Claimed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

brother’s later diagnosis had threatened to close her in once more. She couldn’t live the way her brother and father did. Wouldn’t. And she wouldn’t back down from this opportunity.
    Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t throw her friends a bone. “If they decide it’s too dangerous, then of course I’ll abide by that. With Stefan out of the country and no longer up in my grill, I’ll be able to explore some of the mountain trails he’s constantly warning me about.” She grinned. “So it’s a win either way.”
    “You know, he could be warning you about those trails because of wild animals,” Fran observed wryly. “Not simply because he wants to be a pain in the ass.”
    “Mostly though, he wants to be a pain in the ass,” Lauren said, and the tension in the room finally broke. “I heard from Dimitri that you two were totally making out on the beach. Truth?”
    “We were not making out.” Nicki hesitated. “Well, okay. I was. But I honest to God think Stefan was trying to seduce me to keep from running down the beach. Like this was some sort of super new diplomacy technique he wanted to practice on me.”
    “And how did that practice go?” Emmaline asked. Her expression had also lightened, brimming with curiosity and the possibility of new romance. She among all of them was the most in love with being in love.
    “For me—pretty damn well,” Nicki said. “I think he might have been going through the motions, but trust me, it’s been so long since I’ve been anywhere close to those kind of motions, I’ll take it.”
    “I keep trying to fix you up, and you keep rejecting me.” Lauren protested. “How are you supposed to date if you never go out?”
    “I’m too busy to mess with all of that.” Somewhat true, actually. She’d been a one-woman unstoppable force in college. Too small to play in most organized sports at any sort of elite level, and too worried about her possible heart condition, she knew needed to find something she could do solo. To give herself a competitive chance, she’d set her heart on the outlier sports—windsurfing, adventure running, climbing. There she’d met an entirely new group of friends who knew nothing about her past, nothing about her possible heart disease. They only knew she sometimes got a little dizzy if she didn’t stay hydrated…and that despite said dizziness, she was usually the first to jump off the cliff into the water below, no matter how deep that water was.
    But though there were plenty of men in that group who Nicki could have pursued—she hadn’t. Because despite the fact that she truly believed that she was okay, it was one thing to get your heart broken by a relationship.
    It was something else to walk into a relationship with your heart already broken.
    “Okay, well, let’s be smart about this.” Lauren recalled Nicki’s thoughts to the present into focus as she settled into a chair. “What are the risks here? Let’s say you get stuck somewhere and you can’t take your meds.”
    “What, my beta blockers? Those aren’t that critical, really.” Nicki shook her head. “They’re for my migraines, and there’s some evidence they help with high blood pressure and all of that, so that’s a bonus. But if my heart is really going to go…” she shrugged. “It’s going to go.”
    “And you never got tested for this?” Fran’s voice was incredulous. “That seems really reckless to me, I’m sorry.”
    “Oh, I did once—twice, even, I think,” Nicki said, trying to keep her cool. She’d had this fight with her mother too many times. “The odds aren’t in my favor, and I know that. But I…couldn’t keep going back. Not in the end. I’d rather live with my heart condition as a maybe and actually live—than change my whole life because of some stupid test. I’ve seen what it’s done to my brother. He’s become as bad as my mom, sure that every cold is going to kill him. And my dad…” Nicki sighed. “I’m not