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It slipped into my awareness, not for the first time, that she’d specialized in contract law. Words were her forte and she wielded them with the same precision I had no doubt Samurais once had with their swords.
“Can’t.” Her gaze fluttered, lashes whisper-soft as they batted against the crest of her cheeks. I saw her fingers tighten on the knife in her hand, the delicate pink flesh turning a nasty white from the pressure she was exerting on the blade.
“Why not?”
“He had me gagged. If I talk about it, I risk more fines.”
More fines?
What the fuck?
For a second, my brain stuttered as I tried to process the facts, and considering I was no slowpoke in the grey matter area, that it was stuttering at all spoke of how confused I was.
Jessica had had to pay fines?
Like she was at fault? The guilty party?
And yet, the way she moved, her gestures, the timidity as she looked around her environs…
The fear and vulnerability lacing her features…
It all spoke of one thing and one thing only.
A woman who had been hurt.
A woman who had been forced.
My instincts were rarely wrong, and I knew they weren’t here. My upbringing may not have been shitty, but my apartment building as a kid sure as shit had been. I’d seen it too often, way too many times to mistake her reactions.
So, why the fuck was she the one being fined?
With my free hand, I rubbed at my temple.
“You’re not making much sense, Jessica.”
A nasty laugh escaped her. “No, I guess I’m not. But, I can’t explain. I can’t afford my repayments as it is. I really don’t need him suing me again.”
“Why would anyone be suing you?” I whispered, then, my eyes cleared. “Eileen? Can you leave us alone for a moment, please?”
“Sure,” came the soft reply, and I knew she’d been listening and understood why I needed the privacy.
Once the door had closed, I whispered, “No one can hear us if we keep our voices low. Eileen will shuffle Alex and Derek into the den where Mac will be watching sports. She’ll turn the volume up to give us as much privacy as she can.” I sucked down a gulp of air. “You can talk to me, Jessica. You can trust me.”
I watched the muscles in her throat work. “That’s what scares me, Max.”
“What do you mean? I scare you?” I blustered, horrified by her words.
Then, she speared me with a look.
“I barely know you and I trust you so much already.”
And like that, she floored me. Because this woman didn’t trust, not easily, I knew, and yet, she said she did trust me… With those sparse words, I knew why Derek was freaking out all of a sudden.
Jessica wasn’t just any woman to me.
The feelings she inspired in me were frenzied and frenetic. Too crazy for me to pull apart and analyze.
I just knew I’d never felt this way before, and for it to be happening so quickly? So shortly after we’d met? I knew, to Derek especially, it would make no sense.
