Bought: Destitute Yet Defiant

And he saw a prostitute, she thought bleakly, her eyes feasting on the bold lines of his face and lingering on his mouth. The mouth that could drive a woman insane. Even the scar didn’t detract from his monumental sex appeal. If anything, it added to the sense of danger that women found so irresistible.

Even her…

Confused by her feelings, Jessie’s courage faltered. ‘I—I’m not what you think I am,’ she stammered, wishing she’d never misled him in the first place. ‘My life hasn’t exactly been anything to boast about—I mean, I haven’t achieved anything much, but neither have I sunk as low as you seem to think. All I do in Joe’s bar is sing.’ She said the words fiercely, her gaze fixed somewhere in the middle of his chest. ‘Just sing. Nothing else. I sing, I take my money, I go home. Alone.’ Every night. Alone. Everything she did, she did alone.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now.

She wasn’t going to think about how empty her life was. She’d chosen that path, hadn’t she?

Her confession fell into a long, tense silence.

‘You’ve paid back twenty thousand pounds,’ he drawled, clearly in no hurry to believe her faltering confession. ‘Singers at Joe’s don’t earn that sort of money. Not even with tips.’

‘No, they don’t, you’re right. Which is why I had to find other jobs.’ She didn’t understand why it suddenly seemed so important that he knew the truth. ‘I clean an office block and I work in a café.’

Disbelief shone in his eyes. ‘You don’t finish work until three in the morning. How can you do two other jobs?’

‘I didn’t say I wasn’t permanently exhausted.’ Jessie wrapped her arms around herself, wondering why she’d chosen to say all this standing on a stage. Talk about making a spectacle of herself. Perhaps she should have asked for a megaphone, just to ensure maximum embarrassment. ‘There are some days when my feet ache so much I scrub the floors on my hands and knees because it hurts less. And I’ve been known to drink caffeine nonstop in order to keep myself awake. I admit I’m shattered most of the time. But I’m not what you think I am. And I don’t know why you would have thought that. You should know me better.’

He drew in a long breath. ‘That dress…’

‘It was just a dress, Silvio! It was a bargain. And you’re the one who told me that people shouldn’t judge each other from the outside.’ Exasperated and humiliated, Jessie looked away from him. ‘I don’t have a lot of money to waste on clothes. Joe likes us to wear something glittery and I saw it in a sale. I thought it looked OK…’ Her voice tailed off. ‘I know it was revealing but I got more tips that way—have you come so far that you’ve forgotten how it feels to be desperate for money? And wearing a cheap dress doesn’t make a woman a prostitute, Silvio.’

His phone buzzed again but for once he ignored it. ‘You told me that you use what God gave you.’

‘I was talking about my voice. And I said that after you’d already made your assumption about me.’

There was a long, tense silence broken only by the sound of his breathing and her own heartbeat.

Could he hear it too?

‘Why did you let me think that?’

‘Why did you think it?’

‘Because of the place you were singing. The way you looked.’ He delivered the words with lethal emphasis. ‘The fact that you wouldn’t call the police.’

‘The police can’t handle the workload, you know that. Reporting it to them would have given me more trouble.’

‘You needed money. You wouldn’t be the first person to choose that route when they’re desperate for money.’

‘I’m not that sort of woman, you should know that.’

‘Should I? I knew you as a girl,’ he said softly, his gaze disturbingly acute. ‘I don’t pretend to know the woman.’

Jessie swallowed, her heart pounding and the blood searing her veins. The heat between them was intolerable and she wondered if he could feel it too or whether the connection was all in her head.

‘I’m the same,’ she said hoarsely. ‘The same person I’ve always been.’

‘No.’ His voice was dark, his expression hard as he rose to his feet. ‘Everything is different.’

Jessie stood still, transfixed by the hard lines of his profile. He was breathtakingly, spectacularly handsome, and just looking at him drove every thought from her head. What was different? What did he mean?

No matter what hovered between them, he was still the man who was responsible for her brother’s death. That wasn’t going to change.

She was only here because she had no other choice.

‘Silvio—’