in her gut like a corrosive waste until she would throw up, so she’d long ago learned to suppress her temper, swallow the bile and deny the heat of anger that flashed through her blood.
Yet despite her best efforts to erase her ill-will and moments of irritation, she still carried a boatload of frustration and ire for the desperate circumstances of her life. She blamed Walt’s abuse and her submission to his violence for the dark cloud his threats still cast over her. Now Hardin was doing his best to intimidate and control her, and she struggled to keep the poisonous emotion at bay.
“My shift is over, Mr. Hardin. I need to get home to my children.” Her voice quivered with anxiety and barely suppressed indignation. She curled her fingers into her palms, and the pulse of rising adrenaline throbbed in her temples.
Her boss narrowed his eyes and stabbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray on his desk. “Seems to me there’s a matter of two hundred thousand dollars you either have to pay back or work off.”
The flutter of fear taunted her, beating hard against her breastbone.
“Mr. H-Hardin, I could never work enough hours to repay—”
“Well, if you ain’t going to work the extra hours, then maybe you could settle your debt with me … another way.” Surging to his feet, he raked a lascivious gaze over her and smirked.
Annie fell back a step. Disgust slithered over her, and she shivered. Taking a slow breath, she searched for enough confidence to reply without her voice quaking. “No.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, and his gaze continued to roam over her.
“I’ll find a way to repay the money,” she said, though the words were sour knots in her throat that she had to force out. “It will take me a while—” Like forever. She cringed at the thought of tightening her budget even further and scraping together small payments for Hardin. “But I’ll find a way.”
A muscle twitched in Hardin’s jaw, and his flinty eyes drilled into her. “I want the money by next week.”
The ice in his tone, his stare sent a deep chill slicing through her. Trembling to her marrow, Annie whirled away and hurried toward the dining room. Her feet slipped and skidded on the greasy kitchen tile, but she didn’t slow down. She had to get away from Hardin. Get out of the diner. Get home to her children—the only place she felt even remotely safe anymore.
“I can show you how to defend yourself, protect yourself.”
As she rushed out of the diner, Jonah’s promise filtered through her head. Her steps slowed, and she reached into her pocket for the scrap of paper he’d given her with his gym’s address.
If only—
Forget if only. Dreams and wishes were for other people. She had to deal in reality. In truths and concrete facts.
Her truth was she had to pay her hostile boss a hell of a lot of money.
Picking up her pace again, she jogged to the bus stop, still quaking from Hardin’s chilling threat. No way could she find two hundred thousand dollars to repay him, even if she had a year to pay him. Much less a week.
Her bus rumbled up to the stop just as she reached the street corner. While she waited for an older man with a walker to board, she fished in her pocket for her bus pass.
Once more her fingers brushed the crumpled paper Jonah had given her.
“Do it for your kids if not yourself.”
Guilt and fear squeezed her chest, tangling with irritation over Jonah’s obvious manipulation of her love for her kids. She stared down at the address. What could it hurt just to go and see what Jonah wanted to teach her? He’d already proven he wanted to help, not harm her. And a gym was a public place. She’d be safe there. Right?
“You coming or not?” the bus driver called, jarring her from her deliberations.
“I—” Annie exhaled a deep breath of resignation. She had to at least try to protect herself from Hardin and men like the thief who jumped her last night. She was tired of living with this fear. She’d come too far to lose everything because she let a bully like Hardin intimidate her.
Annie raised her chin and met the bus driver’s gaze. “Not.”
With a puff of exhaust, the bus chugged away from the curb, and Annie headed toward Jonah’s gym.
Chapter 4
The scents of body odor and rubber floor mats greeted Annie as she entered Jonah’s gym minutes later. Wrinkling her nose as the unpleasant smells assailed her, she cast a wary glance around the cavernous warehouse.
When Jonah had invited her to his gym, she’d pictured an upscale facility where beautiful bodies jogged on treadmills, followed a perky blond instructor in aerobic dance or toned their muscles on expensive weight machines. This gym was a far cry from her vision.
Dingy and dark with nary a perky blonde in sight, the large room housed four boxing rings and numerous punching bags suspended from the bare rafters by steel chains. A litany of grunts and curses reverberated from the concrete block walls, while burly men in scruffy shorts and sleeveless shirts pounded the weighted bags—or each other.
Apprehension slithered through Annie as she crept deeper into the room. Like a brewing storm, the raw power and the brute violence on display filled the room with an ominous and suffocating energy. Struggling to pull air into her lungs, Annie scanned the men’s faces for Jonah.
With every passing minute, she grew more uncomfortable and self-conscious. One by one, sweat-drenched men paused from their training to eye her with curious, even lewd, glances. Her discomfort spiked as a man in the nearest boxing ring caught a bone-jarring blow to the chin that sent him to the mat with a groan.
“That’ll teach you to talk back to me!”
She pressed her throbbing cheek to the cool floor, not daring to get up before Walt stalked from the room. Getting up only gave him the opportunity to knock her down again.
The images before her blurred as tears pricked her eyes.
She staggered backward, edging toward the door. She shouldn’t have come. Shouldn’t have risked—
As she passed a different boxing ring where two men sparred while a third coached from the ropes, recognition slammed through her. She squinted at the face barely visible behind the protective headgear, and her heart tapped double time.
Jonah.
Stunned, she stared while Jonah exchanged jabs with the other man, shuffling his feet to dodge blows. Sweat glistened on his arms and glued his tank-style T-shirt to the flat plane of his abdomen. Well-defined muscles in his shoulders and chest spoke for the hours of training and conditioning Jonah had put in.
Annie gawked at his brawny build, and heat prickled her skin. An unfamiliar flutter stirred in her chest, and realization that his size and strength had piqued her feminine interest startled her. Had she learned nothing in her marriage to Walt? She’d been physically attracted to Walt when they married. He’d been especially handsome
