Page 9 of Hard to Love
“I’m the one who’d be lost if I’d left Prophecy again,” Delaney said softly.
Something about the way her brother took Delaney’s hand and shared a secret look with her squeezed at Greer’s insides. She wanted that. But instinct told her this unsettled feeling inside her couldn’t be cured by a man.
This was a fight she had to face herself.
Why she felt she needed to fight or what she was fighting, she wasn’t exactly sure.
Now, if she slid her feet into these boots, she was accepting whatever they, with their prophetic power, predicted. She would be embracing both the best life she was capable of living and the love of her life.
Greer gazed down at the pair of gray sharkskin boots she was wearing. Handmade by her dad.
Delaney said, “Taking them off doesn’t mean you’re forgetting him.”
She was right. He would want Greer to do this. To move forward. He would be so proud of Delaney and so happy for her.
Oh, Daddy, I wish you could be here right now.
But she would honor his memory by embracing the gift of a good life and true love that he and Delaney had given her.
She carefully toed off the boots he’d made her and scooted back her chair to stand. She eased her foot inside the first prophecy boot and stepped into it, the leather gliding over her heel and hugging her high instep.
Oh, it fit perfectly.
Quickly, she did the same with the other. Finally, whenboth her feet were embraced by soft leather, a feeling did surround her. A soft blanket of optimism trimmed with a border of peace.
All stitched together with the certainty that something in her world was about to change.
Dear Jesus,Alex wasn’t at a bed and breakfast. He’d just landed on Mary Poppins’ front porch. The two-story Victorian was painted the color of taffy—pink, yellow, and blue. He shrugged his small gym bag higher on his shoulder and headed for the stairs to get the hell out of there. Before he hit the bottom step, the front door whooshed open behind him.
“You must be Alex.”
He glanced back to see a busty older woman hurry onto the porch. If this was Delaney’s aunt, she had at least one thing in common with his mamá. He and his brothers had always sworn that Sofia Villanueva could hear an ant crap from a mile away.
He slowly turned to face the woman fully. If that didn’t convince her she didn’t want his kind in her candy-colored place, he didn’t know what would. But just for insurance, he slapped on his baddest badass scowl.
“Yeah?” He almost closed his eyes at the bark in his tone. If his mamá ever heard him speak to a woman like that, she would yank his ass up by the ear, force-march him to the kitchen, and make him gargle a gallon of Fabuloso.
Delaney’s aunt gave him a quick once-over, taking in his boots, his jeans, his wrinkled shirt—hesitating on the grease stain on the arm—and looked straight into his eyes. What he found on her face blew him away. No judgment. No wariness. Just simple acceptance and welcome.
With a smile, she stepped forward to wrap an armaround his, making her dangly earrings swing in a circle just above her shoulders. Alex tried to get a closer view of them without being obvious. A tangle of Monopoly pieces—a car, a top hat, a shoe, and that Toto-like dog. Anchoring them all was an orange plastic rectangle with $500 on it. The highest bill in the game.
She maneuvered him toward the front door. “I’m Raylene, Delaney’s aunt. I’m so happy you decided to stay here at Sweetwater. Not that there’s anything wrong with the chain hotels, but I think you’ll find my place a little homier.”
Alex tried to ease his arm from her hold, but Raylene’s grip was solid. “You know, it might be better if I just grab a room at one of those chains.”
“Well, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard since Irma Flores claimed she started a fashion trend that spread all the way to Hollywood. You’re already here. And besides, PBC is paying for your stay. Why anyone would sleep somewhere that offers two packages of instant coffee when you could have fresh brewed and a breakfast that will knock you to your knees?” She glanced down at Alex’s jeans as if she were speculating about his knees. “And speaking of good food, have you had lunch yet?”
His stomach chose that moment to make a sound like a lion too long without a gazelle.
“Guess that answers that.” She pulled him down a hallway bisecting the house, his boots clomping on the shiny wood floor. He lightened his step because he sure as hell couldn’t afford to mark up the place and owe her to refinish the floor.
They stepped into a light-filled kitchen his mamá would’ve killed for. The center was dominated by an island the size of his Montana cabin, and windows spanned thewall overlooking a backyard filled with lush grass and blooming flowers. But the peaceful view couldn’t compete with the hen-chatter coming from an L-shaped breakfast nook. Several ladies—probably ranging from their twenties to their sixties—sat elbow to elbow, sipping iced tea, eating something off dainty-ass plates, and yapping over one another.
AKA hell on earth.
“Some of my Bunco ladies are here for salad day.”
Salad? Yeah, that hellevator had just dropped a floor. “Mrs…”
