Christie Ridgway Read Online Free PDF

disconnecting their baskets. Inside Trin’s, Bailey glimpsed Cheerios, a box of pediatric cold medicine, and small jars of something the color of melted purple crayons.
    She looked into her friend’s almond eyes. “You’re a mother?”
    Trin nodded. “To Adam-sleeping-at-the-moment-but-with-a-cold-that-makes-him-cranky. He’s not quite two years old. I’ve been married for three. My husband’s Andrew Truehouse. Remember him from high school?”
    “Of course I remember him from high school.” A few years older than the two of them, he’d been student body president, as well as captain of the water polo and volleyball teams. Andrew Truehouse had been nicknamed “Drew So True.” Bailey started to laugh. “Oh my God, that makes you Trin Tran True!”
    The other woman scowled. “It was almost a deal-breaker, I’m telling you. But then we agreed I’d keep my maiden name and the wedding went forward. I would have sent you an invitation if you’d ever bothered to make contact during the last decade.”
    Regret and guilt gave Bailey dual hefty pinches. “I’ve made my visits home infrequent and extremely brief.
    Running from retail, you know?”
    One of Trin’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, I’m perfectly aware of who you were running from.”
    “I don’t know—”
    “And I just saw him on aisle three.”
    Bailey swallowed, trying to calm her suddenly rocking stomach. “Who…?” Then she gave up all pretext and clutched Trin’s forearm as if they were both still sixteen. “You saw Finn in here?”
    “Mmm-hmm. He’ll see you your bottle of wine and raise you a quart of whiskey.”
    Bailey searched the area around her, but there wasn’t any sign of him. “Are you certain it was Finn?”
    “Muscles? Eye patch? Big-boobied redhead hanging all over his wide manly chest?”
    A redhead? A woman? But of course Finn had a woman. Did Bailey expect he’d mooned around for ten years, remembering some starry-eyed first love and finding nothing near as dazzling? “Well, um…”
    Trin wasn’t listening to her. “C’mon,” she said, dragging Bailey around a corner. “Let’s spy on him. It’ll be like old times.”
    Of course Bailey would have never considered this on her own. She was too mature, too…uncaring about Finn and his probably fat redhead—the likely one with the equally plump wallet who had gifted him with that outrageous bake sale of a Nativity scene. But Trin, at barely five feet and maybe ninety-five pounds when wearing soaking wet winter clothes, was as strong as a freight train. She tugged Bailey behind a tall display of candy canes, red- and green-wrapped chocolate Kisses, and boxes of instant hot chocolate.
    “There he is,” Trin stage-whispered.
    Bailey worked hard not to look his way. “Really, Trin. I’m not the least bit interested in…” But then she heard his deep laugh and it compelled her to take a peek.
    The redhead did have big boobies. But despite her tiny waist, her hips were definitely fat. Hah. At thirty, Finn had developed a taste for tall fat women with hair the improbable color of a tequila sunrise. That was the problem with men—they never once considered that no real female had breasts that big or hair that red.
    Or maybe the actual problem was that they didn’t care.
    Pigs.
    The fake redhead had a loud voice too. “I know you must be a seal,” she declared.
    Fat, stupid woman. Pig, not seal.
    “A one-eyed special ops?” Finn countered. “Guess again.”
    Oh. Navy SEAL. Since they trained at the nearby base, Bailey now could see where that guess came from. As if Finn would be in the military, though. She knew his rebel’s soul better than that.
    Bailey bent to Trin’s ear. “What does he do, do you know?” At the other woman’s measuring glance, she hastened to add, “Not that I care or anything.”
    But before her friend could reply, from the corner of her eye she saw that Finn had dis-octupied himself from Tequila Sunrise and was moving away from her.