Consumed by Fire by Anne Stuart Page B

of some sort.
    “Not exactly.”
    That wasn’t much of an answer, but since he hadn’t threatened her yet, except to play with that gun, she felt her courage harden. “What do I have to do to get you to leave?”
    She didn’t miss his slow grin. “What are you offering?”
    She didn’t react to his deliberate taunt. “My dog will tear your throat out when he gets back.”
    “I don’t think so. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left.”
    “Is someone else with you? He might have gone after something in the woods.”
    “So many questions,” he said lightly. “No, I’m alone. Why don’t you come closer?”
    “I’m good,” she said, not moving from the spot in front of the doorway. She still hadn’t given up the idea of throwing herself at the door. If she managed it just right, she could hit the handle and the door would fly open, sending her tumbling to the ground. She could scramble to her feet fast enough, but he had a gun.
    “Don’t even think about it,” he said, obviously reading her mind. “You wouldn’t even reach the door. Now come here before I have to come and get you.”
    That idea sounded even worse. Maybe if she sat at the table and pretended to trust him she could talk him into leaving. The stranger was wrong about Merlin—he’d get the gun away, he’d get the man on the ground and hold him. She just had to placate him for the next few minutes while Merlin did his nightly reconnaissance.
    “All right,” she said, moving forward.
    “And get me another beer while you’re at it.”
    Her outrage grew. “You’ve been drinking my beer?”
    “And eating your granola shit and anything else I could find. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to get to any food in the last couple of days, and I’m starving.”
    She moved through the central galley, opened the tiny refrigerator, and pulled out a beer.
    “Get one for yourself,” he added.
    “I don’t want . . .”
    “I don’t give a flying fuck what you want. I told you to get yourself a beer.”
    She recognized the real menace beneath the casual voice, and she wasn’t going to make the mistake in thinking he wasn’t a very dangerous man. She grabbed the second bottle, shoved the door shut, and somehow managed to stalk the few feet she had to travel to get to the table. He looked up at her, still in the shadows. “Sit.”
    She considered balking, but he was holding the gun, and Merlin would be back soon. She sat, staring into the face of the intruder, getting her first good look at him.
    He looked like a soldier. Or maybe a mercenary—there was something lethal about him, though she had no idea how she knew that. In her entire life she’d known assholes and saints, and assholes outweighed the saints by a ton, but this man was something else entirely.
    His face was angular, but she wasn’t going to stop and think whether he was handsome or not. It made no difference if he was model gorgeous or a monster. He was a threat, and she needed to get rid of him.
    His jaw was strong beneath the scruffiness, but it was his eyes that drew her. They were a bright, absolutely compelling green-blue, like the color of Caribbean waters. They were deep and mesmerizing.
    And oddly familiar. The wrong color, but she knew those damned lying eyes, even if she hadn’t seen them for five years.
    She leaned forward, seemingly casual, and before he realized what she was doing, she grabbed the gun from the table, turning and pointing it directly at his heart.
    “You bastard,” she said in a low, vicious voice.
    If he was disturbed that she’d taken the gun he didn’t show it. “There you go,” James Bishop said calmly. “I was worried you’d forgotten me.”
    “I did my best. It was your self-satisfied smirk that gave you away. What are you doing here, James? If that’s even your name. And what the fuck did you do with my diamonds?”
    The man she’d known as James Bishop watched her, seemingly unconcerned about the gun she was pointing at him.