Hannah Alexander - Safe Haven

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Hannah Alexander - Safe Haven» — ознакомительный отрывок электронной книги совершенно бесплатно, а после прочтения отрывка купить полную версию. В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: unrecognised, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Safe Haven: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Safe Haven»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

A TEENAGE FUGITIVE–Youthful master of disguise Fawn Morrison comes to Hideaway seeking refuge. Now that her dangerous game has turned deadly, she must entrust her safety to strangers.A DOUBTING DOCTOR–Karah Lee Fletcher relishes the challenges offered by Hideaway's new clinic, until an unsettling discovery shakes her confidence. Despite self-doubt, she reaches out to Fawn and finds unexpected grace.A LONELY RANGER–Their first meeting leaves Ranger Taylor Jackson vowing to avoid strong-willed Karah Lee. Yet, observing her interact with patients, Taylor begins to feel admiration. Could it lead to something deeper?

Safe Haven — читать онлайн ознакомительный отрывок

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Safe Haven», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

She didn’t argue. How could she? He was trying to get rid of her. “You’ll be here when I get back?” she asked, voice soft, conciliatory.

“I’m not leaving you, Princess, but I have some work to do, and I’ve got to be alone to do it.”

Karah Lee Fletcher yawned for the third time in less than five minutes as her eyes glazed and she struggled to maintain her attention on the highway ahead of her. She was too close to her destination to give in to sleep now, or to the slight nausea she’d battled ever since eating that greasy hamburger in Springfield.

She was going to have to start eating healthier. And she needed to get more sleep. Working with sick people all the time left her open to just about every virus in Missouri, and when she didn’t take care of herself, her immune system let her know about it.

The center line of the road blurred, and Karah Lee jerked the steering wheel to the right. “Come on, focus,” she muttered to her ten-year-old Ford Taurus sedan, as if the car were the culprit weaving back and forth inside the boundary of her lane. “It isn’t that late, and we’re almost there. Only a few more miles.”

Actually, it would be closer to ten miles before she reached Hideaway, and darkness had descended over Missouri some time ago. She glanced at the glowing numbers on the dash. Nine-thirty. Okay, not that long ago, but she’d worked last night. Big difference.

She felt another yawn coming on, and reluctantly closed the vents that allowed the sweet Ozark air to drift through the car. Time for the big guns.

She switched on the air conditioner full force and took a few deep breaths, aiming all four vents toward her. Ah, yes, that chased away most of the nausea and blew off some of the fog that hovered in her brain. The improvement wouldn’t last long, judging by her experience of the past hour. Highway 76 west of Branson had very little traffic to keep her occupied, and it made her wonder: Did someone know something she didn’t? Or could she be lost?

She pulled over to the side of the road and checked the directions Ardis Dunaway had given her. Follow the Highway 76 signs and ignore the strangeness of the new roads that had been added in the past few months. This place had changed a lot, but she still knew how to follow directions.

The stars congregated in the darkness of the country sky, but the moon was nowhere in evidence. The trees on either side of her seemed to swallow any excess light. Another attack of the yawns beset Karah Lee as the night invaded the car with increasing heaviness…and her eyelids drooped ever closer to catastrophe….

She jerked upright. “Time to get serious.” Karah Lee hated talking to herself. To her, it meant that, after thirty-four years, the loneliness of single life had finally affected her mind. People who talked to themselves became so addicted to it that they did so in public. Death knell for a social life. So she wouldn’t get into the habit of it, but if she fell asleep now and ran off the road and killed herself, that, too, would end future prospects.

She reached for the radio knob, then thought better of it. The blare of noise would only cheapen the experience of driving into this magical land that had made such an impact on her when she was a teenager—when the roads had been so much narrower than they were now.

Finally, she cast a quick glance into the back seat, where her huge black cat, Monster, lay snoozing in his pet taxi, strapped safely in place with the seat belt. “You know, you could learn to carry your weight in this family, and at least rattle your cage a little, give me one of those good deep snarls when I start to nod off. Your life is dependent for the next few moments on my ability to keep my wits, and they’re threatening to scatter out across the Ozarks like leaves in a tornado.”

She heard a grumpy cat-mutter and nodded. “That’s better. I probably should have put you up here in the front with me, but I thought I’d be nice and let you sleep through this trip. It’s stupid to drive when I’ve barely had eight full hours of sleep in the past three days.”

The husky-hoarse sound of her own voice in the confined space of the car would probably keep her awake for a few moments. “How many patients have I seen in the past three years who’d fallen asleep at the wheel? I don’t feel like becoming another statistic.”

Just last week a father of three was fatally injured on I–70 during rush hour when he veered over onto the shoulder, then apparently overcorrected and slammed into a car in the next lane. His friends said later he’d gone thirty-six hours without sleep. Countless accidents were caused by irresponsible drivers who…

Her head nodded forward. She took a deep breath, slowed her speed, flexed her hands. She should have given herself more time, should’ve asked for an extra day to get here, but no, good ol’ tough Karah Lee could do anything. She’d been accused by co-workers of having the stamina, pain tolerance and size of a redwood tree. At times, she was proud of the comparison. Other times, it made her feel lonelier. Few people took the time to venture past the facade of indomitable redhead and get to know the real Karah Lee Fletcher.

Monster, given to Karah Lee by a colleague recently engaged to a cat hater, wasn’t exactly what she had in mind as a lifelong companion. In fact, they barely knew each other, and the relationship wasn’t improving with time. When she complained about him at work, however, the staff teased that Monster sounded a lot like his new owner.

She was not amused.

The road blurred. She could not keep her eyes open. She desperately needed sleep.

Maybe if she just pulled over to the side of the road for a short nap…but experience had taught her that if she allowed herself to close her eyes for a few moments, it would take a loud beeper in her ear to bring her out of it before morning. Just a few more miles, and—

A shadow separated itself from the darkness of the trees, followed by another shadow and another, into the glow of her headlights, barely twenty feet from her front bumper. She slammed on the brakes and swerved as three deer darted back and forth over the road in confusion. The tires of Karah Lee’s car skidded into the brush at the edge of the shoulder, and she couldn’t prevent the slide, couldn’t veer from the tree that came at her with sickening swiftness.

The impact thrust her forward, but her seat belt grabbed and held. The crash stunned her. She sat in horrified aftershock.

Monster yowled and scratched at the pet taxi with frantic cries, but Karah Lee sat frozen. Suddenly, she realized that she did not have the stamina, or the pain tolerance, of a redwood.

She fainted.

Chapter Two

Fawn stepped from the elevator on the seventh floor, heart still pounding, hands shaking harder than they had been when she left. She reached into her money-stuffed purse for the key card. Would he be here?

It wasn’t as if she’d never been dumped before. It had happened twice in the past few months, but each time it had been harder to return to other kinds of work. And here she was in Branson, Missouri. She didn’t even know these streets, and she had a strange feeling she wouldn’t be able to do as much business here, even if she could force herself to do that business again.

But what else could she do?

The card slid into the silent-lock mechanism, and to her relief the door opened at the slightest pressure of her hand. Hearing Bruce’s voice, she broke out with a sweat of relief. He was still here.

“Vincent didn’t have the guts to come and talk to me himself,” she heard him say from the other room, “so he sent you.”

She stopped in the doorway and frowned as she caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man in an expensive-looking dark gray suit. His back was to her, and Bruce stood facing her, the shadow of his big body outlined in the neon lights that flashed into the room through the lanai windows. He didn’t even glance toward her when she entered.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Safe Haven»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Safe Haven» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Nicholas Sparks - Safe Haven
Nicholas Sparks
Hannah Alexander - A Killing Frost
Hannah Alexander
Mark Spitznagel - Safe Haven
Mark Spitznagel
Hannah Alexander - Sacred Trust
Hannah Alexander
Hannah Alexander - Fair Warning
Hannah Alexander
Hannah Alexander - Collateral Damage
Hannah Alexander
Hannah Alexander - Solemn Oath
Hannah Alexander
Hannah Alexander - Hideaway Home
Hannah Alexander
Hannah Alexander - Double Blind
Hannah Alexander
Hannah Alexander - Keeping Faith
Hannah Alexander
Virginia Vaughan - No Safe Haven
Virginia Vaughan
Evelyn Crowe - Safe Haven
Evelyn Crowe
Отзывы о книге «Safe Haven»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Safe Haven» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x