Saving Grace (Serve and Protect Series) Read Online Free Page B

strode out of the bedroom.
    Grace was still trying to process what had happened when she heard the front door slam. A few seconds later, Ray’s truck roared to life, reversed out of the driveway and accelerated off. As she listened to the sound of his engine growing fainter, she realized she’d felt this same black despair before.
    At the wheel of her car as she sped away from her husband on a ribbon of wet blacktop.

Chapter 2

    D AMMIT , HE REALLY SHOULDN ’ T have left Grace like that.
    Ray wasn’t a mile out of town before that sober second thought took root. Not that he let it stop him. He let a good twenty miles roll past before he finally pulled into a busy truck stop. Nosing his black Pathfinder in between an eighteen-wheeler and a gleaming RV, he killed the engine.
    She was starting to remember. Not everything, but it was beginning to come. He’d seen the fear in those pale blue eyes.
    He closed his own eyes, and instantly saw Grace’s face. And God help him, her softly rounded body, draped in his shirt. He’d almost dropped the damned tray when he’d walked in to find her sprawled on their bed, touching herself.
    It wasn’t just dismay over her introducing sex when he so desperately needed to steer clear of that minefield. No, the shock was that she’d done it at all. Then she’d pinned him to the bed like a wrestler taking an opponent to the mat and kissed him senseless. Grace just didn’t do those things.
    At least, not with you, chump.
    “Arrrgh!” Ray slammed out of the truck.
    For a moment he stood there in the parking lot, his chest heaving. Yards away, oblivious to his distress, traffic whizzed by, disappearing into the August evening.
    For a moment, he thought about getting back in his truck and driving straight into the deepening dusk. He could just drive and drive, stopping only for gas and to sleep. There’d be nothing and no one to stop him until he hit the Pacific Ocean, three thousand miles away. The idea was incredibly seductive.
    Sighing, he turned on his heel and walked into the brightly-lit restaurant. Though he’d kicked the habit eight years ago, the urge for a cigarette was almost overpowering. But instead of buying a pack of Export ‘A’s, going outside and chain-smoking a half a pack, he sat down and drank three cups of truck-stop coffee.
    Feeling both queasy and jittery from all that coffee, he left the tired-looking waitress a generous tip, climbed into his vehicle, and headed home.
    Four miles down the road, at sixty miles per hour, the front tire on the driver’s side blew out. The SUV veered sharply across the centerline.
    Ray hit the brakes, fighting with the wheel. Oh, Lord, a row of transports in the oncoming lane!
    Fear, sharp and acrid, lanced through him as he realized the vehicle wouldn’t be strong-armed back into the right-hand lane. He was gonna be bug-splatter on the lead rig’s grill!
    Taking his foot off the brake, he wrenched the steering wheel hard to the left. He sucked in his breath, half expecting the SUV to topple with that sharp maneuver. By some miracle, it streaked across the highway, avoiding a head-on collision by mere yards.
    The sound of an air horn echoing in his ears, he found himself on the paved shoulder. He struggled to keep the Pathfinder out of oncoming traffic and off the guardrail, which was all that stood between him and the Saint John River, glistening in the moonlight. Violent gusts from the rigs passing just inches away buffeted his vehicle. The guardrail suddenly looked about as tall as a street curb.
    Even as he thought these things, part of him marveled that he could. But every second seemed to stretch out forever, every action and reaction seemed reduced to slow motion.
    Had it been like this for Grace? When the Mustang careened out of control on that rainy highway, had she thought about the husband she’d left behind? Or had she thought only of her lover, grieving the fact that she might never reach him?
    Suddenly, he had