Free Run Among Thorns by Anna Louise Lucia Page A

into the other room, and she started to breathe again.

    That day was like the day before. It just passed.
    Jenny didn’t think much about it, but went through the motions mechanically. McAllister mostly left her alone, which puzzled her a little. He seemed preoccupied and short of temper, working on the Rover with sharp, economical movements, and ordering her about without looking at her.
    She’d had a chance to get away. She’d had one chance, and she’d given it up. Thrown it away. She couldn’t kick herself enough for that and what was worse, she couldn’t begin to fathom why, either.
    It had just been impossible, in that moment, to drive away from him. Or was she just afraid? Afraid of trying to resume a life that seemed to have been shattered beyond repair, the tiny pieces of it scattered far and wide, and irreparable.

    When he returned, she was still sitting at the table, with her back to the door. For a moment he watched her back thoughtfully. But two hours working on the Rover hadn’t told him why she hadn’t run, and neither did her straight, slim back.
    You could ask her.
    “Conservation work, rangering,” he said, instead, keeping his voice as light as he could. “That’s an odd cover, isn’t it?”
    He watched her shoulders rise and fall on a deep breath. “It’s not a cover.”
    He glanced down at hands covered with grease and mud and grimaced, moved over to the sink, and scrubbed his hands in dish soap and cold water. He rinsed, and picked up a towel. “No? Why’d you end up doing it, then?”
    “I like the outdoors. I like making a difference.” Blunt and uncommunicative.
    Not that he’d expected chatter. This assignment had shifted so far from his own plan it just wasn’t real.
    Assignment? Who was he kidding?
    Why hadn’t she run?
    He stood behind her, drying his hands thoroughly. She didn’t turn round, didn’t lean away. He opened his mouth, but she spoke before he could. “What about you? Why do you do what you do?”
    “We’re not trading questions this time,” he said, letting his frustration roughen his voice. She’d take it for aggression, for threat, anyway. And he needed to create that impression. God, he needed that.
    “So what?” She turned to look back at him, opening her eyes wide. “What are you afraid of?”
    His lips narrowed at the inference. She wasn’t about to manipulate him, not like that. “I do this because I’m good at it.”
    She blinked at him, looking nonplussed. “That’s it?”
    He snorted. “No.” That wasn’t it , not by a long shot. “I’m the best at it. I’m …” He flung the towel over one shoulder and turned his hand over, palm uppermost, trying to encompass it, trying to find the words to explain something he’d never explained before.
    And struggling to lose the thoughts about why he was even trying.
    But she beat him to it, anyway, speaking softly, a little crease between her dark brows. “Because being the best is everything and second best is … nothing.”
    He stared at her, and his heart stuttered into hard, heavy beats, fuelled by a kind of panic that he should have revealed so much of something he barely understood himself. When she had revealed nothing.
    “That’s … sad,” she said.
    He turned his hand over again, curling the fingers over his palm, willing his pulse back to normal. “For you, maybe,” he said.
    Turning her head away slightly, she took a breath, closing her eyes for a moment. One curl swung free of the others, a strand or two catching on her eyelashes, and she raised a hand to tuck it back behind her ear. Her fingers were shaking. Not much, but they were shaking, nevertheless.
    “You’re a bully,” she said, flatly. “They pay you to bully people. And you do it because you’re good at it. Mostly I think that’s sad for you, don’t you?”
    He shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t see it like that.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”
    “Don’t get sarcastic