rose with a shriek and whirled.
Wreathed in the concealing darkness of the hall, deep-set eyes seemed to gleam with a predator’s assessment as they surveyed her from beyond the room’s pool of light. Panic sent her gaze questing for a nonexistent escape route.
Energy crackled as Gabriel Lowe took a sinuous step into the shaft of light.
Her gaze fastened on the twisted scar that ran from the corner of his left eye to the edge of his strong jaw. Horrible! It added gruesome detail to the sinister, fierce aura he projected.
He was broader and taller up close than she’d expected. Powerful shoulders tapered to a narrow waist. Lean hips and well-muscled thighs confirmed his fitness as he glided forward silently like some large, stalking cat.
Cassy forgot to breathe. The darkness seemed to thicken behind him, creating an impenetrable barrier. His fixed, implacable expression held her silent. Her heart drummed wildly against her rib cage.
There was nowhere to run even if she could have summoned the will to move. Like a cornered mouse, she knew she was trapped. The jig was up.
Gabriel Lowe was going to kill her, too.
Chapter Two
Gabe watched as Cassiopia’s shocked gaze traveled the length of his scar before absorbing the rest of him. Well, his features hadn’t been all that great even before the explosion. The bright red puckering of the scar had faded to white over time, but he knew its impact was still strong on unsuspecting people.
“Wha-what are you doing here?” she managed to gasp.
He arched his eyebrows pointedly and remained silent.
Cassiopia closed her eyes and groaned. “I knew I was going to get caught.” She opened her eyes and grimaced. “I guess I should be glad you aren’t a mad rapist.”
He waited, keeping his expression blank, still reluctantly amused by her forced attempt at humor.
“You aren’t, are you?”
“Which? Mad, or a rapist?”
“I know you aren’t a rapist.”
He raised his eyebrows. Color singed her cheeks but she pressed forward boldly.
“How mad are you?”
He came away from the door in a motion that brought him across the room in three long strides. Cassiopia took an inadvertent step back, stopping when her heel bumped the base of the nearest crouching lion.
“What makes you so sure I’m not a rapist?”
The silky tone of his words charged the air. Her lips parted without sound while her gaze fastened on his scar once more. She inhaled raggedly.
“Don’t be absurd.”
Her voice cracked, denying the false calm she was trying to project.
“Are you going to call the police?”
He let his expression darken, then crowded her deliberately, coming to a stop when he was inches from her face.
“Now why would I want to do that? The last thing a mad rapist wants is the police,” he told her with silken menace.
Cassy refused to look away. “That isn’t funny.”
“Neither is breaking and entering.”
She dropped her gaze. Gabe sensed it lingering on the scarred backs of his hands and made no effort to conceal the puckered skin. Let her look her fill. There were more scars than these, covered by his clothing.
A piece of burning siding had landed on him in the explosion nearly four years ago. He’d been unconscious, and only the fast action of a neighbor had kept him from burning to death. Any number of times he’d thought the man hadn’t done him any favors.
Gabe was close enough to smell a bewitchingly light scent that wasn’t some cloying perfume, but was utterly female. He tried to ignore that and focused on the play of color in her hair. Cassiopia Richards was…distracting.
Amazingly, there was neither pity nor horror in her expression when she lifted her eyes. “You left me no choice,” she told him with surprising fierceness. “You could have talked to me when I called you yesterday.”
“I did.”
Her lips thinned. “You told me to take a hike.”
“I’m certain I was more polite than that.”
“Stop playing games.”
That stirred his anger once more. “I’ve said all I have to say on the subject of what happened four years ago. I’m not interested in repeating myself.”
“Beacher claims you were an innocent victim, too.”
Beacher was a fool. His friend was convinced Cassiopia knew something that would help them discover what Powell Richards had done with the missing toxin so he refused to give up his pursuit of her.
As Beacher had pointed out, “That toxin’s somewhere and we’re going to find it and prove we had nothing to do with what happened.”
Gabe believed talking with Cassiopia was a waste of time. She’d been away at school when her father had taken the toxin from under Gabe’s nose and gotten himself killed. And she’d scored an indelible impression on him that day in the hospital. She was too young, too passionate and obviously too impulsive to be of any help to them.
She summoned up a glare as if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. “I’m leaving.”
“You just got here.”
Not many people could hold his gaze when he was in a temper. Given his overall size and his scars, he’d perfected the art of intimidation, but only the quickening leap of the pulse in her neck told him she wasn’t as immune as she’d like him to believe.
Gabe stepped back. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs.”
The widening of those soft gray eyes brought a sudden vision of his bedroom and the two of them intertwined on twisted sheets. It had been a long time since he’d thought about sex and he banished the image instantly. But she seemed to be tuning in to his thoughts.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
This time anxiety threaded her voice.
“You’d rather remain here?”
“Yes. Go ahead and call the police. I’d welcome them.”
The bluster was gone. He’d finally succeeded in frightening her. It made him feel oddly ashamed.
“To the kitchen, Cassiopia,” he told her more gently. “To talk. I may be mad—God
