He's the One by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

hell or high water.
    Clearly, the suspects didn’t want her to get to the D.A.’s office, at least not before
     they skipped town with the money from the insurance from the first boat and any physical
     evidence. Chances were that had already happened, and they were long gone.
    Ella shook her head. She should have taken that job at Target out of college like
     her mother had wanted. Sure, she looked awful in red, but she’d be willing to bet
     no one would bother to break and enter her place because of that job, or handcuff her naked to her own towel rack.
    Unless she wanted them to.
    A slight breeze blew in the open window, breaking the brutal summer heat as the sun
     sank. Oh, God, the sun was sinking, and the severity of her situation sank in. It
     was Saturday evening. Next week was a long time away. God knew she wouldn’t starve,
     not with the five extra pounds she’d been carrying around since puberty—okay, ten , damn it. Still, the amount of time looming ahead felt long, and never having been
     big on self-discipline, she was already hungry.
    She could reach the shower and the toilet. The sink was across from her, a leg’s length
     away. Above it was the mirror that assured her she was as frightening-looking as she’d
     imagined, her hair air-dried and a complete frizz bomb, her face not wearing a lick
     of makeup. Ack . She decided not to look at herself again.
    Beneath the toilet was a cabinet which, if she stretched, she could just toe open.
     A box of tampons, two extra rolls of toilet paper, and a tube of toothpaste. Gee, yum .
    She looked out the window. The cottage was isolated, down a long, sinuous stretch
     of highway surrounded by bush-lined high desert hills, punctuated by dense groves
     of date palms and citrus trees and little else.
    The sun sank away, the daylight faded, and Ella felt anxiety pit in her stomach. But
     even stretching her leg out to bionic contortions, she couldn’t reach the light switch.
    And the dark came.
    She’d spent a good amount of her childhood chasing after her three older brothers,
     and feeling invincible because of them. She’d wear her blankie as a cape and pretend
     she was a superhero who could fly through wind and sleet and snow, who could do anything.
    She didn’t feel so invincible now.
    Then came a noise. The front door closing. When had it opened? Heart in her throat, she froze. Or rather her body froze. Her towel did not. It slipped
     yet again. She grabbed it with her left hand and hastily tucked the corner back between
     her breasts, her heart tattooing a crazy beat against her ribs.
    No other sound, but she could feel someone on the other side of the door.
    Listening.
    Breathing.
    Oh, God. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t even draw air into her lungs.
    The handle on the bathroom door began to turn.
    Ella stared at it, her life flashing before her eyes. She hadn’t watered her plants.
     She hadn’t tried skydiving. She hadn’t reconciled her checking account!
    The door creaked open.
    She stuffed her uncuffed hand against her mouth to hold back her panicked whimper
     at what was about to happen to her. What would they tell her family? No one had even
     known she was coming here, not her parents, her brothers, not even—
    “Ella?”
    At that low, husky, almost unbearably familiar voice, she squinted into the shadows
     of the opened door, thinking, Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.
    But indeed, the form was tall, wide in the shoulders, narrow in the hip, the body
     built like the long-distance swimmer he used to be. “ James? ”
    The shadow stepped into the bathroom and came to an abrupt halt. Not a shadow at all
     but the one man she hadn’t wanted to see her like this, the one man she hadn’t wanted
     to see, period.
    Her mouthwateringly sexy, break-her-heart-and-stomp-on-it husband.
    Make that almost ex-husband.

Chapter Two
    E lla let out the pent-up breath she’d been holding and tried to look normal. As if
     being handcuffed in nothing but a