The Perfect Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page A

pillows or blackmail photographs in a cookie jar.
    That all seemed like another lifetime now. She’d been younger then. Naive. She’d not known what it was to love, or to lose. She’d not known what it was to look at the world and see only glaring shades of white. To walk in the sunshine and feel only the cold. To eat chocolate and taste nothing. To spray on so much perfume others gagged, while she smelled nothing.
    Nathan’s room smelled of tobacco. Not cigarettes, but sweeter, like that from the pipe on the walnut nightstand, next to a dense hardback about famous generals of the Civil War. Out of habit she flipped through the pages, made sure no secret compartments lurked inside. Once, she’d found a small red address book hidden in such a way, and with its contents, she’d made her client very, very happy.
    Femme de la Nuit, she’d been called then. Lady of the Night. And she’d been the best. Socialite by day, private eye by night, no one ever made the connection, not even her police detective brother.
    Now most people thought she was dead.
    Enjoying the once familiar rush, Saura finished off the bed and checked out the nightstands. After slipping a few small discs in inconspicuous places, she looked toward the armoire across the room. Just beyond stood a dressing chair and the door to the white bathroom. On the marble counter inside, she saw a folder.
    Wasting no time, she hurried in and started to photograph, froze when the sound of a door opening broke the silence.
    Slowly, she stepped back from the mirrored vanity and slipped the small camera into her handbag. Nathan expected her to be in bed, but she could come up with any number of reasons to be in the bathroom. She could even position herself on the floor and blame the migraine.
    It had worked before.
    The door opened with a slight creak, but Nathan’s Bruno Maglis did not sound on the wood floor. Not even softly. And as she stood shielded by the bathroom door, she muttered a silent thanks for the genius of his decor. Typically one would think wood flooring too austere for a bedroom. But the long planks boasted an advantage carpet did not. It would not absorb footsteps. Unless someone was very, very careful.
    There was no reason for Nathan to be careful in his own bedroom. Unless, of course, he sought to take Saura by surprise.
    Several seconds of punishing silence passed before she heard the door close. But she did not move, did not for one second think she was alone.
    “I know you’re in here,” he said, and her heart almost stopped. “Your perfume gives you away.”

Chapter 3
    T he voice whispered through her on a violent caress. She stood so acutely still, not trusting herself to move, to so much as breathe. He could be anywhere. Just inside the door. At the bed. Nearing the bathroom. And if he found her—
    Her hand closed into a tight fist. She practiced yoga four times a week and had stayed current with tae kwon do, but it had been two years since she’d had a sparring partner. It would only take one lightning move for him to remove her mask—and expose her lies.
    Her perfume. The mistake burned. She’d colored her hair and changed her makeup, but she’d overlooked selecting a new perfume. She was rustier than she realized. Scent, after all, was the sense most strongly correlated with memory.
    “You don’t need to hide from me,” he said in a dangerously quiet voice that made her blood sing. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
    She stiffened. Curiosity tempted. Very slowly, she shifted so that she could see through the crack between the door and the wall, and saw him. The big bed should have made him look smaller. It didn’t. Standing to the left of it, with his bow tie unfastened and hanging against the stark white of his shirt, the top several buttons unfastened to reveal his throat and a hint of the dark hair covering his chest, he looked very much like a man about to strip down and climb into bed.
    In one hand he held a crystal goblet