Read Embraced for Free Online Page A

When I do, she
might have more to worry about than Vince. She’s going to have to worry about
me.”
    Ella ducked her head, though he caught the
amused curve of her lips.
    “It’s something that perhaps you should
consider,” she finally said as she raised her head, her gaze direct then,
somber. “Marey doesn’t always reach out for what she wants, Sax. She’s too used
to having it jerked away, just as she’s within reach of it.”
    He wanted her to come to him. She had asked
him, pleaded with him years before to leave her alone, to stop his campaign to
seduce her, to hold her. He had promised himself then that when the time came,
it would be Marey’s decision. Perhaps that was where he had made his mistake.
He hadn’t known then the things he knew now. Her determination to hold herself
aloof, to ensure she never lost anyone, nor was betrayed again.
    He pushed his hand into the pocket of his
slacks as he stared back at Ella, seeing the confident, sensual, loving woman
she had become over the past year. She had run from James for nearly a decade,
just as stubborn and determined as her friend was. She was happy now, glowing
with it. Could he fill Marey’s eyes with the same satisfaction, that glow of a
woman confident and well satisfied with what she found in her lover’s arms?
    He lowered his head, staring at the rose
carpet of the outer office as he fought to restrain the impulses that had been
rising inside him for weeks now. After Vince’s attack on her, he hadn’t wanted
her to feel as though she was confronting another extreme situation, a man
unable to let go.
    Perhaps instead of giving her the space to
find the answers, he was doing as Ella suggested instead. Giving her a chance
to hide. Marey didn’t need to hide anymore. She had been hiding for far too long.

Chapter Four
     
    Someone was in the house.
    Marey jerked up in bed later that night,
terrified as she heard the sound downstairs. What the hell was it? Why hadn’t
her alarm gone off?
    There it was again. She blinked in the
darkness. Was that a whistle? She stared into the dark bedroom, her heart
racing, the sound echoing in her ears as she fought to wake up, to make sense
of the sudden panic ripping through her again.
    The new alarm system was supposed to be
foolproof. Alerting the police and sounding a wail that would raise the dead if
the house was breached. Evidently, it wasn’t as secure as the salesman had
promised her.
    There it was again. It was a whistle. And
she knew that sound. The grating little tune was one Vince was fond of. He
would sound it for hours at a time, working himself into a rage as he did so.
It always heralded another accusation, another rage, and in those final weeks
of their marriage, another physical blow against her.
    Shit. She jumped from the bed, jerking her
robe on as she grabbed her cell phone from the bed and punched in the sheriff’s
number. This was insane. How the hell had he managed to get through the alarm
and into the house? And why was he being so stupid?
    “Sheriff’s office.” The dispatcher answered
on the first ring.
    “Janey, it’s Marey Dumont,” she snapped,
her voice low. “Vince has broken into the house.”
    She had gone to school with Janey, knew her
husband and her kids. None of them liked Vince. Not that she could blame them.
    “Stay with me, Marey, I’ll get someone on
the way out there.”
    Marey listened as Janey’s voice became more
distant, imperative, as she called in the report.
    “I have a car on the way, Marey,” she came
back, her voice calm, cool. “I want you to stay on the phone with me, honey,
till they get there. You say the alarm didn’t go off?”
    “Not a peep,” she whispered. “I just
happened to wake up when he made a sound downstairs. I don’t know how he got
through.”
    It didn’t make sense. Vince wasn’t the
brightest light in the house, and electronically, his skills were nil. He would
have needed the code to the gates as well as the