If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

he’d managed to keep that much hidden.
    But shit, he had to get it together.
    Had to get his head together, his act together, had to do … something.
    Shoving to his feet, Remy shambled naked toward the bathroom. Maybe if he blasted himself with enough hot water, and then flooded his body with enough caffeine … maybe.
    Maybe, maybe …
    He turned on the lights, but they hit his tired eyes with the force of a sledgehammer and, groaning, he turned them off again.
    No light. Not yet.
    Shower. Caffeine.
    Then light.
    Maybe.
    Not that he really needed light anyway. Not like he needed light to shower … or even to get dressed. If he didn’t have any light on, he wouldn’t have to worry about seeing his reflection, right?
    And the last thing he wanted to do just then was look himself square in the eye.
    No matter what the evidence said, no matter what the logic pointed to, it just didn’t feel right.
    It just didn’t feel right … at all.
*   *   *
    There were days when Hope Carson wished she’d just driven right through Ash. Instead of stopping in the small Kentucky town to see her friend, like she’d promised, she should have just kept on driving.
    No matter how much she loved Law, no matter how much she’d missed him, missed having a friend, there were days when she wished she had broken that promise and never stopped.
    Maybe she should have driven straight to the ocean.
    Hope had never seen the ocean.
    She’d wanted to go to the ocean for her honeymoon, but Joey … her not-so-beloved ex-husband hadn’t liked the idea.
    Everybody goes to the beach. Let’s do something different
.
    They’d gone to the mountains.
    Skiing in Aspen.
    But Hope hadn’t been very good at skiing. And she hated the cold … it was like it cut right through her bones. She’d fallen down so many times, and had so many bruises.
    “Should have just kept on driving,” she muttered as she listened to the voices just outside her door.
    Would have been wiser, that much was sure.
    Desolate, she stared out the window and wondered if she’d have a room wherever they were taking her next.
    Would it be another hospital?
    A jail?
    She just didn’t know.
    Another hospital, probably. One with
real
security
.
    Dark, ugly dots swirled in on her vision.
    Fear locked a fist around her throat.
Locked … trapped …
    She barely managed to keep the moan behind her teeth.
    When the door opened, she managed to stifle her wince.
    Barely.
    It was just one of the nursing assistants—this time.
    But soon … soon, it would be uniformed deputies. She knew it.
    Hearing the quiet, muffled sound of shoes on the linoleum, she stared out the window and tried not to think about what was coming.
    No matter what, she had to be grateful for one thing.
    No matter what, she wasn’t trapped back in that house in Oklahoma with her husband, and she wasn’t trapped in that hospital where he had complete, total control over her.
    She’d almost willingly be held for a crime she didn’t commit rather than go back to that particular hell.
    At least she wasn’t anywhere close to Joey.
    At least she wasn’t under his control, in any way, shape, or form.
    That counted, for a hell of a lot.
    But it wasn’t enough, and the longer she stared at the plain, white walls of the small hospital room, the more they resembled a cell. So instead, she stared out the window—a reinforced window, one she couldn’t open. Not that she’d tried.
    But the nurse had been a little too free with that information, right after she’d come in to check her blood pressure and
offer
her the medications—just an offer this time.
    Nobody had tried to force it on her again.
    Not since Remy …
    She swallowed and tried not to think about that. It really, really wouldn’t do her any good to think about that, about him. As humiliating as it had been, for anybody to see her like that, it had been nothing short of amiracle in the end. Whether he’d said something to one of the doctors after he’d left or just scared the hell out of the nurses … well, nobody had tried to force any more drugs on her.
    No antipsychotics, no tranquilizers, nothing. That fancy law degree of his, Hope imagined. She didn’t know, and honestly, didn’t care.
    As long as nobody was forcing drugs on her she didn’t need.
    Her head was completely clear. She should be grateful.
    And she would try to be.
    But her gut told her she hadn’t seen the last of Remy Jennings, and the next time