Stacking the Deck (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother and child statistically increased. Lord knew she had no plans to pop out babies willy-nilly like a Pez dispenser. “It’ll be fun,” she asserted.
    Trish gave her a look. “You’ve never spent much time around babies. Are you sure? I could ask Mrs. Vanderpoel.”
    “Mrs. Vanderpoel? Isn’t she like ninety-seven years old? She must be in a rest home by now.”
    “Ninety-three, and I think they allow visitors.”
    “Oh, for crying out loud. I’m perfectly capable. Clara looks… sweet. We’ll be fine.”
    Trish looked dubious but let it go.
    How much trouble could one little baby be? Liz settled in for the ride, determined to ignore her sister’s reservations. True, she didn’t have much experience with infants, but it was a tad insulting taking flak from a woman who couldn’t even get her shirt on right side out.
    A while later, as they neared the outskirts of Sugar Falls, Liz began to fidget in her seat. Seeing the familiar, rolling hills and occasional cow-studded field, the quarry where the in-crowd used to go drinking… It made her skin feel tight—like fat, old Beth was trying to squeeze back in.
    Maybe it was because everything looked more or less the same. There was the Connecticut River, wide and tranquil, an endless dark green mirror reflecting the budding trees on either side. They’d see the falls soon. Then Main Street.
    Sugar Falls would look like it had for generations:  picturesque, in a forgotten, hard-working New England way with blocky brick woolen mill buildings along the river and grand Federal and charming Victorian homes around the common. Everything would be just as she—
    “Hey! When did you get a Walmart?” Liz sat up in her seat.
    Trish gave her a sidelong look. “Five years ago.”
    The van swerved suddenly into the passing lane, and Liz grabbed at a baby rattle and half-eaten granola bar as they skittered across the dash. “Um, Trish? The speed limit’s only forty here.”
    Her sister threw a wary glance at her daughter in the back seat... and floored it. “Screw the speed limit. The sun is setting. There’s no time to lose…”
     
     
    L IZ STOOD ON THE UNEVEN cement walk outside her parents’ house, the cool, moist, evening air seeping through her clothes. Ten minutes earlier, Trish had handed her a key to the front door, unloaded Eddie’s crate and Liz’s luggage on the drive and roared away in a cloud of gravel dust.
    Liz had been standing there ever since.
    She tugged her blazer closed and stared at the old, rambling farmhouse she used to call home. The passing years had not been friendly. Paint cracked and peeled. Shingles curled. The holly bushes, once compact and orderly, now jutted awkwardly toward their neighbors as if fighting for space. A broken branch on a large rhododendron lay brittle and brown against a window sill.
    Liz tried not to remember the crisp fall Saturday she and her father had planted the glossy-leaved holly bushes along the drive, or the way each Mother’s Day the rhododendrons by the house would hum like hives from all the bees attracted to their abundant flowers.
    Dad had always prided himself on a neat landscape. But now, last year’s golden rod tilted in unruly brown clumps by the side of the garage. And his collection of garden ornaments still sat in the lawn, having never been tucked away for the winter.
    When had the place become so… tired? It was like a weary, middle-aged woman who’d given up on herself and taken to wearing elastic-waist pants and sloppy ponytails.
    Liz smoothed a hand over her own, sleek, low ponytail, picked up Eddie’s crate and mentally itemized the obvious punch-list items. Trim shrubs. Clean bird bath. Weed walk. Repaint front door.
    Rent a bulldozer and raze the place.
    She sighed, pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed the one person who never failed to make her feel good about having left Sugar Falls when she had the chance.
    “Bailey!”

    CHAPTER FOUR
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    B Y