The Borrowed Bride

by Susan Wiggs

  “Sure thing,” Isabel muttered. “So what do you use to keep from getting lost in the wilderness?”

  Not that she would heed any advice from that voice. It was the voice of the first man who had betrayed Isabel: her father.

  She clenched her teeth. This was outrageous. She saw the headlines now: Prominent Businessman’s Bride Found Dead. She just wasn’t herself that day, Connie would helpfully recall for the press.

  Isabel plodded on, keeping despair at bay with sheer stubbornness. The shadows grew longer, the forest floor wetter. With every step she took, she devised a new torture for Dan.

  The light rain misted her hair, then plastered strands of it to her forehead and neck. Her skirt and cotton jersey top were soaked through. Her espadrilles absorbed moisture like a pair of sponges.

  Miserable, wet, lost and furious, she shook her fist at the cloudy twilight sky. “Damn you, Dan Black Horse!” she shouted.

  A few minutes later, she spied a movement in the distance. Low branches of Sitka spruce nodded and bobbed as something huge and menacing stirred beneath them.

  Another choice headline popped into her mind: Bainbridge Bride-To-Be Butchered By Bear.

  Isabel screamed.

  When Dan came back from feeding the horses, he assumed Isabel had gone to look around the place.

  Good, he thought. He had worked hard to build the lodge. Harder than he had ever worked at anything. Making it in the music business had been a cakewalk compared to this—to wresting a working enterprise out of a virgin forest without disturbing the very essence of that wilderness. The property consisted of the lodge and outbuildings, a central yard with a spectacular view of Mount Adams, the stables, garage and helipad. It would have been quicker to bring in bulldozers and cement mixers, but he had done everything the hard way. By hand, with local labor. Native American labor.

  He hoped Isabel liked it, hoped she realized what it meant to him. Maybe she would open her mind to the past, and her heart to the tribe she’d been made to leave so long ago.

  He sat on the cedar porch swing, waiting for her to return and planning what he would say to her tonight.

  First, dinner. Grilled salmon from the river, some greens and herbs from Juanita’s garden and a nice Washington State wine. Then he’d tell her everything. Almost.

  He figured it was a little too soon to tell her he was on the verge of bankruptcy. And maybe too late to tell her that he loved her.

  After a while, he grew restless. He got up and paced the porch. He called to Isabel. He walked the length and breadth and circumference of the entire property.

  Finally, the sick realization sank into his brain.

  Isabel was gone.

  “Lady, you look like you seen a ghost,” said the stranger.

  “A bear.” Isabel’s legs felt wobbly. She leaned back against a large rock. The surface was soaking wet, but no wetter than she already was.

  “A bear?” He looked around, his long hair whipping to and fro. “Where?”

  “You,” she said, fully aware that hours of exposure had probably addled her brain. “I thought you were a bear.”

  “Cool.” He pushed back a low-hanging branch. In every respect but one, he appeared a typical American teenager—oversize hiking boots, baggy, low-slung jeans, a plaid shirt with a hood trailing down his back.

  He stood high and dry beneath a broad fiber mat supported by three straight sticks. The design woven into the mat was a tribal bear crest.

  “I’m Isabel Wharton,” she said, “and I guess you could say I’m lost.”

  He grinned—the half shy, half cocky smile of a teenage boy. “Gary Sohappy,” he said, “and I figured you were.”

  “You…” Her pulse was finally returning to its normal rate. “How did you know to come looking for me?”

  “Dan radioed down.” He held out the woven shelter so that it protected her. “He said to keep my eyes peeled for a real good-looking woman with a chip on her shoulder.” Gary took her elbow and started down the slope. “Watch your step here.” He glanced at her, still bashful, still full of mischief. “I don’t see no chip.”

  “I left it with Dan Black Horse,” she said through gritted teeth. “I take it he’s a friend of yours.”

  “Yep.” He continued to lead her down the slope. It was almost dark now, and she could see no discernible path, but the boy seemed to know where he was going. “My uncle and I and a lot of guys from the rez helped him build the lodge. He said you were his first guest.”

  A tiny dart of guilt stung her. She had not paused to look at it that way. Dan had built a virtual woodland paradise, and she had shown little appreciation for his hard work.

  “He caught me at a really bad time,” she said with wry understatement.

  The woods seemed to be thinning. Rain pattered down almost musically on the mat umbrella.

  “Guess so,” Gary said. “I hope the Seahawks like it better than you did.”

  She frowned. “The Seahawks? As in Seattle Seahawks?”

  “Yep. He’s been trying to get a contract to bring the whole team up for R & R. Like a wild-man weekend or something.”

  Realization clicked in Isabel’s mind. Anthony was a promoter for the Seahawks. That was how Dan had come into contact with him and figured out how to find her.

  But if Dan needed the contract, then why would he jeopardize it by dragging her back into his life at this critical moment? Anthony was a tolerant man, but maybe not that tolerant.

  Darkness had fallen by the time they reached a level clearing. Isabel saw a cluster of buildings hunched against the side of a hill. She made out the shapes of an antique tractor and a battered pickup truck.

  “How far are we from the nearest town?” she asked Gary.

  He stopped beneath an awning at the back door of the main house and shook off the umbrella. “Probably ten miles to Thelma. Maybe Dan’ll take you there Monday night. There’s a dance at the fire hall.”

  “Dan’s not taking me anywhere,” she muttered. They entered the house, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.

  She had never been here, had never seen this place, but she knew it. There was a place like this in her heart. She had been running from it for years.

  She stood on a fiber mat in a small kitchen. The linoleum floor was cracked but swept clean. The yellow countertops had a boomerang design in the Formica, circa 1960. A butane-gas stove held a battered teapot and a large cast-iron dutch oven. A curl of steam, redolent with the fragrance of herbs, seeped from beneath the lid of the pot.

  On the wall was a gas-station calendar with a photo of Mount Rainier. The picture was fading, and the calendar had not been turned since February. In the doorway stood a small, slim woman whose smile showed no surprise, only welcome.

  “Hi, Gram.” Gary parked his hiking boots on a rubber mat just inside the door. “Found her.”

  “That’s good. Supper’ll be ready in a minute.”

  Gary left the room, and the woman inclined her graying head. “Juanita Sohappy.”

  “I’m Isabel Wharton. I guess Dan told you about me.”

  Juanita nodded, then lifted the lid of a basket. “Here. Take off your shoes and wrap up in that. Sit down at the table. I’ll get you some stew.”

  “I’m not hungry, thank you.” Isabel pulled the blanket, worn soft with age, around her shoulders.

  Juanita’s black eyes glinted with warning. “Everybody eats when they come to my house.”

  Isabel sat down, instantly obedient and secretly delighted by Juanita’s aggressive hospitality. In the kitchen, she observed a poignant collection of poverty and pride. Four dishes stacked just so in the cupboard. A collection of World’s Fair 1962 tumblers. Juanita’s apron had been made from a flour sack with intricate, beautiful embroidery at the edges.

  Isabel took it all in with a lump in her throat, and a stark truth hit her.

  She had built her life in Bainbridge. But she had left her soul in a place like this.

  Four


  Petunia swung her head to the side and cast a baleful glare at her rider. She was the best horse in Dan’s stables, but he knew she deeply resented getting wet and wasn’t too fond of the dark, either.

  Dan made a sound of sympathy in his throat and urged her down the hill. Horseback was the best way to find Isabel. Elevated, he had a broader range of vision—at least until it grew dark. Unlike the bike, the horse was quiet, and he could hear Isabel if she answered his calls.

  The rain hissed through the woods, spattering onto the broad, lush tongues of primeval ferns and drumming dully on the hood of his poncho. He ought to check with Theo and Juanita. If Isabel wasn’t with the Sohappys, he would radio the forest search service.

  In the meantime, he yelled until his throat ached.

  Damn it, where was she?

  In one way or other, he thought, heading north toward the Sohappys’ settlement, he had been searching for Isabel Wharton for the past five years.

  Only now he knew what it took to hold her—if he could get her to sit still long enough to listen. If he could get past that wall she had built around her heart. If he could find the words he had never bothered to say to her.

  He remembered the first time he had ever seen her. The scene was branded on his memory. He had been twenty-three, cocky as hell, driven by a need to escape and rebel and shock people. The ponytail, the leather, the earring, the attitude—all were donned with calculated purpose, and he wore them like a second skin. His appearance tended to scare nice people.

  He liked that.

  When Isabel came into his life, Dan was playing his guitar and singing to a crowd as dark and ominous-looking as he. His music had already gained him some startled praise from area critics—not that he cared. He just sank into the sharp, rough rhythm, letting it surge around him like the constant, broken pulse of the sea. Through his music, he expressed the wildness and mystery inside him, expressed it with an insistence and a precision that was profitable, but ultimately destructive.

  He spotted her through the heated, angry glare of stage lights. Only a vague impression at first, but totally mind-blowing given the usual crowds at the Bad Attitude. She was dressed all in white with a burnished halo of sable hair framing a troubled face and the largest, saddest eyes Dan had ever seen.

  He stepped back from the mike, doing idle riffs while he watched her. She bent to speak to Leon Garza, the sound man. Her hair fell forward, obscuring her face. She tucked a lock behind her ear then, with a quick, nervous motion of her hand.

  Leon lifted his eyebrows, skimmed her with a hungry expression Dan suddenly wanted to pound from his face and then nodded toward the stage.

  Dan let his riffs trail off and signaled for Andy to take over on the keyboard. She looked up as Dan approached. The expression on her face would live in his heart forever. She showed the usual nice girl’s shock and fear. Her slim hand clutched tighter around her purse strap. But it was her determination that caught his attention.

  That, and the quick, unmistakable signal flare of sexual interest. She probably wasn’t even aware that her breath caught. That the tip of her tongue briefly touched her lips. That her eyelids dropped to half-mast.

  Yeah, she was a nice girl, but her soul was wild.

  “My name is Isabel Wharton.” She handed him a business card. “I think I just wrecked your motorcycle.”

  That was the beginning. He felt it then, and so did she—the heart-catching awareness and a wanting that tore at his gut.

  It was so powerful it should have—could have—lasted forever.

  “I won’t lose you again, Isabel,” he said under his breath as he rode on.

  The sitting room was small, tidy and shabby. Gary was in the next room playing the air guitar with the headphones on. Isabel could hear the tinny rhythm even from a distance. It was one of Dan’s songs.

  Juanita sat in a fading armchair, knitting a muffler of red wool. On the sofa sat her son, a soft-spoken man called Theo, who had come in shortly after Isabel. His booted feet were propped on a stack of farming and forestry journals.

  “I figure Dan’ll be here pretty soon,” Theo said. “It only takes about twenty minutes on foot.”

  Isabel sent him a rueful smile. She was warm and dry, and her curls were now a thing of the past. It’s that Indian blood, her foster mother used to say. Makes your hair straight as a board. Isabel had spent three weeks’ allowance on a permanent that very day, and had worn her hair curly ever since.

  “Twenty minutes?” she said. “I was out walking for at least two hours.”

  Theo kept his face solemn and impassive, but his eyes twinkled. “Guess you took the long way. You must’ve been plenty mad.”

  She blew out her breath. “Not mad. Just impatient.”

  Juanita made a light, noncommittal sound in her throat.

  Isabel winked. “Well, maybe a little mad.” She felt unexpectedly—almost reluctantly—comfortable with this family. And there it was. The operative word. Family.

  She had never really had one. She remembered a few happy times on the reservation back before her daredevil father had gotten himself killed. After that, she recalled only a murky haze of formless months. Although she’d still had her mother, an Anglo, the woman had only been there in a physical sense. After her husband’s death, she had severed all emotional connections with Isabel.

  Eventually, with a sort of dazed resignation, she had surrendered her daughter to foster parents.

  The O’Dells had been older, excruciatingly kind and absolutely convinced that Isabel’s dark moods were caused by her ambivalence about being half Native American. They hadn’t meant to make her reject her heritage, but their subtle emphasis on Anglo ways had changed her. With the very best of intentions, they had scoured her soul, emptied her mind of the ways of her father’s people.

  When Isabel graduated high school, the O’Dells had retired to Arizona. They still exchanged Christmas cards and the occasional letter.

  Family. Without consciously knowing it, she had gone off in search of one.

  With Dan, she had almost found what she was looking for. She remembered staring in awe and cautious joy at the results of the home pregnancy test. She remembered rushing off to the club where he was playing that night, practically bursting as she waited for him to finish the set, then leaping into his arms to tell him the news.

  His reaction was the beginning of the end. He looked panicked, muttered a choice swearword, then gave her a fake smile and false words of hope. They would marry, of course. Get a little house in West Seattle. Shop for furniture and dishes. Build a life together.

  Two weeks later she lost the baby. Two weeks after that, she lost Dan. He was away on a gig when the bleeding started. By the time he made it to the clinic, it was too late.

  He held her and wept with her, but even through a fog of painkillers she saw it. The look of guilty, sad relief in his eyes.

  “You’re a million miles away,” Juanita said. She had a wonderful smile, her creased face a relief map of a long, well-savored life.

  Isabel smiled back. “I guess I was.”

  Juanita set aside her knitting and wrung a steaming, fragrant cloth into a basin next to her chair. She wrapped the cloth around her right elbow. “Arthritis,” she explained.

  “Ma, the doc at the clinic said to take the pills and use the heating pad,” Theo said.

  “My way’s better.” She looked directly at Isabel. “I use an old Indian salve. Bethroot and wormwood steeped in hot water.”

  “It smells wonderful,” Isabel said. But it was more than that. Just being in this house caused a deep fluctuation inside her. These people didn’t question or accuse, but just accepted who she was, what she had done. As Juanita had bustled around the kitchen, getting supper and then steeping her herbs, the old folkways seemed to seep back into Isabel’s bones. And to her surprise, it didn’t hurt.

  The rain stopped as softly as it had begun. Isabel excused herself and walked out onto the rickety front porch.
Stars of searing brightness shone over the dark hulks of the mountains. The air smelled of evergreen and fresh water. It was cool at this elevation, and she wrapped the warm shawl tighter around her.

  She heard Dan before she saw him. Or rather, she heard the horse. The damp thud of hooves, the occasional ripple and snort, the creak of saddle leather.

  It wasn’t every day a man came for her on horseback.

  He appeared in the darkened yard, a slick, hooded poncho enshrouding him. “And I thought,” he said in his rich, silky voice, “that going to Bainbridge to get you was a pain in the ass.”

  Theo came out on the porch. “You okay, Dan?”

  “Yeah. Petunia’s good and mad at me, though.”

  “Petunia?” Isabel asked.

  “She came with the name. Won’t answer to anything else.”

  “You can put her up in the barn for the night,” Theo said. “Gary’ll ride her to your place in the morning. You want to stay here?”

  “I’ll borrow your truck if you don’t mind.”

  Isabel opened her mouth to protest. Then she thought about the small house, the meager supplies. It wasn’t fair to impose on the Sohappys.

  But the prospect of spending the night alone in a luxurious wilderness lodge with Dan Black Horse didn’t thrill her, either.

  Or maybe it thrilled her too much.

  Five

  “You mean there’s a road leading to your place?”

  Dan smiled into the dark and ground the pickup’s gears a notch higher. “It’s an old logging trail. Real old. You have to know where to look for it.”

  She clutched at the edge of the seat as they bounced over a rut. “Good,” she said. “Then you’ll have a way to get me home tomorrow.”

  He said nothing. He didn’t want her to go home tomorrow. More than that, he didn’t want her to insist on going home tomorrow.

  Finally, he asked, “Did you like the Sohappys?”

  “Very much.”

  “They’re my nearest neighbors.”

  “I was lucky Gary found me.”