White Heat Read Online Free PDF

he couldn’t allow himself to give her any comfort. He didn’t have time for her to fall apart. Time for explanations later. Right now he wanted her out of her house and somewhere far away.
    He hoped she had some answers, even if she didn’t know what the hell the questions were.
    THEY FACED EACH OTHER IN THE COOL, DAMP NIGHT AIR, OUT ON THEstreet. Emily wasn’t surprised to find herself trembling. Delayed shock? It wasn’t every day a girl had a guy break into her house, let alone two. Still, she could wrap her brain around that. What was incomprehensible was the necessity for a hazmat team. For blood tests. For her to leave her home in the hands of strangers.
    For going off with Max.
    She flinched when he reached out with both hands and pulled the hood of her bright yellow slicker up over her head. She hadn’t even noticed it was raining. His knuckle accidentally brushed her cheek when he withdrew.
    He put his hand out. “Keys.”
    She curled her fist around them. “It’s a new car.”
    “Yeah. Nice. You’re not driving it right now, you can hardly stand. Get in.”
    Emily wanted to protest, she really did. She just didn’t have the energy. Silently she handed them over and climbed into the passenger seat of her own car. That about summed up her morning, she thought. She’d somehow lost control of her own free will. Just for now, she told herself. Just for now. It didn’t pay to depend on anyone but herself. But she could relax her rules and let the man drive her new car because she was shaking too badly to take the wheel.
    When Max closed her door, she leaned her head back on the butter-soft black leather seat and closed her eyes.
    He seemed to take up more than his fair share of the interior of her car as he adjusted the seat and familiarized himself with the controls. His dark hair was shaggy, falling into his eyes, which didn’t seem to bother him. Emily’s fingers itched to push it back out of his face. Instead, she clasped her hands in her lap, and reminded herself that this Max wasn’t in any way the same Max she’d made love to on every available surface of her palazzo last year.
    Her skin prickled as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t trust him, although she couldn’t put her finger on why. He’d changed in some indefinable way that was unmistakable. She hadn’t seen this ominous rough side of him before. A side that, while it intrigued her, also scared the crap out of her.
    Perhaps because he hadn’t had to use it? No. This was ingrained. Part of his DNA.
    She’d foolishly expected that Max to call her to apologize. But she’d never be stupid enough to expect anything from this Max. She’d learned more about him in the last hour than she had in the four days they’d spent together last year. His personality then and now was like night and day. Light and dark.
    She suspected this dark side was the real Max. The lines on either side of his mouth seemed deeper than before, but that might just be a trick of the streetlights playing on the rough stubble on his face. She couldn’t imagine suave, debonair Franco leaving home looking this disreputable; what a pity
    Adrenaline seeped out of her, leaving her limp and dazed in the aftermath of so much violence. “I’ve never struck anyone in my life.”
    “Could’ve fooled me. That trick with your knee must’ve taken a lot of practice. Buckle up,” Max adjusted his own seat belt to cross his large body. His deep voice stroked across her nerve endings like a mink glove, and she absently rubbed her arms through her soft sweater.
    “How can you joke about it? I thought I was fighting for my life.”
    “Believe me. I’m not. Good thing I don’t want kids, I think you gave me a knee vasectomy.”
    “Glad to be of service,” she told him shortly, glancing at the familiar cars parked up and down her street. Her house was teeming with anonymous men in hazmat suits. Yet there were no strange vehicles anywhere on her