Texas…Now and Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

agreed-upon rendezvous site. But he would. Soon, she guessed.
    Once inside the back door Carl Bridges always kept unlocked, she grabbed a blue plaid flannel shirt from the hooks on the wall and hunched on one of the sturdy chairs drawn up to the scarred plank table.
    The immensity of what she’d just done—and what she was about to do—almost overwhelmed her. Shaking from head to toe, she wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked back and forth. Lake water dripped from her hair and ran down her legs to puddle on the scrubbed pine floor.
    She done it. She’d completed the first phase ofher plan. Not the way she and the judge had envisioned it, precisely, but the speedboat accident would certainly make things more realistic. Now she just had to find the courage to take the next step. Could she really put her parents through the agony of believing she’d drowned? Really leave Texas and start a new life, away from everything and everyone she knew?
    Away from Frank?
    With a little moan, Haley dug her fingers into her sides. She had no choice. Frank would destroy her father. He was that determined. And that vicious.
    She’d find a way to let her parents know she was okay, she swore. Later, when she was sure it was safe.
    The thought gave her the strength to make it through the wait for Judge Bridges. As an old and trusted friend of the family, he’d been invited to celebrate the boys’ homecoming. He would have been one of the crowd gathered under the flickering lights. One of the witnesses to the accident out on the lake. When Luke and the others made it known Haley had been a passenger in the boat, Carl would guess that she’d altered the schedule.
    Sure enough, tires crunched on the dirt-and-gravel road leading to the cabin less than a half hour later. Haley was a bundle of raw nerves, buther rapidly developing self-preservation instinct kept her out of sight as she peered through the bedroom window. She almost wept with relief when Judge Bridges slammed the car door. His prematurely white hair shining like a beacon in the darkness that now blanketed the earth, he rushed to the cabin.
    â€œHaley? Haley, are you here?”
    â€œYes!” She ran in from the other room. “Yes, I’m here.”
    â€œThank God!”
    His lined face was a study in worry and relief. Opening his arms, he crushed her against his chest. Haley clung to him with everything in her. He was her last link with her family. The last link between the woman she was and the stranger she would soon become.
    Finally his hold loosened. He eased her away a few inches. “I thought… We all thought…”
    His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Behind his old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses, his watery blue eyes glistened. Blinking furiously, he glared at her with a combination of anger and admiration.
    â€œWhy the dickens did you flip over Luke’s speedboat? That was a dangerous stunt and not part of our plan.”
    â€œI didn’t flip it! Well, I guess I did, but not onpurpose. I swerved to avoid a submerged log and lost control.”
    â€œWell, it sure adds a grim authenticity to our plan. They’re searching the whole lake for you, missy.”
    â€œOh, Judge!” Wracked with guilt, Haley almost abandoned the scheme right then and there. “My parents must be frantic. Maybe I should go home. Maybe I should just marry Frank.”
    Her tortured doubts acted like a spur on the judge. The steely resolve that had sustained him through fifteen years at the bar and ten on the bench stiffened his spine.
    â€œNo, Haley, you’re doing the right thing. You’ve got to get away. Your parents did everything they could to give you and Ricky a different life. If you go back now, you’ll nullify all their years of sacrifice and worry.”
    She knew he was right. Carl Bridges had been both friend and advisor to Johnny and Isadora Mercado for decades. If Haley had at times