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Page 142
It's time. I want the truth now. Who are you, and why are you here?"
She dropped her spoon into the bowl with a clatter. Finding it hard to breathe, she murmured, "My story is not easily believable."
"Try me."
What choice did she have? She had no lies easier to accept than the truth. She lifted her hands nervously to the bonnet ribbons that were not there. "My name is Abby Wynne. I was born in the year 1836."
"I see," Mike said, not seeing at all. Still, he let her go on.
Soon she was relating the most incredible talealthough one she'd paved the way for ever since he'd found her on the desert.
"My sister Lucy and I did not want to leave our home in Pennsylvania," she was saying, "but my father had what he called itchy feet. I believed he was being kind, that he did not want to tell me that I had scared off suitors for both my sister and me."
He watched her lovely face for a hint of craftiness, but her coffee brown eyes had a dreamy, faraway look as they stared past his shoulder. What was her game? If he let her keep talking, maybe he would learn.
And maybe he would lose the urge to run his fingers through the pale, rich hair that cascaded over the shoulders of her white blouse.
"And how did you scare off, er . . . suitors?" he prompted.
A smile turned up the corners of her full lips

 
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