A Christmas Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

toward the phone on the nightstand next to the bed. “Rowan.” Maybe he wasn’t so mad at her after all. A side of her lips quirked up. He might even be standing outside the building, wanting to say how much he hated how things had ended on a weird note between them tonight. Afterall, Rowan was a strong advocate of not going to bed angry.
    The weight of the world lifted off her shoulders. She raced over to the phone and snatched it up with her apology cresting her lips before she even got the receiver to her ear. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”
    “Well, it’s about time you admitted it!”
    Her face twisted. “Who is this?”
    “Damn. You don’t even recognize the voice of your little sister anymore?”
    Corona slammed her eyes closed and groaned. “Tess.”
    “Wow. What a way to make a girl feel special,
Chloe,
” her sister sniped. “What a ridiculous name. I’m calling you Corona. You were named after our grandmother, and you should be proud of that.”
    “I am proud, it’s just … “
    “Country. And country doesn’t work in the big city.”
    “Can we please not argue about this?”
    “Fine. I called to ask why I had to find out about your getting married to Mr. Action-Pack on that little thingy we call down here ‘the boob tube.’”
    Corona’s heart sank. “You saw that?”
    “As a matter of fact, I did. I watched it standing in the middle of Parker’s Gas Station with Daddy and … Lyfe Alton.”
    “What?”
Corona blinked and felt like she was being swept back into a time machine. What were the chances of Lyfe popping up on the same day that she had just been reading in her diary about their first time together?”
    “Shocking, isn’t it?”
    “To say the least,” Corona agreed. Her brain startedchurning out so many questions that she didn’t know which one to ask first. “What … why … how?”
    “Exactly what I asked,” Tess said, picking up on her sister’s shorthand.
    “Well, what did he say?”
    “Not much. Really. Only that he was in town on sabbatical.”
    Chloe nearly swallowed her tongue.
    “Just imagine if you’d just come home for the holidays like I begged you. Who knows, maybe you two would’ve run into each other.”
    She swallowed. “Like that would have been a good thing.” Still, she couldn’t stop herself from imagining what such a chance encounter would’ve been like.
Awkward. Painful. Explosive.
    “How long is he in town for?” Chloe asked, trying to sound casual.
    “Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
    “
You
didn’t ask?” she said, shocked.
    “Why do you say it like that?”
    “Because I’ve never known you to miss an opportunity to get all up in someone else’s business,” Chloe answered honestly. “Never.”
    “Well, we all were a little distracted with you and Rowan James trying to inhale each other’s faces on national television. Really. Next time, try just getting a room.”
    “Ohmigod. Lyfe saw that?”
    Tess clucked. “With you being in the industry, I figured that you knew how cameras worked. They broadcast to millions of people—even to ones who are just standing in a gas station.”
    Corona felt like she might need to make another run to the bathroom.
    “When exactly were you planning to tell us that you’re marrying a white boy?”
    “Don’t say it like that. What difference does it make what color he is?”
    “I don’t care what color he is, but people like a heads-up.”
    “I know. I know. I’ll call them.”
    “Uh-huh. Right,” Tess challenged. “Looks to me like you were planning to avoid the issue by doing what you always do, run away.”
    “Not funny.”
    “It wasn’t meant to be.”
    “That’s not fair,” Chloe argued.
    “But it is true.”
    Silence.
    “See? You may be good at running your little business up there.”
    “Little?”
    “But when it comes to family issues, you race out of the kitchen before the stove gets too hot. Talk to Daddy. It is waaaay past time for you two to settle y’all’s