The Mercenary Read Online Free PDF Page B

the local
    newspaper.” She looked at him with guileless eyes. “There is a newspaper in Brandon, isn’t there? I’m
    sure they’d love to have the scoop. Do the townspeople have any idea you’re a mercenary?”
    Tory had heard the threat coming out of her mouth—she just couldn’t believe she’d actually had the guts
    to make it. Her heart pounded and her palms became damp when he stepped closer.
    She refused to be bullied, even though he was well over six feet, and he towered over her. His unshaven
    jaw was taut with fury in a face that was too masculine, too hard to ever be handsome.
    His nose was an
    aristocratic slash between dark brows that were drawn inward. He glared at her, a muscle jumping in his
    cheek as he stopped a hairbreadth in front of her.
    She swallowed sickly, refusing to back up.Don’t show fear, she told herself grimly.Do not show this man
    one inch of fear.
    The diamond earring glittered as he shifted to lift her chin with his finger. “You,” he said with lethal
    softness, “are either very brave or very stupid.”
    Tory gulped. Her eyes felt bone-dry as she forced herself to hold his gaze. The sound of her racing heart
    was loud in her ears.
    Still tilting her face up he said flatly, “No one knows that you’re here, do they, Miss Jones?” Before she
    could even formulate a reply he continued. “Did it ever occur to that agile little brain of yours that you
    might know just too damn much?” His fingers tightened around her jaw. “That if I am who you think I
    am, I can’t let you leave here?”
    His grip stretched Tory’s skin painfully across her cheekbones. Her body was paralyzed as he held her
    gaze. “No one would know if you disappeared from the face of the earth, now would they? So if the
    ‘local newspaper’ needed a story, and someone just happened to find a mutilated body down by the
    river—Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t faint—”
    He caught her as her eyes rolled and she slumped forward. The cast on her arm banged into the coal
    scuttle and he winced as he swung her up in his arms and strode over to the sofa, where he gently laid her
    down.
    He was a bastard. An asshole, dickhead son of a bitch. He’d never mistreated a woman in his life. And
    doing so now, toher, proved just how damned low he’d sunk. When she didn’t open her eyes, he moved
    the arm in the cast out of the way, and started undoing the little pearl buttons of her blouse. Her skinwas
    silky smooth and warm.
    He jerked his hand back when the back of his fingers accidentally—swear to Godaccidentally—
    brushed the plump curve of her breast.
    Not boxy at all.
    Miss Jones was all lush curves and hidden valleys. Marc dragged his hand away, and kept his attention
    on her face.
    His words had only partially been a bluff.
    She knew more than was good for her.
    He stopped unbuttoning at the third button. Her breathing was just fine. He was surprised, however, at
    how pleasurable it was to touch her skin, and be sitting close enough to inhale the flowery fragrance of
    her. She wasn’t plain at all, he thought watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest beneath the
    lace-collared white blouse. She had regained consciousness, but kept very still, eyes closed. Playing
    possum. Again.
    He’d never scared anyone into a swoon before. He found himself not liking that she was his first. She
    was pale and limp. He didn’t like that he felt sympathetic, either. That wasn’t who he was. Who he used
    to be, hell…
    “Unless you want me to administer CPR, open your eyes and take a swig of this.” He wanted her awake
    and aware when he booted her out the door. Then he was going to make that call.
    He wasn’t going to tell her and get her hopes up, or listen to her opinion on how the retrieval—please
    God, there was one—was to go down. She could suffer, preferably in silence, for a few more hours.
    When he got news, she’d be the first to know.
    If there was even the smallest, most remote chance that