The Borrowed Bride Read Online Free PDF

stage.
    Dan let his riffs trail off and signaled for Andy to take over on the keyboard. She looked up as Dan approached. The expression on her face would live in his heart forever. She showed the usual nice girl’s shock and fear. Her slim hand clutched tighter around her purse strap. But it was her determination that caught his attention.
    That, and the quick, unmistakable signal flare of sexual interest. She probably wasn’t even aware that her breath caught. That the tip of her tongue briefly touched her lips. That her eyelids dropped to half-mast.
    Yeah, she was a nice girl, but her soul was wild.
    “My name is Isabel Wharton.” She handed him a business card. “I think I just wrecked your motorcycle.”
    That was the beginning. He felt it then, and so did she—the heart-catching awareness and a wanting that tore at his gut.
    It was so powerful it should have—could have—lasted forever.
    “I won’t lose you again, Isabel,” he said under his breath as he rode on.
     
    The sitting room was small, tidy and shabby. Gary was in the next room playing the air guitar with the headphones on. Isabel could hear the tinny rhythm even from a distance. It was one of Dan’s songs.
    Juanita sat in a fading armchair, knitting a muffler of red wool. On the sofa sat her son, a soft-spoken man called Theo, who had come in shortly after Isabel. Hisbooted feet were propped on a stack of farming and forestry journals.
    “I figure Dan’ll be here pretty soon,” Theo said. “It only takes about twenty minutes on foot.”
    Isabel sent him a rueful smile. She was warm and dry, and her curls were now a thing of the past. It’s that Indian blood, her foster mother used to say. Makes your hair straight as a board. Isabel had spent three weeks’ allowance on a permanent that very day, and had worn her hair curly ever since.
    “Twenty minutes?” she said. “I was out walking for at least two hours.”
    Theo kept his face solemn and impassive, but his eyes twinkled. “Guess you took the long way. You must’ve been plenty mad.”
    She blew out her breath. “Not mad. Just impatient.”
    Juanita made a light, noncommittal sound in her throat.
    Isabel winked. “Well, maybe a little mad.” She felt unexpectedly—almost reluctantly—comfortable with this family. And there it was. The operative word. Family.
    She had never really had one. She remembered a few happy times on the reservation back before her daredevil father had gotten himself killed. After that, she recalled only a murky haze of formless months. Although she’d still had her mother, an Anglo, the woman had only been there in a physical sense. After her husband’s death, she had severed all emotional connections with Isabel.
    Eventually, with a sort of dazed resignation, she had surrendered her daughter to foster parents.
    The O’Dells had been older, excruciatingly kind andabsolutely convinced that Isabel’s dark moods were caused by her ambivalence about being half Native American. They hadn’t meant to make her reject her heritage, but their subtle emphasis on Anglo ways had changed her. With the very best of intentions, they had scoured her soul, emptied her mind of the ways of her father’s people.
    When Isabel graduated high school, the O’Dells had retired to Arizona. They still exchanged Christmas cards and the occasional letter.
    Family. Without consciously knowing it, she had gone off in search of one.
    With Dan, she had almost found what she was looking for. She remembered staring in awe and cautious joy at the results of the home pregnancy test. She remembered rushing off to the club where he was playing that night, practically bursting as she waited for him to finish the set, then leaping into his arms to tell him the news.
    His reaction was the beginning of the end. He looked panicked, muttered a choice swearword, then gave her a fake smile and false words of hope. They would marry, of course. Get a little house in West Seattle. Shop for furniture