A Love Worth Living Read Online Free

reached for her. He pulled her out and she sagged against him.
    Her sigh of relief choked to a halt when David’s hands wrapped around her neck. She took a closer look at him—rotting flesh, bullet wounds, everything the children had suffered. “Yes, Carrie,” he hissed through a rotting jaw, “you’re going to break when you lose me too.”
    “No!” The floor beneath her quaked in response and the ground broke apart around her. Her body shook from phantom hands on her shoulders.
    “Carrie, God, wake up!”
    Carrie’s eyes, swollen and itchy, popped open to reveal David’s face. He shook her again. She flinched away, cowering on the couch until the lingering fingers of her nightmare let go and reality seeped back into her awareness.
    She sat up, her back rigid with knotted muscles. “What are you doing in my apartment?” She tried to keep the accusation from her tone, but it was either that or vulnerability, and she knew the greater evil in such a choice. The weak part of her wanted to let him wrap her in his arms. The logical part of her created a very organized list of reasons why that path led to disaster.
    His frown deepened, looking odd on his usually cheerful face. Pangs of regret hit her chest. She’d put those lines there.
    “Gunnerson called you, and when you didn’t pick up, he sent me over to check on you. The deposition starts in thirty minutes. He was worried.” He looked away when he answered, his eyes only flickering back to her once.
    Bloody hell! She leaped up from the couch and rubbed the nightmare from her eyes. With frantic hands, she scraped all the photos together and shoved them back in their folder before she stripped out of her work clothes, leaving a trail of laundry from her couch to the kitchen. She pressed a few buttons, and manna, in espresso form, brewed into her favorite travel mug. She grabbed milk and sugar from the fridge and her mouth watered in anticipation of her morning latte.
    A choked sound made her spin around. David’s eyes were glued to her almost-naked body.
    “Shit!” She scrambled to cover herself and darted into her bedroom. She’d definitely flashed David her goods, and if she wasn’t consumed by anxiety about her meeting, she’d probably panic about that too.
    Instead, she swept all other issues aside and, hands shaking, dressed in one of the five navy suits in her closet. She fumbled with the buttons of her cream blouse, huffing in frustration when her post-nightmare jitters made it nearly impossible to dress herself.
    “Let me.” David, tall and imposing, pulled Carrie’s hands to her sides and out of his way. All business, he did up her buttons and helped her into her coat before he grabbed her travel mug from the dresser and placed it in her hands. “Double shot, skim milk, two sugars. Let’s go before you’re late. And no, you’re not driving.”
    She would have complained if she hadn’t been sucking down her coffee like it was oxygen. On the way out, she stuffed that damned file into her tote and fished out her phone—dead battery. Hard to hear an alarm, or phone calls, from a bricked phone.
    “Twenty minutes, Carrie.”
    In a daze, she followed David out of her apartment and let him lock it behind her. Her fingers clenched, like a tight enough grip could stop the tense threads of her life from unraveling around her.
    They traveled in silence down to the parking garage where David ushered her into his car before backing out with a well of patience Carrie couldn’t fathom. If she’d been driving, she would have pealed out of there, as much running from her morning as rushing toward her appointment.
    Once on the street, David poked at the radio until classic rock piped through the car. A few heartbeats later, he broke the silence. “Must have been some nightmare.”
    She was not going into it, not before this trial and certainly not with him. “I overslept. My phone battery died.”
    “Bullshit.” His harsh curse sliced through the