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Becca Ann & Tessa Marie [Beds Beach Side Beds
Chapman, Janet Pine Creek Hig Kuess niemals einen Highlander
Chapman, Janet Pine Creek Hig Das Herz des Highlanders
Cooper Lovell [Love's Influen Tessa's Highlander [Siren Class
Chapman, Janet Pine Creek Hig Der Traum des Highlanders
Connie Mason & Mia Marlowe Sins of the Highlander (epub) i
Cassidy Cayman [Lost Highland Wild about the Witch (epub)
Chapman, Janet Pine Creek Hig Der Ring des Highlanders
[heft] Perry Rhodan 0618 Zweikampf der Immunen
Dirk Pitt 04 Wydobyc Titanica Clive Cussler

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.She'd been thrilled to discover student loans for which practically anyone could qualify, even an unsecured risk like an orphan.She'd taken a job as a waitress, enrolled in college, and embarked on her quest to make something of herself.Just what, she wasn't sure, but she'd always had a feeling that something special was waiting around the next corner for her.She'd been twenty, a sophomore at the university, when that special thing had happened.Working at the Blind Lemon, an elegant restaurant and bar, Adrienne had caught the eye, the heart, and the engagement ring of the darkly handsome, wealthy Eberhard Darrow Garrett, the bachelor of the decade.It had been the perfect fairy tale.She'd walked around for months on clouds of happiness.When the clouds had started to melt beneath her feet, she'd refused to look too closely, refused to acknowledge that the fairy-tale prince might be a prince of darker things.Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut wishing she could blink some of her bad memories out of existence.How gullible she'd been! How many excuses she'd madefor him, for herselfuntil she'd finally had to run.A tiny meow coaxed her back to the present and she smiled down at the one good thing that had come of it all; her kitten, Moonshadow, a precocious stray she'd found outside a gas station on her way north.Moonie rubbed her ankles and purred enthusiastically.Adrienne scooped up the furry little creature, hugging her close.Unconditional love, such was the gift Moonie gave.Love without reservation or subterfuge—pure affection with no darker sides.Adrienne hummed lightly as she rubbed Moonie's ears, then broke off abruptly as a faint scratching sound drew her attention to the windows again.Perfectly still, she clutched Moonie and waited, holding her breath.But there was only silence.It must have been a twig scratching at the roof, she decided.But, hadn't she cut all the trees back from the house when she'd moved in?Adrienne sighed, shook her head, and ordered her muscles to relax.She had nearly succeeded when overhead a floorboard creaked.Tension reclaimed her instantly.She dropped Moonie on a stuffed chair and eyed the ceiling intently as the creaking sound repeated.Perhaps it was just the house settling.She really had to get over this skittishness.How much time had to pass until she stopped being afraid that she would turn around and see Eberhard standing there with his faintly mocking smile and gleaming gun? Eberhard was dead.She was safe, she knew she was.So why did she feel so horridly vulnerable? For the past few days she'd had the suffocating sensation that someone was spying on her.No matter how hard she tried to reassure herself that anyone who might wish her harm was either deador didn't know she was aliveshe was still consumed by a morbid unease.Every instinct she possessed warned her that something was wrongor about to go terribly wrong.Having grown up in the City of Spooksthe sultry, superstitious, magical New OrleansAdrienne had learned to listen to her instincts.They were almost always right on target.Her instincts had even been right about Eberhard.She'd had a bad feeling about him from the beginning, but she'd convinced herself it was her own insecurity.Eberhard was the catch of New Orleans; naturally, a woman might feel a little unsettled by such a man.Only much later did she understand that she'd been lonely for so long, and had wanted the fairy tale so badly, that she'd tried to force reality to reflect her desires, instead of the other way around.She'd told herself so many white lies before finally facing the truth that Eberhard wasn't the man she'd thought he was.She'd been such a fool.Adrienne breathed deeply of the spring air that breezed gently in the window behind her, then flinched and spun abruptly.She eyed the fluttering drapes warily.Hadn't she closed that window? She was sure of it.She'd closed all of them, just before closing the French doors.Adrienne edged cautiously to the window, shut it quickly, and locked it.It was nerves, nothing more.No face peered in the window at her, no dogs barked, no alarms sounded.What was the use of taking so many precautions if she couldn't relax? There couldn't possibly be anyone out there.Adrienne forced herself to turn away from the window.As she padded across the room her foot encountered a small object and sent it skidding across the faded Oushak rug, where it clunked to a rest against the wall.Adrienne glanced at it and flinched.It was a piece from Eberhard's chess set, the one she'd swiped from his house in New Orleans the night she'd fled.She'd forgotten all about it after she'd moved in.She'd tossed it in a boxone of those piled in the corner that she'd never gotten around to unpacking.Perhaps Moonie had dragged the pieces out, she mused, there were several of them scattered across the rug.She retrieved the piece she'd kicked and rolled it gingerly between her fingers.Waves of emotion flooded her; a sea of shame and anger and humiliation, capped with a relentless fear that she still wasn't safe.A draft of air kissed the back of her neck and she stiffened, clutching the chess piece so tightly that the crown of the black queen dug cruelly into her palm.Logic insisted that the windows behind her were shutshe knew they were, stillinstinct told her otherwise.The rational Adrienne knew there was no one in her library but herself and a lightly snoring kitten.The irrational Adrienne teetered on the brink of terror.Laughing nervously, she berated herself for being so jumpy, then cursed Eberhard for making her this way.She would not succumb to paranoia.Dropping to her knees without sparing a backward glance, Adrienne scooped the scattered chess pieces into a pile.She didn't really like to touch them.A woman couldn't spend her childhood in New Orleansmuch of it at the feet of a Creole storyteller who'd lived behind the orphanagewithout becoming a bit superstitious.The set was ancient, an original Viking set; an old legend claimed it was cursed, and Adrienne's life had been cursed enough.The only reason she'd pilfered the set was in case she needed quick cash.Carved of walrus ivory and ebony, it would command an exorbitant price from a collector.Besides, hadn't she earned it, after all he'd put her through?Adrienne muttered a colorful invective about beautiful men.It wasn't morally acceptable that someone as evil as Eberhard had been so nice to look at.Poetic justice demanded otherwiseshouldn't people's faces reflect their hearts? IfEberhard had been as ugly on the outside as she'd belatedly discovered he was on the inside, she never would have ended up at the wrong end of a gun.Of course, Adrienne had learned the hard way that any end of a gun was the wrong end.Eberhard Darrow Garrett was a beautiful, womanizing, deceitful manand he'd ruined her life.Clutching the black queen tightly she made herself a firm promise."I will never go out with a beautiful man again, so long as I live and breathe.I hate beautiful men.Hate them!".Outside the French doors at 93 Coattail Lane, a man who lacked substance, a creature manmade devices could neither detect nor contain, heard her words and smiled.His choice was made with swift certaintyAdrienne de Simone was definitely the woman he'd been searching for.CHAPTER 3ADRIENNE HAD NO IDEA HOW SHE ENDED UP ON THE MAN'S LAP.NONE.One moment she was perfectly saneperhaps a bit neurotic, but firmly convinced of her sanity nonethelessand the next moment the ground disappeared beneath her feet and she was sucked down one of Alice's rabbit holes.Her first thought was that she must be dreaming: a vivid, horrifying subconscious foray into a barbaric nightmare.But that didn't make any sense; only moments before, she'd been petting Moonshadow or doing… something… what? She couldn't have just fallen asleep without even knowing it!Maybe she'd stumbled and struck her head, and this hallucination was the dreamy result of a concussion [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]