Malcolm & Isabel by Julie Anne Long

Author:Julie Anne Long [Long, Julie Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance, Pennyroyal Green
Publisher: Julie Anne Long
Published: 2018-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

The ‘irrepressible Isabel’ of yore might have shouted after him: “I’ll take that as a maybe!”

Grown-up Isabel cried in the car on the way back to Pennyroyal Green.

The tears were more emotional exhaust than anything else, a byproduct of a combustible swirl of outraged injustice and....arrgghh.......dammit it all....

Shame.

Because at a certain point in his monologue she’d all but floated up out of her body and could see herself with excruciating clarity through his eyes. At the age of sixty-nine he clearly no longer felt obligated to suffer fools or intrusions with anything like grace, and she could hardly blame him. And while he was hardly a martyr—lord knows he’d given Bacchus a run for his money— he’d likely been surrounded by takers and sycophants his entire career.

And that’s what he’d assumed she was: A taker.

And she’d never been a taker in her entire life.

Oh, the scalding shame. Not to mention the scalding injustice!

And while it was entirely possible she’d caught him on a bad day—an emotionally grounded man seemed unlikely to be out shooting shoes—he could have been a little nicer.

She finally pulled over to the verge and cut the engine to try to get a grip.

She took a deep breath then exhaled at length.

The truth was, even when she did something subversive like tattoo her own finger—the one that Malcolm had been so unnervingly insightful about—she’d planned it. She’d executed her rebellion, flawlessly, with subtlety and precision. It wasn’t like her to just waltz into Postlethwaite’s and ask to see the manager or to yammer at Sir Clive Dunkirk, of all people, after stumbling onto his property.

It was just that navigating a slew of unfamiliar emotions was like trying to keep her car on the road in a stiff wind.

A place to call home and someone with whom you can lie next to in the dark and quietly weep, or laugh, or fart.

She didn’t think she’d be embroidering that on a pillow any time soon.

Funny, though. She had a hunch Olivia and Lyon would have espoused a similar philosophy, in different words. She’d never had that sort of thing with anyone.

She closed her eyes, and thought of the expression on Malcolm’s face before he’d pulled his helmet back on and zoomed off. Her breath hitched. Joy and terror suddenly seemed like different facets of the same emotion, one she didn’t quite want to look at head on. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

And maybe she’d never see him again, anyway.

Boy, that notion sure fit like an itchy sweater.

She knew of at least one person who would be happy to hear from her.

She texted Laura:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.