The End.
Author’s Note
Joannie Kay on Dara Ames:
“Dara (dare) came about because I dared myself to try a new style of writing. Dara tells her stories from the first person, and her ‘Angels’ are all BRATS. When I want fun and impossible situations, I let Dara take me there.”
Joannie Kay
Joannie Kay has been writing for some time now, and her favorite genre to read or write is westerns. She loves the handsome cowboys and the feisty, sassy heroines those men try to tame. Joannie also likes to write about women who aren’t afraid to stand on their own when the situation warrants. Joannie has been married to the same wonderful hero for forty-four years now, and they have two adult children, and two grandchildren they love to drive across the country to visit.
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The Impossible Wife
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A Cordial Welcome
The Problem with Jordan
Tucker’s Frustration
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The Sentenced
Reasonable Explanations
She is My Sister
Miss Carter, Schoolteacher
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Last Chance
Viking’s Thrall Series
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The Runaway Wench
The Alex and Anna Chronicles
The Labor Day Picnic
A Thanksgiving Wedding
A First Christmas
A Wonderful New Year
The Alex and Anna Chronicles, 4 book set
The Rusty Bucket Series
The Firecracker Gets Her Man
Harvest Moon
Spring Blessings
Three-Book Set
Holiday Stories and Collections
The Cutest Valentine Ever
The 12 Naughty Days of Christmas Anthology
A Christmas to Remember
A Christmas Duet
A Christmas Memory
Holiday Wishes
Anthologies
Chosen by the Viking
Her Cowboy’s Discipline
Taming the Wild West, One Fiery Bride at a Time
Saving Valentines
Bethany Bliss
1
Valentine’s Day Is Coming
She shuddered in her sleep, her back trembling against Asher’s chest and startling him awake. Again.
“Cora?” he grumbled groggily, shrugging off the covers that kept the heat locked into place away and allowing a startling chill to seep into his skin and hopefully hers as well. She was clammy with sweat. “Cora?” he asked again, but Cora was trapped in a nightmare as she often was.
The feisty Jersey bounty hunter he had come to love when they had met in Miami was merely a shell of her former self. All his fault of course, if he hadn’t allowed himself to be associated with her, Krone never would have gone after her. Never would have abducted and tortured her. She had become Asher’s whole world, and so had become a target of The Company. He was an assassin, a robot to them and not free to love. Cora had paid the price for that disobedience, almost with her life, and the evidence was carved all over her flesh.
He couldn’t so much as stroke her hip without feeling the fresh pink scars where Krone’s knife had split her open. He had noticed that, now, she always wore long sleeves and pants, and avoided mirrors when she wasn’t. Her wardrobe was nothing like it had been in Miami, there she had worn colorful dresses, her legs always exposed.
He rolled so he could lean over her whimpering form. “Cora?” he said louder, sliding one hand behind her head to cradle her as he gently tapped her cheek. “Cor–”
She screamed.
Bolting up from bed, only Asher’s fast reflexes saved him as she slammed her elbow for his jaw. His palm caught it before she could connect and forced her arm down beside her, her wrist locked between his fingers.
“Cora!”
She flailed, lashing out with her opposite fist while aiming a kick up between his legs. He dodged her knee before trapping it beneath his own, his pressed against her inner thigh as he blocked her fist and used her own momentum to trap it with her other wrist.
“It’s me! Cora, it’s me!”
She relaxed but only slightly beneath him, gasping for air as if he had been strangling her rather than defending against her attacks. He couldn’t see her face through the darkness, but they had gone through this enough for him to have memorized her confused expression. It would be clearing by now as she realized whom she was beneath.
She relaxed more and Asher felt safe to release one of her wrists to cup her chin and stroke his thumb along her jawline. “You’re safe.” There was a hollowness to his voice that even he could detect. He didn’t feel safe either. Each day was spent tense, constantly checking for vehicles following him or people walking behind him for too long.
She didn’t comment on it however, instead she just murmured, “Genevieve.”
“What?” he asked.
“My name is Genevieve now.”
Right, he had been having trouble remembering that she went by Genevieve while in Denmark, half the time he didn’t remember his own name was Noah now.
Asher sighed, a quick exhale of air through his nostrils and the only indication that he was concerned.
Cora raised her hand and stroked his scruffy cheek comfortingly, noting again that he didn’t bother to keep himself trimmed, now that The Company wasn’t influencing his every move. His beard was as overgrown as his hair, no longer the professional cut of a CEO that he always kept tidy for his representation of The Company. Seeing him grow out his hair was freeing in a way. A sign of freedom at the very least.
Freedom that Cora had yet to feel for herself.
“I’m joking, Noah, and I’m all right.” The lie rolled off her tongue as his lips traced her fingertips, pressing his face to her extended palm. She was definitely not all right.
Asher continued thinking about Cora through the night and into the next day. Not that that was anything new.
He had obtained a job stacking lumber outside the city, cutting down massive spruces and carving them into building material. It was interesting, doing honest labor rather than dishonest murdering.
