reading multi-word arguments from a file in bash

Is it possible to parse a space-delimited text file with some of the arguments being multi-word quoted strings using plain bash functions if changing IFS is not an option? E.g. if text line is

Code:"1 2" 3when I execute

Code:read a bI want to get

Code:a=1 2
b=3instead of

Code:a="1
b=2" 3