Sweetheart Cottage (Cranberry Bay #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bryan shrugged out of his heavy raincoat. “It’s cold out there. Take this. I’ve got another one at the office. I’ll pick it up.”
    Rylee shook her head at his offer. “I’ll grab something from the closet. I’m sure Grandma had a coat or two that will fit me.” She turned around and opened the coat closet. The empty hangers hung in a row, and a small wadded up piece of gum wrapper lay on the floor. “Grandma didn’t have any coats?”
    “She gave them away,” Bryan said. “Mom helped her with a huge garage sale last summer. I think she knew her time was short.”
    Rylee wrapped her arms around herself. Her insides shook. Her Grandma had known she didn’t have long to live, but she hadn’t called her to come back. Did Grandma not want to run the risk of calling her, knowing her father might also return and show the town who he’d become? Or did Grandma not want to risk asking her, knowing she’d declined all the other offers to return? Rylee had claimed important business commitments, which now seemed less important in the face of her death.
    “Rylee?”
    “Yes. Thank you.” Rylee lifted the coat from Bryan’s hand. She slipped into the coat and struggled to find the second sleeve.
    Bryan stepped up behind her and lifted the coat, so she could slip her left arm inside. “It’s a bit big, but it’s warm and will keep the rain off you.”
    The aspen smell of his scent clung to the coat, and she pulled it tighter around her. Keep yourself together, she warned herself. She could not risk getting close to Bryan again. He didn’t understand how loving someone the way she had once loved him put everything she and her family had always kept in secret about her father in jeopardy. Bryan had a beautiful family whom he loved and who loved him. He and the rest of the town did not need to see her father standing on the street corner with a cardboard sign, begging for more money to gamble. Shame filled her as she thought of how often she’d found her father digging for food at one of the fast-food restaurant’s Dumpsters. “Thank you. I’m sure it will be fine until tomorrow when I can get my own coat.”
    Bryan held open the front door. “After you.”
    Rylee stepped past him, and as she brushed against his solid chest, she felt his sharp intake of breath. Then the moment vanished, and she wondered if it had happened at all as they hustled down the walk and into separate cars.
    Minutes later, Rylee drove her car slowly through the town’s tree-lined streets. Wide sidewalks, Craftsman-style homes, and grassy front yards covered each block. On a nice day, she and Raisin could walk into town. But tonight, the wind blew the leaves across the pavement and small evergreen branches littered the sidewalks. Lights glowed from living room windows, and orange pumpkins sat on front porches. The smell of fireplace wood smoke drifted in through the car ventilators. All of it screamed to her of family and home, things she’d never had and pushed away as ever wanting for herself because they would always be out of her reach.
    Bryan drove slowly, as if he was giving her a tour and allowing her all the time she wanted to take in the small town. As she passed each home, memories flooded Rylee. Memories of sitting on front porches with her grandparents, memories of walking with her Grandpa to town for an ice cream cone, and memories of stopping at the local hardware store to pick up a few things he needed.
    On Main Street, Bryan pulled to a stop in front of a yellow, two-story building. Black shutters lined the windows and a small white light glowed from each room. A strand of white lights outlined a wooden sign with green letters hung above the front door, “River Rock Inn.”
    Rylee pulled her car behind Bryan’s and stared at the warm lights inside the building. She wanted nothing more than to walk inside, check in, and go lie down on a thick cushioned bed and sleep for days. But she couldn’t and, even more