Trouble When You Walked In (Contemporary Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

over.”
    Laurie’s mouth dropped open. “I forgot about that. So now we have to fight for you to stay where you are, no matter what.”
    “But I don’t believe in the legend,” Cissie assured her.
    “Who cares? It still might be true! And I, for one, am not going to see your chance to meet your soul mate go down the tubes.”
    A few minutes later, Laurie followed Cissie up the mountain to her house. They parked their cars out front, beneath the massive oak tree that had stood there for probably six hundred years, according to the tree experts.
    Sam and Stephen, Laurie’s little boys, ran straight to the front porch, sat backward in two rockers, and started rocking for all they were worth.
    “You’re the slowest driver ever,” Laurie told Cissie as they walked up the front steps.
    “That’s our secret, right?”
    “Okay. But when are you going to get used to living on a mountain?”
    “Driving ten miles below the speed limit helps me believe I won’t go over the edge,” Cissie explained.
    “There are guardrails .”
    “I know. You’ve told me a hundred times. And I’m still going to drive how I drive.”
    Laurie grabbed the backs of both rockers and stopped her sons’ madcap ride. “Down . ”
    Cissie threw open the front door, which was always unlocked. “Nana, I’ve brought you your favorite boys!” she called from the kitchen, never dreaming she’d be living back home at age thirty-two. She’d figured she’d be married by now, maybe with a child or two of her own. She’d make love every night on a four-poster Shaker-style cedar bed with a crocheted canopy topper in front of a roaring fire with her version of Boone Braddock—
    No. With Mr. Darcy, of course. Boone was now officially off her fantasy list, no matter what Laurie said.
    “Nana!” the boys cried in unison. “Where are you?”
    Laurie set a pie dish and two identical catalogs on the kitchen counter. “Are you sure she won’t mind buying more? What if she has a whole attic full?”
    “I know she doesn’t,” said Cissie. “She loves that gift wrap. Don’t feel guilty.”
    Laurie bit her lip. “Well, I do make the best chicken pie in town. I hope that’ll help lessen the pain when she writes out the checks.”
    “And y’all need to stay for dinner.”
    Laurie shook her head. “We would, but Perry might come home early tonight from his trip.”
    “I hope so.” Cissie was glad for the distraction of her BFF and sons, but how would she tell Nana that the library was going to be no more? Their family history was tied up in that place.
    “Where is she?” Sam asked.
    Usually when Cissie came home she heard her grandmother singing or whistling. But the house was strangely quiet. She refused to panic. Nana was fit as a fiddle.
    “I hope she’s all right,” Laurie whispered.
    Which only made Cissie panic more. She handed off the boys to their mother. “Let me check. Y’all wait here a minute.”
    “Okay.” Laurie made the boys wash their hands at the sink.
    Cissie slung her purse over a chair and walked nonchalantly through the kitchen into the great room, where every wall was lined with books. Dexter, their sixteen-year-old Siamese cat, lay curled in a patch of sun on the faded olive plaid armchair, his usual place in the afternoon.
    “Nana?”
    She wasn’t there.
    Cissie paused for a moment, listened. But all she heard was the distant whine of a chainsaw somewhere on the mountain and from upstairs, the staccato sound a brand-new playing card makes in your bicycle spokes as you’re riding downhill.
    She turned. Marveled at the precision and vibrant colors of a long line of small wooden blocks spiraling around the plank floor and ascending up the staircase to the second floor.
    Oh, Nana .
    Cissie pressed her palm to her cheek. “Laurie! Get out here with the boys. Fast.”
    They ran in. Waited.
    Watched.
    When the rippling waterfall of toppled rectangles knocked down the final one—the red one at her feet—Cissie