‘You’ll have to stay here tonight,’ Ethan said when Hayley had disconnected her call and he had returned to the sitting room.
She looked up at him, eyes flashing. Recent injury or not, he sensed she was the sort of woman who did not like being pushed around.
‘I’ll have to?’ she repeated, and the words were a clear challenge.
‘You can’t ride back to town in your current condition.’
He tried to make the request sound reasonable. It was clearly unsafe for Hayley to be out on the streets while Alvaro or his goons were out there literally gunning for her. But despite the glare in her eyes, she looked frail and vulnerable and hurt, and he did not want to frighten her the way he surely would if he spelled this truth out to her.
‘I can call a taxi.’
That was true. Ethan sighed. He would have to make his intentions clearer.
‘I really want you to stay here,’ he said.
Hayley was rubbing her shoulder, above the wound. ‘I know what you want me to do. What I don’t understand is why you think I will do it.’
‘Because you need money and I can pay.’
‘You want to pay me to sleep here in your house?’ There was a hard edge of scepticism to her voice. He found himself looking at her more closely. She really was rather pretty.
‘I might be for hire,’ she said, ‘but not that kind of hire.’
‘Let’s make one thing clear: I do not pay for sex, I have never paid for sex,’ he said, firmly. ‘I have never needed to.’
He watched with some amusement as she gulped at that.
‘The fact is, I have too much going on in my life to have to worry about you at the moment and, like it or not, I would worry about you if you were out in the open right now. Not to mention that I suspect you have a tendency to get yourself into trouble. I want that trouble staying here, where I can make sure it doesn’t spread to include Katy. The only way to keep my head clear, so that I can think about what to do next, is to keep you here.’
She folded her hands into her lap and leaned forward. ‘You still aren’t explaining why I should do what you want,’ she said.
‘I’ve said I’ll pay for your time.’
‘Perhaps I don’t need your money.’
‘Perhaps you don’t care about your father.’
‘You were listening in on my phone call?’
Damn it. He should have realised she’d mind about that.
‘I heard enough,’ he said. He wanted to add how moved he had been by hearing how much she cared for her father. Although this did not seem the right time for a confession like that, it was considering her caring nature that confirmed his need to protect her from Tomasi, if he could.
She stood. ‘And I’ve heard enough too. I’m assuming Tomasi doesn’t even want those photos now, so may I trouble you to make one more phone call?’
‘The deal I’m offering you is this.’ Ethan held his ground, refusing to yield as much as an inch, or to betray by so much as a muscle twitch just how much this meant to him. ‘You stay here for two days and in return I will pay your father’s medical bills for two months.’
The air went out of her then like a popped balloon and he could see how very much this meant to her, how worried she had been. She slouched back towards the chair and he could see the relief in her shoulders as she sank back into it. She had obviously had a very long and tiring day, had probably been just about exhausted even before Tomasi shot her.
He moved over to her, breathing in the scent of her floral perfume. It was sweet and feminine and completely at odds with her businesslike demeanour.
‘You need to sit down and rest,’ he said.
‘I need to be able to decide for myself where I do that.’ But the fight was gone from her voice.
‘Your wound is not dangerous but your body is drawing on its reserves of energy to heal,’ Ethan told her. ‘You need to rest. You do, Hayley. Rest here.’
‘For two days? That’s all?’
He nodded.
‘Do you smoke?’
‘No. Why?’
‘And no sex?’
This time he laughed. ‘If you can manage to keep your hands off me,’ he said.
Hayley frowned, but blushed. He found himself wondering about her. Just a moment ago, he had been thinking about how very pretty she was. Was there any chance that she had been noticing him as well?
He shook his head. He didn’t have time for anything like that. There was important business at hand. He needed to work out how to bring down Alvaro Tomasi, because it was clearly the only way he could save Katy in the long term. He didn’t need the distraction of a woman, and he especially didn’t need the distraction of a woman that proved herself as likely to get into trouble as Erica had ever been.
***
‘Did you have a good look around?’ Ethan asked when Hayley walked down to meet him in the kitchen.
Hayley blushed again. What was it about this man and the sudden rushes of blood to her face? He seemed to be forever catching her out at thoughts and actions she felt slightly embarrassed about having.
‘Your place is very different from mine,’ she said, disliking the stiffness she heard in her own voice.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, answering her awkwardness rather than what she had actually said. ‘I told you to make yourself at home.’
She liked that perceptiveness in him. It was a quality she was not used to associating with men.
‘It’s not like my home at all,’ she said. ‘Are you just slicing those onions? Can I help you with that?’
They had agreed that as they were going to be here for a while, until they got some report back about where Tomasi was, they might as well enjoy their meal. Ethan’s kitchen was well supplied with tomatoes and other vegetables, and there were a variety of cuts of meat in a large fridge to one side, as well as dried herbs hanging along one wall and a wide box of fresh basil growing before a barred window, in the sunshine. Ethan had begun preparing a dish of the pork and beans that he said were local specialities.
He made room for her at the bench and slid along the cutting board. The back of his hand brushed against hers and she swallowed. There was a real pulse of electricity in the contact. He was still now, as immovable as any other object in the room and she knew that this meant he had noticed the sizzle too.
‘Are those onions cooking already?’ he asked. ‘There’s a bit of heat there.’
Hayley knew what he was doing, too. He was trying to turn down the power of their attraction by mocking it. She appreciated that. She might have promised to stay here for a couple of days but she sensed that Ethan was no more interested in romantic complications right now than she was. So she forced out a laugh.
‘We want them fried, not steamy,’ she said. ‘I’m not the best cook in the world but I know that.’
Not the best cook in the world? Why had she felt the need to tell him that? The truth was that Hayley wasn’t particularly good at anything practical, apart from photography. Sometimes she felt like she could barely look after herself. Running her own business meant that she never needed to be responsible for looking after anyone else.
Ethan stepped away, reaching for a tray of tomatoes. There was a big pot of water already boiling on the stove beside them and, one by one, he stabbed the tomatoes with a fork and dipped them into the water. Then he pulled them out and, after a moment or two, pulled the skin off in long, loose strips.
Hayley watched him closely. He had long, agile fingers and knew how to handle a tomato.
She would have to remember this trick.
‘So, you live in Melbourne?’ he asked.
Hayley nodded. She wasn’t sure how sensible it was to let this man know any more about her personal life, but at least it kept the conversation away from the attraction that was so evident between them.
‘I have a two-bedroom apartment near the centre of town,’ she said. ‘Well, not really two bedroom. A few years ago I realised I didn’t need a store any more. Most of my business comes to me via internet advertising. So I converted my spare bedroom into a sort of studio or show room. Sometimes people hiring me want to know what I’ve done before.’
‘People hiring you?’ he asked. ‘Home articles for that magazine, then?’
‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘You were the one who tried to fool me,’ he reminded her.
Hayley had the distinct feeling he was going to be reminding her of that for a very long time. She turned her attention back to the chopping.
‘Are you upset?’ he asked.
‘No. Why?’
‘You look like you’re about to cry.’
‘That’s the onions.’
‘And you’ve stopped talking.’
‘It didn’t seem like you really wanted to listen.’
He finished with a strip from his latest tomato and turned to face her, leaning one hip against the marble bench top. ‘I was listening,’ he protested.
She wiped the back of her hand under her eye, and then wiped the mascara off on a nearby paper towel.
‘You were?’ she asked. ‘What was I saying?’
‘You said you turned your spare bedroom into a studio to show potential clients your work.’
Potential clients. She hadn’t used that expression. But it sounded so professional. At home, Hayley had been telling herself she needed to remember that photography was her career, not just a hobby. She wanted to seem more professional. And now that Ethan had said those words, she found herself wishing that she had used them herself. Potential clients. That was what the people who came to see her work were.
She nodded.
‘What kind of clients?’ Ethan asked.
It had been such an intense afternoon, and he seemed so incredibly perceptive about her that it was strange for Hayley to realise that Ethan did not know what she did for a living.
‘I’m a wedding photographer,’ she explained. ‘I have brides-to-be — and their mothers, usually, come to see evidence that I can create really special memories of their day.’
‘Ah, the wedding business,’ he said.
He sounded sceptical. Hayley understood that. Many men were sceptical. Many grooms-to-be, too.
‘It’s the business side of it that interests me more than the weddings,’ Hayley said. ‘Taking photographs really is the only thing I’m good at. There are only a few ways to make it into a liveable income. And I didn’t want to work for a newspaper and always be on the go chasing stories.’
He looked surprised. ‘You didn’t? I had you figured for the type who would prefer that sort of adventure.’
‘I’ve nothing against adventure. I don’t want it to be my whole life.’
Hayley thought about it for a minute. His quick judgements were intriguing, and a little irritating as well. Particularly when the judgements he made about her didn’t seem complimentary.
‘Why did you think that of me?’
He shrugged, a movement of his shoulders that seemed to take in her and the whole of the kitchen, and the house beyond.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re here, and that’s no random accident of fate. You chose to come.’
‘You’re here too.’
‘I don’t believe in fate. And I’m not here on Tomasi business. I’m here because it’s my home.’
‘Isn’t that fate?’ asked Hayley.
‘No,’ said Ethan. ‘It’s family.’
She had the sense that this meant a very great deal to him.
‘I didn’t know anything about the Tomasis. Well, I’ve spoken to Alvaro over the phone. I didn’t know he might shoot me!’
‘You could have guessed that they’re trouble.’
Hayley didn’t want to admit that she was less intuitive about people than him.
‘Maybe I did,’ she said.
He got back to the tomatoes, this time moving to another chopping board and quickly dicing them. Hayley was beginning to get the idea that there was nothing the man couldn’t do. He was a far more competent cook than she was.
‘Tell me about your work,’ she said. ‘From the way you handled a gun earlier, I thought you were in law enforcement. And you’re a great cook. Is there a tomato security squad at work hereabouts?’
Ethan laughed. ‘Corporate business,’ he said. ‘I’ve learned to shoot a gun but only in defence. Until today, I’ve never needed to use it. How is your arm?’
‘It’ll be better in a day or two,’ Hayley said. ‘I’ve never been shot before but this is just like a graze really, and I’ve fallen off plenty of bikes.’
‘A bike riding wedding photographer,’ Ethan mused. ‘And you won’t admit to being the adventurous type. I suppose that means you must be romantic.’
‘Why must I be any type at all?’ Hayley demanded hotly, before she realised he was mocking her again, although gently.
‘I’m not remotely romantic,’ she insisted, a moment later.
He raised an eyebrow in her direction.
‘If anything, I’m the opposite of romantic,’ she continued. ‘I’ve never even almost been married and I never will be.’
Now he looked downright disbelieving. ‘Every woman wants to get married,’ he said. ‘Even Erica — even my wife — wanted to get married. She wanted to do it while hang gliding, but she wanted to do it.’
‘You got married while hang gliding?’ Hayley asked.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the nearby window and realised that Ethan did not have a monopoly on sceptical expressions.
Ethan laughed, shaking his head. ‘Erica thought of it,’ he said.
‘She sounds wild.’
‘She was.’
‘So you’re divorced?’
‘My wife died.’
Hayley’s hand flew to her mouth, and she gagged at the feeling of too much onion juice against her skin.
‘Oh! I’m sorry. How unforgivable of me to forget. I suppose this is the right time for me to say sorry.’
‘You don’t need to say that. You were shot at this afternoon. It’s hard to remember things when you’re in shock. Anyway, it was years ago now.’
Ethan turned away and began heating some olive oil at the base of a large pan.
‘I am sorry though,’ she was starting to say, as she wiped frantically at her mouth with one of the paper towels.
He turned towards Hayley and reached out for the onions.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I’m intrigued by the idea of a wedding photographer who doesn’t believe in marriage.’
Hayley shrugged but didn’t explain any further. The conversation had become intimate enough already, considering it was between two people who were not going to mean anything to each other in the future. It wasn’t like this was a date or anything, like they had any obligation to get to know each other.
Once the onions had browned, Ethan threw in the tomatoes and then a few handfuls of basil.
‘How does this taste?’ he asked, passing her a little of it on a wooden spoon.
Hayley sipped the hot sauce gingerly. It was delicious.
‘Mmmm,’ she said. ‘And it’s so simple!’
‘The nicest things usually are,’ said Ethan.
Then he leaned forward suddenly, one finger outstretched, and touched it against her lip.
When he moved back she saw his fingertip was streaked with red. Sauce. Ethan moved it to his own mouth and sucked it in. Sauce from her mouth, to his. The gesture seemed small but also almost painfully intimate.
Hayley felt her knees grow weak and had to lean against the bench to steady herself. What on earth was she getting into? As though aware of her discomfort, Ethan backed off.
‘The pasta’s just about ready,’ he said, pointing to the largest of his saucepans. ‘Do you want to set the table while I drain it?’
Hayley opened one of the glass-fronted cabinets behind him and pulled out some chunky white dinner plates.
‘Three?’ Ethan asked, apparently puzzled.
Hayley nodded. ‘Won’t Katy want to eat?’ she asked.
‘Katy,’ Ethan repeated. ‘Oh yes. Of course. I’ll keep it in the fridge until she wakes up.’
***
As they ate quietly, Hayley found herself looking around the room. Like the rest of the house, it was simple but beautifully decorated. The walls had been freshly painted in a shiny white, the floors were bare boards polished to a dull sheen and covered with Persian rugs in surprisingly subtle colours. Everything from the light fittings to the silverware at the table was at once obviously expensive and elegantly unadorned. Whoever had decorated had very good taste.
She looked from the place setting to Ethan’s face and regarded him for a moment. He was eating with relish, obviously appreciating the simple, tasty food as much as she did.
‘You look like you’re sizing me up,’ he said, noticing the direction of her gaze.
Hayley rested her knife and fork together on her plate and touched the corner of her linen napkin against her lips.
‘I’ve been wondering about a couple of things,’ she admitted.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, there’s your piano. Do you play?’
‘It was my mother’s. And her mother’s before that. Do you play?’
‘When I can. Like photography, it’s a hard skill to earn a living from. And I’ve wondered who did the rest of your interior decorating. Everything else here looks a lot more modern than the piano.’
‘Interior decorating?’ Ethan repeated, sounding surprised. ‘You mean who bought my furniture? I did that myself.’
‘You have good taste.’
His surprise intensified. Apparently, this was something he had never thought about before.
‘I just bought the furniture I needed. I like to surround myself with things I like.’ He turned his head to one side, looking at her speculatively.
Hayley felt herself blush again. It was as though he were sizing her up, working out if she was something he might feel he needed and liked. The feeling of attraction between them, a feeling that had sizzled outside, and begun to send out sparks in the kitchen, was making her decidedly uncomfortable.
She was not ready for heat like this, not with a man who she had only just met, who she still had lingering feelings of resentment towards, because he might be one of those men who had ruined her father, and whom she was never likely to see again.
‘I think it’s time for me to go to bed,’ she said, standing. She didn’t generally like doing what she was told and it was important to her that she did something, even if as small a thing as choosing a bedtime of her own volition.
‘The room on the second floor? Just past Katy’s?’
He had explained to her that the little girl was still asleep, and often had early nights.
‘I’ll walk quietly.’
He stood, gentlemanly, and held the dining room door open for her.
‘There’s a bathroom next door with fresh towels and a spare toothbrush in the cabinet,’ he said as they began to climb the stairs. ‘Help yourself to anything you need.’
They paused at her door, Hayley’s hand on the knob. She was acutely aware of Ethan standing before her so closely that her eyes were level with his shoulders. He was warm and at once strong and secure, at home in this place that she had already realised was the perfect setting for him.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
For one stupid, long moment she was sorry she had insisted that her agreeing to stay was not the same as her agreeing to sex. Life had been a bit dull recently and if she was honest with herself, in coming here she had been after adventure as much as she had been after money to help with her father. If she had said something else, might she and Ethan be about to walk into this room, together?
She swallowed. Why was she allowing these thoughts, here where some trace of them might appear on her face? She wasn’t the sort of woman that had one-night stands, and with her imminent departure back to Australia, and Ethan’s pressing need to remain here, there was nothing else that they could have.
Ethan leaned towards her. She smelled his aftershave. Tangy and slightly woodsy, reminiscent of the cypresses through which she had prowled this afternoon. He brushed his lips against her cheek.
‘Goodnight,’ he murmured.
Against her wishes, Hayley felt her body shiver, a movement that started in her cheek where Ethan touched her and spread down her throat and through her body until she swayed. She closed her eyes and gripped more tightly onto the doorknob. She did not like this. She did not like this control that Ethan seemed to have over her — or rather, that Ethan’s body seemed to have over hers.
She did not like it at all.
She loved it.
No, she didn’t.
‘Goodnight,’ she said again, unnecessarily, as she twisted the doorknob around and pressed into the darkened room beyond.
A moment later, the light was on, the door was closed, and she was alone. Hayley leaned back against the wall and drew a deep breath as she considered her surroundings. It was a rather small room, built to the same dimensions, she suspected, as Katy’s room, immediately downstairs. The walls were as white as in the dining room, and as freshly painted.
A wide, soft bed with fat welcoming pillows was covered with a throw of rough-woven white and pushed against the wall behind a spongy cream rug. There was a fluffy bathrobe draped over the end of the bed and a bookcase at its foot, once shelf bare apart from a clean glass and a bar of soap resting upon a fluffy green towel.
Ethan had obviously set this room up for guests, not necessarily for her. There had not been time today for all of this. Perhaps he was used to having people come to stay. Perhaps he was less of a recluse here than her experience so far had suggested.
Whatever it meant about his familiarity with guests, the details meant she could be comfortable.
Hayley was grateful for that as she slipped out of her skirt and blouse and into the bathrobe provided. Then she opened the door a crack and peeked out. There was no one around. Half-disappointed, she collected the towel and soap and made for the bathroom.
Only ten minutes later she was clean and ready to climb into bed. The room was warm, the window open. It was barred of course — Ethan was the most security-conscious man she had ever known, and now that she had heard the story about Katy, she understood why — but the shutters behind had been left open and, through them, moonlight streamed in widely over the floor. Far away, the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre were illuminated. She imagined the plays that would have been staged there once upon a time. All that ancient drama about good and evil and fate. The fate that Ethan said he didn’t believe in.
Hayley had just pulled back the bed covers and felt that the sheets were indeed as soft as they looked when a piercing alarm rang out, splitting the evening.
Thump.
That was her foot on the floor. She span around, wide eyed and quickly retying the cord of the bathrobe that she had been about to let slide down off the bed. Then she ran for the door.
The light in the hall had already been turned on and was a straight, bright line beneath her door as she ran for it and flung it open.
There were footsteps, heavy ones, sounding on the stairs, going downwards and away from her. Ethan, going down to make sure Katy was all right.
Hayley darted along the hall, following.
She could hear the heavy footsteps moving on before her as she ran. Ethan wouldn’t mind if she checked too, Hayley reasoned. He could hardly expect her to stay in her room while this was going on, still less that she might actually be asleep.
In a moment the footsteps would stop and another light would be switched on and she would hear the heavy wooden sound of Katy’s door being opened.
But then the footsteps reached what must have been the landing below, and kept on going. Hayley paused at the lower, still dark hall, puzzled.
Katy’s door was still closed. Katy’s father was continuing to run.
It could only mean he had more information about the source of the alarm and was going there instead. Hayley regarded the closed door for another long moment. Ethan had said Katy was uninterested in coming down for dinner and that she was having an early night. The alarm was still shrieking. And the door was still closed.
The girl was some sleeper.
Or was she? Unbidden, an image came to Hayley’s mind of a young girl in the dark room just on the other side of the door; a young, frightened girl sitting up in bed with her feet pulled up, her arms wrapped around her legs as she stared at the closed door and shivered.
This was a warm house but it was a big one and Hayley imagined it would be very easy for a young child to feel lost and alone here. Especially a motherless child, who must be aware of some of the danger her father said she faced. And especially with that alarm sounding and with her father’s attention obviously centred elsewhere.
Hayley pressed the nearby switch so that the hallway filled with light. She did not want to startle the girl if, by some chance, she should happen to be asleep. Then she took a deep breath and pushed open the door next to her.
It swung open to reveal a room that, as she had suspected, was pretty much a copy of her own room, directly above. It took her eyes a moment to become used to the dark. Then she realised there was no little girl sitting up, huddled in bed. There was no child still asleep. There was no child, raised from bed and shivering, frightened in the corner.
There was nobody in there at all.
***
Hayley turned and ran.
What could this mean? Was everything Ethan had told her about a daughter a lie? She realised now that despite her strong instincts to trust Ethan and to distrust Tomasi, all she had to go on were the two men’s opposing statements.
But no… She knew there was something wrong with Alvaro Tomasi. She had known that before she caught him lying the first time, before he changed his story. Invented the second lie.
She remembered how Ethan had looked when he was talking about Katy. His emotions had been too raw, too real, too similar to what she remembered from her own father’s emotions when the two of them had been alone together. He could not be lying.
So, where was Katy? Could she have been sleeping elsewhere? Had Ethan somehow managed to raise her and taken her with him as he ran downstairs?
With or without her, where had he gone? Fortunately, the house was built around long halls, as Hayley sprinted and threw doors open, looking through them to see if Ethan was in the room beyond. Each room she passed that was empty could only mean that he had gone further in the direction she was already moving.
She passed the sitting room where they had spoken earlier, and the dining room, and the kitchen. As she ran, she tried to remember more about the state of Katy’s room.
Had there been some sort of struggle in there? Had Tomasi or one of his men managed to get in after all? Hayley didn’t think so. There was nothing she could remember that had looked out of place or in disarray. In fact, as she far as she could tell, the bed hadn’t looked as if it had been slept in at all.
Ethan had lied to her about Katy being in there for an early night. Did that make a lie out of everything he had told her about his daughter? Did Katy even exist?
That alarm certainly existed. As Hayley made her way closer to the heart of the household, it seemed to grow even louder.
‘Ethan!’ she cried out, her sense of mystification and distress growing as she reached the last door in the hall and threw it open.
Beyond was a brightly lit office with a bank of television screens along one wall and a large timber desk at which Ethan sat before two giant computer screens. His fingers were raised to a keyboard before him and he continued typing as he turned and raised his eyes to her face.
In her panic, the movement looked painfully slow. Despite the ear-piercing shrillness of the alarm, it was as though he didn’t realise anything was wrong.
Hayley felt a fierce clenching in her stomach. If she called him out on lying about having a daughter, then what danger would she be placing herself in? She couldn’t even begin to guess what a man might be capable of if he was also guilty of inventing an entire tragic family life.
There was a photo behind the desk. A large one. It showed Ethan with a beautiful dark haired woman — Erica, it must be — and a beautiful, dark haired young girl. If Ethan had invented Katy, she was not a new invention.
Of course he hadn’t invented Katy. She had felt his love and anxiety in everything he had told her about the little girl. She was not a bad judge of character. She could not have been fooled by that.
Katy was real. She was real and in danger and that made the news Hayley had to share all the more devastating.
‘Ethan,’ she said again. ‘I have to tell you —’
‘I’ll have this solved in a minute,’ Ethan said. Then he frowned and, finally, his fingers paused. ‘What is it?’ he asked, standing.
‘It’s Katy,’ Hayley gasped.
She ran towards him and threw herself into his arms, ready to be the emotional support that he was surely going to need.
‘She’s gone!’