The Perfect Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page B

predator, began to move. With silence. With stealth. “I told myself it was what she wanted. What she deserved. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just lie there and let her walk away, not after the way she’d touched me.”
    The walls of the glowing white bathroom closed in on her. Questions wove through her like a razor-fine needle. Shifting slightly, she pulled herself deeper behind the open door. With a few more steps, he would be inside.
    “I went after her,” he said. “Tried to find her.”
    A game, she reminded herself. Just a game. And while she loved playing, she never allowed herself to be the mouse. The man didn’t mean a word of what he was saying. He was only trying to lull her into a false sense of security.
    “But I never found her,” he said, stepping onto the white marble title. “Until tonight.”
    She sucked in a sharp, silent breath.
    “I walked into Nathan’s house, and despite the candles and cloud of expensive perfume, I smelled roses. And spice. And I knew she was here.”
    Saura gritted her teeth. Next time she would choose something softer. Like powder and vanilla.
    “Then I saw you.”
    Holding herself viciously still, she watched him move deeper into the spacious bathroom, glancing at the glass-block shower, then doing a sweep of the toilet room and linen closet.
    “And touched you,” he went on, edging toward the open closet at the back of the bathroom. “But in my mind it wasn’t you. It was her. The woman I’ve been looking for.” He put a hand to the knob, and pushed. “Because of your perfume.”
    Once she might have believed him. Even now, part of her wanted to. So badly. To know his words were from the man, for the woman. Not part of the game.
    But that was a mistake she could not make. She’d picked him for a reason, she reminded himself. Because he was a stranger. Someone who could not touch her. Could not hurt her.
    His words, his lies, did not matter.
    Holding her breath, she watched him step into the darkness of Nathan’s closet. Only then did she move. Carefully, she stepped from behind the door and slipped into the bedroom. Lifting the dressing chair, she carried it to the bathroom.
    And pulled the door shut.
    In total, no more than six seconds passed.
    She knew the second the stranger realized her intent. She heard him swear creatively, heard the sound of his expensive dress shoes come down against the marble. But by then she’d wedged the chair under the doorknob.
    “Don’t do this!” he roared, jerking at the door.
    But Saura only smiled. All that discipline. All that smooth talking and those buttered rum words. Empty. Lies. All of them.
    “Maybe this time you’ll get the hint,” she whispered, then turned and for the second time, walked away.
     
    John didn’t do smiles any more than he did parties. But standing there in the obscenely white, mausoleum-like bathroom, he felt his mouth curve.
    Some things were just too easy.
    Mission accomplished, he strolled toward the window and eased it open, climbed over the ledge and into the night.
    His foray into Nathan Lambert’s world had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.
     
    I couldn’t just lie there and let her walk away, not after the way she touched me.
    The words stayed with Saura long after she made her excuses to Nathan and drove away from his St. Charles Avenue mansion. Far too restless to crawl into bed, she swung by the new little house that didn’t yet feel like a home, shrugged out of her dress and heels and into jeans, an old flannel shirt and sneakers, then locked up and slipped into the night.
    She’d always loved New Orleans, had started sneaking up to the Quarter when she was only fourteen. Maybe if her parents had been alive, someone would have noticed. But her uncles had been busy men, without a single clue how to handle a teenage girl. Hormones, makeup, drama, broken hearts and designer jeans had been as foreign to them as complacency was to her.
    By the time she was