in its wake with another emotion he didn’t want to deal with. Not when he could still smell her sweet essence, feel the pang of heat in his groin.
“You don’t know me,” she said. “You don’t know what I’ve been through in the last year—”
“I know what I see. I see a young woman about to give her body away because she thinks she might get something in return.”
She managed to look appalled. “I wasn’t going to—”
“The hell you weren’t. I was reading your signals loud and clear, sister.” Gritting his teeth against another jolt of anger—this time aimed at himself—Jake turned away and paced to the other side of the room. Damn, that had been close.
“I wouldn’t have done…that,” she said after a moment.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Jake laughed humorlessly. “Look, if we’re going to be stuck together, I’ve got one rule.”
She leaned back in the chair, blinking back what he hoped to God weren’t tears. “I’m not very good at rules.”
“All I want is for you to be straight with me,” he said. “That means no games. No lying. No tricks. If you can’t tell the truth, then don’t say anything. Do you think you can abide by that?”
She pressed her lips together. “I wasn’t going to…you know, sleep with you.”
“If you weren’t going to sleep with me, just what the hell did you have in mind?”
“Well…I thought maybe…I thought maybe I could distract you.”
“Distract me?” Jake gritted his teeth. “Some other bozo in my position might have taken you up on your offer. Some unscrupulous cop might have wanted more than you were willing to give. Then where would you be?”
“I’d still be in the same predicament I’m in now.”
“Yeah? And what’s that? Paying your debt to society?”
“Going back to prison for a crime I didn’t commit.”
“You’re going to have to come up with something a little more original than that because I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’ve heard every lie in the book.”
“You want original?” She stood abruptly, trembling and pale, tears shimmering on ashen skin. “The night before I escaped, somebody tried to kill me. I had two choices. Leave or die. So I left. Is that original enough for you?”
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