Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels) - By Stacy Gail Page 0,24

in her tiny pitched-roof cottage with its peeling lavender paint and barred security doors and windows. Instead, she was sitting across from a man who had been nothing more than a living, breathing lie from the moment he’d approached her in kickboxing class.

And she’d thought that after all her training and mental barrier-building, no one could get to her. God. What an arrogant idiot she’d been.

And what a heartless ass he was.

Bitter betrayal curdled her blood until her eyes stung with it. It was a reaction that made no rational sense, but there was no way she could stop it. She’d been aware of this man’s existence a grand total of three days, a fact that landed him in the category of acquaintance. There should be no emotional attachment to someone who was barely more than a stranger. Yet she was on the verge of throwing her glass of water in his face. He’d hunted her from the beginning, the bastard. He’d come across as charming and charismatic—hell, he’d flirted with her. She didn’t know what else to call it when a man went out of his way to bring her attention to the size of his feet.

But it hadn’t been real. The manipulative jerk had just been trying to sneak past her defenses to pull the rug out from under her.

And stupid idiot that she was, she’d let him close enough to do it.

What really bugged her was that he’d obviously known from the beginning who she was. That meant there had never been any genuine interest behind his flirting. How could there be? If he knew her old identity, he knew her story. He knew everything.

Who she was.

What she was.

That she was nothing more than a scarred-up, screwed-up mess.

The muscles in her throat knotted like an angry fist. A wave of emotion too dark to untangle slammed her harder than a punch to the gut. Why had he bothered to toy with her? Why make her remember what it was to be just an ordinary woman swept up by the seemingly appreciative gaze of an attractive man? It would have been better if he’d left her to wither away in her numb cocoon of non-life.

A waitress came and went, taking their orders and depositing piping-hot Italian bread and seasoned olive oil before them. And all the while Ella grimly held her silence. She’d be damned if she’d help him in any way from this point on. She had a decent idea as to why he was here; the reason she’d left both her name and her life behind in North Carolina could be credited to the never-ending prodding of the insatiable media. Nate da Luca—if that was even who he really was—might be more determined than most, but he was like all those other bottom-feeder journalists demanding one more gory detail of what had happened in the Smoky Mountains. But she would never give him what he wanted. She’d cut out her own tongue before she’d give him the frigging time of day.

“So.” With his broad-shouldered frame taking up most of the space on his side of the booth, Nate looked too big to be real as he pushed the basket of bread toward her. “You should try and eat something. You look like you need it.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Layer upon layer of icy bitterness formed, locking her in place until she half believed she’d never be able to move again. Drown in my silence, you dick. Drown, drown, drown...

Seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness before he shook his dark head. “Maybe I should’ve let you hit me. It probably would have made you feel better.”

Ella had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from telling him that nothing would make her feel better about being found. But his comment did bring another thought up through the storm of rage. Though she wasn’t exactly proud of the way she’d launched an attack on him, it hadn’t done any good. Her instinctive reaction to lash out at a threat had garnered her nothing. Even now she had no clue how he’d dodged her. She’d never seen anyone move the way Nate had. She hadn’t even known it was humanly possible to move so fast that the lines of his body had somehow blurred around the edges.

Maybe in her shock and upset her mind had decided to play tricks on her.

His mouth tightened when she still didn’t respond. “Okay, let’s get this over with so we