The Wedding Shop Read Online Free Page B

the first time . . . He walked into the shop bold as you please to personally deliver a shipment. “This was left behind on the Wayfarer. Thought I’d deliver it myself.”
    His blue eyes locked on her and never let go. She yielded without hesitation to their beckoning. His voice nailed her feet to the floor, and for the life of her, she couldn’t utter one intelligible word.
    Aunt Jane had to step in, direct him where to drop the bolts of cloth, and apologize for Cora.
    Now she angled away from her reflection, smoothing her hand over her bobbed hair. She wasn’t a beautiful woman. Handsome, Mama liked to say. Tall and lean, with the figure of a teen girl rather than a mature woman of thirty. But she kept herself dressed in the latest fashions and managed to keep what little shape she possessed without the aid of cigarettes or dieting.
    Stepping out of the shop, down the front walk, Cora headed toward the center of Heart’s Bend. The small but affluent town in the shadow of Nashville was alive with morning commerce.
    Shop owners swept their front walks, calling to one another. And she was one of them.
    No one counted on Aunt Jane dying five years ago, at seventy, from a malaria outbreak the authorities claimed was contained. Robust Aunt Jane never saw it coming. No one did.
    So Cora took over the reins of the shop. Proudly.
    Down the avenue, the air twisted with the aroma of baking bread along with the sour odor of horse droppings. Rosie, the milk cart mare, swished her tail at the biting flies.
    Cora crossed Blossom Street, heading along First Avenue, trying to take in the beauty of the day to break free of Mama’s comments. She spotted Constable O’Shannon across the wide avenue, at the entrance of Gardenia Park, talking to a giant of a man with blue leggings tucked into black leather knee boots and a loose blouse billowing about his arms, the breeze shifting his wild golden hair about his face.
    Rufus?
    “Rufus!” She shouted his name through her cupped hands, forgetting decorum, forgetting the gossips with their ears to the ground. “Darling! You’re here.”
    Running into the avenue, Cora avoided a passing car. The driver sounded his horn, but she didn’t care. Her Rufus was here.
    The breeze kicked up as she ran to greet him, her heart racing with love.
    So her morning tingle of anticipation was correct. He had returned. Just like he said. “Rufus, darling! You’re here.”

Chapter Two

    H ALEY
    New Year’s Eve
    Heart’s Bend, Tennessee
    T he pad of paper resting on her lap was blank. At any minute Mom would call up the stairs, “It’s time!” and she’d have nothing.
    Yet across her childhood bedroom, another piece of paper on her dresser said everything. It dictated her future. Filled her achieving parents and brothers with pride.
    The Kellogg School of Management and Marketing at Northwestern University.
    But she’d already given four years of her life to college. Then six years to the United States Air Force. Earned her captain’s bars. Three years ago she spent six months in Bagram.
    Being in a war zone changed her. She was grateful to spend her final years in the air force in California. Near surf and sun.
    But nothing prepared her for last year. First, the whirlwind, crazy-love, destructive relationship with Dax Mills. She’d lost her mind to the power of his charms. It was like she’d stepped outside of herself and become a different woman.
    She was locked into his swirl and almost lost herself until the phone call came that woke her up. Tammy Eason, her best friend since first grade, was dying from an aggressive form of brain cancer.
    How could it be? She was only twenty-eight, four months from marrying the man of her dreams, Cole Danner. Haley was to be her maid of honor.
    Instead of a wedding toast, she spoke a funeral eulogy.
    Haley tossed the pad of paper across the room. What did any of it matter? Goals? Dreams? Notching achievements? Making a name for herself? Landing a Fortune 100