Katie curled in on herself, trying to hold back the images which had tormented her for two long weeks.
But they played in her mind like a horror movie: Megan’s broken body curled on the floor, her arms flung over her head, the vivid welts on her shoulder blades accompanied by their father’s taunts and the sickening thud of leather hitting bone.
Katie gulped in breaths, the sobs so violent they wracked her whole body.
But the sweet spot between her legs still ached to be touched, her lips still felt tender and her cheeks still stung from the rasp of Caine’s jaw.
And the hideous truth kept repeating inside her head, over and over and over again.
Lloyd Whittaker had been wrong about Megan, punishing her for something their mother had done, but he had always been right about her.
And now Jared Caine knew it too.
CHAPTER ONE
Five years later, the Amalfi Coast, Italy
PLEASE DON’T DIE...please don’t die.
Katie prayed for all she was worth, but the god
of smartphone batteries wasn’t listening because the phone screen cut to black.
She whimpered and stopped walking—or rather hobbling—along the narrow farm road as it dawned on her that having had most of her worldly possessions snatched by a couple of teenage sneak thieves wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her today.
The sun had sunk another inch toward the horizon, lengthening the shadows over the landscape of lemon and orange groves perched on the hillside.
She had been blown away by the wonder of the view at dawn that morning when she’d ventured down the deserted track on her second-hand Vespa to find a secluded cove to paint. But anxiety rose like a wave to add to her exhaustion now. In an hour, two at the most, it would be pitch-dark. And she would be stranded miles from the nearest town with no transport, no money, no means of communication, no luggage—she peered down at her bare legs and feet, covered in a layer of dirt that reached her knees—and no shoes.
Resisting the urge to hurl the offending phone—which hadn’t had a signal for hours—onto the rocks below, she shoved it into the pocket of her shorts.
How ironic that three months ago when she’d first arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport from New York with nothing but a backpack, the beautiful mahogany box of art supplies Megan had given her and her passport, the whole point had been to travel light. To support herself and spend some time on her own. To prove to herself and everyone else that she could be more than a serial screw-up or microcelebrity click bait.
On her first night in Paris, in a little hostel near the Bastille, she’d been terrified, but over the weeks and months since, she’d started to find something in Europe she’d never had in the US. Anonymity and hard work had finally given her the time and space she needed to grow up.
She’d made new friends—waiting tables in a brasserie in the Marais, making beds in a hotel near St Mark’s Square and hiking thirty miles on the Camino Real—but in the last month she had started to really appreciate her own company. She’d even managed to start earning real cash doing watercolor landscapes she posted each week to a gallery in Florence.
She hefted the box under her arm, which had begun to feel as if it weighed several tons about a mile and ten thousand blisters ago. At least she still had her paints.
But she’d discovered today she had a lot to learn about personal safety and not being an easy mark. If only she’d been less absorbed in her watercolor of the cove and more alert when Pinky and Perky had appeared from nowhere, maybe they wouldn’t have managed to hot-wire her scooter, wrestle her pack off her and then disappear in a cloud of dust and victorious whoops in the space of approximately twenty-five seconds.
How come I always have to learn everything the hard way?
She forced herself to keep going, even though her feet hurt from tiptoeing over the rocky path and her head was pounding as if someone had sideswiped her with her own pack. Probably because they had.
She tested the knot forming on her forehead with her fingertips.
If she ever caught up with Pinky and Perky, she was going to stab them both through the heart with a well-sharpened artist’s pencil. And then roast them like bacon.
The hum of an engine cut into her barbeque fantasies and a low-slung car appeared ahead of her, driving past the ruins of an old farmhouse. Or rather bouncing toward her on the uneven track.
Her breath gushed out, the wave of relief so extreme she felt nauseous. Maybe she could hitch a ride to Sorrento.
The sleek convertible was brand new and expensive. Apprehension cut off her optimism. What was this guy doing destroying his suspension on a farm track?
She brushed her hair over the bruising on her forehead and gripped the box in her arms, prepared to use it as a lethal weapon if her rescuer turned out to have the same moral compass as Pinky and Perky.
The car stopped a few yards ahead and a man stepped out. With the sun sinking, it was hard to make out more than a silhouette. But her heartbeat began to kick her ribs like a carthorse as he strolled toward her. His stride, leisurely and yet filled with purpose, looked familiar. And not in a good way.