The Quiet Seduction Read Online Free PDF

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    Ellen roused Pete and got him ready for school. They probably wouldn’t get much work done today, as everyone would be full of talk about the tornado. She tried not to think about the two men who had showed up only hours earlier. If they’d been telling the truth about a dear friend who’d been missing since yesterday, wouldn’t they have seemed more upset? More concerned? Not that they hadn’t tried, but they hadn’t been convincing. Something about the whole scene had struck her as off-key, and she was a firm believer in instinct. Jake used to tease her about relying on what he called her witch’s antenna, but even he had eventually learned to listen to her.
    Only by then, it had been too late.
    When she’d looked out and seen those two men at her front door, every ounce of intuition she possessed had warned her against revealing the presence of herstranger. Once his memory returned she would tell him and let him make the decision. They were certainly easy enough to describe. If “Smith” and “Jones” were such good friends of his, he would know how to reach them. It would be his decision to make, not hers.
    By the time she came in to collect his tray after getting Pete off to school and letting the horses into the paddock, he’d fallen asleep again. For several moments she stood silently at the foot of the bed and gazed down at him. How many hours had she sat beside that same bed, in this same room, watching Jake sleep, telling herself that at least when he was sleeping, he wasn’t in actual pain. Praying that that was true….
    Evidently Storm had used the shaving things. Awake, he’d looked older. Even wary. Asleep, he looked oddly vulnerable. His features were too irregular to be called handsome, yet he was strikingly attractive, even with a purple lump on the side of his head. “Whoever you are,” she murmured, “you’re safe here.” It was the best she could do in return for his saving Pete’s life.
    The next time he awoke he would probably remember who he was and call someone to come for him if they couldn’t locate his car. If he had any sense at all, he’d have them drive him directly to the hospital in Mission Creek for X rays.
    Once he was gone things would go back to the way they’d been before, with her and Pete and two no-account hired hands trying to do the work she and Jake and Mr. Caster had done before her world had fallen apart.
    Ellen’s shoulders drooped. She was tired before the day even started. Booker and Clyde, the two transients she’d recently hired, were no more than adequate evenwhen they were sober. They didn’t know nearly as much about horses as they’d claimed when they’d showed up looking for work, but at least they were willing to work for what she could afford to pay and weren’t too proud to take orders from a woman. Desperate to hang on to what they had without having to turn to her father again—something she had sworn she would never do—she had hired them on the spot.
    After washing off a scratch, she dabbed on antiseptic, winced at the sharp sting and sighed. Sometimes she wished she could just take a single day off and do something frivolous, such as curl up with a good book and read and sleep all day long, or take Pete to a circus, or even a movie in town.
    Christmas was only a few weeks away, and she hadn’t even thought of what she was going to get him. A bike, of course, but some little surprise would be nice.
    With no heritage of his own, Jake had been determined to build one for their son. Now Jake was gone, but with any luck, she’d be able to raise their son right here, the way they had planned. Pete would grow up on Wagner property. Eventually he would marry and have children of his own, and one day, if they were lucky, her grandchildren would grow up here along with the descendants of the quarter horses she and Jake