Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County Read Online Free PDF

their scorn again. And Collier County was familiar. As for making a living, her granddaddy had hunted gators in the ’Glades back in the day, and she thought, Well, heck, I can do that. I watched him do it. I helped him do it.
    Besides, she figured, huntin’ gators couldn’t be any harder or more dangerous than working in some old strip club. In fact, it might be easier.
    The years slipped by like the hidden currents in the river. She wouldn’t have said she’d been happy—she wasn’t sure what that felt like—but she wasn’t miserable. She got by, and folks left her alone. Most importantly, Robbie-Lee had grown up handsome, clever, and nice, just as she’d dreamed.
    If only Robbie-Lee had stayed away from that book club he would be here, helping her with the gators. She hated to admit it but she had come to rely on Robbie-Lee to lend a hand with the big, unruly ones. Since he’d left, she’d pretty much given up the gator business altogether. Especially after an odd thing happened: She had started feeling sorry for the critters. She’d never sympathized with the big ones, which would just as soon eat her up, but the little ones—the only kind she could now grab hold of these days—well, they were almost cute! This had come as a shock to her, and she had quietly started retiring her gear.
    She was living on fish she could catch from her dock. She sold grunts—minnows, the Yankees called ’em—to the bait shops, always setting aside a healthy portion for herself. She rolled the tiny things in flour and fried ’em up whole, just like her granddaddy did, and served ’em with a mess of grits. Indeed, there was nothing Dolores liked better than a big ol’ plate of grits and grunts.
    And now someone wanted to take it all away. To some folksit probably wouldn’t have seemed like much. But to her, it was a little slice of heaven.
    How could a man grow up in the ’Glades and fail to see its beauty? How could he look at it and see only money? She’d run into plenty of men like Darryl in her life. They thought of no one other than themselves. They weren’t any different from the school-yard bullies who used to pick on Robbie-Lee, calling him “homo” and other names. Darryl and those just like him, she decided, were evil.
    The person who was harder to understand was Jackie. She had a nice home, a husband with a steady job, a couple of kids, and a Buick convertible. What else could a woman want? If I had that kind of life , Dolores thought wistfully, I would be busy living it. I wouldn’t waste my time creating problems and meddling in other people’s business.
    Dolores had never met anyone from Boston and wondered if they were all like Jackie. First of all, that peculiar accent that was near impossible to understand. Plus the bizarre urge to speak your mind and have everything upfront and out in the open. And the worst Yankee trait of all, a missionary zeal to fix everything Southern.
    Not that Jackie was a bad person. She wasn’t evil like Darryl. She was just a Yankee and, typical of the Northern born, couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Five
    T here’s something I need to tell you, Miss Witherspoon,” Judd Hart was saying, and I noticed he wouldn’t look me in the eye. When he heard I was back in town, Judd made a beeline to my cottage to say hello. With his red hair and blue eyes, it was easy to see that he was Jackie’s son. He was thirteen now and about four inches taller than when I left. We were sitting on the bottom step of my porch, feeding pieces of honeydew melon to my snappers. Of course, this meant having to scold Norma Jean from time to time. She was such a piggy, and I could see she hadn’t changed a bit.
    â€œJudd,” I said, “you don’t have to call me Miss Witherspoon. You can call me Dora.”
    â€œI can’t call you Dora. You’re a