The stranger was still there, prowling the perimeter of the room like a caged-up lion, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Carolina didn’t know him. He wore a dark gray suit, of a cut and fabric that looked European. A stark white shirt and charcoal striped tie were both yanked loose at the throat. A guy could go to the opera in Paris wearing clothes that expensive and distinctive.

But it wasn’t his clothes that had her heart suddenly pounding like a trapped bird’s. It was him. Something about him.

Everything about him.

Still talking on his cell phone, he turned on his heel, about to face her way. Instinctively she closed her eyes so he wouldn’t realize she was awake, but her mind had already cataloged his features.

Only pale daylight seeped through the lone window, just enough to reveal his face, his stature. She guessed he was a few years older than her twenty-eight, but not many, maybe five or six. Although he was dressed for a formal night out, his blond hair looked hand shoveled, his chin peppered with whiskers, his sharp blue eyes shadowed with weariness. He was tall. Of course, everyone was annoyingly tall compared to Carolina’s five-four…but he was really tall. Easily a couple inches over six feet. He was built long, lean and mean, with shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway.

He wasn’t a next-door-neighbor type. He was more the kind of someone who ran things. Big things. Someone who made people jump and events happen. Energy and power charged the air around him, in the way he stalked about, the way his muscles bunched, the way his jaw squared off as he spoke into the phone. Maybe he was an extraordinarily compelling hunk…but she sure wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of an argument with him.

But those were just more reasons why she wouldn’t, didn’t, couldn’t know him. Her circle of people-from her fellow special ed teachers to family to all her neighbors in the new South Bend condo complex-just never crossed paths with anyone like this man.