Tempted & Taken (Men of Haven #4)(35)

Her shoulders sagged with relief and the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding rushed out before she could mask the reaction. “Thank you.”

He chuckled at that. “Don’t thank me yet. I’m still an asshole to work with.”

She tried to fight the smile, but failed miserably so she ducked her chin instead. “You are quite bossy.”

“I am. But I’m good at what I do. As fast as you catch on, you could be too if you can tough it out.”

The bold comment jerked her head back up as sure as if he’d fisted his hand in her hair and yanked. “You mean that?”

“I do. So, when I tell you that teaching you puts little to no weight on me and possibly gains me an asset in the long run I mean it.” He sipped his coffee, never taking his eyes off her. Once done, he set it aside and crossed his arms over his chest. “Now, tell me about JJ.”

For months, she’d faced her past alone. Within the safety of her home and beyond prying eyes. But here, with one simple demand, Knox swept aside the veil and let all the glory and discovery of her time with JJ drift through. The room faded to little more than a haze, only Knox’s rapt presence tying her to the here and now. “When I landed here, I had no one. No name to use beyond the ones I made up. Only the cash I’d been given to live on.”

The crush of mold and stale cigarette smoke that permeated the extended-stay hotel she’d lived in those first few weeks engulfed her like no time had passed at all. She’d not dared to pay too much attention to the floors or the comforter that covered her bed, sheer exhaustion the only way she’d managed any sleep. “I purchased newspapers the first few days looking for work. Then found a local library and searched for online advertisements.”

Knox’s hushed voice slipped through her memories and pulled her back to the present. “Where were you?”

“San Diego.” The same wistfulness she’d felt her first day there swept in fresh and cleansing. “It’s beautiful there. Heaven on Earth compared to Russia.”

He said nothing. Merely offered her an understanding smile and waited patiently for her to continue.

“I answered a job posting,” she said. “One of those classified websites with everything from personal ads to job postings. Jeannie needed a housekeeper and an assistant.”

“And she hired you?”

Darya nodded. “Despite my insistence that I could only be paid in cash.” She chuckled at the memory, remembering the suspicious glint in JJ’s eyes. “Looking back, I think it was because of my insistence.” She refocused on Knox. “She knew what it meant to run and helped me because of it.”

Knox frowned and cocked his head. “Jeannie Simpson shows as a native US citizen.”

“Yes. She was. But not everyone who runs flees the country and not everyone flees forever.” It felt strange to share someone else’s story. Almost as if she were filching on sacred vow, but JJ would have wanted this for her. Would have told the story herself if she were here. She pulled in a deep breath and let it out on a slow sigh. “She had no living family. Only a husband who deemed it his right to force his will on her in the way of his fists.” She smiled. “If you knew JJ, you’d know that arrangement didn’t last long.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “When authorities proved to be unhelpful, she took care of herself.”

“She ran.”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

Darya rolled her lips inward, torn between sharing what she believed to be the truth and keeping her silence. “She never told me more than that, but I did look enough to know that her husband no longer lives.”

Knox dipped his chin. A simple acceptance without uttering a word. “So where is she now? There’s no death certificate, so she’s got to be breathing somewhere.”

And here was the hard part. The part that still left a lingering weight on her soul. “Jeannie died nine months ago. Brain cancer.” She swallowed around the gargantuan knot in her throat, the ugly tan carpeting beneath her feet all she could bear to look at. “It came on quickly and ended mercifully fast. But in that time—in the early months before it stole her spirit—she made arrangements. Leveraged contacts built throughout her life and made it so that I could take on her name and, hopefully, stop running.”

“Those must have been some powerful connections.”

She grinned despite the sadness seeping through her. How could she not? For someone like Knox to appreciate what she’d done would have sent JJ squawking for days. “There is only one loose thread from her arrangements—the funeral director she bribed to handle her cremation. And even he doesn’t know my real name.”

“So, you’re relatively safe.”

“Relatively. For now.”

Seemingly satisfied with her story, he slid his mug from the counter and ambled back to the coffeepot. “From who?”

Quick, but casual. Designed to slip beneath an average person’s defenses. Except she wasn’t average and hadn’t been for a long time. “That part of my past is best left alone.”

He slid the coffeepot back in place, braced both hands on the counter for a handful of seconds then pushed upright and took a drink. He studied her over the rim, some mysterious emotion moving behind his eyes. Something powerful still unspoken.