Small-Town Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page B

become enmeshed in this small town, a part of it.
    He could see himself here next year. And the year after that. His roots digging deeper and deeper into the Pennsylvania ground, his ties to this community, to these people, growing tighter and tighter.
    Cold touched the back of his neck. His stomach got queasy.
    He’d tried ignoring the signs, had pushed aside the sense of unease, which had dogged him for weeks, riding his back like a deranged monkey, screeching, tugging his hair and slapping him upside the head. A man could only escape the truth for so long.
    It was time to move on.
    He’d given it a good run, he told himself, twisting the lid onto his water bottle and setting it aside to take an order from a fortysomething-year-old guy in khakis and a button-down shirt. He drew a beer for Button-Down, exchanged it for money and added the small tip to the wide-mouth jar under the counter.
    Buying this place had been an impulsive move, born of instinct and perhaps heredity. He’d seen an opportunity to take a business and build it up, make it bigger, better and more profitable.
    And if that opportunity just happened to be in some small town where no one knew him or his family, far away from Houston and his past? All the better.
    O’Riley’s was doing well, better than he’d expected. Despite his best intentions, he’d taken after his father after all. At least in one area: making money.
    But staying in one place too long was never a good idea. It made a man comfortable. Complacent. Careless.
    Better to stay one step ahead. Always.
    First thing Monday morning, he’d call a real estate agent, see about getting the building appraised. Start thinking about where he wanted to go next. Maybe he’d head north this time. It didn’t matter where he ended up, Maine or Greenland or somewhere in between. As long as he kept moving.
    * * *
    I T ’ D TAKEN A WHILE , but Charlotte was back on the horse.
    Her sneakers squeaked on the gray floor as she walked down the main hallway of Shady Grove Memorial’s E.R. The baby with a high fever in room 3 cried, his scream heartbreaking and eardrum-piercing. Two middle-aged men—brothers by the resemblance between them—spoke quietly outside room 5, their faces drawn in worry.
    Char approached the nurses’ station. Okay, so technically there was no horse to speak of, but figuratively she was there, sitting tall in the saddle, ready to gallop after her dreams.
    And to think, she’d almost talked herself into believing she’d made a mistake, a big one, in going after what she’d wanted. In planning, scheduling and goal-setting. That she could float along, living the rest of her life taking each moment as it came all willy-nilly without a thought or care about her future.
    Oh, she’d tried to do exactly that. Hard not to want to try something different after you’ve been rejected by the man you’d planned on marrying. Throw in a second rejection, this time by a man the complete opposite of what you were looking for, and any woman would question herself, her choices. So she’d gone in the opposite direction of anything and everything she’d ever done.
    She’d stuck with it for as long as she could, shoving aside her dreams and goals and letting life happen. She’d gone to the grocery store without a list, didn’t note appointments in her phone’s calendar and spent her weekends zoned out in front of the TV, ignoring the work needing done around her new house. For six long months she’d been laid-back, spontaneous and impractical.
    It had been torture. Pure, unadulterated torture.
    Until one gloomy Wednesday morning last month when, on her way to the store to buy milk after discovering the empty carton in her fridge, her car had run out of gas. Waiting for her mother to come get her, good sense returned. Once back at home, she’d immediately listed her one-month, six-month and yearlong goals, cleaned and organized her refrigerator, and balanced her checkbook and, just like