Road Rage Read Online Free PDF Page A

him when he was a baby.
    “Night, Haley-girl.” He kissed her forehead and switched off the light. “Love you.”
    “Night, Daddy-man. Love you too.” She only called him Daddy at bedtime now. The rest of the time it was Dad .
    His chest tight with love, he pulled her door shut then sat down with a beer to watch SportsCenter on low volume. An hour later, he brushed his teeth and headed to bed.
    While he ran through his nightly workout, he found himself entertaining the idea of dating again. “Wouldn’t work,” he concluded, exhaling as he crunched forward in a sit-up. He wasn’t the strutting quarterback who had girls hanging all over him, anymore. And he’d married too young to get much practice at the whole bar-hopping, pick-up-line thing. He wouldn’t even know how to start talking to a woman.
    He was thirty-four now. Practically middle-aged. He didn’t have a six-pack anymore, even though he did sit-ups every night. His knees creaked when he did squats. Hell, sitting on the floor with Haley for two hours had nearly crippled him.
    He was a classic.
    And he was a dad. He didn’t need any more than that out of life.
    Besides, he didn’t think he could take the failure of losing another woman because of his quick temper. Better to focus on his daughter and his day job and steer clear of that whole relationship mess.
    * * * *
    She had to be dead. There were too many checks in the column to keep denying it.
    After spending the night on the edge of the man’s mattress, soothing him through his nightmares, she’d found herself back in the fog. Interminable hours later, it still held her prisoner.
    She could move her limbs, but had nothing to move against, no foundation, no gravity. She didn’t know whether the person she’d been had believed in heaven or hell, but the fact that this disorienting nothingness clearly wasn’t heaven felt like a betrayal.
    “Was I that bad?” she asked the fog. It didn’t answer. “Do you hear me? Anyone? Please!”
    Frustration and desperation were her only companions.
    “I hate this!” she yelled. The fog swallowed her protest without so much as an echo.
    She felt abandoned. Worse than alone. A lonely person at least had a sense of self. She didn’t even have that.
    But she’d had the blond man for company, even if just for a night. And she’d had the feeling he’d needed her. Maybe she had some kind of weird commission to comfort people having nightmares, and if she did a good enough job, she could earn her way into heaven. Since that hope stood between her and despair, she clung to it like a lifeline.
    Suddenly, the fog thinned. A solid surface came up to meet her feet, and the last of the smoky wisps parted to reveal the man’s room. She was back in her corner.
    “Oh, thank God!” She fell to her hands and knees in relief. Being somewhere, anywhere, beat that nothingness. But she had to admit, this room made her feel safe.
    As she regained her composure, she noticed the man doing push-ups between the foot of the bed and the dresser, in nothing but a pair of tight, black boxer briefs.
    His toes braced on the floor mere inches from her hands. Directly in front of her, his calves and thighs made a long, muscular line to a cotton-hugged rear end. His tanned back flared from a narrow waist to broad, muscular shoulders. Powerful arms bunched deliciously as he pumped the plank of his body up and down. The hair at the nape of his neck curled with perspiration. She had an urge to plant her nose in that moist hair and draw in his scent of Irish Spring soap and summer sunshine.
    Virile, masculine flesh filled her vision, and the rhythmic rush of heavy breathing bathed her ears with a sound of life so welcome after the deathly silence of the fog. After hours of sensory deprivation, she greedily feasted her senses.
    Before she could think better of it, she extended her hand toward the man’s right foot and stroked a finger down his sole, tracing the arch from heel to ball. His