Read The Stranger: The Heroes of Heyday (Harlequin Superromance No. 1266) for Free Online

Wally, I’m coming,” she called. “Now get back down there before someone robs us blind.”
    But it wasn’t Wally.
    The lovely spring sunlight, so bright in her many-windowed living room, didn’t quite penetrate this narrow hallway that ran behind both apartments. She blinked as her pupils tried to adjust, but she couldn’t make out the person’s face.
    His back was to the open stairway door, and the sun haloed around him, leaving just a black silhouette, like a moving shadow. Still, she saw that he was tall, much taller than Wally. More substantial. Wally had a boy’s shoulders. This squared-off breadth belonged to a man.
    With no warning, fear tingled across her scalp, and she instinctively took a step backward, toward the shelter of her own doorway. This was Heyday, where dim corridors rarely posed a threat to anyone, and she was no coward, but ever since that call…
    Things had changed.
    Once again she asked herself…could this be the man, the faceless blackmailer with a distorted metallic voice?
    But then the man spoke and the fear disappeared, replaced by a sudden, flaring fury.
    He said just one word. Just her name.
    â€œMallory.” The word was uttered softly, almost apologetically, as if he knew how she would hate seeing him and wished he could spare her the pain.
    â€œMallory,” he said again.
    No, this wasn’t the blackmailer—it was someone she despised even more.
    At least the blackmailer was ashamed enough to hide his true identity. This was someone who made money by exploiting other people’s misery, but did it right out in the open, as if it were something to be proud of. The blackmailer at least announced right up front that he was just trying to weasel something out of you. This man masqueraded as a friend, drank your coffee and pretended to care about your problems.
    And then, like a kick to the gut, he betrayed you.
    This was Tyler Balfour.

CHAPTER FOUR
    W OW . T YLER PAUSED in the half-open doorway. Three years hadn’t softened Mallory Rackham’s heart much, had they?
    The hall in front of him was dim, but the afternoon light behind him streamed in over his shoulders in two bright bands, one of which caught Mallory’s face and illuminated it. The venom with which she eyed him now was just as potent and undiluted as it had been the day she read his first story about the Heyday Eight and saw her husband’s name.
    At least she wasn’t holding a plate of greasy French fries this time. He glanced at the book in her hand. A small paperback. Good. He probably wouldn’t even bruise if she decided to chuck it at him.
    He guessed he had at least a few seconds before that happened. For the moment she seemed paralyzed with shock and the slow awakening of long-buried anger. So he slung his suit bag over his shoulder and moved carefully toward the apartment that would be his temporary lodgings, all the while fingering his keys, trying to locate the right one.
    When he reached the door, which was only about four feet from her own, she finally spoke. “What the hell are you doing here, Tyler?”
    Okay, that was a start. She had used profanity, which he knew she rarely did, and her voice was pointed and frosty, like a dagger of ice, but at least she hadn’t tossed the book. And she’d used his first name.
    About a six, he figured, on the hostility scale. Nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d once investigated a senator who’d been taking bribes, and though that guy had been hostile enough to consult a hit man, Tyler had still managed to get the story.
    He’d get this one, too, including her part of it. He couldn’t leave her out, even if he wanted to. She’d owned the café. She’d been married to one of the johns. Her little sister had gone to school with the Eight. He needed her in the book, and he’d get her.
    At first, Tyler had wondered if moving into the apartment next to her was