Trusting a Stranger Read Online Free PDF

grounds that had been attached to the villa for centuries. And he was so certain that she was walking away from the safety that she might have found here in his mother’s old family home, and into danger…
    He knew he had to do something.
    So much for the computer security program he had meant to get back to this morning! Hayley had been so easy to convince when it came to keeping her from photographing his own place. That innocence would not stand a chance with an enemy like Tomasi. She was brave and she was in danger. For whatever reason, Ethan felt responsible.
    Ethan cursed under his breath as he pressed the security code into his alarm and walked back into the house towards the internal door that led to his basement-level garage.
    Hayley had said she was driving a scooter. That could well mean she was headed into the walled part of nearby Siena, where cars were not allowed. His sports car, then, would be of no use. The only thing for Ethan to do was to take his own bike and follow her there.
    ***
    Was she being followed? Hayley slowed slightly, the wheels of her Vespa grinding into the pebbly road. When it seemed safe, she peered over her shoulder. The road behind her was darkened with the shade of the cypresses she passed but even so she could see that it was empty.
    It was her encounter with Ethan that had spooked her. She was alone. Wasn’t she?
    No…
    What was that? A low, purring noise. An engine? Perhaps more than one…
    Ethan was following her, she became sure of that now. The thought wasn’t at all alarming. From the story he had told her, he was more to be trusted than feared.
    And she had the distinct feeling that he was telling the truth. There was something in the warmth of his brown eyes that was convincing, in much the same way that something hard in Alvaro Tomasi’s eyes had put her on guard. She had seen through Tomasi’s first lie quickly, even if she had promptly fallen for his second, over the telephone. And she was confused about him now. He had sounded like an older man — older than her father. But now Ethan was identifying Alvaro Tomasi as his former brother-in-law. Calling him young but dangerous. Hayley was puzzled. Someone was lying to her. Someone was pretending to be something that they weren’t. But her instinct told her Ethan was not like that.
    So, he was following her. Of course he was. It might even be because he was worried about Tomasi on her behalf; it might be that he wanted to make sure she was safe. Or it might be because he wanted to know where she was going. That idea didn’t really alarm her either. If Ethan knew where she was, that was no problem. She was quite likely to seek him out again later anyway. As long as he gave her the chance to think.
    But then she became aware of another sound: a third engine, lower and more powerful somehow, a third set of wheels crunching through the gravel. At first it seemed a long way off, but the noise increased in volume and pitch as the vehicle approached. Hayley felt her chest tighten, and became sure that Ethan was increasingly wary as well.
    She had checked the map from a café in Siena’s Il Campo before coming out here and was fairly certain that the only house in these parts belonged to Ethan himself. Where could the third rider have come from?
    She waited until she reached the crest of the nearest hill before slowing to a halt and then turning to look over her shoulder. From here she could see forward over Tuscan hills to distant Siena. Its ochre-coloured bricks turned to gold in the late afternoon sun, the terracotta roof tiles gleaming like dull garnets, and back along the shaded narrow road almost all the way to Ethan’s villa. The family feud that Ethan had described seemed to belong to this place, where she had read about wars separating rival city-states like Siena and Florence for centuries.
    She could see well enough to see that she had been right. There were two men on