Read Online Wanton Angel by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page A

silence fell between them. The carriage groped and slid over a road made muddy by yesterday’s rain.
    Bonnie broke the impasse by tartly demanding, “Where are we going?”
    Eli took his time in answering; it was his nature to be downright cussed when he chose. Finally, after stretching vastly and making a startling sound similar to a yawn to accompany the motion, he replied, “Why, to your store, of course. It is true, is it not, that you and my daughter live in the apartment upstairs?”
    Bonnie was simmering at the emphasis he’d put on the phrase “my daughter”—of course Rose Marie was Eli’s child as much as her own! How galling that he had so obviously expected circumstances to be otherwise. “Rose and I do indeed live above the store,” she said with quiet dignity. “Do you plan to try and steal it again?”
    “From what information I’ve been able to gather, the place isn’t worth stealing,” came the immediate response, carrying a soft and wounding bite.
    Bonnie felt the attack sorely, though she did her best not to give any outer indication of that. Had the mercantile flourished as she had hoped, what a sweet triumph it would have been, but in truth the enterprise was a dismal failure, just as Forbes and even Genoa had predicted it would be. Only sheer stubbornness made Bonnie open the doors for business each morning, and it was with the deepest regret that she closed them each afternoon in order to spend the evening dancing at the Brass Eagle Ballroom. Too proud to accept help from Genoa or demand it from Eli, Bonnie needed the money she earned by dancing to survive. “I had no idea,” she countered coldly, “that thieves were so choosy.”
    The carriage was moving up the steep incline leading to the main part of town. “I didn’t steal your store, Bonnie.”
    Bonnie felt color rise into her cheeks. “Perhaps not personally,” she said and, though she spoke quietly, there was a challenge in her words.
    “Not personally, not impersonally. In fact, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
    “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about, Mr. McKutchen. When I returned to Northridge two years ago, I found my father’s mercantile in a disgusting state. Furthermore, there was a sign over the door that read “Company Store, McKutchen Enterprises!’”
    Light from a street lantern spilled muted gold over Eli’sface. He stiffened in his seat, in order to keep from being thrust, by gravity, into Bonnie’s. “You sound as though your dear and much revered father had built that store himself. If you will remember, it was a gift to him from my grandfather —a sort of reverse dowry, if you will.”
    “McKutchen Enterprises giveth and McKutchen Enterprises taketh away—is that what you’re saying?”
    Just then the carriage reached level ground and swung into a right turn, heading toward Bonnie’s store, where Katie would be waiting with Rose Marie.
    “Good God, woman, you are impossible to talk to!” Eli thundered. “That isn’t what I am saying at all! I’m merely trying to understand your attachment to the place—”
    “You could never understand,” whispered Bonnie with proud despair.
    The carriage drawing to a halt, Genoa’s driver and general handyman got down from the box and opened the door. Bonnie stepped out with his help, comforted by the width and substance of her store, standing so sturdily in the kindness of night, and by the bright light beaming from the upstairs windows.
    She would look in on a sleeping Rose Marie, exchange a few words with Katie, have a cup of tea. This dreadful day, for all its shocks and upsets and humiliations, was blessedly over.
    Except that Eli was looming in the opening of the carriage door, his voice quiet. “Bonnie—”
    She turned with great effort to face him, glad that the darkness would hide the pain in her bearing, just as it hid the imperfections of her mercantile. “Please go,” she said, her voice barely above a