Flirting With Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

when you get here. So take a walk. Go to the place in the middle of the airport that has all the rocking chairs and play the game you told me about.”
    Erin was as sharp as they come, but she’d obviously forgotten the game I’d told her about was Jim’s creation. He’d made it up ten years ago. We’d been in Aspen skiing and were headed back to Charlotte but got snowed in at the Denver airport. While I read the latest Nora Roberts novel, he people-watched and tried to guess their names based on their looks. Sometimes after he’d called to them, they actually turned around like he’d been right, and he claimed to have a system. Really young good-looking guys were always Brad or Jason. Bald brainy looking guys were Stanley or George. Tall leggy blonds were either Heather or Ashley with an occasional Jessica. Katherine or Jennifer were safe brunette guesses, but redheads were always Chiara, which I always found odd because it’s not a common name. But like everything Jim did, his game drew me in, and we played it religiously in airports, even though he always won.
    “Tara, listen to me, Lilly wouldn’t want you sitting there with her ashes in your lap, crying.”
    “Are you watching me?” I shifted the miniature coffin from my lap to the chair beside me and covered it with my flouncy skirt.
    “Look, we haven’t known each other very long, Tara, but I know you. You’re like an older me.”
    Great. Now I’m abandoned, grieving, and at forty, I’m officially old. My caller ID flashed the number of some nuisance company who kept trying to give me a lower interest rate for a credit card I didn’t have. I thanked her for fixing my travel arrangements. “I’ve have another call, got to go. I’ll see you soon.”
    I put Lilly in my giant wheelie bag that held my brief case and my handbag, and headed up to the atrium. A martini bar was nestled next to a Bath and Bodyworks store that looked out of place in an airport. I did exactly what the annoying announcement told me not to do, left my luggage unattended, and went to the bar. A perky blond named Heather handed me the menu with forty-seven drinks. Since I only had two hours to kill, I ordered the first four that appealed to me.
    “Do you have some more people joining you?” she asked as she swiped her key card and rang up my order.
    “No. Just me. I’ll be sitting on the rocker in the middle of the concourse.”
    She shrugged and tossed a clean martini shaker in the air à la Tom Cruise from that old movie about bartenders that Jim loved. In a few minutes, she’d brought this handy little side table for me, like a TV tray for martinis. “Here you go. The Wedding Cake, Between the Sheets, Over the Hill, and, last but not least, The Gates of Hell.”
    I thanked her and slipped her a twenty. “Things might get a little rowdy over here. Will you look out for me?”
    “You go, girl.” She fist bumped me. “My brother works at the tapas bar. I could text him to bring you something to eat. You’re gonna need it if you drink all of these.”
    “I’ll be fine,” said the woman who hadn’t drunk more than two glasses of anything simultaneously since her thirtieth birthday. She thanked me for the big tip and turned to go back to her kiosk. “Can I ask you something, Heather?”
    She flashed a blinding smile. “Sure.”
    “Is that really your name?” I pointed to her nametag.
    She smiled and nodded warily, like I was a serial killer looking for perky blonds named Heather.
    I raised my glass to her. “Thanks.”
    The Wedding Cake was a little too sweet but went down easy, and the buzz was kicking in before I had my first sip of Between the Sheets. With the peach schnapps, it was much more to my liking. Yes, I was feeling much better. I took my sweater off and laid it over Lilly’s coffin. The airport wasn’t very busy. People came through the security gates in spurts, hurrying toward their gates. A tall thin fiftyish looking man with thick glasses, pushed