Irrepressible You by Georgina Penney Read Free Book Online Page A

front door. The problem was that they both knew Amy couldn’t, or more to the point wouldn’t, do anything about it. If she went to the police and reported him, Jo might find out about it and that was unacceptable: in the early days, Liam had threatened to get Jo fired by spreading a couple of malicious rumours if Amy said anything. At the time, Liam had been Jo’s boss and Amy had fully believed he’d do it.
    Years later, Amy knew she’d been naive.
    Jo had frequently complained about how much men on the rigs gossiped and Amy knew that any rumour Liam could have spread would have been ignored. She hadn’t known that at nineteen. At the time, she’d been worried about her sister’s career and, much more importantly, her feelings. Jo had introduced Amy to Liam, thinking he was the antithesis of their dad, a good man who’d look after her, treat her well and keep an eye on her while Jo took her first international oil and gas job. Amy had gone along with it because she’d watched Jo protect her for years, taking hits from their dad when they were younger, worrying about how to make everything work financially and emotionally after they’d run away from home. In Amy’s mind it had been her way of giving Jo peace of mind, of giving her something back and setting her free to take her career to the next level.
    Having to tell Jo she’d ended the relationship hurt Amy almost as much as it hurt Jo, but it was Jo’s reaction that broke Amy’s heart. Jo had been so upset, couldn’t understand what had gone wrong, so she’d confronted Amy. The year of silence that resulted between them was easier to Amy’s mind than telling her sister the truth about Liam. They’d only made up after Scott locked them in a room and refused to let them out until they’d formed a truce, with the tacit understanding that Amy’s love life was well and truly off-limits in the future.
    Jo would be devastated if she discovered that she’d pushed Amy into an abusive relationship, never mind the guilt she’d feel over that awful fight they’d had nine years ago. There was no way Amy would put her sister through that, even today, especially not when Jo had physically put herself on the line so many times in the past to protect Amy, even getting shot two years ago in what had been the beginning of the end as far as Amy and Jo’s relationship with their parents was concerned. Just the memory of what had happened was still horrible.
    Jo had been visiting their mum, trying to convince her to leave their dad. Their mum had chosen to stay and Jo had taken a bullet to her thigh when leaving.
    It had still taken a little while for the reality of what had happened to sink in, for Amy and Jo to realise that their relationship with their parents couldn’t go on.
    Amy had been completely devastated. The pain still hadn’t left her and probably never would but it was preferable to what had been before; Jo always trying to protect her from their dad’s violent outbursts.
    The last thing Amy wanted was to see the worried look from their early years back in Jo’s eyes and know she’d put it there. Anything was better than that.
    Amy groaned in frustration, pounded her feather pillow into shape and closed her eyes again, but the neon-pink light from her Hello Kitty alarm clock burned through her eyelids.
    It was no use. Might as well get up.
    She threw herself out of bed and padded into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. The ritual of measuring tea leaves and boiling water calmed her down, as did the sight of the rain beating against her dark kitchen window. She contemplated doing some of the ironing that had been piling up over the week but decided against it. Her wardrobe was high maintenance, but she didn’t mind. Her clothes were so much a part of the persona she’d created more than ten years before, she couldn’t imagine not taking painstaking care to maintain them. Four in the morning, however, was not the time for ironing.
    Once her