Free Edge of Betrayal by Shannon K. Butcher Page A

edge of his favorite knife, he would have done so. But her problems were far beyond that. She’d been hurt. Altered. She needed the kind of professional help only the team Payton had set up could give.
    Riley leaned back in his kitchen chair and stared at his bedroom door. Sophie hadn’t come out all night. He’d heard her get up once to use the bathroom, but that was all.
    He was so worried that he’d wake up and find that she’d taken off again, he hadn’t dared to sleep.
    As if his thoughts of her summoned her, she opened the bedroom door and shambled out. Her strawberry blond hair had dried overnight, leaving it a curly mess around her head. One side of her face was pinker than the other, showing which side she liked to lie on. She’d taken off the sweat pants—likely because he’d cranked up the heat in his house last night to a balmy eighty degrees to warm her up—and now wore only his sweatshirt. It fell above her freckled knees, skimming the pale skin along her thighs.
    A brief flash of the night in the jungle in Colombia flooded his brain. Blood covered her thighs, trickling down her legs into the fallen leaves. He’d felt so helpless that night—unable to stop her miscarriage. He’d been forced to push her onward through her pain, all the time wondering if a woman could lose that much blood and still survive.
    Only the sight of her standing in front of him now, whole and safe, made the muscles in the back of his neck loosen.
    He cleared his throat so he could speak without squeaking like a teenage boy. “Coffee? Breakfast?”
    “Just water. I’m dehydrated. Didn’t want to have to stop and use the bathroom when I was on the run, so I quit drinking much a couple of days ago.”
    He filled a glass and set it in front of the seat across from him.
    She took the hint that he wanted her company, and sat down. It took all his willpower not to glance down and see just how far up his sweatshirt had slid, and whether or not she wore anything underneath.
    “I washed your clothes,” he told her. “Hope you don’t mind.”
    Her slender fingers curled around the glass. “Not at all. Thanks. That’ll make it quicker for me to hit the road.”
    “You’re not leaving.” It wasn’t a question. Riley wasn’t the kind of guy who generally bossed women around, but this was important. “You have no car, no money, no phone.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I checked your pockets so I wouldn’t wash anything. All that you had on you was lint and an elastic hair tie. That’s not exactly going to get you far, especially not with men on your trail.”
    “I lost them. And money isn’t hard to come by.”
    “What are you going to do? Steal someone’s wallet?”
    She looked down at her lap. “If that’s what I have to do to survive.”
    “You came here so I could help you. Let me.”
    “I shouldn’t have come at all. If I hadn’t been so sleep deprived and scared, I wouldn’t have.”
    That hurt. He didn’t know why it should, but the barb still stung. “I’ve seen you safely through worse situations than this. That has to count for something.”
    She lifted her gaze to meet his, and it hit him so hard he forgot to breathe. “This is different. This is real danger.”
    “And flying bullets and a miscarriage weren’t?”
    “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Riley. These men are bad news. They won’t just kill you. They’ll make you beg them to first.”
    “How do you know that?”
    She looked away again and stared out the kitchen window. “Just consider my leaving as payback for you saving my life in Colombia.”
    “I’m not letting you go.”
    She pushed to her feet. “You don’t have a say in the matter. The fact that you think you do proves just how stupid it was for me to come here.”
    As she started to leave, Riley grabbed her wrist. He was careful with his hold, but he knew instantly that touching her had been the wrong thing to do.
    He was overwhelmed by the feel of her skin