Gillian slowly became aware of lying on something silky and sumptuous and very large. A bed? Certainly not her own narrow bed back at the villa she and her sisters were renting for the season.
She stirred, feeling cool satin sheets slide beneath her body. And realized her shirt and boots had been removed, leaving her barefoot, wearing just her trousers and a cotton camisole.
Where was she?
And what on earth had happened to her?
“Ah, you’re back with me at last,” a deep, masculine voice murmured from the undulating brink of consciousness.
Her eyes fluttered open.
A man sat on the bed, looking down at her.
Tall and muscular, he had black hair and a striking black mustache in an arrestingly handsome face. But it was his eyes that really commanded her attention. Piercing, amber eyes ringed with black and flecked with gold, they watched her with calm, deadly concentration. The gaze of a predator observing his prey...
A tremble sifted through her whole body. It was...him. The man from the tomb. She knew it down to her still-shaking knees.
She wanted to tear her gaze away from those mesmerizing eyes. But couldn’t. Couldn’t, because along with being terrifying, she also found the dark stranger...incredibly attractive.
“Where am I?” she managed, unable to stop herself from surreptitiously brushing her throat with her fingers, foolishly checking for bites.
He smiled, revealing a hint of straight white teeth. “My estate. You fainted in the tomb. Lucky I was there to catch you,” he said in his cultured British accent.
She swallowed, positive it was because he’d been there that she’d fainted. If that was what had happened. She had the oddest feeling that he’d somehow deliberately caused her blackout. Though she couldn’t imagine how.
“Yes, lucky,” she said, closing her eyes against a shiver.
He’d caught her in his arms. Touched her. And carried her off to his house.
An involuntary frisson zinged through her insides as she suddenly remembered her lack of a shirt. God knew what else he’d done...
“Shall I call a doctor to make sure you’re okay?” he asked, interrupting her alarming thoughts.
“No.” She sat up. “I’m fine. Really. A few sips of water, and—”
“You’re very warm. It might be sunstroke,” he warned. “We should try to bring down your body temperature.”
Too bad the way he was looking at her had the opposite effect. Which, under the circumstances, was pure insanity.
“Sunstroke? Inside a tomb?”
He ignored her pointed comment. “Perhaps you’d like to take a cooling bath?” he suggested.
She blinked, her nervousness shifting into a completely different sort. Her heartbeat kicked up. “I really don’t think—”
Rising, he indicated a door next to a lavish built-in wardrobe. “You should find everything you need in the bathroom, through here. I’ll send someone with a change of clothes for you.” He turned to leave the room.
“Wait,” she said. Had she been wrong about him? She could have sworn she’d seen something hidden, something...dangerous...in the stranger’s eyes. Or was she imagining it all? “You never told me who you are.”
His smile did a mysterious curl at the corner of his lips. “You don’t remember?”
She tried to dredge her mind, but it was like peering through layers of fog. “Sorry, no. I’m Gillian Haliday, by the way,” she added, her pulse pounding.
“Gillian. What a lovely name. Very nice to meet you, Miss Haliday. I’m Rhys. Rhys Kilpatrick.”
She literally felt the blood drain from her face as the fog dissolved and a flash of disturbing memories came flooding back. Of their meeting in the tomb.
Oh, God.
The bizarre inscription. The voice in the darkness. His voice.
The voice of a dead man.