White Heat by Cherry Adair Read Free Book Online Page B

other.”
    Max barked a sound that was supposed to pass for a laugh. “Hurt me? He was barely aware of my existence. And I didn’t give a damn enough to be hurt by him.”
    She’d touched a raw nerve. Emily decided to drop the subject. For now “Have you ever been here?”
    ‘‘No.”
    The tall wrought iron gates illuminated by their headlights opened slowly on well-oiled hinges, as if welcoming them with open arms.
    “You must’ve spent a lot of time here if he had a microchip put in the car to activate the gates for you.”
    He. No name.
    “I did. But it was also more convenient. I tended to lose the gate control. He has five cars, all of them have the opener installed. I think the lawyer had them taken into Florence to have them appraised—”
    “He did.”
    “Then I’m sure you’ll want to take at least one of them with you when you leave.”
    “Maybe,” Max said blandly.
    Maybe? He couldn’t have sounded less interested. Fine. Emily had no desire to spend any more time with Max than she absolutely had to. If this was the real him, she’d come to realize in the last hour that he’d probably done her a favor by leaving. Too bad he intrigued her now more than ever, she thought with a glimmer of annoyance. She wasn’t fond of puzzles, and she was too linear and straightforward to read between his lines and try and figure out who or what he was. Still, there was a strength about him, a strength that had nothing to do with what he’d done to her intruder, that captivated her. Ticked her off, too.
    The gates slowly closed behind the car, and they continued up the ancient cypress tree-lined driveway that cut a pale swath between acres of lawn and trees. In the predawn light the usually vibrant and lush gardens were stark and somber, as if painted in grisaille, draped in the incredible tonality of a black-and-white Sickle’s chiaroscuro. Emily loved the grounds austere like this almost as much as she did in midsummer when everything was in a Technicolor of full bloom.
    “Last summer your father had a hundred new trees planted in the olive groves,” she told Max, whether he wanted to know or riot. The eerie stillness of the estate, and the villa ahead, dark and grim, unnerved her. She wasn’t given to idle chitchat. She spent too much time alone for that, but needing to break the thick, uncomfortable silence was changing her usual desire for peaceful quiet.
    If Max knew what was going on he wasn’t being chatty with the information. And she didn’t want to talk about the things that had gone bump in the night until she was in brilliant light. Be it sunlight, or a good one-twenty bulb.
    “Your father’s gardens were quite famous, you know,” she said, almost desperately. Anything not to think about what had happened in her palazzo earlier. Who was that man? What had he brought with him? God. This was like a surreal movie. The kind she didn’t enjoy watching.
    She tried to think how she’d explain this to Franco, and almost smiled trying to imagine him, in his Armani suit, his razor-cut hair, and his seven-hundred-dollar shoes, battling the thug in her hallway. The image wouldn’t form.
    “Earth to Emily? Gardens?”
    “Not that Daniel worked in them.” She tried to block out the memory of Max’s grim expression as he’d knocked the vial from her hand in her bedroom earlier. Her brain couldn’t even comprehend things like biotoxins and hazmat teams.
    “He loved to look down from the tower when he was painting.” She knew she was talking too fast. Worse, she knew Max had absolutely no interest in what she was saying. And she didn’t want to think about the tower that had taken her mentor’s life.
    “It’s exquisitely beautiful, particularly in the spring and summer. Of course to maintain it, he has upward of a hundred people working in the garden and the house.”
    “A hundred and twelve,” Max inserted, his eyes glittering in the backlight of the headlights. He turned off the wipers as