Read Online Wedding at Wildwood by Lenora Worth - Free Book Online

of yours. Don’t go gouging me for too much money on these wedding pictures. I’d hate to think you’d take advantage of my good graces just ’cause you’ve gone and got a big head.”
    Seething, Isabel smiled sweetly at him. “I’m doing this as a favor for Susan and my grandmother,” she explained. “And unlike some people, I don’t take advantage of others. You can rest assured I’ll quote you a fair price for my services, Eli.”
    Eli nodded, his gaze sweeping her face. “I’ll just bet.”
    A shiver of revulsion slipping down her back, Isabel turned to hurry toward her house, memories of Eli’s past innuendoes coming back with all the clarity of the chirping crickets singing to the approaching darkness.
    While Dillon had always teased her relentlessly, his youthful flirtations had only fueled her own longings. Eli, on the other hand, had been much older and much more direct with his barbs. He’d always cornered her, making suggestive remarks about her station in life and about her lack of a social position, making her feel small and worthless even while he implied he could give her whatever she wanted—if she’d be willing to pay the price. Isabel had never taken him up on any of his offers. And apparently, he’d never forgiven her for it. Or for her closeness to Dillon.
    Isabel tried to block the ugly past and Eli’s condescending cruelness out of her mind. But it wouldn’t work. Dillon’s sweet touch, followed so closely by Eli’s implied threats, only reinforced what she’d been telling herself all along.
    She should have never returned to Wildwood.
    Nothing good could come of this. Especially if she and Dillon didn’t halt things between them right now.
    Reaching the back porch of the little farmhouse, Isabel turned to stare out into the golden dusk. And then she saw Dillon, moving like a desperado through the wildflowers. Heading toward home.
    “Only we don’t have a home, do we, Dillon?” she whispered to the night wind. “You and me, we’re like that field of flowers, wild and uncultivated, scattered.”
    And if Eli Murdock had his way, they’d both be mowed down and cleared out.

Chapter Five

    “M ore rice and flour,” Cynthia Murdock said, laughing out into the crowd of about twenty women scattered around the opulent formal living room of Eli’s home. “Susan, sugar, you’ll have to cook rice every night for a year if this keeps up.”
    Susan laughed, then passed the basket laden with staple provisions around the group, her eyes shining with pleasure. “But isn’t this basket so lovely. I can use it in the kitchen maybe, or out on the sun porch.” Then, her gaze flying to Cynthia, she hastily added, “That is, if you don’t mind me adding my own decorating touches here and there, Mrs. Murdock.”
    Cynthia took the floral-etched wicker basket filled with not only rice and flour bags, but spices and seasonings, too, then turned to her future daughter-in-law. “Of course not, honey. As far as I’m concerned, when you move in here with my son, my work is done. I plan to fade to the background. I think I’ll travel a lot and you know, I might even invest in one of those fancy condominiums down at Panama City Beach. I do so love the Gulf of Mexico.”
    “Wish I had an accommodating mother-in-law,” one of the shower attendees chirped. “I’d gladly buy mine a condo far away from here, if I could afford it.”
    Isabel, standing near the high arched doorway to the kitchen, laughed at the offhand joke, then snapped the moment with her camera, her stance aloof and observant as always. She was comfortable being on the outside, looking in. Maybe because she’d been born into that position here at Wildwood, it just came naturally for her now. Perhaps that was why she’d taken up photography at an early age, with an inexpensive camera Grammy Martha had given her one Christmas. Now, she could watch the world from her vantage point and capture the parts of it she wanted to