Read Online Dakota Born by Debbie Macomber - Free Book Online Page A

sat in front of the television. His gaze didn’t waver from the screen when she entered the room. The show was a rerun of Walker, Texas Ranger and she didn’t want to waste her evening sitting with an embittered husband watching a show she’d already seen.
    Without a word she’d set up her sewing machine on the kitchen table, intent on making her daughter a new dress for church. It was a hundred-mile round trip to the closest church. A priest came to Buffalo once every two weeks to say Mass, but Joanie wasn’t Catholic. Brandon had stopped attending services with her three years earlier, so she made the long drive alone with the kids. Her husband had given up doing a lot of the things she considered important, another sign of the growing discontent in their marriage.
    As she worked, Joanie had brooded, alternating between resentment and despair. She deftly ran the flowery fabric beneath the frantic needle, but the task didn’t calm her, the way it usually did. This sewing machine had once belonged to her mother. Joanie had inherited it when her mother purchased a newer model, but God help her if she were to hint at buying a new sewing machine. Look what had happened when she’d asked about a washer.
    At ten, Brandon had wandered into the kitchen, glanced around, said nothing, then gone up to bed. It didn’t take Joanie long to follow. She waited until the room was dark before she climbed beneath the sheets.
    Brandon lay next to her, as cold and silent as a corpse.
    â€œI’m sorry about this afternoon,” she whispered, staring up at the ceiling.
    He didn’t say anything for long minutes, then finally, “Me, too.”
    â€œWhat’s happening to us?” she asked, her heart breaking. At one time they’d been so much in love. Neither of them would have allowed anything—a disagreement, a misunderstanding—to come between them. But these days they almost seemed to invent excuses to argue.
    Their courtship had been wildly romantic, but even then her mother had seen problems looming. When Joanie announced that she wanted to marry Brandon, her parents had advised against it. As a result, Brandon had never gotten on well with her family. Her parents didn’t dislike him, but he chose to believe otherwise. If she wanted to spend holidays with her mother and father, she and the children went alone.
    â€œI guess your parents were right,” he mumbled in the dark.
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?” she demanded, angered by the comment. She wanted to end this tension, not heighten it. Brandon couldn’t seem to let their disagreement drop, and it annoyed her.
    â€œYou’d have done better marrying Stan Simmons, like your mother wanted. He could buy you ten washing machines if you asked. Hell, he’d take them off the showroom floor and not miss a single one.”
    â€œI wasn’t in love with him. As it happens, I fell in love with you. As for those washing machines, I don’t need ten. Five will do.” She expected Brandon would chuckle, roll over and hug her, but he didn’t. “That was a joke,” she said.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œThen why didn’t you laugh?”
    Brandon sighed. “The answer should be obvious.”
    â€œApparently not.”
    â€œOkay, if I have to say it, I will. I didn’t happen to find your little joke all that amusing.”
    Joanie swallowed a groan, wondering why she even tried. “You’re impossible.”
    â€œYeah—and not only that, I drive a two-hundred-thousand-dollar combine.” He abruptly rolled onto his side and jerked the covers over his shoulder.
    Joanie waited until she was sure he’d fallen asleep before she slipped out of the bedroom and walked into the living room. For two hours she sat alone in the dark and listened to the chime of the grandfather clock every fifteen minutes. Eleven. Quarter after eleven. Eleven-thirty. This was her life, she