Just For Her. Katherine O' Neal
Читать онлайн.| Название | Just For Her |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Katherine O' Neal |
| Жанр | Исторические любовные романы |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Исторические любовные романы |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780758233509 |
Just for Her
KATHERINE O’NEAL
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
For all the
Femmes on Fire
everywhere
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 1
21 June, 1926
Cap Ferrat
French Riviera
Jules awoke with a start.
Without moving, her eyes scanned the vast bedroom of her hilltop Mediterranean villa. The floor-to-ceiling French doors were open as she’d left them, the breeze billowing the gossamer white curtains into the room, playing with the moonlight that spilled in with a silvery glow. Beyond the windows she could see the conical tops of the cypresses that towered above the gardens below. All was quiet. The world around her seemed peaceful, serene.
And yet…
Something had jarred her awake.
She lay motionless in her bed, listening. What time was it? The moon was still high in the sky. She hadn’t meant to doze off, but the hours she’d spent waiting the night before had caught up with her. How long had she been asleep? Minutes? Hours? Her brain felt numb, heavy. She couldn’t seem to think.
But then she heard the faint tinkle of the tiny bell she’d fastened to her study window before it was abruptly silenced. The hush that followed was dense, fraught with an expectation—a waiting—that throbbed in the air around her. She knew what that brief muffled tinkle meant. Someone had opened the window.
He was here!
And now her mind was sharp, her senses bristling. She lay frozen in her bed.
She could almost see him in her mind’s eye—a dark mysterious figure, creeping up to her soaring terrace, finding the window to her study, testing it to find it unlocked. Startled by the bell, grasping it in his fist to silence it. Waiting, breath held, for some evidence of alarm, some movement in the house. And only when he was certain it was safe—only then climbing in through the window to the study beyond.
The study that was next to her bedroom, just on the other side of the wall.
She realized she hadn’t been breathing and took a slow shallow breath. She realized, too, that her heart was pounding so violently it hurt her chest. It seemed to her that the sound of it must be reverberating through the night, and that even from the next room, he could hear it as loudly as she could in her own ears.
A cold panic seized her.
What have I done?
When she’d envisioned this scene in the light of day, it had seemed daring and romantic. But now that it was actually happening, everything in her screamed it was a ghastly mistake. The man in that room was no longer a projection of her naïve fantasy, but a living, breathing human being. And a dangerous one, at that.
The Panther!
The notorious cat burglar who’d been terrorizing the villas of the Côte d’Azur these past several months…
The audacious thief who’d stolen Lady Westley’s ruby ring from her finger as she’d slept…
The scoundrel who’d lifted the Duchess of Parma’s hundred-carat aquamarine collar from her wall safe without rousing a soul…
Like a slide show flickering on a blank screen, the headlines flashed through her mind.
PANTHER ONCE AGAIN ELUDES POLICE TRAP…
GUARDS FAIL TO OVERPOWER FLEEING CAT…
IN FEAT OF MARKSMANSHIP, STRAIGHT SHOOTING CROOK
EMBARRASSES PURSUING POLICE OFFICIALS…
From Menton to Hyères, the idle rich were in an uproar, endlessly retelling the tales of the Panther’s exploits in casinos, beneath the striped umbrellas of La Garoupe beach, and all along the circuit of cocktail parties up and down the coast. But as the stories had floated around her like snippets of melodrama from the silver screen, Jules had painted this phantom of the night with an entirely different brush, imbuing him with colors of a larger-than-life character from a storybook. And slowly, the desperate plan had taken shape in her mind.
Two days ago, assured of the brilliance of her scheme, she’d calmly told Lady Asterbrooke, the most notorious gossip in the South of France—a woman guaranteed to blab to the winds—that she had no fear of this bandit. “In fact, Bunny,” she’d told the society clarion in a deliberately breezy tone, “I have every intention of wearing my emeralds to the Richardson ball on Saturday. I shall remove them from the Nice vault, and secure them in the wall safe of my upstairs study.”
She felt confident the word would reach him. The Panther seemed to have an ear in high society, knowing when people would be out of their villas and even where their jewels were kept. So she’d laid the trap and waited for him to take the bait. She’d stayed awake the night before, certain he would come, excited by the prospect, even disappointed when he hadn’t shown.
But now that he was actually in her house…only steps away…her actions seemed impetuously risky and downright foolhardy.
I must have been out of my mind!
Because the reality was neither daring nor romantic. It was terrifying. Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t even swallow.
She listened in the trenchant silence for some indication of his movements. What was he doing? The study wasn’t a large room. Once inside, he would look around, see the Fragonard on the far wall, step lightly to it, remove it from its hanger, set it on the floor.
Then he would get to work on the safe. Rolling the dial of the lock back and forth. How long would it take him to crack the combination? From his reputation, not long. Soon, he would pull the door open and see there was nothing inside.
What would he do then? Flee into the night?
I