Free Take Me Deeper by Jackie Ashenden

I’m a little too concerned for my own survival for your liking.”
    He didn’t answer immediately and she found her gaze wandering to where his hands rested on the truck’s steering wheel, gripping it with an easy confidence she found insanely distracting. They were nice hands, with long, blunt-tipped fingers, white scars crisscrossed his tanned skin.
    How had he gotten those scars? He’d said he’d been a Green Beret, which meant he’d been a soldier. No, correction, he’d said he
was
a Green Beret, which technically made him
still
a soldier. And that was weird because if he was a soldier, what the hell was he doing here chasing bail-jumpers?
    “Don’t be scared,” he said quietly. “You
will
be safe there.”
    Oh hell. Again he seemed to be able to pick up on her underlying emotions with astonishing ease. She wasn’t that simple to read, surely?
    “I’m not scared,” she lied flatly.
    “So you’re just being a bitch for the hell of it then?”
    Iris opened her mouth to tell him that she’d rather be a bitch than a condescending asshole, but then thought better of it. He wasn’t wrong, she was being a bitch. But she didn’t know how else to be with guys like him, the guys she was drawn to despite her better judgment. Not that there had been many of them. Well, one exactly. Dylan. Who’d been kind to her, who’d offered to help her. Whom she’d thought might be different from all the rest…
    “You were going to take me back to the police. Can you blame me for being a little bitchy?” She couldn’t hide the defensive note in her voice, which was irritating.
    “Maybe you should have thought about that before you got involved with dealing drugs.” The words were colored with disapproval, hooking into a vulnerability she thought she’d long since gotten over.
    A sarcastic, cocky reply would have been the perfect defense. Except that wasn’t what came out. “Yeah, well, you try finding a job that doesn’t require qualifications or a high school diploma, and pays well enough to get your baby sister out of a horrible trailer park.”
    Oh God, why had she said that? And too loudly, too emphatically. She’d even let her voice crack right at the end, which was simply unacceptable. If she wasn’t careful, she’d burst into tears and then her humiliation would be complete. One good thing at least was that she hadn’t mentioned her stupidity in letting Dylan use her in the first place.
    There was a terrible silence.
    She looked down to where her hands were clutching on tight to her bag. The bag that had virtually nothing in it since she had virtually nothing. She’d had to leave everything behind when she’d gotten out of Dallas, including Jamie’s stuff…
    Tears pricked the backs of her eyes.
    Goddammit.
    “We’re not far.” Zane’s voice this time was cool, impersonal, and it settled something in her. If he’d been even remotely sympathetic or understanding, she probably would have opened the door and leapt from the truck no matter how fast it was going. “In fact,” he added, “we’ll be there in ten.”
    Not trusting her voice, she only nodded.
    Zane said nothing more, an awkward silence filling the truck as they sped down the highway.
    But she wasn’t inclined to break it. Talking only made things worse anyway, and they were bad enough as it was.
    Zane was as good as his word though, and ten minutes later he was pulling the truck up outside an old-looking, two-story brick building with high, arched windows. There was an iron sign fixed above the double doors: Lone Star Bounty.
    Iris frowned as she got out of the truck. This was what he’d meant by going back to his office? Sure didn’t look like any office building she’d ever seen.
    “Here?” she asked dubiously, clutching onto the strap of her bag as Zane locked up the truck and came over to her. “Looks like a hotel or something.”
    “It was a hotel. Now it’s a bounty hunting business.”
    “Yours?”
    He shook his