The Perfect Stranger Read Online Free PDF

with burgundy liquid. In the other hand—a plume of black and red feathers.
    Shock seared her throat. He stood there completely exposed, as if he had absolutely nothing to hide from her.
    “I understand why you don’t trust me,” he said. “After the way I came on to you.” He lifted the glass to his mouth and threw back the rest of his drink. “That’s why I’m here. To apologize.”
    Her mind raced. He sounded sincere. He sounded remorseful. But she also knew the cat usually did, right before he pounced.
    “I came on too strong,” he said. “I know you’re with Nathan.”
    The sight of him lingering by the big bed threw her back to another night, another bed. When only a candle had lit the room. But she’d seen him anyway, every inch of him as she’d tugged at his clothes. Almost feverishly she’d run her hands along his body, driven by the warmth of his flesh. For so long there’d been only cold…
    He’d been hot tonight, too. When they’d danced. When she’d forced her arms to curve around his body, to endure the feel of him, the strength and the memory.
    Swallowing hard, she ignored the sight of his hand lingering against the sheets, and toyed on the pieces. Two years before, her brother’s life had been blown to bits. He’d been hunted and persecuted, condemned and outcast. At the time, she’d been unable to help him. Then, two months ago, he’d been vindicated. But in the process her dear friend Alec had been killed, and Nathan Lambert had vowed he’d not yet played his last card.
    Only a few days later the stranger arrived in the out-of-the-way bayou town, his clothes as battered as his eyes. Now here he was, at Nathan Lambert’s party. In his bedroom. Apologizing to her.
    “It’s because of your perfume.” With the quiet words he turned toward the bathroom, and her heart slammed hard.
    She’d forgotten. In the five weeks since she’d run her fingers along his face, she’d forced herself to forget how brutally handsome he was, how a man could look so untouchable and lost at the same time. But now she saw, and now she remembered.
    And damn him, now she wanted.
    She wanted to go to him, touch him again, pretend they were two different people, in one very different situation, to skim her finger along his cheekbone to his mouth, along his lower lip—
    “It sounds crazy, but for a minute there I thought you were someone else. There was a woman,” he said, and her throat went dry. “We were only together once, but I can’t get her out of my mind. I made her cry.”
    Saura stiffened. Logic, she told herself. Indifference. No matter what the stranger said, the truth could not be changed. He was here. In Nathan’s world. And even though Nathan denied knowing him, she knew better than to accept everything she was told, everything she saw, at face value.
    Only a stupid man publicly shared drinks with informants and assassins.
    People lied, but facts did not. The man had been in Bayou d’Espere, and now he was here. Which meant he was involved. It wouldn’t be the first time someone infiltrated her family. People she loved had been hurt. One was still missing after over a decade. Another lay dead.
    All of them she intended to avenge. Because no matter who this man really was, who he worked for, he’d made one critical mistake.
    Saura Robichaud was no one’s weakness.
    “She left me,” he was saying. “Without saying goodbye.”
    Saura closed her eyes.
    “She thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t.” With the words, he turned toward the bathroom. “I felt her get out of bed, watched her put on her clothes and run for the door.”
    Saura bit down hard—she had not run for the door. She’d walked. Very slowly. Very deliberately.
    “She was scared. I could tell something was wrong. That’s why I didn’t go after her. She wanted away from me.”
    The memory scraped clear down to the bone. She hadn’t been afraid. She’d been stunned.
    “I tried to let her go,” he said, and like a