The Borrowed Bride (8 page)

“I
t’s wonderful to see all of you,” Isabel said, and she meant it. Sitting at her favorite garden café, enjoying a perfect Indian-summer afternoon, she truly did mean it. Six months after the disastrous bridal shower, Connie and Lucia had come over to Bainbridge Island for lunch.

Connie handed her a cream stock envelope. Somehow, Isabel knew before opening it what she would find.

It was an invitation to Anthony’s wedding.

“We figured you’d want to know,” Lucia said.

“You’re right.” Isabel smiled at them. Even after she had broken off the engagement with Anthony, his sisters remained friends with her. And Anthony surprised her by coming through with a contract for Dan’s lodge. By all reports, the team had a spectacular weekend, hosted by Clyde Looking and Theo Sohappy while Dan was still laid up.

“I’m pleased for Anthony,” Isabel said with conviction.

Connie touched the rim of her wineglass to the rim
of Isabel’s. “We figured you would be. But what about you, sweetie?”

In an odd way, Isabel cherished the hurt that she lived with night and day, the hurt she had endured since last April, when Dan had ordered her out of his hospital room, out of his life. Sometimes, that pain was the only thing that reminded her she was alive. Early on, she had tried to call, but again and again he refused to speak to her.

“I’m all right,” she said, looking down, tucking a silky lock of hair behind her ear. She’d gone natural with her hair for the first time since high school, letting it grow in straight and stark black instead of using chemical perms and colors. Idly, she noted the blast of the one-fifteen ferry horn.

Summer sales at the plant nursery had broken records. Of the three new staff members she’d hired, two were Native Americans, and one was an expert on traditional Indian herbs.

In a burst of energy, she had totally redone her cottage. Over the bed hung her pride and joy—a Yakima mat woven with the design of a soaring eagle crest.

On a good day, she avoided thinking of Dan for whole minutes at a stretch.

But most days, she dwelled on the time she had spent at his lodge, remembering every moment, polishing it up in her memory until it gleamed with the soft patina of a lost dream.

She had stayed in touch with the Sohappys. They told her little of Dan, only that he had gone to a hospital in Olympia for therapy and then returned home. The lodge was prospering thanks to the winery that had
sponsored the race and to record summer visitors. Word-of-mouth recommendations kept the place booked solid.

From Dan, there was nothing but silence.

Isabel gulped back her wine and tried to focus on what Lucia was saying, but a faint sound kept humming beneath the murmur of conversation.

She gazed down the length of the café garden. Most of the plants had come from her nursery. The flower beds and trees burst with fall color.

The roaring grew louder, more urgent. Lucia stopped talking. Isabel stopped breathing as unbearable anticipation built in her. And then, right where the gravel driveway turned off from the road, he appeared.

He was an image out of her most intimate dreams. Clad in black leather. A bandanna around his head. Inky, flowing hair. Mirror-lens sunglasses. The Harley beneath him bucking and spitting gravel like a wild animal.

“It’s Mr. Testosterone again,” Connie murmured as the machine roared up the terraced garden path.

Isabel stood, clutching her wineglass in fingers numb with shock. The apparition skidded to a halt, jerked the bike onto its kickstand and walked toward her. Long, loose strides with a limp that favored his right leg. Tall boots crunching on the path. Gold earring winking in one ear.

“This sort of déjà vu I can live with,” Lucia whispered.

He yanked off the mirror glasses and stared at Isabel. His dark eyes dragged down the length of her, and she felt the touch of his gaze like a caress.

The wineglass slipped from her fingers, struck the grass and rolled under the table. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

He gave her the old cocky grin, the expression that used to make her go weak in the knees.

It still worked.

She was still drawn to his aura of seductive danger, the faint sulkiness of his full lips, the powerful body as well tuned as his Harley. The lean hips and broad shoulders that made her body flush with memories.

“I came to see you,” he said. “And to say I’m sorry.”

Her cheeks heated with stinging color as she moved away from the table. “‘I’m sorry’?” she echoed. “You banished me from your life, and you think two words will cover it?”

“No,” he said in a low, rough voice. “It’ll take me a lifetime to make it up to you.”

“You can start now,” she said, folding her arms over her middle, not daring to let herself hope.

He gave her that lazy, Sunday-morning, stay-in-bed-all-day grin. “I figure it’s now or never, Isabel.”

She felt the rapt fascination of her friends, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Connie jerk her head, urging her to go with Dan.

Still uncertain, she took his hand, and they walked toward the Harley. She felt the unevenness of his gait. Rather than detracting from his physical grace, the limp shifted his weight in a way that was somehow wildly sexy.

He held out a helmet for her. She stepped back, dropping his hand and studying him. For the first time, she noticed a few extra lines around his eyes and mouth and a leanness in his face that had not been there before.

“I won’t go with you until you tell me the truth, Dan. I want to know the real reason you stayed away so long.
Why you never called.” She eyed his right leg. “Just how bad were your injuries?”

He started to put on his mirror glasses, then seemed to think better of it. “Not so bad they didn’t heal, Isabel.”

“What about what you did to us?” she asked, forming the words around the ache of tears in her throat. “Will that heal?”

“Saying I’m sorry is only the beginning. When I sent you away, it was like cutting off an arm. Cutting out my heart, maybe. It was stupid, running you off when I had never needed you more.”

“Then why?” she persisted. “I need to know.”

“I thought I’d never walk again. I didn’t want to saddle you with that.”

She remembered the way he had looked in the hospital bed, immobilized by a stainless-steel scaffold. Realization hit her like a thunderclap—it hadn’t been anger she’d seen in his eyes, but fear. “I can’t believe you thought your physical condition would make a difference in the way I feel, Dan.”

“Like I said, it was stupid.
I
was stupid. But I’ve had a lot of time to learn a few things.”

“What sort of things?”

“That I don’t need to take risks, to go looking for danger, to hide from my feelings. My reckless rebel days are over.”

A rush of elation rose through her, and her mouth curved into a smile. “Well, it’s about damned time. I’ll hold you to that.”

“I know.” Without warning, he set down the helmet and pulled her against him so that she was engulfed
by the textures and scents that had haunted her dreams all summer.

From the corner of her eye, Isabel saw Connie briskly fanning her face.

“Forgive me,” Dan said, brushing his lips over hers, “for wanting to make sure I
could
heal before I came back to you.”

“That
is
stupid,” she whispered, entranced by the way he was kissing her, so lightly and gently that her head swam. “You should’ve told me.”

“I’m telling you now,” he said, still kissing her almost senseless.

“Telling me what?” she managed to ask.

“That I love you. That I want us to get married. Have babies. Grow plants and build picket fences and plan fundraisers and go fishing—”

“Yes,” she said, sliding her fingers through his long, silky hair, letting the bandanna drift to the ground.

“Yes to what?” he asked.

“To all of the above.”

If you liked this story, discover these other titles by Susan Wiggs always available wherever ebooks are sold:

The Lakeshore Chronicles

Summer at Willow Lake

The Winter Lodge

Dockside

Snowfall at Willow Lake

Fireside

Lakeshore Christmas

The Summer Hideaway

Chicago Fire Trilogy

The Hostage

The Mistress

The Firebrand

Tudor Rose Trilogy

At the King’s Command

The Maiden’s Hand

At the Queen’s Summons

The Calhoun Chronicles

The Charm School

The Horsemaster’s Daughter

Halfway to Heaven

Enchanted Afternoon

A Summer Affair

The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle
(contains
The Charm School, The Horsemaster’s Daughter
, and
Halfway to Heaven
)

Other

The Drifter

Home Before Dark

Just Breathe

Lakeside Cottage

The Lightkepper

The Ocean Between Us

The Story of Us

Summer by the Sea

Table for Five

That Summer Place

Husband for Hire

“The St. James Affair” in
Romancing the Holidays Bundle 2009

“Snowfall at Willow Lake” in
Snowstorm Heat Bundle