Hideaway Read Free Page B

he insisted.
    She tried pulling away from him. “We’ll talk another time. I’ll call you…”
    Owen tightened his grip. “Let’s go.”
    Parris winced at the punishing hold on her upper arm. This was an Owen she had never seen before. They had exchanged heated words, but he never attempted to hurt her.
    “Don’t fight with me,” he hissed near her face, his gaze brimming with white-hot rage and resentment.
    Owen glared at his beautiful wife. Parris Simmons had walked out on him. She left him while mockingly issuing a threat which continued to haunt his every moment of wakefulness, and it was only now that the threat attacked him even as he slept. He had tried to forget her but he couldn’t. Parris was too indelibly imprinted on his brain to forget. She was a witch who had cursed him, and he wanted to be freed from her wicked spell.
    He signaled a valet who rushed to bring his car to the front of the lot. The young man thanked the man in formal dress profusely while silently admiring the woman whom he held possessively to his side.
    Owen settled Parris into his low-slung Miata, then walked around to the driver’s side. He started up the car, switched on the headlights, then roared out of the parking lot. The setting sunwas a large ball of orange fire as he drove toward the beach, unaware that a sleek black Jaguar purred quietly behind him, keeping a respectable distance.

Chapter 2
     
    O wen pulled into a parking area less than three hundred feet from the ocean. He came around the car, extended his hand and helped Parris out.
    They walked together in silence under the full moon, hand-in-hand, until the dampness of salt water seeped into their shoes. Owen glanced up and down the beach, smiling. There was no one else in sight.
    He tightened his hold on Parris’s hand, making her his prisoner. “You’re not going to leave me again.”
    She fought against his cruel grip. “Wrong, Owen. Because I
left
you.”
    He pulled her to his chest. “Wrong, Parris. You’re not going to leave me because I’m taking you with me.”
    She panicked as Owen dragged her toward the incoming tide. “Stop! You’re mad!”
    “If I’m mad it was you who made me mad, Parris Lawson. I wanted you and needed you so much that I went just a little crazy. But you never wanted me. You never loved me.”
    Sheer black fright swept through Parris when she realized Owen wanted to drown her. “No,” she gasped, panting in terror.
    “It’s too late for pleading, Mrs. Lawson,” he intoned. “It’s too late for me. Too late for us.”
    Panic rioted within her and she fought him with every ounce of strength in her body. Her free hand pounded his face.
    Owen cursed savagely under his breath and he knew he had to end the nightmare quickly. Half-carrying and half-dragging Parris, he pulled her into the water as angry waves swelled, breaking over his knees.
    His sunglasses fell and he cursed louder when the lenses cracked under the heel of his shoe. He looked down into the blackness of the swirling water his grip on Parris slacking.
    Her right hand swung again, connecting with his left eye. He howled in pain, heat and bright lights sending him to his knees. She went down with him while struggling vainly to escape.
    He pulled her back with a jerk of her hair. His right arm swung up in a curve and came down once, his fist connecting with the left side of her face.
    Parris heard the snap of bones, the searing fire, then blessed blackness.
    Owen stared down at her motionless body, tears filling his eyes. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He loved her too much to hurt her. Picking Parris up gently, he rose to his feet and faced the Atlantic Ocean once again. Balancing her limp body, he cradled her to his chest.
    “I love you, Parris. I love you,” he murmured over and over as he walked out into the pounding waves.
    The swirling dangerous undertow pulled him down and he dropped Parris. Struggling to regain his footing, he searched the water for his