Renegade Read Online Free PDF

inclined to let him practice in his dorm.”
    â€œI agree.” Cash smiled wistfully as he listened to the haunting melody. “Is he here often?” he asked her.
    â€œWe see him all around the neighborhood,” Tippy replied lazily. “He’s one of the nicer street people. Homeless, of course. I slip him some money whenever I have a littleextra, so he’ll be able to buy a blanket or a hot cup of coffee. A lot of us around here indulge him. He has a gift, don’t you think?”
    â€œHe does. Know anything about him?” he added, impressed by her concern for a stranger.
    â€œNot much. They say his whole family died, but not how or when…or even why. He doesn’t talk to people much,” she murmured, watching Rory hand him the bill and receive a faint smile for it as the piper halted for a moment. “New York is full of street people. Most of them have some talent or other, some way to make a little cash. You can see them sleeping in cardboard boxes, going through Dumpsters for odds and ends.” She shook her head. “And we’re supposed to be the richest country on earth.”
    â€œYou’d be amazed at how people live in third world countries,” he remarked.
    She looked up at him. “I had a photo shoot in Jamaica, near Montego Bay,” she recalled. “There was a five-star hotel on a hill, with parrots in cages and a huge swimming pool and every convenience known to man. Just down the hill, a few hundred feet away, was a small village of corrugated tin houses sitting in mud, where people actually lived.”
    His dark eyes narrowed. He nodded slowly. “I’ve been to the Middle East. Many people there live in adobe houses with no electricity, no running water, no indoor facilities. They make their own clothing, and they travel in pony carts pulled by donkeys. Our standard of living would shock them speechless.”
    Her breath drew in sharply. “I had no idea.”
    He looked around the city. “Everywhere I went, I was made welcome. The poorest families were eager to share the little they had with me. They’re mostly good people. Kind people.” He glanced at her. “But they make bad enemies.”
    Tippy was looking at the scars on his lean, strong face. “Rory’s commandant said that they tortured you,” she recalled softly.
    He nodded and his dark eyes searched her light ones. “I don’t talk about it. I still have nightmares, after all these years.”
    She studied him curiously. “I have nightmares, too,” she said absently.
    His eyes probed hers, seeking answers to the puzzle she represented. “You lived for a long time with an older actor who was known publicly as the most licentious man in Hollywood,” he said bluntly.
    She glanced toward Rory, who was sitting on a bench, listening as the bagpiper started playing again. She wrapped her arms close around her chest and wouldn’t look up.
    Cash moved in front of her, very close. Strangely, it didn’t frighten her. She met his searching gaze. It almost winded her with its intensity.
    â€œTell me,” he said softly.
    That softness was irresistible. She took a deep breath and plowed ahead. “I ran away from home when I was twelve. They were going to put me in foster care, and I was terrified that my mother might be able to get me out again—for revenge because I called the police on her and her boyfriend after he…” She hesitated.
    â€œCome on,” he prompted.
    â€œAfter he raped me repeatedly,” she bit off, and couldn’t look at him then. “I wouldn’t have gone back to her, not if it meant starving. So I went on the streets in Atlanta, because I had no way to earn money for food.” Her face clenched as she remembered it. Cash’s expression was like stone. He’d suspected something like that, from the bits and pieces of her life that he’d ferreted out.
    She