Under Pressure. Kira Sinclair

him in his place when he’d needed it, and as an angry, scared, hurting adolescent, he’d needed it often. She’d had the highest hopes for him, expecting him to do her and the memory of his father proud.

      When his father was killed in action and his mother abandoned him, his grandmother had given him a safe place. So he’d wanted desperately to make her proud. His every decision growing up had been for that one purpose.

      But the pressure he’d felt to live up to the glowing ideal of his father and make up for his mother dumping him on her doorstep had been huge. Difficult for a child to shoulder.

      Right now, he felt the same weight as Kennedy stared up at him expectantly.

      “I’ve got this,” Asher forced out.

      “Obviously not, or you wouldn’t have run from that room like someone had tossed in a grenade.”

      Kennedy pressed closer. Asher countered with a single step backward. He would have gone farther, but his back collided with the solid plane of the wall. Damn the small room.

      She crowded him, glaring up out of those mesmerizing eyes, golden and fierce.

      “You’re not going to g-give up on this, are you?”

      “No.”

      He stared down at her, his mind spinning and his body in turmoil—his need for her intertwining uncomfortably with the fear that surfaced each time he thought about standing in front of those damn cameras.