Trusting a Stranger by Kimberley Brown Page B

solid timber.
    There was no sound from beyond except what might have been gentle sobs. Hayley was obviously feeling this intense attraction just as much as he was. The difference was that she didn’t yet understand enough about the situation to realise how impossible it was for anything to happen between them.
    Ethan waited beside the door for a moment, fighting the urge to go in and comfort her. He could not allow himself to do that. Then he squared his shoulders and went back downstairs to check once more on the villa’s security.

Chapter Six
    What the hell was she doing? Hayley found herself wrestling with the pillow and with her emotions long after she should have gone to sleep. In her fatigued, confused state there was no chance of her finding sleep tonight. And fatigue and confusion were not the only emotions interfering with her sleep. As much as the reality of it alarmed and confused her further, she was slightly aroused too.
    What was it about this man that made her feel so confused? Hayley was no blushing virgin; she knew about men, she had experienced relationships before. But there was no one she had ever known who had stirred her the way Ethan did. Already, it was impossible to really believe that she had known him for less than a day.
    She closed her eyes and cast her mind back to the way Ethan had looked when she first saw him. A large man, stretched out and looking lazy in the sun. Only now did she realise how much of an act that appearance of relaxation must have been. At all times as she approached and circled his house, Ethan would have been acutely aware of her. His mind would have been busily assessing who she was and what precise level of threat she presented to his home and to Katy.
    She felt a shiver run through her as she thought of the way Alvaro Tomasi had been responsible for ruining Pearl MacDonald’s life. How terrified Ethan must be! The safety of his precious daughter was at stake. He had every right to be suspicious of intruders.
    For the first time, she considered what tremendous insight he had shown — and more than that, what generosity — in realising that she, Hayley, meant him no harm. That she had come here under pretences that may have been a little dishonest but that she was not the sort of person who would allow someone like Alvaro Tomasi to dictate her behaviour. That she meant Ethan and his family no harm and never would.
    No wonder she was so moved by him! Any normal man would have used her early connection to Tomasi as a reason to hate her, would have left her shot and bleeding by the road, would not have even realised she was there. Because the truth was that Ethan had only been able to save her from being shot because he cared enough about her safety to follow her to make sure she made it safely back to Siena.
    Hayley rolled over and gazed towards the window. She had left the shutters open and now her room was dark and had a view of a sky that was countryside-rich, with a swathe of stars and, beneath them, the hills with their punctuation marks of trees black against a burnished silver sky. She realised only now that she didn’t know in which part of the house Ethan had his own bedroom. Was he looking out towards the same darkened view that greeted her eyes? Or was he, even now, still at work in his study?
    As if in answer to her mute question, somewhere in the house a telephone began to ring. Hayley turned again, now looking towards the door. Where it had been all darkness, now there was a dim line of light visible beneath. She could hear footsteps. The ringing stopped.
    The light stayed on, however. It brightened. Hayley sat up. There were footsteps again, coming towards her this time. She began to fear that on this particular night, when she probably needed a lot of rest to help her recover from the gunshot wound to her arm, she was not going to get any sleep at all.
    Then the door was thrown open. Ethan stood there dressed in nothing but a pair of