Scarred (Book 1, #1) Read Online Free

kept her journal and her pen. She opened the book to the entry she had made earlier before she left for work.
    The first day of the rest of my life.
    June 1, 2011
    I got a thousand dollar tip tonight for doing nothing more than a pole dance. That was unusual itself, but then the same guy dropped twenty grand for me to be his “private dancer” for a week. Sometimes I get so annoyed with these men and the anger I feel at having changed my entire life because of one of them, boils to the surface. Other times, like now, I have to wonder just how lonely does a man have to be to spend that kind of money on simple companionship...and companionship of the most superficial nature to boot.
    It’s strange, because if you look at this man and his life on paper you would say he was the least likely candidate in the state for loneliness. I guess it’s another lesson for me on the virtues of not judging people based solely on first impressions...everyone has layers, like an onion. Some look fresh on the outside and the deeper you peel them back, the more rotten the layers become. I know the opposite is true as well, but that’s the side I have a harder time seeing, not because of the physical scars, but because of the psychological ones. Those are the ones that urge me to keep everyone at a distance...especially now. When Jesse gets out of prison I’ll have to know for certain that there is nothing left of the old me to lead him in my direction.

Chapter 6
    ––––––––
    C hloe woke up the next morning with a new resolve. She didn’t really want to know anything more about Derek Stark. She knew that if she’d ever seen him before...if she’d ever so much as glanced into those ice blue eyes, she wouldn’t have forgotten him, she couldn’t have. It’s been two years since she molded herself into someone new...there is no way he knows who she is. She knew she was just being paranoid.
    He’s just some lonely freak like the rest of them, only he happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. Like Lexi said, it’s really a blessing not to have some fat, bald creep rubbing his dick through his trousers while she danced. She would keep that in the front of her mind and try to let the rest of it go.
    She got up and took a quick shower. Lexi wasn’t up yet and she doubted she would be for a while. They worked odd hours, so Lexi slept odd hours. Chloe did her best to get up at the same time every day. She had too much on her plate to sleep half the day away. Today was her advanced self-defence class with Maximus and he was the best.
    When she first moved to Rhode Island she was working in a diner. One of the girls she met there had told her about a self-defence work-shop she was going to.   Chloe went with her and as it turned out, that one weekend had gone a long way towards instilling some of the confidence back in her that Jesse had beaten out of her. So she had decided to take the entire beginner’s course. It concentrated on teaching women how to use their personal strengths against their assailant’s physical and mental weaknesses. They also had them do a lot of exercises designed to alleviate the daily fear from their lives. The fear of being attacked in your home or on the street. The fear of date-rape and domestic violence...
    Chloe loved it and she was good at it. At the end of the course they had what was called an “Adrenaline Stress Training” where an assailant...properly padded so that he was safe, would attack them in various ways. They got to apply the information they’d learned using both their physical skills and their mental prowess.  
    She aced that first one, kicking a six foot two one hundred and seventy pound man’s ass to the mat. She was instantly hooked.
    She dressed in her compression pants and a tank-top. The weather this time of year in Rhode Island was gorgeous. She slipped on her tennis shoes and grabbed her I-Pod and her water and headed out. The class was about six blocks from the beach-side