Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection Read Online Free Page A

of the action. He’d once been a quarterback, after all. Old habits died hard.
    “Have fun in the Land of Cheese, Boss Man,” Miguel said before clicking off.
    No doubt about it. A month back in Wilmington Bay and his brain would look like hunks of Swiss, his body like clumps of curd and his patience like shreds of mozzarella.
    He shook his head and punched in his brother’s phone number.
     
    * * * * *
     
    ELIZABETH SPEED-DIALED Gretchen on her cell only five seconds after she closed her car door. No chance her hands would stop shaking, though, for five thousand seconds, at least.
    “M-Meet me at my place in half an hour,” Elizabeth told her.
    “You sound crazed,” Gretchen said. “What’s going on?”
    She swallowed. “He’s back.”
    “Who?”
    “Rob,” Elizabeth whispered.
    Gretchen gasped. “Roberto Gabinarri? The ‘Hot Calzone’ of Wilmington Bay High?”
    “The very one.”
    “Hold onto your oregano, honey, I’ll be right over.”
    By the time Elizabeth’s heartbeat had slowed to a mere Fred-n-Ginger tap-dance pace, Gretchen arrived, her presence announced by a healthy pounding at the door.
    She strode in—tall, strong, big-boned but without flab, shoulder-length blond hair, bright blue eyes, peachy-cream skin with natural rouge spots on her cheeks—bearing a box of her famous truffles and a tin of cocoa. All she’d need to complete the Original Swiss Miss look was a white ruffled apron and a backdrop of the Alps behind her.
    Gretchen thrust the chocolate offerings at Elizabeth. “So, tell me about this dude. You two graduated together, right?”
    “R-Right.”
    “What’s so bad about him?”
    Gretchen was a few years older and had gone to high school in a neighboring town. She’d heard of Rob, of course, like everyone, but she’d never been under his spell.
    “Everything. Seeing him again—it’s worse than I thought. Even worse than it was in the beginning.”
    “Let’s start there then. The beginning. You met him, when?”
    “The s-summer I turned five.”
    Gretchen’s eyebrows popped up to the middle of her forehead. “You’ve known him that long?”
    “Uh-huh.” The years spun like a pinwheel through Elizabeth’s mind with images of Rob flashing in full color on every panel. “My Uncle Siegfried and his Uncle Pauly were celebrating their seventeenth anniversary of being in business together. Rob and his family lived in Wilmington Bay already but my family had just moved here so I could start school in the fall. We were all invited to a Tutti-Frutti party.”
    “And it was love at first sight, right?” Gretchen said.
    “Not even close. I was terrified of him. He seemed like a creature from the Klingon Empire…and he never stopped talking. And m-me—” She looked into Gretchen’s face and saw the caring, loyalty and sympathy an intensely private person like herself came to count on in a friend. The feeling of safety warmed her soul, even while her head still twirled in panic. “You know how hard words can be for me around people I don’t trust. People I’m not comfortable with.”
    “I know, honey. I know.” Gretchen put a gentle arm around her shoulders. “So, did he ever stop talking so much?”
    She shook her head. “It’s remarkable, really. The guy doesn’t shut up. He wasn’t in a homeroom class with me until third grade but, even before then, I could always recognize his voice in the hall. Hear his laughter.”
    “Did he bug you in third grade?”
    “No. He was nice. Nice to everyone,” she said, remembering the smiling dark-haired kid Rob was back then. “There was this one day when he’d lost his pencil. It was a Friday afternoon. He was sitting next to me at the Number Four table and Mrs. Klausen had asked us twice already to get our writing utensils out. Teddy from across the table said, ‘Hey, Rob, you can have one of my dinosaur ones,’ and he rolled it over to him. But I held my best pencil out to him. It didn’t have any fancy