“Okay. There were three possibilities, and I found addresses for two of them. Turned out one, Hernando Fortunada, lived just north of here in Ridgeville. I didn’t see any reason not to pay him a visit, and maybe I’d find a father who, when he knew I existed, would be proud to call me his daughter. I had this picture in my mind, you know. If he was my father, he would be glad to see me. If not, no harm done.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
It was only through sheer will that he didn’t yell at her for going to a strange man’s house alone. He pressed his lips together. If he opened his mouth, whatever words came out would no doubt cause her to close up like a damn clam.
“Fortunada, who I pray to God is not my father, did this when I interrupted whatever was going on with the girl. Problem is, he now knows who I am and where I live.”
It hurt to breathe. She’d been in the grasp of a possible rapist, one who’d had his hands on her with the intention of shutting her up. Jake had never been so glad of his skills. He could protect her. His decision—instant and final—to not let her out of his sight until this Fortunada bastard was in jail or dead would have repercussions. Let Kincaid do his worst. Even if it meant getting fired for not delivering Maria into the safety of her brother’s arms, Jake didn’t care.
“I’m curious. Did you think you would take one look at him and say, yes, that’s my daddy?”
She flinched. “You don’t have to be sarcastic, but no, I didn’t think that. I kinda hoped he would look like me, but I thought he wouldn’t object to a DNA test once I explained who I was. Then once he knew I was his daughter, he would maybe love me.”
Maybe love her? She asked for too little. He could no longer ignore how much she was hurting, not only from the wounds on her body, but deep in her soul. He wrapped his hand around that gloriously silky hair and gently tugged her head to his shoulder.
“I have to find him, Jake. If Fortunada’s my father, then both my parents are trash and it’s better to know that now so I can get on with my life. I just need to know,” she whispered, turning her face into his shirt.
And he just wanted to kill someone. Her mother, her father. Didn’t matter. “I need to know what we’re up against, Chiquita Banana. How does he know who you are?” The kiss he planted on her forehead was pure impulse. She slipped her hand under his shirt, and his skin rippled, hot and wanting under her fingers. Any other woman, and he would have had her under him in the blink of an eye.
This one, though, wasn’t for him. Calling on every damn control technique he’d learned since making it through each torturous day of SEAL training, he managed to keep his hands—along with other parts of his body—from claiming her.
Maria pressed her nose against Jake’s shirt and breathed him in. It had been a long time since he’d called her by the pet name. Not since her twenty-first birthday had he called her Chiquita Banana, and she’d missed it. Missed him.
Their kiss had been tender and special. At least to her. She assumed to him, probably all in a day’s work. She felt his stomach muscles tense under her fingers, and he pulled her hand away, gently pushing her back into her seat.
“I know this is hard, but you have to finish telling me.”
She’d much rather he kiss her again.
It was hard because talking about it meant reliving it, a reminder of her stupidity. When she slipped her hand back into his, he let her. “I had my finger on the doorbell when the girl ran out of the house and crashed into me. I pushed her away and told her to run. When I turned to haul ass myself, he grabbed me and pulled me inside.”
“Go on.”
He spoke in his SEAL voice, the one she heard the guys use when they got serious about something. Likely, he would yell at her again when he heard the rest.
“We fought. He hit me in the face with his fist, so I kneed him in his balls.” She could still see the fisted hand coming at her and had known she only had a slim chance of getting away. “Then I hit him on the head with my purse. It was the creep’s bad luck that I forgot to take out one of my textbooks, and it dazed him. I ran out the door, jumped in my car and sped away. End of story.”
“End of story?” Jake echoed, still in his take-no-shit SEAL voice. “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“Well, there’s one other little thing. The second time I hit him with my purse, he grabbed it and wouldn’t let go. I had a choice of wrestling him for it or running. I ran. Now he has my wallet, so he knows my name and address.”