Beauty and the Mustache Read Online Free PDF

hand.
    I heard a rustle and then
Elizabeth’s voice was in my ear. She’d obviously commandeered the
phone from Sandra. “Honey, listen. Sandra and I will be there
tomorrow. Just text Sandra your home address. Don’t worry about
anything. We’ll stay in a hotel and help you get your mother
settled. Where are you going now? Is anyone there with you? One of
your brothers?”
    “ No. I’m on my way back to
the house now to tell them the news.”
    Elizabeth tsked softly. “Oh, my
dear friend, I wish we were already there. We would huddle hug and
get drunk.”
    “ Me too,” I admitted,
grateful that there were people in the world who loved me. I didn’t
have the strength to argue against their generous offer, so I
simply said, “Thank you.”
    “ No need for thanks. We’ll
see you soon.”
    I nodded, and my eyes
watered again as I clicked off the call, but I blinked the wetness
away. I needed to pull myself together. I needed to tell six boys
that their momma was dying, and I had no idea how they were going
to take the news.
    After eight years with
barely any contact, my brothers were basically
strangers.

CHAPTER 3
    “ Death is a very dull,
dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever
to do with it.”
    — W. Somerset
Maugham
    I imagined that this was what Snow White must’ve felt like when
she woke up in the presence of the seven dwarves.
    Seven hovering
beards.
    Seven sets of bewildered eyes.
    Seven inquisitive
expressions—partly suspicious, partly amused.
    The fainting was my
fault.
    I drove home from the hospital in a daze. I
walked to the front porch. Jethro came out of the house trailed by
several others. I glanced over his shoulder. The world went
black.
    I should have known
better. I was a nurse for hootenanny’s sake! Two hours of sleep, no
food, intense levels of stress; no wonder I passed out. I was lucky
to have made it home without crashing my car. I’d never been in a
position of forgetting to eat before.
    Now I was laid out on the
couch in my momma’s house surrounded by a sea of beards. I heard
the roosters in the back crowing up a fuss.
    My brothers’ expressions
were varying degrees of anxious and curious. At last, my eyes
settled on the measured, silvery blue stare of a stranger. My brain
told me that this stranger’s name was Drew Runous, that he was a
pillaging Viking highlander laird, and that earlier in the day he’d
mentally pictured me getting my rub on.
    Drew was sitting next to
where I lay on the couch, leaning over me, one arm braced to the
side and his hand at my temple.
    That’s when the
fuzzy-headedness began to retreat.
    “ What are you doing here?”
I asked him groggily, placing my hand to my forehead as I tried to
sit upright.
    “ Don’t do that.” He pushed
my shoulders back to the couch. The hand at my temple moved to my
wrist, his index and middle finger pressing against my pulse point.
“You fainted. You need to take it slow.”
    “ Listen to him, Ash. He’s
a doctor.” I recognized the voice of my third brother. I turned to
see sweet and anomalous Cletus just as he brushed a strand of hair
from my face. He gazed at me with kind hazel eyes. “It’s good to
see you, baby sister.”
    I gave him a small smile.
I hadn’t seen him in eight years. An unexpected wave of nostalgia
rushed over me. I ignored the tears stinging my eyes and responded,
“You too, big brother.”
    “ I’m not that kind of
doctor,” Drew said quietly, and my attention moved back to
him.
    “ What?”
    His stern face and
gray-blue gaze focused on me. “I’m not a medical
doctor.”
    I blinked at him and his
bewitching eyes. “Okay….”
    “ But you said you was a
doctor.” Cletus glanced between him and Jethro.
    “ He is a doctor, just not
that kind.” Jethro placed his hand on Cletus’s shoulder and spoke
softly.
    “ What kind?” Cletus
asked.
    “ He’s a PhD. It’s like
being an expert in something. He doesn’t do the people medical
stuff.”
    “