Authors: Shirley Wine
Yesterday's Sins (43 page)
Buffeted by wind and rain the bird stalked across the lawn with an innate arrogance. Against all reason it made her uneasy.
One for sorrow...
Sofia's soft voice ghosted through her memory. Her mother had spent countless hours regaling Anna with fairy tales, myths and legends.
Another memory intruded, vivid and disturbing.
A month ago she'd watched another solitary magpie stalk across a lawn of their home on Tambourine Mountain.
And the very next day she'd found her father dead in his bed.
At twenty-three, Anna wasn't superstitious but seeing that bird, at this particular moment, sent a shiver down her spine. Was that magpie an omen?
Don't be ridiculous,
her rational mind chided even as Mico's warning flashed into her head.
Something about this situation stinks. If you do find Megan, are you prepared for whatever you may learn?
While her brother's words were meant to wound, they also held a ring of truth. Mico had done his level best to prevent her coming to New Zealand.
Anna shivered.
How could any mother walk away from her new-born baby? To Anna, it was incomprehensible. And yet, if she were to believe her father, that's exactly what Megan had done.
What do you know about love, motherhood or any feminine emotion?
Mico's sarcastic taunt echoed hollowly.
Anna's stubborn refusal to marry Benito Domenico, the man her father had handpicked as her husband while she was a teenager, angered the men in her family. Paolo Belmonte may have left Italy as a boy, but he'd never strayed very far in his attitudes.
Even thinking of Ben made her shiver.
Big and quiet, he was single minded in his pursuit of her. Every protest, every refusal to entertain his proposal was greeted with ineffable good humor, but lately, the gleam in his eyes had grown downright disturbing.
She shook her head. No matter what happened with Megan, returning home was Anna's least preferred option.
Suddenly, the sensation of being watched made her tense. A surreptitious glance around the dining room and her stunned gaze landed on a man filling the doorway.
He was staring directly at her and she forgot to breathe.
Trapped in the stranger's obsidian gaze, heat flooded her face. She closed her eyes trying to escape his scrutiny, but opening them again, found him watching her with the same hawk-like intensity.
Who was he?
Unable to break free of his inimical stare, Anna tilted her chin in defiance.
His black eyes narrowed in unmistakable antipathy as he straightened and strode across the room with the easy cat-like grace of a man confident of his place in the world.
Anna swallowed hard, but failed to dislodge the lump anxiety settled in her throat.
He was tall, well over six feet, the breadth of his shoulders awesome. Blue jeans and pale blue shirt accentuated swarthy good looks. Sleeves, rolled to the elbows, exposed well-muscled, tanned forearms. Raindrops trembled in night-black hair. A hawkish nose dominated his rugged face. The square chin suggested a man accustomed to ordering life on his own terms.
Anna's heart drummed at a suffocating pace.
His eyes were dark chocolate, not black. Her mind was in such a chaotic tangle the irrelevant observation seemed sensible.
He pulled out the chair opposite, and sat at her table.
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