Born To Be Wild Read Online Free

would know if something was going on. Lucy has been pretty emotionally transparent since the accident.”
    “What about the opposite? Maybe some boy has been paying a little too much attention to her?”
    A thought that cut through her. “If so, she hasn’t said anything. Micah, she’s only eleven!”
    “A mature eleven.”
    “Still…too young to be involved with a boy.”
    “Kids don’t always see things the way adults do. We didn’t.”
    Skirting a sumac, she remembered all too well. “I wasn’t eleven, though. I was nearly legal.”
    The nearly part having been the problem.
    “Have you given her an opening to confide in you?”
    Isabel stopped and confronted him. “What are you saying, Micah, that I’m not paying attention?”
    “No, of course not—”
    “Because that’s what it sounded like. That you blame me.”
    “I swear I’m not pointing fingers, Isabel. It’s just that it’s been hard for me to get anything out of her for a while. I wondered if you were having better luck than I was. I guess maybe that’s the problem with being a part-time father.”
    “And whose fault is that?”
    Micah looked as if he were grinding his teeth, but he didn’t respond. Isabel closed her eyes and shook her head. What was she doing, trying to start a fight with him? They were on the same side here. They had an equal investment in wanting to find their daughter. Whatever had once been between them was in the past. Lucy was the only thing that mattered right now.
    She choked back another rush of tears. “Sorry.”
    Micah went all tense. For a moment, she thought he would reach out to her. Touch her. Hold her in his arms the way he had so many years ago.
    She shouldn’t let him.
    But, oh, she wanted him to…
    And then he retreated, moving back away from her as if pulling himself together.
    “Maybe we ought to get back to the house. Just in case.”
    She nodded. “Right. About Lucy not talking to you… Sometimes she’s not the same girl she was before the bus accident. She doesn’t talk to me much, either. At least not about what’s bothering her.”
    “I thought she was getting counseling?”
    “She is, but what happened is a lot for an eleven-year-old to absorb in a couple of months.” It would be a lot for anyone to absorb. “She once told me she was broken inside and she didn’t know how to fix it to make things right again. I tried talking to her about it, but she clammed up. We never used to fight, but now, when she gets in one of her moods…” She sighed.
    They got in the truck and drove back in silence.
    But when Micah saw the Falcon Ranch truck parked in front of the house, he cursed under his breath.
    Isabel didn’t say a word. She’d told Poppi not to come, but she hadn’t told him why. Because Micah was here. Now there might be more trouble than she could bear.
    So the moment Micah pulled his pickup behind Poppi’s, she flew out of the passenger side and ran into the house. Her family was already waiting for her. Not just Poppi, but her sister, Reyna, and brother, Cruz.
    “ Querida ,” Poppi said, holding out his arms just the way he had when she’d skinned a knee or gotten thrown off a horse.
    Unable to help herself, she rushed right into her father’s arms and pressed her cheek to his shoulder as he enclosed her in a giant hug, his thick mustache pressing against her forehead. Reyna and Cruz moved closer. Though Cruz was older than her and Reyna younger, they looked more like each other than they did her, their brown hair naturally streaked with gold a shade darker than their eyes.
    “Have you heard anything?” Reyna asked, her eyes watery, her narrow face pinched, as if she were about to cry.
    “Nothing yet.”
    “We’ll find her,” Cruz promised. His hawk-sharp features tightened. “What the hell is he doing here?”
    Isabel knew he meant Micah. She glanced back to see him coming up the walk. And he didn’t look any happier to see her family than they were to see