Secrets to Hide 3: Just a Little More by Ella Sheridan Read Free Book Online

storm.
    Angel had gone to Florida State to earn her degree. He’d teased her weeks ago about the shiny coat she’d unpacked for the winter. It was the color of the Goodyear blimp, a metallic gray relieved only by the giant Seminoles patch emblazoned on the back. Tonight he thanked God and the stars and anything else he could think of for that obnoxious coat and the fact that it shone even in the gloom of a full-blown snowstorm in the middle of the night. That silver coat could well have saved her life—at least until he got her home, when he just might strangle her for scaring him half to freaking death.
    She was huddled in a doorway, her feet dipped into the thick coating of snow on the sidewalk. Her head was bare. God . When her pinched, dead-white face finally came into view, eyes closed, his heart skipped several beats, then thundered on.
    “Angel?” His last few steps were more of a leap as he covered the distance between them. Don’t let me be too late! But then a puff of white escaped her slack mouth, just in time to keep him from screaming out his rage at the thought of losing her.
    “Angel! Angel, wake up, beautiful.” He grabbed her cheeks, shocked at the frozen feel of her skin. “Angel! You fucking wake up right now!”
    Ice-crusted eyelids fluttered, and slowly the deep navy depths of Angel’s eyes were revealed. “Brad?”
    He bit back another curse. The sting of tears burned behind his eyes and thickened his voice. “That’s right, beautiful. Come on. We gotta get you warm.”
    “No.” Angel batted at his hands ineffectively. “Just a little…more.”
    “No! No more,” he snarled, anger pouring through him like lava—or maybe that was relief. “You’re coming with me, whether you want to or not. We’re going home.”
    “No.” Angel’s head lolled against his shoulder when he lifted her into his arms. “No…can’t. Gotta get out.”
    Brad ignored her slurred words in favor of hustling her to the car. He managed to deposit her into the passenger seat and buckle her in without too much of a fight and adjusted the vents so a gentle flow of lukewarm air blew on her feet and torso. He grabbed the blanket from the backseat and draped it around her. Should he head to the hospital? Had she been out long enough for frostbite to be an issue? The temperature hovered in the lower twenties, but who knew how long she’d been out in this weather with inadequate covering? She had to have been walking awhile, which might’ve kept her warmer. Hell, he was from the South; everything he thought he knew about hypothermia came from The Day After Tomorrow , for God’s sake.
    He didn’t know what to do.
    Just get in the car and then figure it out, idiot.
    Right. The blowing wind and snow muffled the slam of the door, stealing his need to hit or throw or kick something, anything. Damn it! He slammed his hands on the roof of the car, feeling the sting of the cold as it seeped into his bare skin just as he imagined it had Angel’s. He fisted the thin layer of snow that had accumulated there, refusing to give in to the relief stealing his strength. His palms flared with pain, then went numb as the ice lingered against them, but still he hovered there outside her window, protecting her until he could get himself together and get the hell into the car without Angel seeing how scared shitless he’d been.
    By the time he slid into the driver’s seat, Angel was shaking so hard her teeth clanked together loudly in the stark silence of the car’s interior. Okay, hospital it was. He tucked the blanket more firmly around her, lingering to cup her jaw, lean over, and breathe his warm breath against her chilled cheek. He loved her so much he shook as hard as she did. He couldn’t live without her. God help him, but he couldn’t live if she left him all alone.
    “I’m taking you to the hospital,” he told her.
    Angel’s eyes shot open, a spark of defiance glimmering in the navy-blue depths. “No. Take me