Honor Bound(2)

Her threat was an empty one, and she rather imagined he knew it. She lived in a new condominium complex on the outskirts of Scottsdale. Fewer than half the units had been sold. No doubt he had selected her house for pilfering because of its remote location.

She heard a metallic whispering noise coming out of the darkness. The sinister sound filled her with dread. She knew the terror of a small jungle animal when rustling leaves alert it that an unseen predator is nearby. Lucas Greywolf had spotted the rack of butcher knives on the countertop near the sink and had slipped one from the wooden scabbard.

Expecting any moment to feel its cold metal edge slicing across her throat, she was stunned but at least grateful that she was still alive when the kitchen light came on, momentarily blinding her. She adjusted her eyes to the sudden brightness. He was still holding the long, gleaming silver blade of the knife to the light switch.

From that intimidating sight, her eyes tracked the length of a brown, sinewy arm up to a curved shoulder, over to a determined, square chin, along a straight, narrow nose, and into the most chilling pair of eyes she'd ever seen.

All her life she'd heard the expression "heart-stopping." Countless times she had casually used the adjective herself, describing any number of inconsequential things. But she'd never actually experienced that graphically descriptive sensation. Until now.

Never had a pair of eyes conveyed such unmitigated contempt, such uncompromising hatred and undiluted bitterness.

Unlike the rest of his features, which were clearly American Indian, his eyes belonged to an Anglo. They were gray, so light a gray they were almost transparent, which only made the pupils in their centers look even deeper and blacker. They seemed to have no necessity to blink, because they stared at her without movement. Set in that dark, brooding face, those steadfast, gray eyes were a startling contrast that held her attention far too long.

She lowered her eyes, but when she saw the knife flash, she fearfully jerked them back up to him. He had merely sliced off a disk of summer sausage. As he raised it to his lips, the hard, set line lifted at one corner to form a smirking smile before straight, white teeth bit into the meat. He was enjoying her fear and that made her furious. By an act of will, she rid her face of any telltale expression and surveyed him coolly.

Which might have been a mistake.

Before tonight, if she had been asked to conjure up a picture of an escaped convict, it would never have resembled Lucas Greywolf. She vaguely remembered reading about his trial when it was making the news, but that had been several years ago. She recalled the prosecutors making him out to be a chronic troublemaker and rabble-rouser a dissident who went around spreading malcontent among the Indians. But had the reports ever mentioned him being so handsome? If they had, she hadn't been paying attention.

He was dressed in a blue chambray shirt that was no doubt prison issue. The sleeves had been ripped out, leaving ragged, stringy armholes. One of the sleeves had been fashioned into a headband, tied Apache-style around his head to hold back hair so unrelievedly black that it barely reflected the light shining directly on it. But then the dust clinging to it might have been partly responsible for that dull finish; his jeans and boots were covered with it.

Around his waist he wore a belt made of intricately worked silver set with chunks of turquoise. Dangling from a chain worn around his neck was a silver Christian cross. The charm nestled in a thatch of dark hair on his chest. He wasn't pure Indian.

Again she let her eyes fall away. Under the circumstances, it disturbed her deeply that the sweat-stained shirt was open almost to his narrow waist. It was equally disturbing that the earring in his right ear didn't repel her. The tiny silver kachina mask represented a spirit of another religion and was incongruent with the cross worn around his neck. Yet if Greywolf had been born with that earring pierced into his earlobe, it couldn't have looked more in keeping with the total aspect of the man he was.

"Won't you join me?" he asked in a taunting voice, holding out a slice of sausage on the blade of the knife.

She lifted her head and thrust her chin out defiantly. "No thank you. I'll wait to eat dinner with my husband."

"Your husband?"

"Yes."

"Where is he?"

"At work, but he'll be home at any moment."

He tore off a bite of bread from the slice he raised to his mouth and chewed it with an unconcerned leisure that made her want to slap him. "You're a terrible liar."

"I'm not lying."

He swallowed. "I searched the house before you came home, Miss Aislinn Andrews. There's no man living here."

Now it was her turn to swallow, and she did so with great difficulty. She willed her heart to settle down and stop drumming against her ribs with mounting anxiety. Her palms were perspiring. She pressed them together beneath the table. "How did you know my name?"

"Your mail."

"You went through my mail?"

"You sound alarmed. Do you have something to hide, Miss Andrews?" She refused to be baited and kept her lips firmly closed over the vituperative rejoinder that pressed against them from the inside. "You got a telephone bill today."

His sly grin set off her temper again. "They'll catch you and send you back."

"Yes, I know."

His calm response rendered her mute and made the threatening, argumentative speech she was about to voice unnecessary. Instead she watched him raise the carton of milk to his mouth, tilt his head back and drink thirstily. His neck was deeply tanned. The sliding action of his Adam's apple intrigued her as a hypnotist's pendulum would. He drank until there was no more, then set the empty carton down and wiped his mouth with the back of the hand that still held the knife.