Wedding at Cardwell Ranch. B.J. Daniels

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the thought of what might be waiting for her inside the cabin this time made her shudder as she opened the door and stepped in, Nat at her side.

      She hadn’t heard Nick’s voice since she’d quit taking the drugs. Until last night. When she’d come into the living room, half-asleep, she’d found his favorite shirt lying on the floor by the couch. She’d actually thought she smelled his aftershave even though she’d thrown the bottle away.

      The cabin looked just as she’d left it. Letting out a sigh of relief, she put Nat to bed and tried to convince herself she hadn’t heard Nick’s voice last night. Even the shirt that she’d remembered picking up and thinking it felt warm and smelled of Nick before she’d dropped it over the back of the couch was gone this morning, proving the whole incident had been nothing but a bad dream.

      “Good night, sweetheart,” she said and kissed her daughter’s forehead.

      “Night,” Nat said sleepily and closed her eyes.

      Allie felt as if her heart was going to burst when she looked at her precious daughter. She couldn’t let Mildred get her hands on Nat. But if the woman thought for a moment that Allie was incapable of raising her daughter...

      She quickly turned out the light and tiptoed out of the room. For a moment, she stood in the small living area. Nick’s shirt wasn’t over the back of the couch so that was a relief.

      So many times she had stood here and wished her life could be different. Nick had been so sweet while they were dating. She’d really thought she’d met her Prince Charming—until after the wedding and she met the real Nick Taylor.

      She sighed, remembering her decision soon after the wedding to leave him and have the marriage annulled, but then she’d realized she was pregnant. Had she really been so naive as to think a baby would change Nick into the man she’d thought she’d married?

      Shaking her head now, she looked around the cabin, remembering all the ideas she had to fix the place up and make it a home. Nick had hated them all and they had ended up doing nothing to the cabin.

      Well, she could do what she wanted now, couldn’t she? But she knew, even if she had the money, she didn’t have the heart for it. She would never be able to exorcize Nick’s ghost from this house. What she really wanted was to sell the cabin and move. She promised herself she would—once everything with Nick’s death was settled.

      Stepping into her bedroom, she was startled to see a pile of her clothes on her bed. Had she taken them out of the closet earlier when she’d changed to go to dinner? Her heart began to pound. She’d been upset earlier but she wouldn’t have just thrown her clothes on the bed like that.

      Then how had they gotten there? She’d locked the cabin when she’d left.

      Panicked, she raced through the house to see if anything was missing or if any of the doors or windows had been broken into. Everything was just as she’d left it—except for the clothes on her bed.

      Reluctantly, she walked back into her bedroom half-afraid the clothes wouldn’t still be on the bed. Another hallucination?

      The clothes were there. Unfortunately, that didn’t come as a complete relief. Tonight at dinner, she’d worn capris, a blouse and sandals since it was June in Montana. Why would she have pulled out what appeared to be almost everything she owned from the closet? No, she realized, not everything. These were only the clothes that Nick had bought her.

      Tears blurred her eyes as she started to pick up one of the dresses. Like the others, she hated this dress because it reminded her of the times he’d made her wear it and how the night had ended. It was very low cut in the front. She’d felt cheap in it and told him so but he’d only laughed.

      “When you’ve got it, flaunt it,” he’d said. “That’s what I say.”

      Why hadn’t she gotten rid of these clothes? For the same reason she hadn’t thrown out the chili pot after the squirrel incident. She hadn’t wanted to upset her mother-in-law. Placating Mother Taylor had begun right after Allie had married her son. It was just so much easier than arguing with the woman.

      “Nick said you don’t like the dresses he buys you,” Mildred had said disapprovingly one day when she’d stopped by the cabin and asked Allie why she wasn’t wearing the new dress. “There is nothing wrong with looking nice for your husband.”

      “The dresses he buys me are just more revealing than I feel comfortable with.”

      Her mother-in-law had mugged a face. “You’d better loosen up and give my son what he wants or he’ll find someone who will.”

      Now as she reached for the dress on the top of the pile, she told herself she would throw them out, Mother Taylor be damned.

      But the moment she touched the dress, she let out a cry of surprise and panic. The fabric had jagged cuts down the front. She stared in horror as she saw other deep, angry-looking slices in the fabric. Who had done this?

      Her heart in her throat, she picked up another of the dresses Nick had made her wear. Her sewing scissors clattered to the bedroom floor. She stared down at the scissors in horror, then at the pile of destroyed clothing. All of the dresses Nick had bought her had been ruined.

      Allie shook her head as she dropped the dress in her hand and took a step back from the bed. Banging into the closed closet doors, she fought to breathe, her heart hammering in her chest. Who did this? Who would do this? She remembered her brother-in-law calling from out in the hall earlier, asking what was taking her so long before they’d gone to dinner. But that was because she’d taken a shower to get the smell of her own fear off her. It wasn’t because she was in here cutting up the clothes her dead husband had made her wear.

      Tears welled in her eyes, making the room blur. She shoved that bitter thought away and wiped at her tears. She wouldn’t have done this. She couldn’t have.

      Suddenly, she turned and stared at the closed closet door with mounting fear. Slowly, she reached for the knob, her hand trembling. As the closet door came open, she froze. Her eyes widened in new alarm.

      A half dozen new outfits hung in the otherwise nearly empty closet, the price tags still on them. As if sleepwalking, Allie reached for one of the tags and stared in shock at the price. Hurriedly, she checked the others. She couldn’t afford any of them. So where had they come from?

      Not only that, the clothes were what she would call “classic,” the type of clothes she’d worn when she’d met Nick. The kind of clothes she’d pleaded with him to let her wear.

      “I want other men to look at you and wish they were me,” Nick had said, getting angry.

      But when she and Nick went out and she wore the clothes and other men did look, Nick had blamed her.

      “You must have given him the eye,” Nick would say as they argued on the way home. “Probably flipped your hair like an invitation. Who knows what you do while I’m at work all day.”

      “I take care of your daughter and your house.”

      Nick hadn’t let her work after they’d gotten married, even though he knew how much she loved her wedding planning business. “Women who work get too uppity. They think they don’t need a man. No wife of mine is going to work.”

      Allie СКАЧАТЬ