Single in Suburbia Read Online Free PDF

ballpark and then work her scheduled shift.
    Brooke, whose cuticles and psyche were clamoring for attention, had picked up her stepson from his mother’s, driven the totally hostile and completely silent preteen to the field, and watched him stomp off to the batting cages where his team awaited. Tyler got to play baseball. Brooke got to spend the next three hours in a concession stand with two other women who would probably make her stepson look like Mr. Friendly.
    Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she tilted her chin upward and headed up the gravel-strewn hill reminding herself as she walked that she was exactly where she wanted to be.
    Married to a successful man with a home in the suburbs, she had come a long way from her trailer park beginnings. Making the rent on a doublewide had been her mother’s crowning achievement. But Brooke had been born with her mother’s looks and a calculator of a brain—undoubtedly inherited from the father her mother had been unable to identify—and she had used them both to get her accounting degree, which had led to a position at Price Waterhouse. Which in turn had led to Hap.
    Keeping her gaze fastened forward, Brooke ignored the admiring looks of the fathers she passed. The hostile looks their wives aimed her way were harder to duck.
    Brooke’s smile slipped a notch. Her single friends, who treated a trip to the suburbs like a trek to Siberia, had largely abandoned her. The wives of Hap’s friends and the women she met here weren’t planning to welcome her into the fold any time soon. She was their worst nightmare and the fact that she’d refused to go out with Hap until after his divorce was final was a hair they weren’t interested in splitting.
    At the concession stand she spotted Candace Sugarman and hid a smile as the older woman leaned against the concrete building and yanked off her boot. When she turned it upside-down and shook it, a landslide of dirt and pebbles poured out.
    Brooke looked down at her own black suede mini boots, which were now covered in dust. “This place isn’t exactly high heel friendly.”
    “No, it’s not.” Candace gave her the once-over then went back to clearing the debris from her shoe. “But I don’t own Levi’s or sneakers. And I don’t think I want to.”
    Brooke considered the blonde. The woman was much too sophisticated and independent to fit in with the mothers from the team, but there were things to be learned from a woman like this. Like how to carry herself and how to look like she didn’t give a damn, without giving offense—not the sort of thing one picked up around the trailer park. Or even in an MBA program.
    Amanda Sheridan arrived for concession duty dressed like the other mothers, for comfort not show. Brooke couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, being dumped like she had after almost twenty years of marriage.
    But Brooke didn’t think the woman was finished. Not by a long shot. In fact, she could probably learn everything she needed to know about being a suburban wife from Amanda Sheridan. As Brooke had discovered at a very young age, there were lessons to be learned from everyone. She’d just have to figure out the holding on to her husband part by herself.
      
    Amanda knew just how far her stock had dropped when she discovered that she’d been assigned to work the concession stand with Brooke Mackenzie and Candace Sugarman.
    Ushering them into the boxlike structure, she stowed her purse under the counter and considered her coworkers. They looked like aliens plopped down on earth with no idea of the local dress or customs.
    Brooke’s auburn hair cascaded down her back in carefully orchestrated disarray and her black suede man-tailored shirt nipped in to a Scarlett O’Hara–sized waist. Low slung jeans and pointy-toed boots in the same black suede as her shirt completed the ensemble. Her diamond studs were big enough to double for doorknobs.
    Candace, too, looked more suited to a lunch date than an afternoon