As the small
knoll materialized in the ghostly fog, he cut the wheel, switched off the
engine and allowed the car to coast across the lawn to halt under an oak
tree. The slight roll in the landscape
saw the mound overlooking the thatched house, nestled into the odd crook in the
land.
“My,
what a perfect location for tonight’s bit of work,” he said, his low voice loud
in the stillness of the night. “All the
better to spy upon you, Little Red Riding
Hood.”
Pocketing his keys, he opened the
car’s gull wing door, and then paused with foot balanced on the body’s fame
while his eyes took in Raven’s home.
The bungalow was two stories, though
the second level was likely just a bedroom and bath due to the steep incline of
the roof. The only time he’d been in a
thatched house was when he was small, in the months after his father had
committed suicide. He’d been too young
to remember much of that time in Ireland.
Des remembered. That period of their lives had left deep
scars in his older brother. Trev figured
he’d look down his nose at Raven’s humble home.
Instead, he was fascinated. An
air of warmth and welcoming beckoned him toward the cottage, aglow with its
amber lights.
He sat on the hood of the car and
studied the bucolic structure, trying to pinpoint Raven. Playing Peeping Tom was easy. The place was constructed of so much
glass. A gardener’s cottage once, there
were two greenhouses― one on either side of the whitewashed abode. The first had likely been a hothouse, the
other for plants that required a more temperate clime. Raven was an artist, a painter. The report Julian Starkadder had compiled
about her said she was working toward a one woman show for a local gallery come
next spring. The smaller glass room had
been turned into a studio. Even from
this distance he could see the easel, though it was too far away to tell what
she currently painted upon the large canvas.
Aside from the two glassed in
spaces, a dining room had been added, also with glass walls. Raven Montgomerie’s life was on display, but
he figured she never considered that.
Some beautiful women loved to put on a show for anyone looking― even Peeping Toms. Still, for someone as gorgeous as Raven, she
didn’t live her life on the stage she created here. He’d be willing to bet the Lamborghini on that. Raven was merely far away from people,
nothing even remotely close, so obviously she felt no need to hide behind
drapes.
“Where the hell are you, Red?” he
asked. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
All
these walls of glass and he couldn’t spot her!
Exasperated, he knew she was at home.
She’d been working on the preparation for the gala all day, doing final
touches. After supper he’d grown
twitchy, so had driven past the banquet hall that her brother, Cian, had rented
for Montgomerie Enterprise’s big
bash. As he spotted her coming out of
the building, he swung into a parking lot down the road and watched while she
slid into her ancient MGB. Keeping a distance, he followed her until she
took the turn off for the cottage. She
was still there. His predator’s sense confirmed that.
Growing impatient, he pushed off the
car and trotted toward the cottage. The MGB was parked at the side of the house,
attesting to her presence within.
Staying to the shadows, he circled around the larger greenhouse and
toward the back of the dwelling. As he
cornered the far side, he pulled up when he saw Raven. Her face was framed in the kitchen window, an
overhead light nearly a spotlight on her.
From her movements, he saw she was washing dishes.
Raven’s face was more than
beautiful, it was arresting, with a hint of feline ethereality. While her jaw reflected the same Montgomerie
stubbornness as her sisters, the thinness of her countenance softened the
effect. Trev shuddered. His whole body cramped with longing.
“Longing?” he echoed aloud.
The word caused pause. With
any other woman he’d have said lust.
Trevelyn Mershan didn’t long
for a woman. He simply wanted to screw
them. Once he achieved that aim, they
lost any fascination for him. Longing
required more than animal impulses. It
spoke of something much deeper. And that bothered him.
Music floated on the night air, and
it took a moment to identify the song coming from the kitchen, Constant Craving ―an oldie by KD
Lang. Raven’s mouth
moved as she sang along with the words.
Though he couldn’t hear her, a shiver slithered up his spine. Yeah, he knew something about constant
cravings. Five months of it. Ever since he’d seen her back last May at her
grandfather’s funeral.
He recalled sitting with his
brothers at the rear of the small church, watching the seven sisters in the
pews at the front, then later while they exited the ornate building. That memory haunted him. So peculiar, beyond her beauty, there was
little about Raven that would normally attract him. No, Raven Montgomerie was not his taste in women. And yet, he’d known in that breathless
instant when their eyes collided, outside the ancient Norman kirk, that in five
months’ time he’d be coming for her.
“Though hell should bar the
way…” he said under his breath.
She was the key to
getting him closer to the Montgomeries, so the Mershans could finally mete out
their long-overdue vengeance. His inner
voice warned Trev that their objective had damn little to do with his coming
here tonight. A ravenous need was rising
in him, something dark, dangerous. A
force primeval...
A WOLF IN WOLF'S
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