Savage Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page A

afraid. He’d take it.
    “Guess I have some reading to do,” she said.
    “You’ll learn things that will make this seem like…” Soren paused, mildly amused that it took him this long to think of anything truly innocent. “Like that time the teacher read your note in front of the whole class.”
    Cate scoffed. “Never happened.”
    “You never passed notes?”
    “I never got caught.”
    “Too smart for that, huh?”
    “By far,” she said, eying him. “But you got caught all the time anyway, didn’t you?”
    “How’d you know?” he said, smiling. She was right. He’d gotten in trouble every day.
    “Because,” she said, tilting her head, letting her voice drop. “You’d be proud of it.”
    Holy shit, maybe she did know him.
    Soren watched her in quiet amazement. He was used to controlling the pace, the intensity, even the content of pretty much every conversation he had in his life. The only people who could ever match him and call him out were family: Declan, the lead singer of Savage Heart, Declan’s uncle Jim, who practically raised both of them, and now Molly, the woman Dec was marrying. Dec and Jim just had too much dirt on him, and Molly only pulled it off because she worked at it like it was a part time job.
    And now he could apparently add Cate Kennedy to the list, who’d known him for about five minutes, and who was supposed to defend him against charges of being the other kind of asshole.
    “Me knowing about you isn’t going to be a problem,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He just wanted her to know it, and to know that he knew it.
    Damn, he was playing with fire.
    He saw her swallow.
    “I guess not,” she said. “Maybe it will help you open up, if you know something about me that no one else knows. Because your lawyer needs to know everything, Soren . I mean everything . Can you do that?”
    Soren felt himself smile, even though the more time he spent with this woman, the less certain he was that he could remain professional. “Ford didn’t tell you?”
    “What?”
    “I have no shame. Hope you’re prepared.”
    “You’ve only seen me at my worst,” she said, hopping down off the bar stool in what he now saw were some incredible high heels. She rocked that power suit. Just lethally feminine, even in a suit. “You don’t think I got to be where I am by being a total pushover, do you?”
    Something in her voice had changed.
    Something was…
    Different.
    She stood a little taller. Chin up, shoulders back, eyes flashing. Yet still he could see glimpses of the a spses ofwoman who’d clung to him outside, who ’d instinctively run and then decided to brave through anyway, who’d talked to him about abuse and BDSM, who so clearly had a past she wanted to hide. He wanted to know more about that woman, too, not just the one who was about to kick legal ass.
    Damn. She really was all kinds of trouble . The truth was that he hadn’t felt anything like this since…
    Well, since Julia.
    That was dangerous thinking right there. And besides, it was different. He knew that, watching her lead him up to the lounge, taking those long strides, letting her heels strike the floor hard in that warlike rhythm. Yeah, she was the most interesting woman he’d met in a long time. Maybe it felt different because he was older now and he could appreciate it.
    That instant connection.
    That instant want .
    He knew if he touched her again they’d both lose it. Weird way to think about your lawyer, but Ford had insisted there was no one better. Come to think of it, Soren had been expecting someone much older. Everything he knew about big-time lawyers came from his stepfather: old, male, usually drunk, always douchebags. How good did she have to be to rise to the level of partner at her age in an old boys’ club?
    If only she wasn’t a newbie. Goddamn. If he thought he could have her without her getting attached…
    And the worst part was he knew he could help her through that fear. He knew it too