Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

time thinking about her. In fact, I couldn’t remember a day that she hadn’t been front and center in my mind. But, lately, it had gotten out of hand. Basically, since the day she’d gotten her good news from the doctors and I’d taken a very inebriated, very talkative, very affectionate Cara home, I’d played the conversations we’d had that night over and over in my head.
    And, since I’d found out last week that she didn’t have any memory of divulging as much as she had, I was even more obsessed with replaying every word. For…something. Some clue as to how to move forward and get out of the friend zone I’d put myself in. It was all I thought about, and I still wasn’t any closer to coming up with a plan.
    It was driving me crazier than an outhouse rat.
    “Thanks for dinner, Mama. It was amazing, as always.” I kissed my mom on the cheek and gave her a quick hug while she did her puzzles.
    Sunday evenings after family dinners, Dolly Briggs put jigsaw puzzles together. When we were little, she used to say that it was her reward for making it through the week and keeping all nine of us alive.
    “Dishes are in the washer,” I said. “I’m gonna head out.”
    Every week, my siblings and I rotated dishes duty. We’d been doing it since I could remember. There are pictures of each one of us on stools at the sink when we weren’t tall enough to reach the water.
    My mom lifted her head, still holding two small puzzle pieces in her hand. “I figured you had somewhere to be. You had ants in your pants from the second you sat down.”
    I grinned. “Wow. I haven’t been accused of that since I was a kid.”
    When I was a kid, I’d always had a tough time sitting still. Church and school were the hardest, but sometimes, even sitting through a meal was difficult. I’d never understood how other people didn’t get bored as easily as I did. I’d always had an excessive amount of energy. My parents had already had seven boys by the time I came along, and they said nothing could’a prepared them for me. My dad liked to say that the only hell my mama raised was me. It was even a running joke that God gave them Harmony as an apology for what I’d put ’em through.
    Thankfully, I’d also grown up on a farm with seven brothers. Most of the time, I had been up before dawn to do chores. Then I’d had school and sports. When I got home, it was supper, homework, chores, and then bed, just to do the same thing the next day. The only time it got bad anymore was when I had something I needed to be doing or somewhere else to be.
    Not that either of those things were true tonight. As much as I wished I had somewhere to be or someone to do, I didn’t.
    “I don’t have anywhere to be. Just a lot on my mind.”
    My mom’s left eyebrow lifted. I knew she wasn’t going to let me leave without following up on the statement I’d just made. “Really? Who is she?”
    “She’s no one,” I shot back. The second the words left my mouth, I realized my misstep. It was a rookie mistake, I shouldn’t have made. If there really was no one, as I’d claimed, then I wouldn’t have said, “ She’s no one.”
    “You still seeing the Talbot girl? Lori?” she asked casually.
    I knew her game and I wasn’t playing. “I only went out with her once, months ago.”
    As she searched for a place to put the piece that she held between her thumb and forefinger, she nodded and oh-so-innocently commented, “Oh, that’s right.”
    There was no way I was buying that she was confused over whether or not Lori and I were still dating. Dolly Briggs had the well-deserved reputation of knowing all and seeing all. We’d even joked that she was omnipotent, which she’d quickly put a stop to because she’d felt we were walkin’ the fine line of blasphemy.
    “So, is it Clare Green’s girl? I know she’s been dying to get the two of you together since Lizzy graduated and came back home.”
    “I’m not seeing Lizzy.”
    Again, this was