Challenging Andie Read Online Free

unfinished plateful of food away as though her appetite had deserted her. “The news agency just told me there were reports that she’d been pulled out of her car and—”
    “—and killed. Yes.” Ryan battled an unfamiliar urge to envelop her hand with his. She needed human contact, especially now. Her mouth trembled. She looked as though she was holding herself together by an effort of will, but doubtless if she wanted someone’s touch it wouldn’t be his. “I was on the streets, returning to the hotel, and heard about it minutes after it happened. We got into a car and drove to the house in the middle of Rexa that had been designated as the meeting place. Somehow the military junta discovered the rebel leader was going to talk to the press.”
    Andie squeezed a napkin between her fingers. “Keep talking,” she whispered.
    “The car was riddled with bullets. Her driver was dead and the doors were open. There was no sign of Emily.” Just a river of her blood staining the seat red and flowing into the street. Details no daughter needed to hear.
    “Why didn’t they leave her body?” Andie’s voice was laced with agony. “Why didn’t they leave me at least something to bury?” Her clear blue gaze fixed to his. “Her coffin was empty, Ryan. I couldn’t even feel…” She broke off and buried her face in her hands. Her body shook as she cried silently.
    “The deniability factor. Without a body the international community can consider her missing. What they hadn’t expected was the photograph.”
    A photograph had been smuggled into the hotel where all the news agencies were staying. It showed Emily Harte’s body laid out on the dry dirt before some sort of a rough dwelling made of blood or paint-stained corrugated iron. The photographer had never been identified, but the general consensus was that it was probably a rebel sympathizer who understood how important confirmation of her death would be to the rebel cause.
    “I saw the picture in the papers—but you know, with Photoshop…” Hope lit in her eyes suddenly.
    Ryan shook his head. “I saw the original. There’s no question that the picture was faked, Andie. I’m sorry.”
    She gasped, then her body shuddered and tears ran unchecked down her face.
    A gust of wind lifted the bottom of Andie’s hair, and a strand brushed against her cheek.
    The door to the pub opened, and a crowd of laughing students crowded into the quiet space, disrupting the ambience.
    Feeling eyes on him, Ryan glanced over to the bar to see the barmaid staring over, a frown marring her pretty face. “We should go.” Ryan stood, walked to the bar to settle the bill, and returned to the table. “Come on, we can talk in my car.”
    She came with him as quietly as a sleepwalker. Shock must have robbed the fight from her. He knew all about how grief could affect people. Had seen it firsthand more times than most people in the aftermath of conflict. Sometimes anger was uppermost, sometimes the eviscerating rawness of grief as a loved one was wrenched away. Sometimes, facing the truth left the victim numb and pliant. As Andie was now. Sadness settled on Ryan’s shoulders, weighing him down like a heavy cloak. Her solitary journey into pain was inevitable. Nothing he could say or do would bring relief. Frustration bloomed, expanding to a cavern of powerlessness.
    He opened the door and helped her inside.
    The hotel management had asked him to return Emily’s things to the news agency where no doubt they’d be boxed up and forwarded, perhaps with a brief note.
    He’d only learned Emily was a mother when he arrived at the station with the little package under his arm. The news had shocked him to the core. The thought of someone being handed a loved one’s effects by a stranger, as he had, was unthinkable.
    Then and there, he’d decided that someone needed to make sure Emily’s daughter was okay. He was that someone. “I need to...”
    “I can’t face talking about my