Back in the Game: A Stardust, Texas Novel Read Online Free PDF

inside?”
    “Whatever you want it to be.”
    “That’s impossible.”
    “Is it?”
    “You’re being mysterious.”
    “Am I? You’re the one hankering for the trunk.”
    “Will you sell it to me?”
    The woman sat silent for a time before she said, “This trunk requires a special owner. Someone who believes.”
    “Believes in what?”
    The woman drew bony knees to her chest and tucked tiny feet beneath the hem of her long dress. She set the chair rocking, and smiled a toothless smile. “Why, the unstoppable magic of true love.”
    Breeanne notched up her chin, felt her heart thump harder beneath the pressure of her thumbs against her breastbone. “I believe.”
    The woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Do you?”
    “More than anything in the world,” Breeanne said. “Will you sell me the trunk?”
    She’d been reading romantic fairy tales since she was five years old. Of course she believed. But it was her parents’ real-life, thirty-year love story, and their devotion to each other and their four adopted daughters, that truly made her believe in the unstoppable power of true, unconditional love.
    “I’m not sure you are strong enough to own it.”
    “It’s just a trunk.”
    The old woman’s eyes flickered, searched her face. “You know it’s not.”
    The smell of rain thickened. Clouds darkened. Wind shook the plastic walls of the stall. People scurried for shelter.
    Neither of them moved, nor looked away.
    Her cell phone dinged. Jodi texting. She ignored it. She needed this transaction completed before her sisters descended and tried to talk her out of it.
    Breeanne almost offered the woman three hundred dollars, but managed to bite her tongue in the nick of time. It was all the money she had in her purse, and it belonged to Timeless Treasures. She didn’t have three hundred dollars in her savings account to reimburse her parents. And if she got this trunk, she was not putting it up for sale in the store.
    Besides, money wasn’t the woman’s end game, but Breeanne didn’t know what was. “I want the trunk.”
    The crone’s eyes deepened to amber beneath the darkening sky and her mouth quirked into a sly curve. “If you make a wish before opening a compartment for the first time, that wish will come true.”
    “Without fail?”
    “Without fail. Make certain you truly want what you wish for, because you will pay a great sacrifice for it. And once the wish has been cast, it cannot be undone.”
    “I understand. So five compartments. Does this mean there are five wishes in total?”
    The woman gave a curt nod, as if she was growing bored of her. “Yes, yes.”
    “What happens if I don’t make a wish when I open a compartment?”
    “Then you will find nothing inside.”
    Ha. Likely nothing was inside. She didn’t care, because she was buying an exquisite trunk, not what was or wasn’t in it. If anything was inside . . . bonus. “Two hundred and twenty dollars, but that’s my final offer.”
    The woman considered her a moment, the breeze whipping the material of her faded dress around her.
    Breeanne’s cell phone pinged again, another text from Jodi.
    Finally, the woman stuck out a wrinkled hand, palm upturned. “Done.”
    Warmth spread through Breeanne’s body, pumping adrenaline, jittering her nerve endings, dizzying her head. She shuffled her feet in a happy Snoopy dance. She’d won. The trunk was hers.
    She counted out the money.
    The woman folded her fist around the twenty-dollar bills and stuffed them into her bra. “All sales are final.”
    “Where’s the key?”
    That toothless smile again. “I have no idea.”
    “But how will I open it?”
    “That’s for you to figure out.”
    “You could have mentioned that in the beginning.”
    “You could have asked.”
    “Fine.” She squatted beside the trunk again, and her irritation vanished. It was such a beautiful hope chest and worth the inconvenience of not having a key. No biggie. She would hire a