Run From Fear Read Online Free PDF

the gym. The smell of salt and sweat permeated the air, and gangsta rap pumped through the speakers.
    This was so much better than the three-hundred-dollar-a-month private club where she used to train in Seattle. Talia’s muscles twitched in anticipation. She and Rosario made a quick side trip to the ladies’ locker room, which was much more nicely appointed than the rest of the gym would have suggested. But Susie wasn’t the only one to realize how well Gus’s shredder classes worked to keep the pounds off, so he’d tricked out the ladies’ locker room to rival that of any high-end gym.
    She and Rosario ditched their stuff in a locker and went out to join Gus for a private training session. As he had them warm up with jump ropes, Talia’s mind wandered back to Jack.
    If last night was good-bye, why bother to come see her at all? In the six months she’d lived here, he’d never made an effort to see her when he traveled down from Seattle for business.
    Talia had had reservations about moving here, specifically because she thought it would mean running into Jack more often than she thought she wanted. Though Jack ran the Seattle office, Gemini’s headquarters were just up the road in Menlo Park, which, the connection to Jack aside, did turn out to be a lucky coincidence. Though Talia was all about self-sufficiency in this new life of hers,it was good to have people nearby who had shown their willingness and ability to help her out of a jam.
    However, along with that reassurance came the trepidation that Jack might be popping in to say hi on his trips to the Bay Area. But it had never happened, and she knew from Alyssa, who came to Suzette’s at least a couple times a month, that Jack had been here half a dozen times since she and Rosie had moved here.
    Last night was the first, and apparently last, time Jack was planning to darken Suzette’s doorstep.
    “Ease up, this is just a warm-up drill,” Gus said when she jabbed the focus pad hard enough to make him grunt. He took off the pads and motioned her and Rosie to follow him into the studio to spar.
    She was glad, she told herself as she and Rosie circled each other. She didn’t need Jack, with his cool, analytical stare that saw too much. Yet even as he unnerved her, she had to admit something happened to her whenever she got in the same room with him. After all this time, she felt safer with him than any other human being on the planet. She wished—
    Rosario’s gloved fist connecting with Talia’s stomach jarred her back to reality.
    “So what happened with you and Jack after I left?” Rosie asked, a little breathless as she bobbed to avoid Talia’s return blow.
    “He had a beer; we chatted at little bit. He said he was glad we were doing well, and he left.”
    “That’s it?”
    Talia used her forearm to block Rosie’s kick. “What else would there be?”
    “He didn’t ask you out or anything?”
    The question startled her, tangling her feet so instead of lightly dancing out of Rosario’s considerable range, she staggered back and fell on her butt.
    “Jack and I aren’t like that.” She took Rosie’s proffered hand and let her sister pull her up.
    “Okay.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing. It’s just that sometimes when I talk to him, the way he asks about you—”
    “Wait, how often are you talking to him? What are you saying about me?”
    “Jeez, Tal, calm down,” Rosie said as they resumed the fighting stance. “When we talk, he asks how you are—that’s it. I just thought—”
    “Did you say something to make him think I wanted him to ask me out? Because, Rosie, believe me, after everything that happened, I don’t really want to go out with anyone, especially not Jack.”
    “Why not?”
    The reasons were endless, starting and ending with the fact that Jack had seen her at her lowest point, had pulled her naked and bleeding from that basement. And worst of all, he knew that it was her own fault, her own stupidity, her own bad choices