The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

bubble to pop? Then again, Peggy wouldn’t have known that Becca—and Ellie and Frannie and even Thea—basically lived hand to mouth. No one but the women themselves knew that, or the reasons why.
    Yes, Thea had money socked away—some she’d saved from her days waitressing at the upscale Austin restaurant where she’d met Todd; the rest was the money she’d taken from his safe and his bank account when she’d split—but it was money earmarked for the business. It had to be.
    It was the business that would allow the women she helped to get back on their feet in an environment where they felt safe. And that’s what made the idea of another income stream so appealing. “I wonder what Callum would think, having Bread and Bean on both sides of Bliss.”
    “She didn’t ask you,” Becca said, miffed. “She asked me.”
    “Oh, I know.” Me and my big mouth . “I didn’t mean—”
    “It doesn’t matter. None of it does.” Becca headed for the shop’s door and jerked it open. “I’ll never have anything of my own.”
    “Becca,” Thea said, but it was too little too late. She’d screwed up because she hadn’t thought before speaking. It was the one thing she’d always been good at. Or at least according to Todd.
    Seemed that hadn’t changed at all.

CHAPTER THREE
    O h, crap,” said the redhead who’d slammed into Lena Mining, causing Lena to grab Bliss’s sidewalk bistro table to keep from falling. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.”
    The woman had been standing in front of the window of the coffee shop next door as Lena walked by, and had obviously turned as Lena passed, knocking them both off balance. Lena bent to pick up the textbooks she’d dropped.
    “Don’t worry about it,” she said, taking a nerve-settling breath. “You had your hands full.”
    Pushing the big black frames of her hipster glasses into place, she smiled at Lena and pressed her hand to her chest. “But I should’ve been paying attention. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry.”
    Lena set the books on the table and waved the hand still holding her phone, doing her best to be cool. It wasn’t easy, and the circumstances sucked, but whatever. She’d been hoping to meet this woman for weeks. Now not to screw it up. “I know better than to text and walk at the same time.”
    The other woman leaned down to retrieve what looked like fabric swatches hooked in one corner on a ring. But it was the spools of thread rolling all the way to the front door of Bliss that had her groaning. “Crap. Just crap.”
    She scuttled around, snatching up the little wheel-like runaways, the hems of her jeans too long and tattered because of the wear as they dragged the ground. Her hair, a mass of red waves that looked as if she’d slept in rag rollers, hung to the middle of her back.
    “I think you got them all,” Lena said.
    “I hope so. I’d hate for anybody to slip on one and fall.”
    Lena, always the cynic, had assumed she was worried because she needed them for a project. “Are you making something?” And what a stupid question that was. Who walked around with spools of thread if they weren’t?
    “Oh, no, I was double checking the thread against the fabric. How it will look from the shop’s interior, and from out here when the sun hits the window. I don’t want passersby to be put off by mismatched colors and not come in.”
    For real? “I kind of doubt anyone will notice the thread.”
    “I’ll notice,” she said with a completely beatific smile as a missed spool rolled toward her. She stopped it with the toe of a very tired-looking Birkenstock sandal. “And Frannie will notice. She’s the one making the curtains. I’m Ellie, by the way. Ellie Brass.”
    “Lena Mining,” she finally said, still caught by the smile, her heart thudding.
    “I know. You work at Bliss.” Ellie gestured behind her, her hair flying around her shoulders as she moved. It was nearly copper in the sun, and Lena, an old hand at hair color, knew