‘I heard a rumour about a pack of trouble and a girl with a golden voice.’ He shifted gears viciously, coaxed the car round a tight corner and accelerated away so fast that Jessie’s head thumped gently against the head rest.
‘I wasn’t looking for trouble.’
His eyes were fixed straight ahead of him. ‘How much did he owe them?’
Jessie gave a twisted smile, not at all surprised that he knew the truth.
She didn’t waste time pretending he’d misunderstood. Neither did she ask him how he knew. He knew everything. This man had contacts at every strata of society—a network that would have made both social climbers and the police force weep with envy.
‘Forty thousand,’ she said flatly, wishing the sum didn’t sound so terrifying. ‘It was twice that, but I’ve paid back half. I’m late with a payment. That’s why they came after me tonight.’ She gave him no details. Didn’t elaborate. But he knew. He was a man who’d known hunger, violence and deprivation and, in the fleeting second before he controlled his reaction, she saw the murderous flash of anger in his eyes.
‘You paid them?’ The question hissed through his lips and Jessie was reminded that this man was twice as dangerous as the men he’d rescued her from.
‘I didn’t exactly have a choice.’
He changed gears with a savage movement of his hand. ‘But you could have gone to the police.’
The dark streets flashed past and Jessie wondered if he even realised he’d just driven straight through a red light. ‘That would have made things worse.’
‘For whom? Law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be afraid of the police, Jessie. Or were you afraid you’d be arrested?’ The contempt in his tone baffled her until she saw his gaze flick briefly to her exposed thighs—saw the raw fury—and suddenly understood his meaning.
He thought she—
That was why he was so angry?
Jessie was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t respond. ‘What sort of job do you think I’m doing?’
‘Presumably the same job as the rest of the girls in that club.’
He thought she was a prostitute.
She leaned her head back against the seat and started to laugh. It was that or cry and there was no way she was ever crying in front of this man. All her tears had been shed in private.
‘You think it’s funny?’ His tone savage, he drove the car harder still and Jessie wondered why it bothered her so much that he thought that of her.
‘I use what God gave me. What’s wrong with that?’ It was a stupid thing to say. Flippant, provocative—like dangling a piece of raw meat in front of a hungry wolf—and the moment the words left her mouth she wanted to suck them back in. But it was too late for that. Too late to wish that everything was different between them.
Too late to wish that the past hadn’t happened.
And perhaps it was safer this way. If his opinion of her was rock bottom then it would protect them both from the dangerous chemistry that had flickered round the edges of their relationship like a force field.
She didn’t want that.
He didn’t want that.
He brought the car to an abrupt halt and when he looked at her the red blaze of fury in his eyes made her shrink against the seat in instinctive retreat.
‘If you were that desperate for money,’ he said thickly, ‘you could have come to me. It didn’t matter what happened between us. None of that mattered. If you were in trouble, you should have contacted me.’
‘You are the last person on this earth I would ever ask for help.’ But the words came out as a whisper because she was too overwhelmed by her feelings to manage anything stronger or more convincing.
; Self-loathing mingled with a desperate yearning that frightened her.
She didn’t want to feel like this.
‘Pride can kill, Jessie.’