A November Bride Read Online Free PDF

was there when you went through puberty and your voice changed.”
    Erik pressed his fist against the bedroom wall. Really? He’d put in a full morning brainstorming ideas for his new account. He’d spent an hour running on the treadmill. He was hungry. Tired. And now he was calling to ask Sadie out—because Phillip had put him up to it—and she had to knock him all the way back to puberty?
    “You still there?”
    “Yes.” Erik hummed a few bars of “Born in the U.S.A.” Some people counted to ten when they felt as if they were losing their grip on their patience. He hummed . And this was no time to get testy. He would treat Sadie like, well, like a woman. Not like his best friend.
    “Are you humming?”
    “What? No.” Erik stepped up on the treadmill again. Hit Start—keeping the pace low and slow.
    “You sure? Because you only do that when you’re trying not to lose your temper.”
    If this conversation didn’t improve soon, he was going to sing the entire song at the top of his lungs.
    “Sadie, would you go out with me?”
    Silence—and then she laughed. Not her off-tune giggle that always made him smile, but a laugh that probably had her doubled over. When she spoke again, her words were punctuated with gasps for air. “Erik . . . first you asked me if I wanted to kiss you . . . and I said no. You . . . you turned down . . . my marriage proposal . . . Why are you asking me out?”
    Of course she was going to make this difficult. Keep walking, Davis. Charm her.
    “Hey, you refused to kiss me. And that wasn’t a real proposal.”
    Charming. Now they sounded like two grade schoolers.
    “You didn’t really want me to kiss you. What was that line you used? ‘I’ve become a much better kisser. Want to try again?’ ” Sadie’s imitation of him was not even close. “Is that how you set a romantic mood for every woman you date?”
    Was he supposed to take Sadie’s verbal slicing and dicing without even flinching? If he continued his pursuit of a date, she’d leave him in little pieces, just like the ingredients for the Cobb salad she’d served him last month. Was he a man or an avocado?
    “Okay, so I don’t want to marry you and you don’t want to kiss me.” Erik stiffened his spine and asked again. “But you didn’t answer my question: Will you go out on a date with me?”
    “Come on, Erik, I need to—”
    “You need to answer my question. When a man asks you out, you need to tell him yes or no.”
    “You’re asking me out?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    Couldn’t the woman just say yes and let it be? “Because I want to go out with you.”
    “As friends?”
    “As a man and a woman. On a date.”
    “But you and I—together—we’re not a man and a woman. We’re best friends.”
    Erik fought back the urge to start humming again. “Now that’s absurd.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    Why had he ever thought asking Sadie out was a good idea? Oh, yeah, because Phillip had gotten into his head and convinced him he might be in love with Sadie. Right now, he wasn’t even sure he liked her.
    But he wasn’t quitting—not yet, anyway. “Sadie, will you go out with me, please?”
    “No.”
    No? “What do you mean, no?”
    “You asked. I answered. No, I will not go out with you. I don’t believe in mercy dates or practical joke dates or whatever this is. If you ever want another late-night meal—any meal at all—cooked by me, end this conversation now. Good-bye, Erik.”

    The last Thursday of the month—and Sadie was about to be surrounded by a horde of men and their sons. Again.
    “I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t agreed to help me with this class.” Sadie stood side by side with her friend Mel, setting up cooking stations around the counters in the church kitchen. “When the men’s ministry director asked if I wanted to teach a series of cooking classes to dads and sons, I should have said no. N-O. How hard is it to say that two-letter word?”
    “You go through this