Read Online Wed to the Witness by Karen Hughes - Free Book Online

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    Although her mother’s people had raised her with love and a deep understanding of the legacy she’d inheritedfrom the woman she had no memory of, Cheyenne had sensed early that her father had sent her away because she was different. How different became apparent at the first Anglo school she’d attended when she tugged on her teacher’s sleeve one sunny morning and predicted an accident would happen on the playground. When the teacher dismissed the warning and the event Cheyenne had seen so vividly in her mind’s eye occurred moments later, her classmates had begun taunting her, calling her Princess Voodoo and She-Who-Knows-It-All.
    Her most intense memories of that school year were of the hours she’d spent cowering at a desk in the back of the classroom, wishing desperately she were like everyone else.
    Over time, she had grown accustomed to being different. She learned the value of using discretion with outsiders, understood that the only people she could trust were those of her mother’s blood who accepted and revered her gift of sight. Only once since that day on the playground had she misjudged. During her final year of college she had fallen in love with Paul Porter, a man she had trusted with her heart and her secrets. Like her father, Paul could not deal with the fact she was different, and wanted no part of her after she’d told him about her heritage. So, he’d walked away, leaving her to deal with a raging, tearing hurt. In the year she’d been at Hopechest, her battered heart had healed and she’d settled into a content, safe existence.
    Until the night before last when she’d stepped into Jackson Colton’s arms. Even now, while she watched her student fit an arrow’s nock into the bowstring then slowly draw it back until his right hand came even with the side of his mouth, Cheyenne felt a frisson of needstir deep inside her. A need she knew well she could not risk feeling.
    So, she wouldn’t risk. After all, she and Jackson had shared only a couple of kisses in a dimly lit parking lot. Nothing more. Just because she’d allowed her control to slip for a few mind-numbing minutes didn’t mean she would ever again try to crawl up the man’s chest.
    The thought of the blatant way she’d opened her mouth in invitation, of how her body had melted against his put a heated flush into her cheeks that had nothing to do with the warmth of the morning sun that slanted across her face.
    She knew next to nothing about the man.
    Granted, she knew a lot about his family—her brother had married Sophie Colton—but Cheyenne had no clue what kind of man Jackson was. And there she’d stood, making out with him in a parking lot for God and everyone to see!
    Behind the dark lenses of her glasses, Cheyenne narrowed her eyes. Sophie had once mentioned that Jackson had broken an ample number of hearts after he’d graduated from law school and moved to San Diego to work in the law offices of Colton Enterprises. Cheyenne didn’t doubt it. With his arresting good looks and charmer’s grin—and the talent to kiss a woman until her bones melted—Jackson was a man countless women would be drawn to.
    Just because she was drawn to him didn’t mean she had to act on that attraction. She had no intention of winding up on the list of another man’s spoils.
    If it had been anything other than fate that had brought them together, she would have phoned Jackson and canceled this morning’s breakfast plans. Only her deep understanding of the responsibilities that went hand in handwith her gift had prevented her from making the call. The vision that had slid inside her head and sent her to the Cinema Prosperino had told her the man she would meet there was in trouble. That he needed her help. She could not turn her back on Jackson any more than she could reject her gift.
    So, she would deal with her responsibilities. This morning