Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) Read Online Free PDF

daughter three hundred miles from home to go to school in the Eastern Panhandle.”
    “Well, we have to do something,” Mrs. Wheeler whispered fiercely. “Before—”
    “Before what, Mama?” Faith asked. Her tears evaporated in the heat of her growing anger. “Exactly what do you think I plan to do with Alex Brannon?”
    Mr. Wheeler threw up his hands and slumped back in his maple Windsor chair. “She’s calling him Alex. Is that your pet name for him?”
    “It’s his name name, Daddy!” Faith wailed.
    “Faith, honey,” Mrs. Wheeler started, her voice quivering. “You’re known by the company you keep, and Alexander Brannon isn’t the sort of person you should be associating with.”
    “You’re such a snob,” Faith mumbled.
    Mr. Wheeler slammed his hands on the table, forcing plates, glasses and cutlery to jump. “Don’t you disrespect your mother! We haven’t raised you to call your mother out of her name, or to run around with the town hoodlum!”
    “He’s not a hoodlum!” Faith shouted, showing that she had inherited his quickness to anger along with his rich brown skin and expressive eyes. “You don’t know him! You’ve never even talked to him!”
    “I don’t have to talk to him to know that I don’t want his ass fooling around with my daughter!”
    “You’re so unfair, Daddy,” Faith wailed, her tears reappearing. “You, of all people, should know how hard it is to live in a place where people cast you as a stereotype.”
    Mr. Wheeler eyed her suspiciously, caught off guard by her savvy observation. “Don’t you dare try to compare my experience as a hard-working black business owner in this town with that trailer trash Alexander Brannon. Our people have lived and worked here for generations, since John Brown’s raid. That Brannon kid is one generation out of the hills, and he’s gonna end up a drunk like his daddy or crazy like his mama. You are strictly forbidden to see him again.”
    “Daddy!”
    “It’s for your own good, baby,” Mrs. Wheeler said in the placating tone Faith hated most.
    “It’s for your reputation,” Faith said derisively.
    She and her father stood at the same time, Mr. Wheeler knocking his chair over in the process. “Go to your room!” he ordered, his words overlapping Faith’s, “I’m going to my room!”
    Just as she had when she was eight and had been sent to her room for farting at the dinner table, she stomped out of the dining room, through the living room, into the foyer, up the carpeted stairs, and into her pretty pastel-hued bedroom. She paced angrily, like a panther in a cage far too small.
    How dare her parents tell her with whom she could be friends! How dare they forbid her to do anything! Faith was a good student, she was popular, she never broke curfew, and no matter what, she never embarrassed her parents. As the wealthiest family in town and one of only a few black families in Dorothy, the Wheelers were always careful to adhere to a higher standard of behavior. It wasn’t enough to be better; they strived to be the very best.
    Faith loved and respected her parents, but their order completely fled her mind the next time she saw Alex—almost a week after her blow-up with them. She had been in ballet class in the studio above McGill’s Pharmacy. Executing a textbook arabesque penchée, she caught sight of Alex standing just inside the garage at Brody’s Auto Body. He was wearing a bluish-gray striped jumpsuit with Brody’s embroidered across the chest. Automotive grime smudged his chin and the backs of his hands. He appeared to be busy patching the inside of a tire, but he wasn’t watching his work. His face was tilted upward, and his eyes were on Faith.
    His gaze was so intense, Faith broke her perfect position. It had been impossible for her to concentrate on class after that. Afterward, she hurried downstairs and out of the building, hoping to run into Alex. And she had, literally; he’d been waiting for her.
    Without a