False Family. Mary Anne Wilson

face. “The Ghost of Christmas Past,” he murmured, his dark eyes unblinking and intense in their scrutiny.

      “How could…?” She touched her tongue to her lips. She could sense that aura of danger he had exuded last night at the theater, and that sensuality, as well, and she felt uncomfortable in these closed quarters. “How could you be here?”

      The wind caught the door and slammed it shut, cutting off the lights inside, but it did nothing to diminish the impact of finding herself in this man’s car. He turned to settle behind the wheel. “I drove and didn’t go into a ditch.”

      “I’m not in a ditch,” she said, hating the way her breathing tightened and her heartbeat refused to settle into a normal rhythm. She was totally alone with this man, and every nerve in her body was on edge.

      “You’re stuck,” he pointed out as he put the car in gear, the windshield wipers swiping at the sheeting rain. The car moved to the left and headed up the road.

      “What were you doing at the theater?” she asked.

      “I like live theater.”

      She hadn’t had any sense that he belonged at the theater when she’d run into him. “You’re connected with the theater?”

      “No, I got lost going to the men’s room.” He maneuvered a sharp corner, then headed uphill. “I hear the play closed, that what I saw was the last performance.”

      “Yes, it was.” She stared at him as she nervously fingered the wet fabric of her coat. She could see little of him beyond a blurred profile touched by the low lights from the dash. “It just isn’t a good time for small theater companies right now.”

      “Since it’s already closed, I guess the bad publicity about the accident won’t hurt it.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “The hit-and-run victim outside the theater. I understood that she was a cast member.”

      The words were said evenly and without emotion, but they set Mallory’s stomach into knots. “She was.”

      “She died?”

      “No, she’s still alive.” Mallory closed her eyes for a moment, then exhaled and looked back at the man. “How did you know about all that?”

      “The newspaper.”

      She hadn’t even thought about the accident making the news. “The car never stopped. It’s so senseless. If she hadn’t gone out just then, or if it hadn’t been raining…”

      “Life boils down to chance, doesn’t it?”

      “A lot of times it does.” She forced her hands to stop clenching and pressed them on the damp fabric of her coat by her thighs. “What are you doing out here in this storm?”

      “Chance,” he said softly. “The same as getting lost on the way to the rest room and meeting a ghost.”

      She nibbled on her lip as tension grew in her neck and shoulders. “That’s no answer.”

      He ignored her statement and asked, “Is Saxon Mills expecting you?”

      “Yes. I’m supposed to be there at six.”

      “You’re going to be late.”

      She glanced at the digital clock in the dash, surprised to see that it was only five minutes to six. It seemed as if she had been on the road with this man for an eternity, but it had been less than ten minutes.

      “If I get there close to six, I think it will be all right,” she said, hoping it was true.

      “Seeing him is pretty important to you, isn’t it?”

      “Yes it is, and I really appreciate you giving me a ride,” she said, realizing she should have said those words a lot sooner. But surprise had robbed her of logical thinking for a few moments.

      Right then, the man turned onto a narrow lane. As Mallory looked ahead of them, a cracking bolt of lightning lit the sky, exposing trees pressing on both sides and rain that ran down the pavement like a river. Then the light was gone, thunder pealed, and the only glow in the blackness came from the headlights of the sports car.

      “You’re going there for the holidays?”

      “Not entirely.”

      “Business, too?”

      Another bolt of lightning tore through the night, and thunder followed close on its heels. “It’s getting closer,” she said.

      “Excuse me?”

      “The lightning. When you see lightning, you start counting one thousand one, one thousand two. And whatever number you get up to before you hear the thunder, that’s how many miles you are from the strike point of the lightning. That last lightning struck only a mile or so from here.”

      “Is that a scientific fact, or an old wives’ tale?”

      “I think it’s scientific.”

      “Or maybe it was created to take people’s attention off the storm.”

      She glanced at him again. “A diversion?”

      “Yes, sort of like you’re doing right now when I asked you that question.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “I asked if you were seeing Saxon Mills on business and I was given the theory behind calculating the distance of lightning when it strikes.”

      “I’m going there to see Mr. Mills,” she said. “That’s it. Period.”

      “I was just trying to figure out what’s so important that you were willing to go out on a night like this.”

      The more he prodded at her for details, the more she dug in her heels. She wasn’t about to tell him exactly what she was doing on a road in this storm with his car hurtling toward her. “I didn’t expect the storm to keep up so long.” She laughed, a forced sound at best. “Besides, everyone knows we’re in a drought situation in California. Now they’re saying there’s no end in sight to the storm.”

      “Who are you?” he asked abruptly.

      “Mallory King. Who are you?” She deliberately said the question echoing his abruptly blunt tone.

      “Anthony Carella. Where are you from?”

      “The city.” She felt annoyance at the man’s curt tone of interrogation and repeated his words back to him. “Where are you from?”

      “Los Angeles.”

      “Why were you at the theater in San Francisco?”

      He was silent for a moment as he downshifted, slowing the car to a crawl. Then he glanced at her, his look lost in the shadows. He was silent for a long moment, then he turned back to the road ahead of them. “All right. I get the idea.”

      “What idea?”

      “I tend to interrogate people. It’s a bad habit of mine.”

      And you never answered my question about the theater, she thought, but didn’t ask it again. “What are you—a lawyer?”

      “No. Just a businessman.”

      She sat back in the seat. “Are you going somewhere for the holidays, or are you going somewhere on business?”

      She could see him shrug, the movement sharp in the shadows. “Both. I’m going to see an associate of mine, and it happens to be the holidays.” He cast her a fleeting glance as he slowed the car a bit more. “To answer your earlier question, I heard from a reliable source that I’d find the play interesting.”

      “You like Dickens?”

      “I like interesting things,” he murmured.

      Mallory looked ahead of them and saw