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it off. He’d already told Annie too damned much, and he couldn’t use the excuse of too much tequila. He’d never let alcohol loosen his tongue before.Something had snapped inside him when Win had died, and all his years of training had gone south. He looked at Annie Sutherland’s angry eyes, and he wanted to tell her the truth.
    He wasn’t that far gone yet. He wouldn’t tell her the truth, ever. Not even if it came time to kill her.
    She was standing with her back against the wall, looking at him as if he were her worst nightmare. She had enough sense to realize that much, he thought grimly.
    He’d been about to touch her, and that would have been a mistake for both of them. He wasn’t quite sure what he would have done. Whether he would have hurt her. Closed forever those blue eyes that saw him far too clearly, whether she realized it or not.
    Or whether he would have kissed her.
    He couldn’t remember when he’d last kissed anyone. It wasn’t a usual part of his sexual repertoire, and he couldn’t even remember wanting to. He wanted to kiss Annie Sutherland. Christ, he always had.
    “I think I’ll go for a walk,” she said in that same breathless voice that couldn’t quite hide her nervousness. She didn’t want him to see it, and for some reason he was willing to let her think he didn’t know how much he frightened her. “I need some fresh air.”
    “No,” he said.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” she shot back instantly. “I’m not going to stay cooped up in this cottage while you decide whether I’m having paranoid delusions …”
    “It’s dangerous out there. If you want to go for a walk, I’ll go with you, but I think that would defeat the purpose, don’t you? If you just want to get away from me, then go back upstairs.”
    “Why should I want to get away from you?”
    He smiled at her. She didn’t seem reassured. “You tell me.”
    “I should never have come here,” she said bitterly.
    “Probably not,” he agreed. “But it’s a little too late to change things.”
    “I could leave.”
    “Not until I say you can go.”
    She stared at him in shock. “You can’t keep me here.”
    “I can do anything I goddamn please. And if you really want to put a halt to this, to go back to Martin, you can do so with my enthusiastic cooperation. As soon as I’m convinced it’s safe.”
    “Why wouldn’t it be?”
    “If someone killed your father, they wouldn’t be very happy about the two of us being together. You started the paranoid delusions, Annie. You’re going to have to humorme for the next few days until I decide just how crazy they are.”
    He could see the anger and frustration in her pale face, and he wondered just how far he could push her. Now wasn’t the time to try it.
    She moved away from the door, running a hand through her shapeless mop of hair. She was biting her nails, he noticed. That was a far cry from her usually perfect manicure. “Maybe I’ll take a nap,” she said with studied nonchalance. “You can sit here and drink coffee and brood.”
    “Fine,” he said absently.
    But he didn’t brood. And he didn’t drink his coffee straight. He poured tequila into it, just a bit at first, because he discovered his hands were shaking. He could hear her moving around upstairs, and he poured himself some more, hoping to force his brain to concentrate on what he had to do.
    He could send Annie Sutherland back to Martin. Except that Martin had to have had a reason to send her there in the first place.
    He could kill her. That might have been what Martin had in mind, but he didn’t think so. Even in their unsentimental branch of the business, people didn’t take killing their ex-wives in stride. And while he usually viewed killing with calm detachment, he wasn’t surehe could be as machine-like with Win Sutherland’s daughter.
    Or he could do as she wanted. Find out why Win was killed. Find out who and what had gone wrong.
    He knew the official reason Win had died.