Center Stage: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 8) Read Online Free PDF Page A

voicemail at the very least. That’s what Doug had done.
    Right. Like there was a good way to be jilted.
    There. The turnoff for the county road. She signaled her exit and took the off-ramp carefully. Zach would approve. At least there was something she was doing right on this miserable, messed-up day.
    She flipped on her high beams and punched up the volume, now that she was on the scarcely populated road. Roy Orbison sang straight to her, hitting her in the pit of her loneliness. Every drawn out note of “Crying” tugged at something deep inside her. Her throat tightened, and her eyes welled up, and she needed to scream and wail and sob.
    She was ten minutes from the farmhouse she’d grown up in. Ten minutes from unlocking the front door, from running a cool bath in the deep, claw-footed porcelain tub, from cracking open a beer and folding a towel behind her head, and letting loose the tears that might never stop. She could cry as hard as she wanted. She could even scream if she wanted; no one would hear her. No one would worry.
    That was the beauty of her old family home, quiet and peaceful in the middle of the North Carolina fields—she could be alone with her misery there and no one would ever know the difference.
    But she wasn’t alone. There was a car following her. A car with obnoxious headlights that were far too bright in her mirror.
    She eased her foot off the gas pedal, hoping the other driver would pass. The car, though, kept perfect pace with her.
    She edged over toward the shoulder, giving the other vehicle plenty of room. When it still didn’t pull around her, she actually tapped her brakes, wishing she could send a command in Morse Code— go around me, already ! The other car didn’t get the message.
    A swell of unease twisted through Lindsey’s gut, fear that was the identical twin of nausea. The tightening in her belly reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since grabbing a quick sandwich in the middle of the morning, and even then she’d only managed to choke down a few bites before Grace had rushed her off for her mani-pedi, for her hair appointment, for their early arrival at the church.
    Glancing at her phone, she considered calling her sister. But that was stupid—Grace was probably over at Rachel’s house, helping her put the twins to bed. Her sisters would be slouching around in shorts and stretched out T-shirts, relaxed, content. Lindsey shouldn’t bother either of them any more than she already had that day, with her fiasco of a non-wedding. Besides, what could Grace or Rachel or even Beth do about a creepy driver behind her on the county road?
    She could call Zach.
    Yeah, right. Call Zach and have him show up at the farmhouse, with a nuclear weapon in one hand and a straitjacket in the other. She wasn’t going to call her big brother to make everything all okay. She was a grown woman. She could handle a tailgating jerk on the road to the farm.
    Slowing even further, she snapped on her turn signal before she eased the car onto the shoulder. Her pulse soared as she realized the car behind her was stopping too. This wasn’t some distracted driver following her lead. This was someone following her. Stalking her. What the hell was she supposed to do now?
    She could slam her foot down on the gas pedal. She knew this road—it ran straight for miles, past the farm, all the way to Shepardsville.
    But those high-quality headlights ran an ice-cold poker down her spine. Lights like that belonged on a luxury vehicle. A car with an engine a hell of a lot better than her Prius. She could never outrun something like that in her car.
    She’d just have to wait until the guy got out of his car. If he got to her door, she could pound the gas, leap forward, put some real distance between them before he could recover, before he could get back to his own car and chase her down…
    She swallowed hard and told herself she could do this.
    She watched in her rear-view mirror as the other driver’s door