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She garnered her strength. Since she’d told him this much, she might as well tell him the rest.
“The day after the funeral the police knocked on my door. They wanted to investigate an accusation…”
When she hesitated, he tipped up her chin with a knuckle. “An accusation of what, Ella?”
She swallowed. “Matricide.”
“You?” When she nodded, Tristan laughed. “That’s absurd.” His amused expression dropped. “What evidence did they have?”
“More or less just Scarpini’s accusation.”
“More or less?”
“I administered morphine to my mother for the pain. Scarpini said I overdosed her. I had her prescribed supply but he said, because I’d known a doctor, I could access more.”
“What reason could you have for killing your terminally ill mother?”
“Scarpini was livid I hadn’t given in to his threats. Whether he’d called the police to intimidate me, or he’d hoped that they’d actually charge me, I don’t know. But he told them I was tired of looking after her. That she was about to change her will and I wanted it all.”
“The worst kind of gold digger,” Tristan murmured gravely.
His pupils dilated until his eyes were burning black coals. When he finally spoke, his voice was danger-ously low. “How long have you known this man?”
She was a little taken aback. “I told you. Just weeks before my mother died.”
He nodded, but the slope of his brows said he needed to absorb it. Could she blame him? His mind must be reeling.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll go to the police.”
“No. Please.”
She couldn’t forget the way the officers had looked at her the day after her mother’s funeral, as if, despite the lack of evidence, she was nonetheless a criminal. All those disgusting questions, the sensation of having her heart ripped out and trodden on again. She’d only ever tried to help her mother, yet she would always remember the cold suspicion shining in their eyes.
Mud sticks.
“Ella, this man isn’t going to back off without a less-than-friendly nudge.”
“I couldn’t bear to go through all that again. The questions, the looks, riffling through the details of my mother’s illness…”
He studied her pleading gaze for a long moment then nodded once. “It goes against my better judgment…but, all right. Only on the condition that if he calls again, you tell me straightaway. Now—” his hand curved around her jaw, “—I don’t want you to worry, okay?”
She eased out a shaky breath. “I’ll try.”
And she did feel a little better. But the best remedy for worry, she’d discovered long ago, was keeping busy.
Her gaze skated toward the table. She’d lost her appetite and after that episode she wouldn’t be much company. “I’ll clear the table.”
Crossing over, she swept up her plate, then his. When she turned, he was behind her.
He took both plates and set them resolutely on the table. “The dishes can wait. We have wine to finish.”
Mere inches divided their bodies but with that call still echoing through her mind…
She touched her clammy forehead. “I think I’ve had enough wine.”
“Are you that eager to get to the dishwasher?”
“No.” He grinned at her quick reply and she smiled weakly back. “It’s habit, I guess.”
“There’ll be a dance floor and music tomorrow night.” He paused. “Do you dance, Ella?”
She gave him a knowing smile. “You’re trying to take my mind off of that phone call.”
His head slanted. “Be that as it may…” He waited for her answer.
“I…have danced,” she admitted.
With a playful tilt to his mouth, he measured her hesitant expression. “But not recently.”
“Seems like a hundred years.”
She bit her lip. Too much information.
“Do you know how to waltz?”
She didn’t want to make a fool of herself—or him. “I’m really not very good.”
“Then perhaps we ought to practice. I can put on some music in the living room.” He took a step closer and the edge of his warm hand brushed against hers. “Or we could practice here.”
The intercom buzzed, loud and unexpected enough for Ella’s stomach to jackknife to her throat. She swung toward the door.
Oh Lord. It was Scarpini wanting in at the entrance gates, she just knew it.
Annoyed at yet another interruption, Tristan groaned and headed for the intercom panel.
“I can get it,” she called after him.
“I’ll get it. And if it happens to be your Mr. Scarpini, I’m more than ready for him.”
Ella’s knees turned to jelly. Eight months of calm, now the world was spinning out of control.
She straightened and pinned back her shoulders.
Whatever came, be damned if she would stand in the background, quaking in her shoes.
She followed Tristan to the intercom.
“Hello.” Tristan waited a beat before one hand clenched at his side. “Hello, who is this?”
The reply was deep and familiar, but not in the way Ella expected. It sounded somehow like Tristan.
“Tristan,” the disembodied voice came back. “It’s Cade. We need to talk and we need to talk now.”
Chapter Four
The relief seeping through Ella’s system was so wonderfully intense, she almost laughed.
It hadn’t been Drago Scarpini buzzing for access at the Barkley gate. As was true of most bullies, Scarpini was a coward, a cockroach. He wouldn’t knock on Tristan Barkley’s door and expose himself like that, even to get to the person he obviously still viewed as a worthwhile payoff, she thought.
Then Ella saw Tristan’s face, his tanned complex-ion paler than she’d ever seen it. His nostrils flared as he stared at the floor, then he slammed the back of his fist against the wall.
Her stomach muscles clutched in reaction.
“Tristan?” she murmured.
He turned and glared at her as if she were the enemy. Then he dragged a hand through his hair and his savage expression eased slightly. “Ella, you can clear the table now.”
He stabbed a button to open the gates and seconds later a car rumbled up the drive.
Ella let out the breath she’d been holding. Whoever this visitor was, clearly he wasn’t welcome. But that wasn’t any of her business. She was an employee with a job to do and despite Tristan now knowing her dirty laundry, that hadn’t changed.
Running her hands down her sides, she concentrated on slipping back into professional mode. “Would you like me to bring coffee?”
When Tristan looked at her, his eyes were filled with fire—or was that hatred? “He won’t be staying that long.”
Tristan strode off to answer the front door while Ella calmed her frazzled nerves. What was the visitor’s name? Mr. Cade? She started toward the table and with leaden arms collected the dishes, then moved to the kitchen.
She’d never heard that name used in this house. But Tristan had a lot of business dealings to juggle. Some-times business relationships turned sour. Ella rinsed the dishes while her thoughts churned over Tristan and his visitor, then Scarpini and his phone call.
She dropped her head and cursed the ache in her throat. Oh, how she wished that man would drop off the edge of the planet.
A blind clattered against a kitchen window. Ella’s stomach gripped as her concentration snapped up. Her locked muscles relaxed when the scent of coming rain entered the room. Not an intruder, just a storm on the way.
Tristan preferred fresh air to air conditioning, but Ella hurried to close all the windows now, then remem-bered there were more open in the main living room where she’d vacuumed today.
A moment later, she thumbed on a living room lamplight and went to each window. After checking that the security system was still activated, she spun around and almost tripped over the vacuum cleaner she’d ne-glected to put away earlier. When she bent behind the settee to bundle up the cord, a man’s raised voice per-meated Tristan’s closed study door.
Crouched behind the settee, Ella froze as her heartbeat boomed a warning in her ears.
Move, Ella. This isn’t a position to be caught in.
About to escape to the kitchen, the study door swung open, slamming against the wall.
“Get it through your skull,” Tristan snarled, “I will never agree to your terms.”
“Never’s a very long time,” came that other deep and graveled voice.
“As far as I’m concerned, not long enough.”
Curiosity won out. Ella peered over the couch and saw her boss speaking with a man. His hair was a shade darker than midnight. He was tall, with a commanding presence similar to Tristan’s. The man stood angled toward her. Even at this distance she noticed his eyes, bright yet at the same time seemingly impenetrable…the color of scorched honey. As his gaze narrowed upon Tristan, the amber eyes flashed. But then he slapped his thighs, a gesture of defeat, and stormed away.
Ella slumped as the tension ran from her body. Seconds later, the front door thumped shut. As the echo thundered down the hall, Ella pushed to her feet at the same time Tristan strode past the room and spotted her.
He pulled up, his handsome face dark with fury. She’d never seen him so wild. In fact, other than last week when he’d thought some harm had come to her, Tristan had always kept his emotions well under control.
“Ella,” he growled.
She forced her rubbery lips to work. “Yes, Mr. Barkley?” How easily she slipped back to formalities. Suddenly she didn’t feel as if she knew him.
Tristan’s shoulders came forward, then he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Would you pour me a drink, please?”
While she beat a path for the crystal decanter on its trolley beside his chess table, Tristan moved into the room and sank into the settee she’d crouched behind. When Ella handed him the drink, he thanked her and knocked back half.
Head back, he concentrated on the ceiling. “You know how you don’t like your brother?”
Drago Scarpini? She nodded. “Yes.”
“That was mine. How does the saying go? You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your relatives.”
She knew Tristan had a younger brother, Josh. But he’d never mentioned anyone named Cade.
A shudder crept up her spine. She wanted to ask what had happened in that room, in their past, for the anger between them to be so strong.
Tristan answered her unspoken question. “Cade wants me to go back and work for the family business.”
“Which business?”
He flicked her a curious glance. “Barkley Hotels.”
“Your family owns that?”
He leaned forward, holding his Scotch glass between his knees. “I assumed you knew.”
He’d never mentioned it, nor had any one of the numerous guests he’d had to the house. Neither had she read anything in the magazines she flipped through.
Looking down, he swirled the liquor in his glass. “I don’t suppose you should have. It’s been a while since I left the company, and everyone and his dog knows the subject is banned from my ears.”
“Because of your brother?”
He eyed her as if she might be withholding some interesting secret. “Sit down, Ella. Here next to me. I need your advice.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “My advice?”
He patted the cushion. “Sit.”
She sat. But, even with an arm’s length separating them, she felt it—the sexual charge arcing between them like a powerful magnet.
But Tristan seemed oblivious to the sparks and the pull. He was preoccupied with what had transpired in his study moments ago.
