Can't Hurry Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

the last few months. Maybe because Celeste seemed to believe that the mistreatment Victoria and Luc had received at Lyle’s hands as kids was somehow her fault for leaving him when she did.
    A ridiculous notion, but to her great shame Victoria did nothing to assuage that guilt.
    Which only made her more uncomfortable around the woman. When Celeste was judging her, Victoria knew where she stood—directly beneath the former fashion model. Now that Celeste had decided to like her, of allthings, or if not like her, at least support her—well, Victoria was totally adrift.
    One more thing in her life that she couldn’t count on staying the same.
    “It could use it,” Victoria said, striding across the wide plank floor as if there were no trepidation in her heart about this room and her place in it. “It could use a match.”
    “The whole ranch could. The only thing worse than the décor is the architecture.”
    Well, on that they were in total agreement.
    Victoria didn’t even hesitate as she pushed the rolling chair away from the oak desk and sat on its worn fabric seat as if she belonged there.
    A spring poked her butt as if to argue.
    Celeste sat in one of the black leather club chairs set up across from the desk. In the day’s brand-new light, she looked like one of those paintings of the Madonna. Serene. Lovely. Her complexion like milk.
    Despite her two showers, Victoria still smelled like horse poop.
    “When do you leave?” Victoria asked, when the silence pulled taut between them.
    “Today. I have a reservation at Big Sky Resort for the week.”
    Victoria sighed in nostalgic bliss. Spa weeks. She remembered those.
    “Mud baths? Tell me there will be mud.” The mud baths had been her favorite and she tried not to sound like a kid asking for candy, but it was hard. It had been over a year since she’d even gotten a pedicure, much less sat in mud.
    “And seaweed.”
    “Oh! Seaweed wraps, with the plastic wrap and the hot towels?”
    Celeste smiled like a cat with a mouth full of cream, the bitch. “If it’s a good spa, I certainly hope so.”
    “Well, for your sake I hope it is.”
    “You could come.”
    The idea was like a whisper from her old life, as if someone had left open a window and the memories of better times came swirling in on a breeze.
    She’d been a princess, spoiled and pampered, sitting in mud and wrapped in seaweed, and for a few years it had felt so damn good. She’d been so deeply infatuated with the spa lifestyle that in the years before Jacob was born, she’d thought of opening a spa. She’d even picked out property in New Jersey. At one point she’d been so excited, she’d told her best friend, Renee, about the idea.
    And Renee had laughed and told their entire circle of friends about it as if it were a joke. As if Victoria herself was the punch line. And Victoria had been young enough, and insecure enough, that she’d tossed the dream aside.
    But that was so far behind her it was as though it had happened to another person. And going back or wanting to go back was like a betrayal of every person her husband had robbed. Every life that had been ruined so that she could sit in mud.
    It was ludicrous when she thought of it like that.
    “I can’t,” she finally said. “I just … can’t.”
    Celeste nodded, smiling sadly. “I know.”
    Celeste blew on whatever was inside the steaming crimson bowl she carried and then set it on the edge of the desk.
    As the scent of eggs, bacon, cheese, and sour cream filled the room, Victoria’s stomach roared like a bear coming out of hibernation.
    She jumped, startled and embarrassed. It had been a long time since her body had made itself known. Between her husband’s suicide, and the resulting fallout,and Jacob’s sickness and hospitalization, she’d begun to consider the feeding and bathing and clothing of her body as chores that needed to be checked off her list.
    But suddenly … she was hungry.
    Celeste arched an elegant