The Borrowed Bride by Susan Wiggs

Author:Susan Wiggs [Wiggs, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 1996-06-21T21:00:00+00:00

Six

The next morning, Dan caught his breath when Isabel walked into the kitchen. He had probably, at some point, seen a more beautiful sight, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember when.

Her face was scrubbed clean, her hair slightly damp from the shower. She wore a gray sweat suit with the University of Washington seal on the front. The soft folds of fabric enveloped her small frame.

She helped herself to coffee. “I found the sweat suit in the closet in my room. I hope you don’t mind.”

“’Course not, Isabel. It’s chilly this morning.” He rose and handed her the sugar bowl.

She smelled like every warm, fragrant dream that haunted a man in the dead of winter. When she didn’t fuss with her hair, it relaxed into a long waterfall of silk he wanted to bury his fingers in.

“Did you check on the bird?” she asked.

“A couple of times in the night, and then at the crack of dawn.”

What he didn’t tell her was that he had also stood in her room in the dark, watching her sleep while wave after wave of tenderness and regret rolled over him.

Five years ago, she had slipped into his heart through a side entrance when he thought he had barred all the doors. He set his jaw and clenched his eyes shut, remembering.

The day she had told him about the baby was branded on his memory. She was so thrilled and so scared. So was he. No, he was terrified.

His feelings for her suffered from some sort of paralysis. Too young and too thickheaded to understand that the first bloom of love needed to deepen and ripen and mature, too stupid to see that responsibility wouldn’t stifle him, he’d panicked.

Her grief and rage over the miscarriage provided him with the opportunity to escape. Like a fool, he took it.

“Dan?” Her voice intruded on his thoughts.

He opened his eyes and blinked at her.

“Is the bird okay?”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t stop staring at her.

She took a sip of her coffee, regarding him over the rim of her mug. “Are you okay?”

His grip on the edge of the tile counter tightened. He had to anchor himself somewhere, to something, or he would explode. “Yeah. Only—”

“Only what?”

“I always thought you were the one who left five years ago, Isabel.”

“And now what do you think?” She seemed to have no trouble switching into his train of thought. He could almost believe the past was on her mind, too.

“Physically, you left, you walked out. But I didn’t give you many options. Stay in hell with me or save yourself. Not much choice there.”

She started to move away. “We were young—”

“Were young,” he echoed harshly, grasping her wrist. “We’re different now, and you know it.”

She was breathing hard with some inner struggle. Dan made himself let go of her hand. “Sorry.” He carried her cup to the table for her.

Both of them were edgy and emotional this morning. Dan’s nerve endings felt raw with desperation. All he knew for certain was that he could not stand the thought of her getting married to someone else.

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