Silver Falls - Anne Stuart [27]
She started after him, pushing past the wet branches, following him down the steep, muddy path. She slid once, landing on her butt, and he glanced back at her but didn’t slow down. She got to her feet once more and hurried on, trying to keep him in sight without getting too close.
Her first image of the house was the bright blue of the tarp covering the half-finished roof. The trees had grown up all around it, and she could see lines and angles, oddly familiar. It was more of a ruin than a half-finished house, and yet she couldn’t rid herself of a feeling that she’d been there before.
“Lovely,” she said in an undertone. “Do you even have a telephone?” Maybe she could call home when she got there, see if David could pick Sophie up. Except then she’d have to explain where she was, and who she was with. That, or lie, and neither of those choices was acceptable. There was nothing wrong with what she was doing—she just didn’t feel like having to explain it to David.
“Of course I do.”
“Where’s your car?” she said when she reached the level ground. She stared up at the house. There was a long series of rickety-looking steps leading up to the front door, and there were two wings spreading out from either side. Eerily like David’s house, which she still couldn’t think of as her own.
He was already halfway up the steps. “Around back. It’s a rental, and I’m not about to let a mud rat in it. Come inside, Rachel. I promise I won’t strangle you.”
She didn’t move. “Don’t you think that’s a little tasteless?”
“I’ve never been troubled by matters of taste, and if my intended victim were a yappy broad like you the first thing I’d do is shut you up. Either come in and clean off or get down the mountain on your own. I’m getting tired of all this.”
“You’re a son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He kept climbing the stairs, and she had two choices. Make it on her own, and go with him.
He was arrogant, dangerous, rude and much too good-looking for her peace of mind. She liked gentle men like David, not bastards like his brother.
She looked up at the half-finished, prairie-style house, and she had the odd feeling that she was at the point of no return.
She put her foot on the first step and began climbing.
He whistled beneath his breath as he drove into the garage and closed the door behind him. The women of his household were gone—Sophie was at school, Rachel had gone looking for his brother. He’d known she would—women couldn’t keep away from Caleb once he decided to lure them, and he’d been watching Rachel with those dark eyes of his.
David had driven by the parking area at the base of Silver Mountain, just to be sure. Rachel’s Volvo was parked there, the car he’d given her for a wedding present. He couldn’t help it—he chuckled. She was so easy to manipulate, so transparent. His brother would probably have her on her back in record time.
An ordinary man would have been disturbed. Not David. He’d known almost immediately that he’d made a mistake in marrying Rachel. She’d seemed the answer to everything—she calmed him when his needs flared, and he thought she’d be perfect. By the time Sophie reached the right age he might even have moved past his darkest desires. He’d been having a harder time controlling them recently. He’d never felt the need to strike only six months apart. He could keep Rachel as the perfect wife, the perfect cover. And he could watch Sophie grow into the young woman she was meant to be. And when that happened, maybe this strange cycle, that had lasted more than twenty years, would come to an end. Something would happen to Rachel, and he could live out his life with Sophie, serene and brilliant.
In the meantime, Rachel was proving a sore disappointment. He kept hoping he could train her, but she ignored his hints, and he understood human nature well enough to know that she wouldn’t respond well to direct orders. There was nothing he could do about it, except get rid of her in as timely a manner as possible.
But first he had to make absolutely