Playing His Dangerous Game (14 page)

‘I’m not planning on having someone take a photograph of you.’

No, she was planning something far more effective than that.

‘OK. When and where?’

Shara thought rapidly, sifting through her options. She needed just the right place for the half-formed plan in her mind to work—somewhere public and open and, even more importantly, somewhere guaranteed to have a lot of people.

She wanted them visible.

‘Bonito’s,’ she said, naming a popular café she and Steve had been to numerous times before. ‘Ten o’clock for coffee and a chat.’

With that she hung up the phone. He’d be there. She knew he would. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.

The sense that something was wrong between Royce and herself intensified the following morning.

As was usual, Royce was in the middle of cooking breakfast when she walked into the kitchen.

He always woke before her. He was one of those people who got up as soon as their eyes opened. Shara was the exact opposite. She liked to take her time, snoozing for a few minutes before she was ready to greet the day.

‘Good morning,’ she said, walking into the room.

She walked towards Royce like a homing beacon. Her intention was to wrap her arms around his waist from behind and then wait for him to turn and give her a good-morning kiss.

Royce threw her a brief smile over his shoulder, said an equally short good morning, and then turned back to the stove.

Shara stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at his back for a long moment, a sense of unease rippling down her spine.

After standing there for another minute, with not another word or look, let alone a good-morning kiss, she diverted to the fridge.

‘You didn’t come to bed last night,’ she said, trying to keep her voice light and even.

‘I slept in another room,’ he said, addressing the contents of the frying pan. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘You wouldn’t have disturbed me.’

In fact just the opposite. She’d wanted nothing more than to have him in bed with her, the hard, warm length of his body beside her, his arms wrapped around her.

‘You needed the sleep.’

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as her sense of unease deepened. She stopped part-way to the kitchen bench, a tub of yoghurt in one hand, a punnet of blueberries and a banana in the other.

‘Don’t tell me what I need or don’t need,’ she said, addressing his back.

Particularly when he had it wrong.

What she’d needed was
him
.

She almost blurted the words out loud, but she swallowed them back. Given how stand-offish and unapproachable he sounded, it was hardly the appropriate thing to say.

‘You
didn’t
need to get some sleep after all the fracas?’ he asked, tossing the question over his shoulder.

Their eyes met. His were blank. Empty. Totally without the warmth she was used to seeing in them.

A shiver ran down her spine and her stomach shrank to the size of a pea.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, her heart beating anxiously in her chest.

She was still staring at his back intently, which meant that
she saw the infinitesimal tightening of his muscles. ‘No, nothing is wrong.’

But everything was wrong.

It
felt
wrong.

Royce looked and sounded different.

And she couldn’t figure out why.

She wasn’t imagining things.

And it hurt.

It hurt more than she cared to admit.

Royce was pretending to work—pretending because he couldn’t forget the look of hurt confusion in Shara’s eyes when he’d deliberately tried to blank her out—when his computer started to beep.

His head snapped up, a frown on his face.

Pulling the keyboard towards him, he tapped a few keys to take him to the household security system. The beeping indicated that the outside perimeter of the house had been breached.

One look at the monitor confirmed someone near the garage at the back of the house.

Was someone—Brady?—coming in?

Or was someone—Shara?—going out?

There was only one way to find out.

He was on his feet and racing towards the back of the house in two seconds flat.

He reached the rear door, only to find it locked. Cursing under his breath, he ran for the front door, noticed an open window and made a quick diversion. He squeezed through the opening, which he only just fitted through, and rounded the house in time to see Shara’s car disappear out of the gate at the end of the driveway.

This was the first time she’d tried to give him the slip since that very first day. For a moment all he could do was stand
there. He couldn’t believe this was happening—not after everything that had happened between them.

‘Damn it!’ he hurled. ‘What is the woman doing now?’

Running at full tilt, he headed for his 4WD. Shara had a head start. There was no time to lose.

He was in and had the motor running in a time that would have shamed an Olympic runner. He took off with a screech of tyres, leaving in his wake a trail of smoke and the smell of burning rubber.

As he drove his brain went to work on this latest development.

Why had Shara tried to give him the slip now?

Royce wasn’t sure, but his gut instinct warned him that whatever it was it wasn’t good.

Although he was already going well above the speed limit he flattened the accelerator to the floor. The 4WD surged like a hungry monster.

He raced through the streets.

His head turned left and right, searching for a glimpse of Shara’s small red sedan.

He had to find her—and fast.

Shara clenched the steering wheel with sweaty hands.

She was a jumble of emotions. So much so that she could hardly string two thoughts together.

Although she was nervous about confronting Steve, her forthcoming meeting with him paled into insignificance beside what had happened this morning.

She’d been so determined not to hand over her power to a man again, and yet that was exactly what she’d done.

She hadn’t seen it happening.

It had crept up on her.

And this time it was even worse.

Because this time she’d handed over the most precious thing she possessed. Her heart.

Royce slammed on the brakes, sending the 4WD into a skidding fishtail.

Car horns blared around him. Abuse was yelled out of windows, along with a few obscene gestures. Royce ignored it all as he brought the car under control and executed a turn.

He’d just caught a glimpse of a red sedan on one of the cross streets. Although there were plenty of red sedans in Sydney, there wasn’t a lot of traffic about—and it was the first car he’d seen that looked remotely like Shara’s.

It was a target. The best hope he had at the moment.

Hurtling around the corner, Royce gave chase.

Shara pulled her car into a parking slot directly opposite Bonito’s. She took a deep breath and looked over at the café.

Steve was already there, waiting for her.

Shara hadn’t expected that. Although perhaps she should have. If Steve thought he was being set up it would be logical he’d want to reconnoitre the place. Being here before her would mean he had plenty of witnesses to say that she’d approached him, not the other way around.

Grabbing her bag, she got out of the car, locked it, and hurried across the road.

Steve was drinking what looked like a cappuccino. He didn’t bother asking whether she wanted something as she sat down opposite him. He knew this wasn’t a social occasion.

She wouldn’t be able to swallow anything anyway. She wanted to get this over with so that she could think about Royce and what she was going to say to him when she got back to the house.

Because she had to say something.

She had to
do
something.

She couldn’t just sit back and let Royce break her heart.

A lump formed in her throat. She swallowed it down and forced thoughts of Royce away.

Now was not the time.

She’d deal with Royce
after
she’d dealt with Steve.

She leaned back in her chair, as far from Steve as possible. ‘So here we are.’

Steve nodded, watching her warily.

Her eyes ran over his face. In the past she’d found him so frightening. Now she didn’t. Not in the same way.

Now she saw him for what he was. Not an all-powerful monster. Just a man. A bully, with a mean streak a mile wide.

Her heart started to thud uncomfortably in her chest and she took a deep breath.

It was time.

Royce frowned through the windscreen as the red sedan pulled into a parking space and the sole occupant alighted from the car.

It was Shara.

There was no doubt about it.

Although he was still too far away to make out her features, he recognised the outfit she was wearing and the magnificent fall of her hair.

She hurried across the street and took a seat at a table on the footpath outside a busy café.

His eyes narrowed on the man opposite her.

Ice slid down his spine.

His teeth clamped down tight.

It was Brady.

Royce stared—and kept on staring.

One thing was apparent.

Their meeting was no accident. It had clearly been arranged. There was no doubt about that.

Shara had deliberately and intentionally gone behind his back to meet her ex.

Betrayal bit hard and deep. So hard and deep that it left him gasping for breath.

He would not have believed Shara capable of such subterfuge.

He really wouldn’t.

When he’d realised he was guilty of pigeonholing her he’d looked back on her behaviour with new eyes—and it had been quite an eye-opener.

Her reactions had appeared as if they were completely without artifice.

When he’d accused her of being a victim she hadn’t hesitated to tell him that if she was a man she’d hit him into the middle of next week. And when she’d realised he was right she hadn’t tried to hide her reaction. Instead she’d buried her face in her hands and called herself a fool.

The list just kept going on and on.

Her lack of embarrassment about having a meltdown and her frankness in admitting that she was tired of being scared and that she wanted more confidence.

Even the first morning she’d woken in his arms she’d been open about her feelings, telling him that she felt uncertain and anxious.

He’d been convinced that where Shara was concerned what you saw was what you got.

And yet here they were, Royce thought bitterly.

He thumped the steering wheel—hard.

Then again—even harder.

Then with considerable effort he pushed his feelings aside.

Right now he had a job to do. The fact that Shara had obviously agreed to meet Brady didn’t alter the fact that having done so put her in danger.

His heart began racing. Adrenalin pumped through his
veins. Danger lurked in the air. He could smell it. He could taste it. He could touch it with his hands.

What did he do now?

He could, of course, come to a screeching halt at the kerb outside the café, jump out of the car, and snatch Shara to safety.

But he had to consider Brady’s reaction.

If Brady saw him coming it could push him over the edge. Who knew what he might do?

Throwing the brick through the window had been a violent gesture. A café had knives. A bottle smashed on the edge of a table could become a lethal weapon in less than a second.

No, a stealthier approach was called for.

It would be safer.

Royce assessed the area through narrowed eyes.

There was a side street running along one side of the café. If he drove around the block neither Brady nor Shara would see him. He could sneak up on them.

The other big advantage of that plan was that Brady had his back to that particular corner. If he was careful—and he usually was—he could steal up behind Brady without the other man even realising he was there.

Swinging hard on the steering wheel, Royce made a sharp right turn and raced around the block. There were no spaces available, so he drove up a driveway and parked on the pavement in one neat manoeuvre.

He jumped out of the car even before the engine had stopped. Then, keeping close to the wall, he edged towards the corner. Once there, Royce leaned forward—just far enough to take a quick look around the end of the painted brick wall.

Brady’s back was maybe ten to twelve feet from him.

Royce braced his feet against the pavement and was about to throw himself around the corner when he heard Shara speak.

‘You are a pathetic loser,’ she said, her voice strong and clear and cutting.

His heart lurched with shock. He froze to the spot, unable to move.

What was she
saying
? What was she
doing
?

Provoking Steve was asking for trouble.

‘What did you say?’ Brady’s voice was low and dangerous.

‘You heard me.’ Shara sounded strong and self-assured. ‘You are lower than a snake’s belly. Just a weak little bully who gets his rocks off by pushing other people around. Well, I came here today to tell you that you don’t scare me any more. You are just—’

Shara broke off at the same time as a scraping sound hit his eardrums.

Everything happened in slow motion then.

At the same time it happened so fast that it was a blur.

Royce flung himself around the corner just in time to see Brady push himself up off his chair. It fell to the ground with a loud crash that made heads turn in their direction.

Shara jumped to her feet. She didn’t back away. She just stood there.

Royce was running as fast as he could, but it felt as if he was moving through an invisible glue which was dragging at him, slowing him down.

He saw Brady draw his clenched fist back in preparation for throwing a punch.

Royce was too far away to stop it happening.

‘Block!’ he screamed. ‘Block, damn it.’

But his instruction wasn’t needed. Shara was already moving into action, her body jack-knifing straight, her left arm shooting upwards to block the punch that was already halfway to her face.