“Isabella Burton.”
Murdock digested the fact that Richard already knew her. He’d told neither him nor Rafael about the intensely personal mission he’d undertaken, or about her.
Murdock continued, “She’s now Dr. Isabella Sandoval.”
Sandoval. That wasn’t either of her maiden names. Coming from Colombia, she’d had two. She must have been trying to become someone else when she’d adopted the new surname, after what had happened to her husband. That would also explain the changes in her appearance. And she was a doctor now.
Murdock went on, “But that wasn’t what made me wary—what made me single out her meeting with Dr. Anderson to present to you. It’s because I found a gaping thirteen-year hole in her history. From the age of twelve to the age of twenty-five, I couldn’t find a shred of information on her.”
Of course. She’d wiped clean the time she’d been Burton’s wife, and for some reason only known to her, years before that. No doubt to hide more incriminating evidence that would prevent her from being accepted by any respectful society.
“The information trail starts when she was twenty-six, when she started a four-year surgical residency in Colombia, in affiliation with a pediatric surgery program in California. It was a special ‘out of the match’ residency arrangement with the chief of surgery of a major teaching hospital. She obtained her US credentials and board certification last year. Then a week ago, she arrived in the United States and signed a one-year lease on a six-bedroom house in the Forest Hills Gardens section of Queens. She is here at the behest of doctors Rose and Jeffrey Anderson to start working in their private practice as a full partner, major shareholder and board member.”
After that, Richard didn’t know when he ended the call.
He only knew he was replaying that video over and over, Murdock’s words a revolving loop in his mind.
Isabella. She was going to be his sister’s partner.
Swearing under his breath, he almost cracked the remote in two as he pressed the off button.
Like hell she was.
* * *
Four hours later Richard felt as if the driver’s seat of his Rolls Royce Phantom was sprouting red-hot needles.
It had been more than two hours since he’d parked across the street from his sister’s house. He’d driven here immediately when Murdock had called back saying he’d neglected to tell him Isabella was having dinner there tonight. She had yet to make an exit.
What was taking the bloody woman that long? What kind of dinner lasted more than four hours?
This alone told him things were worse than he’d first thought. Isabella seemed to be a close friend of his sister’s, not just a prospective partner. And though Murdock hadn’t been able to pinpoint the events leading to this bizarre status quo, Richard was certain this wasn’t an innocent friendship. Not on Isabella’s side. She always had an angle. And obtained her objectives through deception and manipulation. Her medical qualifications themselves had probably been obtained through some meticulously constructed fraud.
Yet that was all conjecture. He had nothing solid to explain how Rose and her husband had developed such a deep connection with her that they’d invite her to be their equal partner in their life’s crowning achievement. She’d made herself so invisible, her past so untraceable she’d fallen off Murdock’s radar until now, when she was about to be fully lodged into their lives.
He’d torn over here once Murdock had informed him they’d finished dinner and coffee, expecting to intercept her soon afterward as she left. That had been—he flicked a glance at his watch—two and a half bloody hours ago.
Every minute of those he’d struggled with the urge to storm inside and drag her out.
He hadn’t stayed out of his sister’s life only to let that siren infect it with the ugliness of her past, the malice of her intentions and the exploitation in her blood.
Suddenly the front door of Rose’s two-level, stucco house opened and two figures walked out. Isabella first, then Rose. His every muscle tensing, he strained to decipher the merriness that carried on the summer night air through his open window. Then they kissed and hugged and Isabella descended the stairs. At the bottom she turned to wave to Rose, urging her to go in, before she turned and crossed the street, heading to her car.
The moment Rose closed her door he got down from his car.
In the dim streetlights, Isabella’s figure seemed to glow in a light-colored summer coat unbuttoned over a lighter dress beneath, its supple material undulating with her brisk walk. Her hair was a swathe of dark silk swinging over her face, her eyes downcast as she rummaged through her purse.
Then feet before he intercepted her, he stopped.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Isabella Burton.”
Her momentum came to a startled halt, her alarm a sharp gasp that echoed in the night’s still, humid silence. Then her face jerked up and her eyes slammed into his.
A bolt struck him through the heart.
His sudden appearance seemed to have hit her even harder. If a ghost had stopped her to ask her the time, she wouldn’t have looked more shocked...or horrified.
“What...where the hell did you...?”
She stopped. As if she found no words. Or breath with which to say them. He was almost as shocked as she was...at his reaction. He’d thought he’d feel nothing at the sight of her. He didn’t know what he did feel now. But it was...enormous.
And it wasn’t an overwhelming sense of familiarity. It was her impact as she was now.
She’d changed. Almost beyond recognition. It made it that much stranger he’d recognized her in that video so instantaneously. For this woman had very little in common with the younger one he’d known in total, tempestuous intimacy.
Her face had lost all the plumpness of youth, had been chiseled into a masterpiece of refinement and uncompromising character. If she’d been irresistible before, even with shock still seizing her every feature, the influence she’d exuded had matured into something far more formidable.
But her eyes had changed the most. Those eyes that had haunted him, eyes he’d once thought had opened up into a magical realm, that of her being. They looked the same, glowing that unique emerald-topaz chameleon color. But apart from the familiar shape and hue, and beneath the shock, they were bottomless. Whatever lay inside her now was dark and fathomless. And far more hard-hitting for it.
Her lids swept down, severing the two-way hypnosis.
Gritting his teeth at losing the contact, his own gaze lowered to sweep her body. Even through the loose clothes, it still had his every sense revving. Just being near her had always made him ache.
Then a puff of breeze had her scent inundating him and his body flooded with molten steel. That was the one thing about her that hadn’t changed. This distillation of her essence and femininity that had constantly hovered at the edge of his memory, tormenting him with craving the real thing.
And here it was at last. What he’d once thought an aphrodisiac nature had tailored to his senses. That belief was renewed in full force.
Hard all over, he returned his gaze to hers, eager to read her own response. She poured every bit of height and poise into her statuesque figure, made him feel she was looking him in at eye level when even in three-inch heels, she stood seven inches below his six-foot-six frame.