Rent-A-Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

love with him—
and
you get to keep your clothes on. Is that a sweet deal or what?”
    Amelia rounded the corner to her block. “I don’t know, Terry.”
    “I should tell you, there is one catch.”
    “I knew it! I
knew
it!”
    “It’s just the guy lives in Michigan so you would have to fly there
tonight
. Don’t worry, I’ll buy the ticket.”
    Amelia frowned as she spotted a large group of people crowded outside the front of her boarding house. She could hear the sounds of raised voices, mixed with horns blowing as cars crowded the street near the huddle of people. “Terry, I’m gonna have to call you back.”
    “Okay, but I need an answer in the next hour, Amelia! The old guy may go at any minute so the client is pretty anxious for someone to get there. You know, before it’s too late.”
    “Fine. I’ll call you back.” She hung up the phone and ran the rest of the distance. As she reached the crowd she realized most of them were other tenants of the boarding house. When she glanced at the house she saw a sheet of paper taped to the front door.
    With a sinking feeling in her stomach she slowly approached the stairs leading up to the door and climbed. Even before she reached the top stair she could clearly read the word: FORECLOSURE written in bold letters across the top of the paper. That sinking feeling turned to butterflies that took flight throughout her entire body.
    On the door handle was a large mental locking device with a keypad. In a daze Amelia lifted it and looked at it as if unable to believe what she was seeing.
    “It’s no use. I tried to break the code but you’d have to be a rocket scientist or something.” Amelia turned to see the petite, older man who lived in the room across the hall from her was standing next to her. She’d never actually spoken to the man before which was the case with most of the tenants.
    “What happened?” Amelia was embarrassed to hear her voice crack as the tears threatened to return. But seriously, considering the day she was having who could blame her?
    “They came by about an hour ago and forced us all out. We’ve all tried to call that sorry excuse for a landlord, Vic, but his phone is disconnected. I just paid my rent yesterday and he didn’t so much as blink!” The man ran a shaky hand over his balding head. “He could’ve at least given us some kind of warning.”
    Amelia swallowed the lump in her throat. “But all my stuff is in there.”
    It wasn’t much but still it was everything she owned in the world, a few shirts and jeans, her toiletries and makeup - she was currently wearing her best outfit, a button up cream colored silk blouse and peach colored slacks with matching heels. She kept the rest of her nicer clothes packed in a suitcase under the bed along with her few keepsakes like pictures of her brother, Byron, having fully expected to be evicted eventually just not like this.
    “I know. Me too. They didn’t even give us any time to pack. Said they would be back next week with a couple of sheriff’s deputies and then they would let us all go in one at a time and get our belonging. But what are we suppose to do until then?”
    Amelia glanced back at the people on the sidewalk. Many of them were on their cell phones, some were mingling in small groups talking and some were just standing around looking as lost as confused as she felt. Occasionally a car would pull up and one of the people would get in and drive away. But there would be no one coming to pick her up. She had nowhere else to go.
    Suddenly there was a big commotion as a group of people ran to the back of the house. Not sure what else to do Amelia followed them and found a young Hispanic man scrambling up the side of the house to climb through a partially opened window.
    Once he was safely inside he pushed the window all the way up, he turned and spoke to the group crowded below. “Okay, I don’t know how much time we have before someone calls the cops so I’m only gonna