The Borrowed Bride

by Susan Wiggs

  Everything had changed, and Isabel knew she could no longer put off calling Anthony. Her fingers felt cold as she lifted the receiver and dialed his number, punching in her credit-card code and then waiting with growing impatience through six rings.

  The answering machine kicked on. She listened to the bland, cheery message, then said, “Anthony, it’s me, Isabel. If you’re there, pick up. We need to talk. You see—”

  “Sure, babe.” Anthony Cossa’s real voice interrupted her. “What’s up? Are you ready to return to civilization yet?”

  “The lodge up here doesn’t have a phone. I’m in a town called Thelma.”

  “Listening to lousy country music, if I’m hearing the background noise right.” He laughed easily.

  “I was planning to come back sooner, but something came up. A couple of things.” She had no idea where to begin, what to tell him, what was fair. An injured eagle? An unresolved past? A sudden need to look into a part of herself she had kept in the dark for years?

  “Having second thoughts, babe?” Anthony asked.

  She could discern no inflection in his voice. She tried to picture him—he was probably wearing khakis or jeans, in his pristine Santa Fe–style condo on Western Avenue, drinking a beer from a microbrewery and being paged every sixty seconds while channel surfing on his forty-eight-inch TV.

  She tried to remember the last time they had shared a bottle of wine and just listened to music for a few uninterrupted hours. She tried to remember the last time they had gone dancing.

  “Isabel?” he prompted.

  “Anthony, I just don’t know. Saturday, I saw our whole lives rolling out ahead of us like a giant red carpet. But now—”

  “Now what?” Still she heard no sharpness in his voice, just curiosity.

  “Maybe the red carpet took a left turn somewhere. I’m having to take a good look at myself, Anthony, and—”

  “Just a sec. I have another call coming in.” He clicked off.

  She stood staring at the telephone keypad, wondering whether or not she had a right to be irritated.

  “Okay.” Anthony was back. “I’ve got someone on hold. Long-distance.”

  She was leaning heavily toward being irritated now.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asked. “Postpone the wedding? Call it off?”

  She felt the burn of tears in her eyes. “Your family has everything all planned—”

  “My family,” he said. “That’s really what all this is about, isn’t it? That’s what it’s always been about.”

  “I adore your family, Anthony. I’d hate myself if I disappointed them.”

  “Yeah, well, look. You do whatever it is you have to do to get your head straight, and call me tomorrow, okay, babe?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I better take this other call. Talk to you soon.” He was gone with a gentle click.

  Isabel stood with the receiver still held to her ear and leaned her forehead against the cold, shiny metal of the pay phone. She’d believed she belonged with Anthony. She had thrived on the fast pace of his lifestyle, and he had seemed eager to move to Bainbridge Island in order to be with her.

  But his abruptness and bland reaction had seemed exaggerated in their phone conversation. Perhaps it was the odd juxtaposition of hearing Anthony’s voice in a fire hall in Thelma. Or perhaps it was the things Clyde had said about Dan still echoing in her ears.

  According to Clyde, Dan had saved the tribal council—the whole town, for that matter—from financial collapse. The lodge enterprise had employed people who hadn’t had jobs in years.

  Of course, Clyde had said cautiously, Dan had run through a lot of his own money getting started. A lot of money.

  The rapid-fire beep of the off-the-hook-phone signal startled her. She quickly replaced the receiver in the cradle and turned.

  Dan stood a few feet back, watching her.

  The sight of him made the breath catch in her throat. He had always been easy in his tall, broad-shouldered frame, and he seemed so now, with his weight shifted to one leg and a thumb stuck into his belt. He was backlit by the muted lamps in the hall so that she could not see his face, only the inky waves of his long hair.

  He was too far away to have heard her conversation, yet she felt a heated blush rise in her cheeks as if she had been caught doing something wrong.

  Ridiculous. He was the whole reason she was in this dilemma. If it had not been for him, she would still be in the bosom of the Cossa family, getting ready for her wedding.

  Moments passed. They both stood unmoving. Some part of Isabel yearned for him so fiercely that she nearly wept. Then, before she could decide whether or not to go to him, he turned on his heel and strode away.

  She felt a deep, invisible agony rip through her, but she stood there mute and helpless. She wanted to be angry, wanted to blame him for her doubts, but he was ignoring her, stalking past dancing couples and groups of people chatting together.

  She should not have been surprised when he stepped onto the low platform and picked up an acoustic guitar. But she was. Somehow, she had managed to forget that Dan was a musician, a performer. An artist.

  The lights dropped even lower, and the other musicians tapered down the tune they were playing. The fiddler set a mike in front of Dan.

  He was surrounded by shadow, alone in a pool of light as he had been when she had seen him for the first time. As perhaps he had always been. When he lifted an unseeing gaze to the listeners in the room, her heart lurched. How well she remembered that unfathomable look.

  His long brown hands worked magic on the battered old guitar, drawing out chords of melancholic sweetness. It was the music of lonely places in the heart, of chances missed, of lost souls looking for a welcome somewhere.

  Dan’s gift with music had not diminished since his retirement. Instead, Isabel knew instantly that his talent had intensified and deepened. He had come back to the place where his soul had been made, and she heard a new awareness in his mesmerizing voice.

  The words were simple, a refrain that rang true, that made women reach out and sidle closer to the men beside them, and made the men gently take the hands of their partners.

  Through it all, Isabel stood alone, stricken, watching, knowing only one thing for certain.

  She had never stopped loving Dan Black Horse.

  There. She admitted it to herself. And it was the truest thought she’d had in years. She had let anger and fear eclipse her love and darken her heart, but the love had never gone away. It had just been obscured by a hundred other things. And she had allowed it. So had Dan.

  But somehow, he had found a way to look back at what had happened and to learn from what he saw. That was what it was all about. His song, and his abduction of her, the whole crazy weekend.

  The song ended with a smattering of applause. Dan grinned and chatted for a few minutes with the musicians. Then he walked straight to Isabel.

  “Now what?” he asked, keeping his distance, watching her, waiting.

  “Now—” Isabel’s mouth felt dry as dust. If she followed her heart, there would be no turning back. Yet she had never felt more certain of anything in her life. “Now we go home.”

  Eight

  Dan wasn’t sure what she meant, but he knew what he wanted her to mean. He said, “I’ll get your coat,” and then nothing more as they rode back to the lodge.

  After putting up the bike, he took her hand and started walking across the yard. The moon was up, and spidery shadows crept across the damp ground. The quiet was all pervasive, pierced only by the hollow hoot of an owl.

  Dan stopped walking and looked down at her, at the fine, silvery light in her hair. Her breathing was quick and uncertain. He gently brushed a stray strand of hair back from her cheek. He wondered about that phone call she had made, but he didn’t ask. He’d find out soon enough.

  “Now what?” she asked, echoing his own question to her. She gazed up at him, looking as lost and lonely as she had the first time
he’d seen her.

  He felt a surge of tenderness as he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close.

  “Now this,” he murmured, and settled his mouth on hers. He kissed her in a way that left no question as to his intent. The pressure of his lips urged her to open for him, and his tongue plunged inside, hungry, possessive. His body was so racked with desire that by the time he lifted his head, he could barely speak.

  If she said no, he would back off. He had made that promise to her the first time he had kissed her, and he knew he would still honor it now.

  When she spoke, it was a breathy whisper. “Yes.” And nothing more.

  But it was all he needed.

  Hand in hand, they walked into the darkened lodge and up the stairs to her room. She had been here only two days, but already her presence was strong in the soft, soapy fragrance that hung in the air, in the overturned paperback book she had left on the bedside table, the shoes she immediately kicked off.

  He knew there were things he should say to her, things he should ask her, but talking distracted him from the way he wanted to touch her. He stood behind her and took off the leather jacket she wore, letting it slither to the floor beside the bed. He bent and brushed aside her hair and kissed the tender flesh at the nape of her neck.

  A soft sigh slipped from her, and she tilted her head to one side. His lips trailed across her heated skin, tongue flicking out to touch her earlobe, hands moving to her waist to release the front buttons of her knit top. He freed her of the shirt and slid his hands up over her breasts. He slid her skirt down and watched her step out of it. He ran his open-palmed hands up and down the length of her, feeling the contours of her body as if for the first time. She had not changed; she was still petite and slender and soft. So utterly feminine that she made him feel large and clumsy.

  She gasped, reaching up and back with her arms and winding them around his neck to bring his mouth down. He turned her and kissed her then, and she brushed against him with an intimate, suggestive movement. She slipped out of her lacy underthings while he undressed, and neither felt awkward, for it was an inevitability that had been waiting for them for years, lying dormant and unacknowledged in their hearts until this searing instant.

  They lay back on the bed, cool sheets and billowy eiderdown sighing beneath the weight of their bodies. Dan braced himself up on one elbow and let his caresses ripple down the length of her while he gazed into her face. She wore a slumberous look, moist lips slightly parted, eyes half-closed. Her hands reached for him; then her palms drifted down his sides to his hips. He had to set his jaw and squeeze his eyes shut to regain control.

  Not until this moment did he realize the power she had over him. He bent his head and kissed her, drinking from her lips, his hands circling her breasts and then dipping lower, parting her thighs, finding her so ready for him that he could hold off no longer. He moved over her, their mouths still joined. Wanting her pleasure even more than he wanted his own, he lifted his head and waited, muscles straining, for some sign from her. She stared up at him, her shadowed expression unreadable.

  “You’re not…” he said through clenched teeth, “making this easy.”

  “Am I supposed to?” she whispered. But there was a smile in her voice, and her hands drifted down and clasped and guided him, and they were suddenly together as if they had never been apart.

  He found a rhythm they both remembered, a dance of the heart that had endured despite the passage of time. She lifted and tilted herself, as giving as the earth in springtime, and her dulcet acceptance filled him and brought him such a shattering pleasure that he saw stars. When a soft cry slipped from her and she arched upward, he knew the reunion was complete, knew that neither of them would ever be the same.

  Still their silence persisted, and it was a comfortable stillness, an abatement of worry. Neither spoke; they did not have to. Nor did they want to. That would mean entering the world again, entering reality, facing up to the unresolved matters that hung over them.

  Dan gathered her close and made love to her again, slowly this time, lingering over every part of her as if getting reacquainted with an old friend. She gave herself to him with a sigh of surrender. He found all the little delights of her, the hollow of her throat and the tender inside of her wrist, the backs of her knees and inner thighs where the skin was softer, smoother than anything he could imagine. With hands and mouth, he brought her to ecstasy again—and again—until she was sweetly exhausted, snuggling against his chest and growing warm and heavy limbed until, just as dawn tinged the sky, she slept.

  She awoke slowly, hovering in a delicious realm somewhere between sleep and waking. Her mind was filled with memories of Dan—his voice, his touch, the taste of his mouth, the shattering power of the passion she had found with him.

  Only him.

  Willfully, she thrust aside the thought. Just for now, she would not worry about the future. Just for now, she would let herself be warm and lazy and slightly dazed by all that was happening to her.

  “Dan.” She whispered his name and opened her eyes, but he was gone. He must have gotten up to make coffee. She stretched, feeling interesting aches in certain parts of her body, then went to brush her teeth. Rather than pulling on the terry-cloth robe, she slipped into Dan’s leather jacket. Wearing it, feeling its voluminous weight drop from shoulder to midthigh, she felt closer to him.

  The jacket should have evoked bitter memories, for she had also worn it the afternoon she had come home from the hospital. Both she and Dan were so silent that day, neither knowing what to say. They both cried and held each other and looked at the doctor’s pamphlet explaining how a high percentage of early pregnancies ended in miscarriage; it was generally a natural process and there was no reason they could not try again….

  Somehow, they both knew they would not try again. The first time was an accident, but a second time would be deliberate, would force them to commit to permanence in their relationship, no more drifting through the days toward a hazy, shapeless future.

  He had not been ready. And when Isabel finally realized that she could no longer wait for the full commitment of his love, she left.

  Last night changed everything. Dan had never touched her so deeply, so intimately. He was different now. Settled. Responsible. Ready to love her. She was falling in love all over again. This time, it was for real. This time, it was for keeps.

  As she walked bare legged and barefoot down the steps, she felt wicked and wanton. Dan had plucked her out of her controlled, rigid life and plunged her into a world of sensation and emotion. It was scary and sometimes it hurt, but she had never felt so alive.

  Her hand encountered a folded piece of paper in the pocket of the jacket. She pulled it out—a flyer of some sort. As she read the words, she stopped on the second-to-last step. The blood froze in her veins. Her heart turned to a block of ice.

  “No,” she said in a low voice, forcing her legs to start moving again. Surely this was just something Dan had picked up and forgotten to discard. Surely… She forced herself to calm down and made her way to the back of the lodge.

  The kitchen was warm and cheery with the scent of coffee. Dan was out on the back porch, leaning against the railing, holding a mug in one hand and an envelope in the other. He was looking out at the mountains.

  He wore only jeans, no shirt or shoes. His muscular shoulders and chest gleamed in the muted morning sun, and his hair flowed down his back. The subtle shadow of whiskers softened the harsh line of his jaw.

  There was such a stark beauty in him that for a moment Isabel felt completely inadequate. He could not possibly be hers. He was too perfect, too desirable.

  Then she remembered her purpose and stepped out onto the porch. The screen door tapped shut behind her, and Dan turned.

  His slow, easy smile held every memory of the splendor they had shared the previous night. “Damn, Isabel,” he said, his eyes smoldering, “you always were a great dresser.” He set down his mug and held out one a
rm. She went into his embrace, and he kissed her, his mouth tasting of sweet coffee.

  “Did you sleep all right?” he asked her.

  “Sleeping is about the only thing I can do right around here,” she said.

  “I can think of a few other things.” His hand slipped into the jacket, and his eyebrows lifted. “Damn, Isabel. You’re naked in there.”

  She couldn’t stifle a laugh as she moved away. His expression told her he had every intention of whisking her back to bed. She welcomed the prospect, of course, but first she had something to ask him.

  “What about this?” She held out the flyer.

  He hesitated for a heartbeat. The piece of paper dropped from her fingers.

  Dan propped one hip on the railing. His face was inscrutable. “The Yakima Suicide Race,” he said.

  She drew her hands into the sleeves of the jacket. “It has nothing to do with you, Dan. Right?” When he did not answer, she said again, “Right?”

  “It’s this afternoon,” he said, not looking at her. “And I’m entered.”

  Isabel leaned back against the door and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping against hope that she’d heard wrong. Just the thought of grown men on motorcycles jolting down near-vertical slopes, leaping gullies and skirting cliffs made her nauseous.

  “Dan,” she said, dragging open her eyes. “My father died in that race.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t do it, Dan.”

  “One of the local wineries made the purse worth winning. It could keep me afloat through the summer, long enough to get the cash flow started.”

  “You won’t need any business if you die in the race,” she said fiercely. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”

  “Will you listen to yourself?” Dan rounded on her. “Your father didn’t do a damned thing to you. You’ve always regarded his death as a deliberate, personal affront. A reason to pretend you’re not Indian at all, a reason to hide with your sterile Anglo foster parents and grow flowers on your sterile Anglo island.”

  His words sliced like cold metal into her. “I don’t need this, Dan. I don’t need you to say these things to me.”