Wanton Angel Read Online Free PDF

and that she’d been able to keep him on his feet long enough to reach her bed.
    “You should have come to me immediately, Consolata,” the padre said, but the reprimand was a gentle one and there was understanding in his eyes. “This situation is extremely dangerous, not only for Señor McKutchen, but for you and your uncle.”
    Consolata could only nod.
    “You’ve told no one that this man is here?”
    “Only you,” Consolata managed to answer.
    “That is good. After dark, you and I will move him to my chambers in the church. In the meantime, I’ll go to the American forces and ask for their help.”
    Consolata was very conscious of the wicked thoughts and feelings that had possessed her from the moment she’d brought the handsome stranger to her room. She’d undressed him, after all, and bathed him, and she despised this woman he cried out for, without even knowing her. She clenched her hands together and lowered her head. “Padre, have I sinned?”
    Gently, the holy man from Kansas touched her tangled hair. “No, child. Kindness is never a sin.”
    Consolata’s uncle was of a different opinion when he returned from Havana and learned of the man hidden in his niece’s room. That night, when the cantina was filled with Spanish soldiers and there was no sign of either the padre or the
norteamericanos
he had promised to fetch, Tomás threatened, in his anger and fear, to turn both his sister’s child and her half-conscious charge over to the enemy.

CHAPTER 3
     
    B ONNIE ENTERED HER father’s store and swiped at a fly buzzing furiously near her left ear. Smells of spoilage and general sloth assaulted her on every side, and the chiming of the little bell brought no shopkeeper to attend her.
    Fighting to control the nausea that had troubled her since her arrival in Northridge nearly a week before, Bonnie raised her chin and took in the full scope of the mercantile’s descent into neglect.
    The stairs, leading to spacious apartments on the second floor, were littered with all manner of trash, their sturdy banister gone. The tilting bins, built directly into the walls, stood agape, and Bonnie knew without looking that weevils and possibly even mice frequented the sugar and flour they contained. A layer of grime covered the giant coffee grinder that sat on a table in the middle of the shop, and the potatoes and onions, in their bushel baskets, were not only sprouting but rotting as well. The framed photographs of smelter workers and miners, which Jack Fitzpatrick had cherished, were all but obscured by flyspecks and dirt.
    The windows, scrubbed and glistening when Bonnie had last stood inside this store, were coated with mud and the excrement of birds on the outside and yellowed by cigar smoke on the inside. The shelves were dusty and the solidwooden floor was covered in sawdust and strewn with elements Bonnie preferred not to identify. She stepped up to the counter and saw that the pickle barrel was uncovered, and there was something floating inside that had never, at any point in time, been a cucumber—Bonnie closed her eyes tightly and willed her stomach to calm itself when she realized that the object was a discarded cigar, swollen and wet.
    She shuddered and then started when a querulous voice behind her demanded, “Help you, missus?”
    Bonnie turned, one hand to her breast, to see an unkempt little woman staring at her through a white film of cataract. “No, thank you—I mean, yes—”
    “Make up your mind, honey!” the hag crowed, tugging at a clump of long hairs that sprang from her chin. “Either I can help you, or I cain’t!”
    Bonnie sighed. “I assume you work for McKutchen Enterprises?”
    “In a roundabout way, I reckon I do. But I gets my pay from Mr. Forbes Durrant.” The crone gave Bonnie’s fancy Eastern clothes a suspicious once-over. “Don’t get many ladies in here. Who are you, anyways?”
    “Might I see Mr. Durrant, please?” Bonnie countered, drawing herself up.
    “Oh,