Her throat bobbed once, twice, as if she was trying to force the words up and out. “He was going to make me marry someone,” she finally said. “Told me he’d been saving me for just the right deal to take his empire to the next level.”
Make her marry . . . ? Aw, what the actual fuck. “So, what, it was to cement some business alliance with another crook?” Dare asked, his hackles all the way up.
She cut her gaze to his. “Yep.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dare bit out, raking a hand through his hair. As bad as that all sounded, Dare knew she was painting the picture of her life using the broadest strokes. The details of her day-to-day would probably make him want to smash things with his bare hands. And given how the father viewed her and his desire to use her that way, he was probably pretty damn motivated to get her back and save face with the would-be groom, whoever the hell that was. “What was the other guy’s name? The one you were supposed to marry?”
“Ray Landry,” she said, her voice thin, her tone sad. “God, I sound even more pathetic when I say all that out loud.”
On instinct, Dare stepped right into her space. He saw a lot of things when he looked at this woman, and none of them were pathetic. “Don’t say that, Haven. You hear me? From what I can tell, you survived, you escaped, and you persevered in a bad situation. That must’ve taken an incredible amount of fortitude and courage, so don’t discount yourself like that. I won’t stand for it,” he said.
Eyes wide, chest rising and falling fast, mouth open in surprise, Haven peered up at him like she was afraid to move. “Okay,” she whispered, her gaze flickering over his face, lingering on his lips.
That little show of interest speared white-hot lust through Dare’s body. He was hard in an instant, his mouth suddenly ravenous for a taste of her. Which meant it was time to get the fuck out of there before he did something they’d both regret. He reared back, nodding. “That’s good for now. I’ll let you know if I have any more questions,” he said, and then he took off without waiting for her to respond.
Anyway, he had much more important things to be doing than sniffing around a woman—a much younger, way-too-innocent-for-him woman. He had two Southern criminals to track down. Before they found Haven first.
CHAPTER 7
“You’re going to be mad at me,” Haven said as they sat side by side on the bed in Cora’s room, watching an addictive cooking competition show. Shows about cooking had been among Haven’s favorites for as long as she could remember, and television had been her main source of entertainment growing up. The one nice thing she could ever remember her father doing was buying her a small flat-screen TV for the kitchen so that she could try new recipes along with the chefs on TV—and that was only because her cooking benefited him.
Cora sat the bowl of popcorn down on the bed between them. “I doubt it,” she said. “About what?”
Haven clicked off the TV and shifted to face her friend. Her conversation with Dare that morning had been weighing on her all day, but Haven couldn’t put off telling Cora any longer. Better to find out from Haven than from Dare, in case he cornered Cora, too. “Dare asked me a bunch of questions this morning.”
“I figured that was coming at some point. Did you stick to what we agreed to say?” she asked.
Haven fingered a pulled thread in the bedspread. “Not entirely.” She just hadn’t been able to lie or hold back all the key pieces of information when Dare’s concern for her seemed so genuine.
“Oh, Haven, what did you tell him?” Cora asked.
“Not everything,” Haven rushed to say. “I didn’t tell him about the reward.” From the minute they’d been rescued by the soldiers at the storage facility, she and Cora had agreed not to tell anyone about the reward. They hadn’t known who to trust and didn’t want to give anyone financial motivation to say they’d help them while all along they were planning to use them to cash in. The one thing they didn’t know was how much the reward was for, but Haven had no doubt that her father would want her badly enough to pay—or do—whatever it took to get her.
Cora sighed. “Well, that’s good, but what is it you did tell him?”
“My dad’s name, where we’re from, and that I was going to be forced to marry,” she said.
“Geez, Haven. If they can find your father, they can find out about the reward,” Cora said, her tone more worried than angry.
“I know, and I’m sorry. But I think we can trust Dare, don’t you? He says that everyone here wants to protect us, and we’ve been here for over two weeks and no one’s done anything to make that seem untrue, don’t you think?” God, she really needed Cora to feel the same way.
After a long moment, Cora released a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s right. But we can’t be too careful with you, Haven. You can’t go back there for any reason. Ever.”