Betting Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page A

dreaded more than anything on earth.
    Singing.
    With one off-key, high-decibel, off-time note, he knew he was already too late. It wasn’t right what CB could do to Garth Brooks. He shuddered every time she tried to attempt “Thunder Rolls”. Especially bad, not only was she singing, she was suspiciously sniffing and gasping into skipped words. She was also nearly a whole line behind.
    He headed into the kitchen, where the white CD player was failing to drown her out. He hit the stop button and pushed open the back door. He found her exactly where he expected; in the flowerbeds on her knees, her hands sunk into the still muddy earth between his rosebushes. Whenever she was upset, she tried to sing and till the entire earth single-handedly. She didn’t abandon her task, continuing to turn over the dirt like an earthworm gone wrong.
    “Garth threatened to sue last time, remember?”
    No response.
    “So did the neighbors.”
    Silence.
    “Cassie?”
    Then he heard the most awful thing. A full blown sob. Her shoulders hitched and everything. He stood there, shocked to immobility while she lowered her head and cried. What finally made him realize this wasn’t some horrible nightmare was when she picked up her hand to cover her face.
    “CB, no!”
    She jumped, startled by his voice, plopping her rump on his thick grass and setting her elbows on her parted knees. Mud clumped to her fingers, falling in chunks between her feet. Her hair was still wet from her bath, rippling and unruly, strays in all directions, hanks dried into strings around her face. Those big green eyes of hers glistened miserably at him as tears poured over her spiked lashes.
    God, why not shove a stake through my gut, Cassie?
    “Honey, it isn’t that bad.”
    “He’s marrying her!” Brand new sobs bubbled out of her while she tried to say something else, but the lump in her throat seemed to keep her from making any intelligible noises.
    “I heard.”
    “He-he-he-”
    Burke stifled a groan. This was going to take a while. She wasn’t this goopy when Luke left her practically at the altar. He grabbed the hose and brought it over to her, kissing off the rest of his day. She extended her hands at his gesture. He turned on the spray, sending mud dripping off them. Once she was reasonably clean, he helped her to her feet and led her back into the house.
    She stopped crying by the time he got her to the couch, thank God, but she curled up on a blanket and turned away from him, which wasn’t an improvement. He let her stay there, long enough to start some coffee. He carried in two mugs, one sweet and creamy the way she liked. She hadn’t moved an inch and she didn’t twitch at the scent of the coffee. Bad sign.
    The white square of paper caught his eye when he put her mug on the coffee table. He tilted his head to inspect it, finding the gold-embossed pattern of two swans forming a heart with their necks.
    A wedding invitation.
     
     
    Cass knew it was stupid to be this upset over someone like Luke. Actually, it wasn’t Luke bothering her. It was that he was right. How there weren’t little horned ice skaters outside, she couldn’t say, but it was true. She didn’t know the first thing about being feminine. Being a girl. Being a wife. Worse, she was never going to find out. Burke might be uncomfortable for a moment in his otherwise blithe existence, but dammit, she deserved to cry about it.
    Sitting in a heap on Burke’s couch, she could see her entire dismal eternity spreading out before her. Friday night poker games until she was as old as Ben Friedly, one of May Belle’s infamous regulars down at Shaky Jakes. The man was eighty if he was a day and not one person in town remembered him being married, having a date or even liking a girl. Then again, no one but Ben remembered the Depression with any clarity either. The point, the one she could see in the not-so-distant horizon, was she’d already left her best chances behind her.
    She was doomed