Wild Cat Read Free Page B

gunfight. Two of the men who had been holding her were shot and killed. The other two had been outside the building and got away. She knew her grandfather had hunted for them for two years.
    When she was fifteen, someone had tried kidnapping her again. Alonzo had stopped them. She didn’t remember much about it, but she had terrible nightmares. One day, after she told her grandfather her nightmare, he simply said she didn’t have to worry anymore and to stop. The nightmares didn’t stop, but she never told him about them again.
    â€œStay out of his house, Siena,” Paolo warned her again.
    She nearly startled, so lost in her thoughts she had almost forgotten he was standing in front of her. Paolo had always helped her grandfather. She guessed he was fifteen to twenty years older than she was. He had been one of the men to rescue her from the first kidnappers, assigned as her bodyguard back then before he moved into the number one position.
    He was handsome, she supposed, now that she was really up close to him. She had never thought of him that way, but she wasn’t attracted to him. Not really. So why did that edgy feeling begin to creep back over her?
    â€œI will,” she agreed, turned and left without a backward glance. What was wrong with her? Paolo had manhandled her. She shouldn’t have noticed that he was good-looking. She shouldn’t have felt tingles anywhere on her body. Not a single place.
    She drove fast with the top down and the wind in her hair. She didn’t care if the long strands got tangled and she looked terrible when she arrived at Elijah’s house. She needed the cool air on her hot skin. She needed to breathe, far away from the house that had once been her home but was now a prison.
Everyone
watched her. Waiting. She detested that her every move was scrutinized. It was the reason she didn’t use the state-of-the-art gym her grandfather had put in for her, insteadchoosing to have a little respite from all the eyes on her ever since she’d returned home.
    Elijah owned a large estate not far from where her grandfather lived in the hill country west of San Antonio and Austin. His property was close to Jake Bannaconni’s huge, sprawling ranch. It was where all the millionaires lived, although Bannaconni was a certified billionaire according to
Forbes
. Most of the bigger estates and ranches were out away from the city. She knew Bannaconni took a helicopter to work. She didn’t know what Elijah did, but she wondered.
    There were rumors, of course. Her grandfather was Italian. He’d actually emigrated from Italy with his wife to raise his family in the United States. He’d worked hard for his winery and, although he made his money legitimately, the rumors persisted. They did about Elijah’s family as well. His family was Spanish and had come from somewhere in South America. Because she knew her grandfather was a good man who had worked hard all of his life for his family, she didn’t judge Elijah or the whispers surrounding him.
    The high wrought-iron gates to his ranch were closed, and she leaned over to look into the camera and state her business. There was a moment of silence while her heart pounded. She twirled a thick strand of hair from her ponytail around her finger, which she often did when she was nervous, but couldn’t help it. The gates swung inward. Heart pounding, she drove through and up the long, winding driveway to his house.
    She knew this wasn’t the family home, the huge one Elijah’s father had owned before he’d been murdered. Rumor had it that his own uncle had ordered the hit on his father and then his uncle had been killed, leaving Elijah the head of his family business. No, this was the house Elijah bought to entertain his women in. His tall, thin, blond,
beautiful
women. She sighed, knowing she spent far too much time at school where she had developed low self-esteem for a variety of reasons. It