I LOVE LUCY (The Bachelor Pact) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Four
     
     
    Three more days until Christmas. Lucy missed Reid more every day that passed.
    But she tried to focus on her new friends at Sunset Vista.
    The fact that their families were either gone or were too busy to include them in their plans broke her heart.
    Just as Deseree had so many times.
    She would not let the Silver Sneakers, the women who walked every morning on the beach, down.
    Pasting on a smile, she entered the common room, laden with decorations. Some of the men had already strung colorful, twinkling Christmas lights across the room, and another resident had decorated the doors with angels and wreaths. Santas and snowmen stood out against the palm trees outside.
    Her phone buzzed on her hip, and she checked the number. Reid and Sophie had each left a dozen messages.
    She set the box on the table and the Silver Sneakers attacked it, grabbing ornaments and mistletoe and tinsel and giggling as they discussed the upcoming talent show.
    She stepped aside to listen to Sophie’s message wishing she could talk to her and tell her about this place.
    “Lucy, call me,” Sophie said. “I’m counting on you being home for Christmas. Deseree is actually talking about cooking this year.”
    Lucy blinked back tears. She wanted to be there with them and see that. But she couldn’t bring Emmet into her sister’s life, not when Sophie had finally found happiness.
    The room grew noisy as more residents filed in for the tree decorating party. Christmas t-shirts were the theme since it was too warm for sweaters, and Moon handed out Santa hats.
    Birdie, the matchmaker of the Silver Sneakers, stood instructing Able Cooligan, her current boyfriend, strategic places to hang the mistletoe to optimize kissing opportunities for the singles.
    “Our bodies might be sagging and bagging,” Birdie said as she pointed to her wrinkly knees and winked. “But inside we’re still the same.”
    Lucy hugged the woman. “Everything looks great.”
    Mae strolled in wearing a reindeer shirt, and Lucy detected the smell of blueberries. “Have you been baking?”
    Mae blushed. “I’m making a cobbler to take to a man from my church whose wife just passed. I just saw the obit this morning.”
    “It would be awful to lose a loved one during the holidays,” Lucy said. It was bad enough just being separated.
    “I know. It’s so sad.” She dabbed at her eyes. “But there’s a whole pew of widow women who’ve been eying him,” Mae said with a nervous frown. “He probably has casseroles up to his eyeballs.”
    “I’m sure your pie will be the best,” she told the sweet woman.
    “I don’t know, Ellen made him her sour cream coconut cake. Everyone says it’s better than sex.”
    Lucy grinned. She wanted a piece of that cake.
    Mae patted her gray curls. “You think I should get highlights to make me look younger? Or maybe we should have a Botox party.”
    Lucy shook her head. “No, you are beautiful just the way you are.”
    Moon and three of the men adjusted the tree in the tree stand while Rhoda, a woman who wore diamonds on every hand, directed them, her bangled bracelets jangling.
    “To the right a little. No, no, now to the left.”
    The group had bickered about where to put the tree at first, then how much to cut off the bottom. She’d finally stepped in to settle the dispute and now the tree stood by the picture window that offered an impressive view of the pool and intracoastal waterway.
    In another corner, seventy-year-old DeEtte, one of the quilters of the bunch and the leader of the Silver Sneakers, taught a group how to make Christmas ornaments from the seashells they’d collected on their morning walk.
    Flora, a spry eighty-year-old who suffered slight memory lapses and constantly forgot her teeth, filled candy jars with red and green M & M’s, placing them around the room while Billy and Nelda, the couple who’d been married so long, erected a manger scene on the front lawn.
    Lucy spied the table where several