Still The One (Family Stone #4 Jack) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t give her a passport card. Thank goodness. Otherwise we’d have to expand our search to Canada and Mexico.”
    Jack was pretty impressed. The girl had cojones. He’d give her that. “Wouldn’t she know that the safest thing she could do would be to stay put and wait until we could expose Fernandez?”
    “She probably felt like she’d exchanged one prison for another.” Bliss’s shoulders slumped.
    God, he couldn’t stand to see her obvious discouragement. Without thinking, he reached over and curled his fingers around hers. The spark was instant and electric. A current shot from his fingers to his groin and his heart began to beat in triple time as if he’d been shocked by a defibrillator.
    At the surprising arousal, he tightened his fingers over hers. Unwilling to let the contact slip away, he tugged her to her feet and curled his other arm around her shoulders. Bliss stiffened. But Jack was lost in the feel of her in his arms. She fit as if she’d never left. As if she’d been made just for him. Her head tucked perfectly beneath his six foot five frame and into the curve of his neck.
    Jack closed his eyes, shut out the fancy office, and reveled in how she felt in his arms. Familiar, and yet different. He remembered the days when she belonged there. Why the hell had he ever let her go?
    Except the truth was, he hadn’t let her go. She’d kicked him out and never looked back. She’d gotten married. He’d celebrated the day with a highball glass and a bottle of scotch. And when she’d gotten divorced he’d spent that day the same way.
    And damned himself for still caring.
    Yet, all that was forgotten the moment she nestled in his arms like she’d been made just for him. She relaxed into the curve of his embrace for a precious second as if she were happy to be there. Just as happy as he was to have her there. But that quickly ended.
    “What are you doing?” She shoved out of his embrace, avoiding his gaze. But her indifferent mask had slipped revealing a pain she’d hidden expertly. Her anguish nearly brought him to his knees with its depth and intensity. But then he realized she’d been hiding things for years.
    He thought about her hesitation when he’d said she wouldn’t have any personal knowledge of relocation and witness protection. Her reaction meant she’d been keeping secrets for far longer than he could even imagine. That was irrelevant right now.
    But in the back of his mind, where all this new information about Bliss took up residence and simmered, he wondered...What else had she hidden from him?
    “You need to stop beating yourself up over this.”
    “Really?” Bliss’s bland mask disappeared in a puff of anger. Her honey eyes sparkled and her face heated. The indifference was gone.
    Jack could feel himself getting sucked back in to the vortex that was Bliss Lee. He couldn’t afford to let her get to him. He’d been lost the last time she’d tossed him out. While he liked to think he was older, wiser, and his heart protected by a cynical barrier that not much penetrated anymore, he wasn’t about to chance it and end up devastated and alone in the same position thirteen years later. The thought that she could suck him in and he would end up back in the same place raised his ire.
    “Fine. Let’s just focus on what to do next.” Anger was a much easier emotion to express than regret and sorrow, so Jack embraced the geyser of hurt and rage that shot up from the pit of his stomach and jabbed at her with a small dig. “What would you have done?”
    Bliss jerked as if he’d punched her, but she didn’t acknowledge that he’d scored a direct hit. She shut her eyes and contemplated what her response would have been to a threat. What action would her instinct prod her to take?
    “The first primal instinct is to get as far away from...Fernandez as possible.” Bliss rubbed her palms against her biceps, the gesture caused the button up shirt to gap. Jack tried to keep his gaze