Sandra Marton - Naked In His Arms

When she’d refused, they’d gotten angry. Told her Gennaro would never stop searching for her. Made threats about sending her to prison.

That was when she’d decided to disappear from the Long Island motel where she’d spent a couple of nights. And how better to disappear than to move to Manhattan, where you could lose yourself in the crush of humanity?

She found a job and a place to live and until she exhausted the money she’d saved during the months she’d spent cataloging the library in the Gennaro mansion, she was safe.

More or less.

Cara carried one of the kitchen chairs to the door and propped it beneath the knob. That and the old sleigh bells she’d found in an antique shop on Ninth Avenue weren’t much of an alarm system but right now, they were all she had. She’d get the lock changed tomorrow but there’d still be the skylight….

She didn’t want to think what it might cost to alarm the skylight.

“Look up there, Ms. Smith,” the rental agent had bubbled. “See? You have a real skylight.”

What she had was a way for somebody to get in from the roof, but there was no point in being paranoid. The FBI wanted her to believe Anthony Gennaro would hurt her, but she knew better.

He wanted her back alive, not dead.

Besides, skylight or no skylight, the rent was right. So she’d said yes, she’d take the big, ugly loft.

And here she was.

As for the skylight…she’d ask the locksmith for suggestions. He could gate it off. Make it impenetrable. Yes, and turn this big, empty space into a prison.

Good practice, considering that she’d probably end up there anyway, according to those two FBI agents.

Cara swallowed hard.

“Stop it,” she said in a no-nonsense voice.

She wasn’t going to give in to self-pity. What she was going to do was take a long, hot shower, heat a can of soup and read a book until she was too tired to do anything besides tumble into bed and sleep.

Briskly, she slid out of her raincoat. Took off the newsboy cap and the dark glasses. Her sweater and skirt. Then she toed off her shoes and padded toward the far end of the loft, pausing in front of the closet, hand curved around the knob before she remembered her robe was on the hook behind the bathroom door.

The bathroom was small and badly lit. Its saving grace was a glass shower stall with top and side sprays and an abundance of deliciously hot water.

Cara switched on the light, took the clip from her hair, then opened the stall door and turned the shower on. Steam began rising, clouding the pebbled glass as she undressed and placed her clothes neatly on the closed—

What was that?

Her heart banged into her throat. Something was moving. She could hear it. A scuffling sound. Feet?

Was somebody breaking in? Was the FBI right? Would Gennaro send his men after her?

A little gray mouse darted from under the sink, shot across the floor and disappeared out the door.

Cara gave a weak laugh. A mouse. A mouse! Her imagination had turned it into a monster. She was letting fear dominate every aspect of her life.

No more.

Still…she felt a chill shrivel her flesh. For a moment, for a heartbeat, she’d been certain someone was here.

Watching. Waiting…

Ridiculous!

Cara stepped into the shower stall and shut the door, lifting her face to the spray. The water and the steam would do their magic and ease away her fear.

She hadn’t come this far to fall apart. Survival was all that mattered now.

Resolutely, she took a tube of shampoo from the shower ledge, squeezed some into her palm and began washing her hair.

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