Avenging Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

her knee.
    She slanted him a lethal look, her eyes narrowed in fury, and for a moment he thought she might call his bluff. He narrowed his own gaze in warning and pushed her harder.
    “Move it, honey,” he drawled. “We’ve got a long, hard night ahead of us.”
    The clerk grinned, and his gaze dropped once more to Johanna’s breasts, irritating the hell out of Dylan. He said something crude to the kid, two succinct words meant to put him in his place. The kid’s smile disappeared, and he got busy rearranging his candy displays.
    Johanna leaned over the counter. “I want to use the phone,” she said loud and clear, getting the clerk’s attention. Dylan had to admire her for holding her ground, but she was also adding to his irritation. She’d called his bluff. Now he was going to call hers.
    He took a second to concentrate his strength and take a breath, then he jerked her close, none too gently, and whispered in her ear. “If you drag the boy into this, he’s going to get hurt.”
    Johanna stilled at the deadly intent in his voice. His grip tightened around her arm, a distinct contrast to the softness of his breath blowing across her skin. She shivered in an instinctive reaction.
    “Let’s move out,” he murmured, and she let herself be half pushed, half pulled out of the store and back into the relentless heat of the night.
    Dylan Jones had said he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d said he was trying to save her life. But he’d just made it damn clear that he would brook no interference from a stranger.
    She slid into the sedan ahead of him and found her place in the middle of the seat, letting her head fall back. She didn’t know if Austin had come to her apartment to hurt her or not, but she strongly suspected he had. It was unbearably naive to think otherwise. He hadn’t talked to her in four months. Then, suddenly, the private company they’d put together was all over the newspapers and he needed to see her on a moment’s notice.
    The only thing that didn’t fit, that didn’t make sense, was the man next to her. He closed the door and let out a low sound, like a groan. Surprisingly, after praying for him to drop dead in the store, she felt the stirrings of compassion. She quickly squelched the absurd emotion. She wasn’t in a position to be doling out compassion to a man who had kidnapped her, threatened her, and done his best to humiliate her.
    “Why are you doing this?” she asked.
    He shifted the car into drive and released the parking brake. The sedan eased forward.
    “Are you working for somebody? What’s in it for you?” She kept at it, demanding answers to her questions. “You owe me an explanation.”
    “Shut up . . . please,” he said, his voice painfully tired. He checked in both directions for traffic before pulling onto the road.
    Johanna leveled a glare at him he didn’t see and stiffly crossed her arms in front of her chest. She didn’t stop talking because he’d asked, but because she didn’t want to waste her energy, or his. He hadn’t had the grace to collapse in the store where she would have been safe. She didn’t want him to do it behind the wheel of the car while she was in it.
    She needn’t have worried. He drove only a couple of miles before pulling into the parking lot of a brand-name highway motel. She didn’t voice a single complaint when he dragged her inside to register. She had the routine down pat, and her other option had been a big roll of tape he’d shown her. Nor did she hesitate when he ordered her into room number seventy-two. They were in a motel, and she didn’t have a doubt in her mind that she could outlast him in the consciousness department. From her observations, it was a miracle he was still on his feet.
    The accommodations were clean and color-coordinated, neatly appointed. They were more than she had expected from him. From the looks of him, she would have expected him to choose a flea-bitten rat hole facing an alley somewhere.
    She