Convicted (Entangled Ignite) by Dee Tenorio

was. Her father had stayed in Vietnam until the bitter end. Came home, married three years later. Katrina arrived three years after that, but her mother hadn’t survived her birth. David Killian’s life seemed to fall apart after that, leaving a trail of drunken disorderlies on his record. But he held on for his daughter. Eight years, anyway. Then he’d used his service pistol to blow his brains out while she was in school. “You’re not responsible for what happens to me. No more than for what happened to him.”
    Her eyes widened, her mouth tightening with clear anger. “Don’t try psychoanalyzing me, Cade. It’s hypocritical.”
    He let his fingertips graze her face, unable to keep from soothing the hurt he saw there. He felt the smoothness of her cheek, cool and firm. Strong from her steady smiles. Smiles he couldn’t decide if he should believe in or not.
    “Then stop playing your games with me.”
    Her fingers wrapped around his wrist, soothing the fiery heat that had taken hold of him and doing nothing to pull his touch away. “You’re not a game. You’re a risk. Not just to me, to yourself. You have to get a better hold of this.”
    This being his emotions, such as they were.
    “You want to protect these people, protect me, but you can’t do that if they’re scared of you. The sheriff is a joke. Someone has to make a change. Give them something to believe in. To hope for.” Her low whisper lost none of its urgency, not when her gaze stroked his face like a caress he could feel over every inch of his skin. “Frank wants you out of his way. What he can’t control, he fears. What he fears, he destroys. It’s as simple as that.”
    “And you? Are you afraid of me?” He had no business standing here like this with her. Touching her. Less than an inch from tasting her again. The hunger in him wouldn’t settle for just a taste, either.
    But if she was afraid of him, it would break the few threads of self-respect he had left.
    She shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid for you. There’s a very big difference.”
    Yes, there was. It was the same fear he had for her, alone in that pack of murderers and thieves. His mind refused to accept she’d come from them, that she belonged there. “Come out of the club…”
    Be with me instead.
    He didn’t say it, but he knew she heard it all the same.
    The same way he knew, from one heartbeat to the next, that she’d turn him down.
    “Cade, I—”
    He straightened away, the blood that had been flowing so hot and fast through his veins turning to ice. “I gotta go.”
    She held onto his shirt, almost pulling it from his under his belt. “Don’t leave like this.”
    “Like what?” he asked, backing away so he didn’t make a bigger fool of himself by grabbing her and forcing her to feel the same gut-wrenching need that he did. As if he could.
    “You’re mad.”
    She had no idea. “Do me a favor, Katy ,” he added. The look on her face said the name stung. Good. It felt like shit in his mouth, knowing there was nothing personal in it. Katy was who she was to everyone else. To the people who judged her without knowing her.
    There couldn’t be anything personal in it. Not as long as she stayed with a group like that. Not until she was willing to cross to his side of the line, something he could see was never going to happen. “Don’t come back to me again.”
    “Cade—”
    But he couldn’t listen. Not if he wanted to keep it together. Not if he wanted to keep her out of harm’s way. So he walked. And hated himself a little bit more every step of the way.
    …
    Katrina leaned back into the uncomfortable leather booth seat, one booted foot stacked over the other. She crossed her arms snugly over her body as she relaxed.
    She finally had a few minutes to rest and for the first time in a long, long while, the bar was something close to quiet. She had her room in the back to sleep in, but she’d found scratch marks on the locks and she didn’t trust