The Past Between Us Read Online Free PDF Page B

But when I couldn’t deny it any longer I wanted to make sure that at the very least, you had someone who would treat you kindly.”
    At that she gave him a brief look, derision twisting her mouth. “Kindly? This is your version of ‘kind’? Pardon me if I don’t subscribe to your brand of kindness,” she retorted and rubbed gingerly at her jaw with her bound hands.
    “You seem to forget you cleaned my clock the first go-round.”
    The corner of her lips twitched. “Of course I haven’t forgotten. I’m just wishing I hadn’t pulled my punch. Maybe the situation might have played out differently.”
    She’d pulled her punch? He nearly did a double take. It’d felt as if she’d beaned him with a hammer. Gone was the girl who’d shied away from anything physical for fear of breaking a nail. “Where’d you learn to be such a bruiser?” he asked.
    She didn’t look inclined to answer but after a drawn-out pause, she answered coolly. “You’d be surprised what I know.”
    “At this point no, I wouldn’t,” he muttered.





CHAPTER FOUR
    “I HAVE TO PEE,” SHE announced, looking to him to see if he cared. To be honest, she didn’t really need to go but it was a plausible excuse to get him to stop the car. They’d been traveling for about an hour and a half, and each mile away from New York and her precious date book made her panic level climb but she kept it under control. It wouldn’t do to have him know just how desperate she was feeling about this whole situation. She didn’t need to give him yet another piece of leverage to use against her. So, the excuse of bodily function seemed the best bet.
    “How bad?” he asked.
    “I’m about to soak your leather interior. Is that bad enough?”
    “Can you hold it another few minutes? I think there’s an off-ramp coming up. Might as well gas up while we’re at it. If we’re lucky there might be a McDonald’s or something.”
    “Yum. Mystery meat. I’m a vegan, by the way,” she sniffed.
    “Since when?”
    “Since now,” she snapped. It wasn’t true. Trinity Moon had been a vegan but Cassi Nolan loved meat. Still, she didn’t like him thinking that he knew her that well and she was willing to continue the farce if it threw Tommy off. “I don’t eat anything with a face.”
    “Well, I’m pretty sure they remove the face before they throw the animal on the grill,” he said, eliciting a scowl on her part.
    “Now you’re just being crude. Typical.”
    “Listen, you can order a salad. How’s that?”
    She’d really rather sink her teeth into a cheese-burger but she nodded stiffly. It burned like acid but she offered a terse thank-you. Best to make it look genuine. They were somewhere outside Philadelphia and she had no cash on her. That posed a significant problem. If she didn’t have any cash, she couldn’t pay for a bus ride back to New York, which meant she’d have to hitchhike. The fact that the idea of thumbing a ride with a stranger didn’t scare her as much as it should was a sign that she was, indeed, desperate to get back to the city. Hitchhiking, under normal circumstances, was just plain stupid.
    An alternate thought came to her. She slid her gaze over to Tommy and took in the details of the car. It was your basic government-issue sedan, which also meant it was an automatic. Score one for her, since she’d never learned how to drive a manual. When they pulled over, he’d gas up, which would take care of that issue and she could make it back to the city and dump the car before they could catch her on GPS. She bit back the smile but allowed herself the first real breath since being captured. She had a plan.

    T HOMAS TOOK THE FIRST off-ramp that indicated there was food and gas, but before he parked the car, he made a slow sweep of the area.
    “What are you doing?” she asked, squirming a little in her seat. “Remember me? The woman with an immediate and personal issue? I have to go.”
    “Just getting my bearings,”