“Not unless they have a reason to study the casino security video and notice that an elderly woman hobbled into the ladies’ room a few minutes before the big win, but never came out.”
Naomi swallowed. “I felt like I was being watched. It was only you?”
“You’d better hope it was only me.” He bit off a curse, infuriated by her brazenness—by her recklessness that seemed to border on suicidal. “For fuck’s sake, Naomi. You have to know what it means to cross a man like Leo Slater. Are you deliberately trying to get yourself killed?”
“No.”
“Then why, damn it? What the fuck are you trying to accomplish?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” he growled, taking hold of her slender shoulders. He was vibrating with the force of his anger—and his worry for her. He felt his eyes burning with sparks as he glowered at her within the confines of the truck’s cab. God help him, he wanted to shake her.
He wanted to drive his fist through the dashboard and rail at her for how close she’d come to danger. Danger she couldn’t even begin to fathom, now that he knew Slater had a former Hunter on his payroll.
“Tell me why you’re so hell-bent on this casino. On this man.”
“He owes me. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“No. We’re not leaving at that.” He gripped her tighter. “You’re not a stupid female, Naomi. In fact, you’ve proven yourself to be clever as hell. Except when it comes to Slater.”
A chill swept over him as he relived the anguish and fear and helplessness of an innocent child who’d witnessed the brutality of life, the ugliness of it, much too young. There was a part of him—a part he kept buried deep down inside—who understood some of that too.
Asher searched her pained gaze, his hands still holding onto her. The connection renewed the memory he’d read from her before, but he didn’t let go, unable—or perhaps unwilling—to release her. “It was Slater who hurt your mother, wasn’t it?”
“Hurt her?” She spoke in a tight, but quiet voice. “He killed her, Asher. I can’t prove it, but I know he did. The police have called the case unsolved. Just another woman who vanished off the face of the Earth after Leo Slater got tired of beating and using her.”
“She went missing?”
“When I was eight years old. She left me alone for the weekend and . . . never came back.” Naomi swallowed, her eyes welling. “I kept waiting. I kept hoping, even after child protective services came to our apartment and took me away with them a couple of months later.”
Asher exhaled a curse that boiled up from the pits of his soul. Her anger was one thing. He could’ve handled that in stride and been fine. In the short time he’d known her, anger and combativeness were the emotions she’d worn the most. Along with stubborn, unflagging determination.
No, those emotions she kept right up front for all to see.
It was the single tear rolling down her cheek that made his heart ache.
And the next one and the next after that. Her sadness over her mother ripped him clean in half.
He had no skill when it came to giving comfort or saying the right things. He’d been bred to deny any softness, any emotion that might make him a weaker instrument when it came to dealing death. Not even his time looking after Ned had smoothed all of his rough edges.
But he wanted to give Naomi comfort. He wanted to let her know that her pain was his now. That he would not only protect her, but do whatever was necessary to ensure Leo Slater never had the chance to hurt her or anyone else again.
Wordlessly, he moved his hands from her shoulders to the sides of her beautiful face, cradling her gently in his palms. She didn’t resist him. Her gaze stayed locked on his as he smoothed his thumbs over the tears that now coursed down her face in steady streams.
And when he drew her toward him, her lips fell open on a quiet exhalation, a sound that was far from a sob. Asher brushed his mouth over hers, shocked at the current that roared through him at that first tender contact. He wasn’t prepared for how sharply he craved her.
He wasn’t prepared for how deeply this female was impacting his life. He didn’t have room for the trouble she was bringing into his solitary world. And he sure as hell wasn’t prepared to deal with all of the feelings she’d been stoking inside him from the moment their eyes first met.
He drew away from her on a low groan and a murmured apology that he didn’t actually mean.
“Buckle up,” he ordered her gruffly. “It’s not safe for you in this city. And we’ve wasted too much time already.”
She sank back against the seat in silence and drew the seatbelt across her body. When she was secured, Asher threw the truck into gear and sped out of the garage with renewed determination.
He would protect Naomi, with his arm and his life. As slim as his honor was, he couldn’t live with himself if he allowed anything to happen to her.
And now, on top of that obligation, he would call in the debt Leo Slater owed her if it was the last thing he ever did.
