Something Has to Give Read Online Free PDF Page A

jeans.
    “Stop that!” She pointed, but quickly snatched her hand back when she realized how badly it was shaking.
    He shucked his jeans all the way down his muscular legs and stepped out of them. Standing nonchalantly before her in nothing but a well-fitting pair of tightie-whities, he folded and dropped his pants on top of his boots without ever taking his dark eyes off her. “Good night, Elsie.”
    Except that he didn’t mean “good night” at all. Rather, he meant “go to hell”. She could hear the words hanging like icicles in the air between them.
    “Not in this bed,” she said hoarsely, so impotently helpless to stop him that she didn’t know what to do. Obviously, she couldn’t call the police. She couldn’t physically stop him ; it was laughable even to try. There were no guns anywhere in the house that she knew of, and although there were weapon-able knives in the kitchen, exactly what was she supposed to do once she’d retrieved one? Attack him? Yeah—she looked him up and down—yeah, right. He was a trained soldier. He was bigger, tougher—one hand crept back behind her to touch her still burning, throbbing backside—and definitely meaner. She had absolutely no illusions about how such a confrontation would end.
    “Anywhere else,” she said, waving her hands over the bed, blustering in the hopes he might listen, because bluster was literally all she could do. “Anywhere else in this house, but not in my bed!”
    Taking hold of the quilt, he whipped back the bedding . “Get the door on your way out.” He got in and jerked the blankets back up over him. Casting her one final look, he punched his pillow twice and lay down on his side, with arms folded hard across his chest and his back to her. “Get the light, too.”
    And just like that, her bedroom was no longer hers. Elsie stumbled backwards out into the hall. Shaking, she grabbed at the door handle, missed, grabbed again and finally managed to slam it shut between them. Then she stood there, shaking with anger and helpless fear. After eight months of false security, now she was going to lose everything all over again.
    Except that “everything” in this case hadn’t really been hers in the first place, had it?
    Yes , because she’d made it hers! She’d taken this dilapidated, abandoned house and she’d patched it up, fixed it up, and turned it back into a home. She wasn’t going to leave! Where would she go if she did?
    There was no place. She had nothing.
    Elsie covered her mouth with her hand, and momentarily bowed by the sudden weight that hit her in the back along with that realization. She had nothing. She was once more exactly where she’d been last spring. She could taste the desperation in the back of her mouth, that sickly taint that made her feel as if she were going to throw up.
    Get a hold of yourself, Elsie .
    Dragging herself up the wall, Elsie straightened her spine. Rydecker might be a soldier, but she was used to fighting too. She’d been fighting every single day for every fragile toehold of gain she’d taken, and she wasn’t about to back down now. If he’d had the power to really throw her out, the cop would have arrested her. He hadn’t; so Rydecker didn’t. The only way he could win this battle was by getting her to admit defeat.
    Well, Elsie was al l done being defeated.
    She scrubbed the tears she hadn’t realized were winding their way down her cheeks, and then she marched back into the bedroom. Sometime during her crisis in the hall, Rydecker had got up and shut the light off himself. He was back in bed now, still with his back to her, still with his arms folded across his chest. He was pretending to be asleep, but she knew better.
    She wasn’t about to strip down to her usual nightshirt, but she did kick off her shoes and then she got into bed, too. Robbing him of at least half of his blankets, she scissored them between her legs to ensure he couldn’t wrench them back and freeze her out during