Bare Facts by Katherine Garbera Page A

memorizing them for a time in the future when memories of Charity would be all that he had left. He didn’t understand why he felt so strongly about her. Didn’t think he ever would, but then women were meant to be mysterious.
    “It frightens me when you stare at me.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I can tell you’re not at all the sophisticated, civilized man you pretend to be.”
    He almost laughed at that. She was too observant, but then he hadn’t expected that to change. From the first moment she’d walked into his hotel room, she’d been knocking him off balance.
    “Good, forewarned is forearmed.”
    “Do I need to be armed around you?” she asked, in that silky tone of hers that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
    “Aren’t you always armed around men? Ready to charm or disarm them?”
    “Maybe.”
    “I thought we were going to have honesty between us.”
    She put her free hand over his wrist, right below his watch, and stroked his arm. “Yes, I am exactly like that. But with you it’s different.”
    “How?”
    “I got the feeling you saw past all that.”
    He drew her hand up toward his lips, brushed his mouth over the back of her hand. The skin was soft; her nails were painted a delicate color, yet that hand had held a Sig Sauer semiautomatic with surety and skill. God, she intrigued him.

Chapter Eight
    Everybody’s at war with different things…I’m at war with my own heart sometimes.
    —Tupac Shakur
    T upac’s rap had a way of cutting straight to the heart of what she was thinking. Charity didn’t find any peace in knowing what was in her own heart. She wanted to pretend that she didn’t understand Daniel or that she wanted just his body or to protect him.
    But the truth was that she felt sometimes that there was nothing left inside of her except the two parts that warred with each other. Nothing left of that girl who’d been her family’s pampered princess. That all of the real Charity had been burned away in her quest for vengeance against the man who’d ruined her world.
    The man who’d dared to take her perfect fairy tale and ruin it. And she hadn’t been subtle about ruining that man’s life. She’d been very Old Testament about her quest against Kenkichi. She’d gone after his parents, and then after him. She’d taken his world apart as efficiently as he had hers.
    The only problem was that she’d emerged not knowing who she was anymore. And she still didn’t know.
    She doubted that knowledge was going to come to her now as she stared into Daniel’s green eyes.
    “What are you hiding?” he asked her as he dropped her wrist. He brought his hand up to her face, something he did with too much frequency. She was starting to really like the way he held her jaw in his hand. That ruined forefinger moving over her skin softly, tracing the line of her jaw.
    “Nothing,” she said, the honesty of that statement rattling around inside of her.
    “Charity,” he said, her name released on a breath.
    “I’m not lying.”
    “I know. You’re not empty.”
    His words scared her. How could he know the very fear that had always driven her?
    “How?”
    “It’s in your eyes. You think that you are—”
    She jerked her head away from him. “Don’t tell me what I think, Daniel. You don’t know me.”
    “Sweetheart, you don’t even know yourself,” he said.
    His words were at once sweet and cutting. She shook her head, angry that she’d let him distract her from her focus. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted to distract him. She had just realized that with Daniel she was playing a game she didn’t know how to win.
    But she was beginning to understand the rules. “You needle me when you want a distraction.”
    “I’m not needling you.”
    “That’s right, you aren’t.”
    He gave her one of those half-smiles of his. “When we get on the plane I want you to help me think like my enemy.”
    She sat up straighter. Finally, something she was good at. Once she