Blind Ambition by Gwen Hernandez

hadn’t killed him already.
    Not that he was complaining.
    “It wasn’t good enough,” she said. “If you hadn’t arrived when you did, I’m not sure I would have survived.”
    The thought of her pinned beneath that kid made Dan’s stomach roll. And if it happened again, what could he do? A shitload of nothing.
    “If one of those guys tries anything again, you do whatever it takes to fight him off, Lys. I mean it. Whatever it fucking takes. ” He pulled against his chains, straining his muscles to the max, but there was no give in his restraints.
    She watched him as he sat there breathing hard from his exertion. “When did you quit the PJs?” she asked in a soft voice.
    He raised his eyebrows. Did she care or was she just bored? “About two years ago.” A year after she’d dumped him. Was it sad that almost every event in his life had been categorized as Before Alyssa or After Alyssa? Of course, he’d have to rename those categories.
    “Why?”
    Good God. He didn’t really want to go there, but what the hell? Spilling his guts might be a mistake, but what was one more fuckup at this point? “My wife maxed out all of our credit cards and I came home from Afghanistan to a mountain of debt. So I jettisoned her and the Air Force and went to work for a private security company called Claymore. You might have heard of them. They were in the news recently.” Another clusterfuck he didn’t want to think about. Another failure on his part.
    She gaped at him. Which part had shocked her most? His financial situation, Mary, or the fact that he’d worked for the evil Claymore?
    “You were married?” Her voice came out as a high-pitched squeak.
    Okay, so, Mary. “Yeah.” Did Alexa find it so hard to believe a woman might want to marry him?
    “This was after…”—she cocked her head—“us?”
    He nodded. He could say more, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her the whole sordid story. Especially the part where he’d proposed to Mary to prove—to himself and everyone else—that he was over Alexa. Fucking idiotic now that he looked back on it. And he’d been paying for it ever since.
    And then he realized what she was asking. “Wait. You don’t think I would have been with you while I was married to someone else, do you?”
    Her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t look away. “You wouldn’t be the first man to cheat on his wife.” She paused. “Or girlfriend.”
    “Jesus. I would never—” He stopped himself. Clearly she’d done the math and realized he got married not long after leaving St. Isidore. He and Mary had stopped dating the first time several months before he met Alexa, but he didn’t owe her an explanation. Didn’t really want her to know how much she’d messed him up.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not how I think of you. I was just…surprised.”
    “What?” His voice turned hard. “You imagined me pining away for you? Too heartbroken to move on. Is that it?”
    Her cheeks reddened and she looked down.
    “You did.” He couldn’t keep the disgust out of his voice. Never mind that it was true, he still didn’t want her thinking of him like that. Like some sad schmuck who never got over the woman he couldn’t have.
    She swallowed hard and met his gaze again. “I guess I hoped that our time together meant as much to you as it did to me.”
    What the hell? “I was under the impression that it didn’t mean much to you at all. In fact, you made your feelings very clear.” He didn’t want to sound angry. Anger meant that he cared. But he couldn’t help it.
    “I lied.”
    His heart skipped, and for second he wondered… Then he gave himself a mental slap. He had no idea why she was doing this, but he wasn’t falling for it. “Yeah. I must admit the whole shipping heiress thing was quite a surprise. You’re not the snobby bitch I would have expected, though.” He’d dealt with enough of them that he thought he could spot them from several