A Love Untamed. Karen Van Der Zee

from hotel rooms; she didn’t even take the little soaps and bottles of shampoo. And she never lied. Well, almost never.

      She did not go through other people’s papers, either.

      She stared at the corner of grey peeping out from the duffel-bag pocket.

      Well, she had the right, didn’t she? Shouldn’t she know the identity of a stranger who’d forced himself into her house and refused to leave? A dangerous-looking stranger now asleep under her roof?

      Of course she did.

      She went down on her knees, took the oblong booklet out of the pocket and leafed through the flimsy carbons, peering hard at the faint lettering to decipher it. Clint Bracamonte, it said. It seemed to fit him. He certainly didn’t look like a Jimmy Johnson.

      It took a few minutes to piece together his itinerary from the collection of ticket carbons, but then she had it and it made her heart beat faster—not with fear this time, but from pure excitement.

      Balikpapan-Jakarta-Hong Kong-San Francisco-Washington DC.

      Balikpapan! Balikpapan was a town in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, a wild place full of jungle and rough rivers and tiny villages and tribal people living traditional lives. She knew her geography, which was not so surprising since she had lived in many places in the world due to a globetrotting father who was a career diplomat. They’d resided in Jakarta, Indonesia, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in Dares Salaam, Tanzania, in Geneva, Switzerland, and other places of which she had no memory because she’d been too young.

      She put the papers back in the duffel-bag pocket and straightened. She opened the heavy door. The hinges squealed in agony and she winced at the sound. The perfumy fragrance of lilacs greeted her. She stepped on to the front porch and the old wood creaked under her feet. Everything was making noise, setting her nerves on edge. She took a look at the car. As expected, it was a rental he’d procured at the airport, a silver-grey Ford Taurus.

      She shivered in the cold night air and went back into the house, tiptoed up to her own bedroom and sat on the side of the bed. Jack would come early tomorrow morning. For now she should just go to bed. Mr Bracamonte had flown straight from Balikpapan to Washington without a stopover—two days without sleep, across the international date line and many time zones, his body clock gone haywire. He wasn’t going to wake up for a while.

      Why did he think the house was his? It was crazy, impossible. She couldn’t think. She was simply too tired. A long afternoon of hard physical labour topped off with a big dose of heart-stopping terror tended to be exhausting.

      She crawled into the sleeping-bag and closed her eyes. She should have lain awake anxious and afraid, but, strange as it might seem, she didn’t. She drifted right off and slept like a baby.

      * * *

      She awoke with the birds, which sang euphorically in the trees. She’d left the window open and the April morning was glorious, the air crisp like chilled champagne. For a moment she luxuriated in a sense of wellbeing—a very short moment, because her mind suddenly produced the image of the dark stranger who’d found his way into the house late last night. Black eyes, black hair, black beard.

      Oh, God. She closed her eyes. Well, she was alive and well and she hadn’t even had to employ her meagre karate skills.

      She locked the bathroom door and had a quick shower, then dressed in jeans and a bright red cotton sweater. Red was good. It made a statement. It showed confidence and power. She had a hunch she’d need some once Clint Bracamonte was awake. Hopefully that wouldn’t be until Jack had arrived.

      She put on socks and trainers and tied her hair back in a ponytail and made up her face. It was no genetic accident that she had straight black hair and brown eyes. She was American by upbringing and citizenship, but her ancestral background sported Greeks, Italians, Hungarians, and even an outcast gypsy woman who’d had the audacity to fall in love with a gorgio. Her mother had researched the family tree with true passion, travelling to Europe to find out as much as she could, discovering long-lost relatives—a dentist, a goatherd, a butcher, a housewife, and, lo and behold, a toothless Greek great-great-grandma of one hundred and seven wearing black, totally lucid and not about to depart. She drank two shots of ouzo every day.

      The family tree revealed many things. It was not so strange that her dearest passion was travel: gypsy genes. Also, she loved colourful clothes and dangling earrings, and she’d discovered a taste for ouzo. Her friends insisted it had to be genetic, because how else was it possible to like that vile stuff?

      Quietly she slipped down the stairs into the kitchen, only to find that she had miscalculated. The man was standing by the sink, filling the kettle. The same huge male that had walked into her house last night—black eyes, black hair, but minus the bushy black beard. Her heart turned over. He looked fantastic. She couldn’t help thinking it. It was the truth. The evil had gone out of his appearance and what was left was a lot of very disturbing male sex appeal. He plunked the kettle on the stove and turned on the burner.

      ‘Well, good morning,’ he said, noticing her stand by the door.

      ‘Good morning,’ she returned, feeling the very air around her quiver with sudden tension.

      He wore clean clothes—cotton trousers and a blue T-shirt. His hair was damp from the shower, still too long but tamed by the water, at least temporarily. His eyes were still the same penetrating black and the part of his face where yesterday had flourished the bushy beard now revealed a strong, square jaw. His face was all hard angles, his features well-defined. Energy radiated from him.

      His gaze swept over her, then back up to her face. ‘Are you the same woman I met last night, the one wearing that long, lacy nightgown? Or was that merely a lovely vision in my dreams?’

      Her stomach tightened and her pulse leaped. ’that was me,’ she said, not being able to think of anything more brilliant or profound. It was a pretty nightgown, true, but she wished she’d been wearing functional unisex pyjamas instead. Only she didn’t own any. She liked beautiful lingerie—possibly because it felt good to put on something soft and feminine after spending a long, hard day in old jeans and a T-shirt covered with dust and paint and wallpaper paste.

      He took two mugs out of one of the cabinets. ‘Coffee?’ he asked politely.

      ’thank you, yes,’ she answered, equally politely. Well, that was the way she’d been brought up. It sort of came out automatically, but she realised the absurdity of the whole situation as soon as she heard her own courteous reply. The man had invaded her house and now he was playing host.

      The groceries she’d bought yesterday had been taken out of the paper bags and spread out on the table. Instant coffee, chocolate bars, bread, peanut butter, thick orange marmalade, strong French mustard. He’d obviously taken charge and acted as if he had every right to be here in this kitchen.

      He opened one of the cabinets, took out two plates and put them on the table, then opened a drawer and found knives and forks. It did not escape her that he didn’t search for these items. He knew exactly where they were. It was not a good sign. A tiny flame of apprehension began to flicker in her mind. She suppressed it. Maybe he’d checked things out earlier.

      ‘Make yourself at home,’ she said coolly.

      ‘I am at home,’ he returned. ’so tell me, what is your name?’

      ‘What is yours?’

      ‘May I point out to you that a question requires an answer, not another question?’

      ‘You may point all you want. What’s your name?’

      His mouth curved in faint mockery. ‘Clint Bracamonte. What’s yours?’

      ‘Olivia Jordan.’

      ‘Olivia.’ He spoke her name as if tasting it, narrowing his eyes, considering. ‘Nice name. I like that. Now, Olivia, is this all there is for food? What were you planning to eat for breakfast? Peanut butter sandwiches?’

      ’something