Steps to the Altar Read Online Free PDF

an extended cab with enough room for my backpack, my dog, and my horse tack. And it could haul hay bales with the best of any full-size Chevy pickup. All a woman really needed.
    Right at that moment, walking down the sunny street toward my best friend’s bookstore to harass her about her pending nuptials, I felt content and happy. Feelings I was learning to savor when they came in this unpredictable life. After bugging her, I would go shopping for her shower gift, stop off at the mall to buy the game prizes, and head home, where Gabe and I would spend another evening moving stuff to our new house.
    Blind Harry’s Bookstore was right in the heart of downtown San Celina. The redbrick building felt like a second home to me since Elvia started managing and slowly buying it five years ago. As one of the last surviving independent bookstores in San Celina County, it had become one of the most popular spots in town for both locals and tourists. I paused in front of her large glass window and studied this month’s display. Though I nagged her to make it a wedding motif in honor of her and Emory, she’d remained firm and stuck with the always popular Mardi Gras theme. This year’s theme was Masked Madness. At least fifty masks filled the window—including antique ones with faded feathers and still bright rhinestones; dime store varieties with their rainbow-colored feathers and cheap glitter; and elaborate one-of-a-kind creations made with large face-framing plumes, hundreds of sequins, and price tags that moved them from merely masks to pieces of art. Her window designer, an ex–Cal Poly art student who, though she no longer worked for Elvia but for a local interior design firm, still loved doing Blind Harry’s windows.
    Inside the bookstore, the mood was subdued, not unusual for a Wednesday afternoon. Things usually started picking up in the early evening when the students, done with their classes and looking for fun, started hanging out in the coffeehouse downstairs. The only activity going on right now was an after-school story hour presented by one of Elvia’s student employees, a girl majoring in early childhood education. She was reading The Tortilla Quilt picture book, one of my own personal favorites, to a group of fidgety five-year-olds. Elvia had the colorful quilt made from the pattern in the book hanging above the small storytelling stage.
    “Where’s the boss lady?” I asked the clerk at the counter. She had burgundy hair in two thick farm girl braids and a diamond stud in her nose.
    “Downstairs with Mr. GQ,” she said, smiling big. She made elaborate kissing noises. Since Elvia’s engagement last September, her employees, a mixture of senior citizens and college students, had taken great pleasure in teasing her about finally screwing up her courage to jump over the marriage broom. She allowed them a little fun, then when the enormity of this life change became overwhelming, went into her upstairs office and slammed the door. That was when everyone knew to leave her alone. If she was downstairs, she was obviously in an amiable mood.
    “Thanks,” I said, heading for the wooden stairs. She was in the back of the used-book-lined coffeehouse (her system of borrow a book and replace it with another had been a hit from its inception) sitting at a round oak table sharing a cranberry scone with my dearly beloved fifth cousin Emory.
    “Hey, kids,” I said. “Are you ready to stomp on the wineglass?”
    “I’m glad you’re here,” Elvia said, standing up. “You can entertain the poultry baron while I get back to work and earn a real living.”
    Emory worked at the local newspaper though he was, in fact, filthy rich from his father’s smoked chicken business in Arkansas. He gave me yet another wide, goofy grin. His bright green eyes glowed as if he were on some kind of very potent, possibly illegal drug.
    “Oh, geeze,” I said, sitting down next to him. “If I have to gaze upon his canary-eating grin one