Read Online The Hopechest Bride by Kasey Michaels - Free Book Online Page B

going to slip to the south.
    Why hadn’t she been paying attention? Unless she hadn’t wanted to look back, to think about the possibility of a storm, because that would have meant she would have to postpone her camping trip.
    She took one longing look at the chicken, stuck one crispy chicken leg between her teeth, and refilled her half-empty canteen from the stream. Tucking everything else back into the bag, she then untied Molly and mounted her with the ease of long practice, using the rock as her step up.
    Once in the saddle, Emily looked toward the dark clouds again, and then toward the hills. Could she make it? She lifted her head, sniffed the air, at last becoming aware of the increase in the wind, all of it blowing in off the ocean.
    If she turned back toward the ranch, she’d be riding straight into the storm. If she rode toward the cave, the sanctuary she’d always kept stored with dry wood for a fire, and which held her camp stove and other supplies in a large plastic container she’d dragged up there two summers ago, she might be able to outrun the storm.
    Definitely the cave was the lesser of two evils. Besides, the last thing Emily wanted to do was go backto the ranch. Not yet. She gave a flick of the reins, heading Molly toward the hills.
    She didn’t look back, because looking back wouldn’t help her. The storm was coming. That was all she had to know.
    If she had looked back, she might have caught a glimpse of Josh Atkins, remounting his own horse, ready to follow her wherever she led.
    Because Emily was right. The storm was right behind her.
    Â 
    Martha watched as Meredith slid her arms into a full-length raincoat Joe held out to her. “Are you two sure you want to do this? Patsy is highly disturbed, and she hates you both. This could get nasty. Perhaps you should wait, give it a few days, then speak with the doctor again?”
    â€œI can’t do that, Martha,” Meredith told her. “Joe told me the doctor said Patsy’s suicide attempt was a cry for help. Hate me or not, I’m all she’s got. She has to have directed that cry to me.”
    â€œThen let me come with you,” Martha suggested, reaching for her own coat. “She may need to see you, but she doesn’t need to see Joe. I’m sorry, Joe, but just the sight of you might set her off. I’m sure I can convince her doctors to let me accompany Meredith into Patsy’s hospital room.”
    Joe looked at Meredith, who nodded her agreement, and within minutes they were in the car and on their way. Forty minutes later, with the windshieldwipers losing their battle with the windblown rain, they arrived at the gates of St. James Clinic, a part of the state’s institution for the criminally insane.
    Martha watched Meredith closely from the back seat as Joe drove through the gates, for Meredith had once resided here, after the engineered automobile accident had robbed her of her memory. Patsy had brought her here, to these grounds, and left her, unconscious, where the staff would find her, recognize her as Patsy and lock her up in a mental institution.
    The amnesia, or as the doctors at St. James had termed it, her “disassociative fugue,” had only been a bonus to Patsy, who had believed that only Meredith’s insistence that she was not Patsy would be enough to keep her sister locked up for years and years.
    â€œAre you all right?” Martha asked as she and Meredith exited the car in front of an imposing pair of doors cut into the dark brick building and stepped under the overhang, out of the worst of the weather.
    â€œYes, I’m fine,” Meredith said as Joe went to her, gripped her hand tightly in his.
    â€œMaybe so,” he said, trying for some sort of gallows humor perhaps, “but I’d still like to put a name tag on you, just so these guys remember who you are—and who you aren’t.”
    â€œThey were very kind to me in the short