that. Once upon a time, she and Max had seemed perfectly suited. Maybe they hadn’t been. Maybe she’d let her fairy tale recollection fog reality. It had certainly fogged her judgment. Since Max seemed to avoid being alone with her, she’d decided to use the stock agreement as leverage. A way to force him to meet with her privately.

Huge mistake.

She’d never forget Bridgette St. Regis bursting into the room, shouting. What are you doing in Max’s bed? How dare you plot to seduce my fiancé! You don’t honestly think he would be interested in his little brother’s castoffs, do you?

Mortified, Ellie had fled the penthouse.

Max was engaged. The news had been shocking. How could she have gotten everything so wrong? Sure, the tabloids had linked Bridgette and Max; the insatiable Il Diavolo was linked to a different woman every week. But Ellie’s source—whom she’d forever doubt now—had assured her that Max wasn’t seriously involved with anyone.

Not for the first time, Ellie had misread the cues. The extreme measures Max had taken to resolve the messy court proceedings over Stefan’s estate had not been done for her benefit. Just when it seemed there would be no end to the scandals that surfaced following Stefan’s death, Max had charged in and bought out all the other claimants. She now had to assume he’d mortgaged his own shares of DSI to do so, in order to settle things prior to his marriage to Bridgette. Which meant his desire to extend their management agreement was simply a means to safeguard his fiscal position.

Ellie covered her eyes with her hands. In the morning, she’d sign Max’s agreement, as is. That would be her apology. Mea culpa. Then she’d have her attorney work up a stock transfer in Max’s favor. That would be her wedding present.

Max deserved to own the company one hundred percent. That had never been an issue. All she’d ever wanted from Stefan’s estate was what she’d come into the marriage with: her inheritance from her grandparents and her maiden name. Those would allow her to start over, to revive her once-thriving design business. Unfortunately, she hadn’t realized her and Stefan’s financial affairs had become so entwined and complicated. Hell, she hadn’t realized a lot of things about her marriage.

Unable to sleep, Ellie sat up. The house felt warm. Her arms were damp with perspiration. Thunder rolled again, louder and more ominous. In its wake the house seemed inordinately quiet. A glance at the digital clock confirmed that the power was out.

“Great,” she mumbled. What else could go wrong tonight?

Kicking free of the tangled sheets, she piled out of bed. She snatched her robe off the chair and tugged it on over the short nightgown and headed toward the door. As long as she was up, she might as well—

A sound caught her attention. Glass breaking. Downstairs.

Instinctively, she grabbed the cordless phone from the nightstand. But without power there was no dial tone. And her cell phone was plugged into the charger downstairs.

Her thoughts flew to the creepy e-mails she’d received over the last few weeks. At first she’d dismissed them, convinced they were pranks orchestrated by an overzealous member of the paparazzi. Then she received a string of photographs of herself shopping, dining, leaving her apartment in Manhattan. The police had labeled the man a cyber-stalker. At the time, the term sounded surreal. Distant.

Right now, though, his latest message came to mind: I want to watch you dream.

“Stop it!” she hissed. If she gave in and let him scare her, he’d win. Besides, the cyber-creep had no way of knowing where she was. She’d left New York this afternoon for Boston, and had already fled there.

The house remained quiet, which encouraged her. Instead of jumping to dire conclusions, think. A storm front was moving in, remember? The wind could have blown something into the house. The fact the alarm didn’t go off was the clincher, though. The system had a battery backup.

“See? Everything’s fine.” She’d go downstairs, check things out, and maybe grab her laptop. Looping the robe’s ties, she went back to the door.

Just as her hand closed around the knob, another sound echoed. Closer, out in the hallway. There. This time the sound repeated, distinct and unmistakably identifiable. The creak of the staircase.

Someone was in the house. And headed upstairs.

Panic and terror collided in her mind, producing one thought: Get out! Screw clothes; screw shoes; just go! She crossed the room to the window and raised it.

The old, Sixties-style beach house had a narrow wooden deck that encircled most of the entire second floor. She’d climb down and run to a neighbor’s to call for help. She paused long enough to close the window. If someone came into her bedroom, she didn’t want to leave an obvious sign.

A three-quarter moon floated free of the clouds, bathing everything in an eerie blue-gray light that seemed to make her white robe glow in the dark. She shifted into the shadows beneath the overhang. A gust of wind blasted sand and grit against her bare legs as she scrambled to the far side of the house and the stairs. She plunged down them. More thunder echoed. Simultaneously, the rain started, the drops fat and heavy.

As her foot touched the ground, she saw movement in her peripheral vision. Before she could react, a hand clamped across her mouth. At the same time, a strong arm snaked around her, beneath her breasts, snapping her back against a solid male frame.