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

clapped, then chuckled when she saw what the back of that domino said:
    Time to hug some boys.
    “Hurray!” Sam and Stephen yelled.
    Cissie put on the kettle.
    Life with Nana was never dull.
    When the kettle began to huff and cough, the family matriarch appeared in the kitchen, her hazel eyes sparkling. “I don’t want tea, do I, boys?”
    “No!” they cried in unison. “You want a toddy!”
    “Exactly.” Nana looked at Cissie and Laurie. “What eighty-five-year-old person wants tea?”
    “What’s a toddy?” asked Stephen.
    “An older person’s vitamin drink,” said Laurie.
    “You’re only eighty-two,” Cissie told her grandmother.
    “I know, but I feel eighty-five today.”
    Laurie laughed. “There’s an actual difference between feeling eighty-two and eighty-five?”
    “Hell, yes, shug.” Short for sugar . “You try setting up all those dominoes. But I did it for these rascals.” The boys hugged her around the waist. “And maybe myself, too.”
    “You’re the bionic woman,” Cissie said. “And brave. Dexter could have brought the whole thing down.”
    “I worked around his napping schedule,” Nana said. “And here’s a confession. I got Mr. Reader to help.”
    Cissie drew in her chin. “The bug man?”
    “He didn’t have any other appointments after ours. Rule number fifty-five, boys: your bug man is not just your bug man. Take advantage of that fact.”
    The two boys high-fived each other.
    “Nana,” said Cissie.
    “Rule number fourteen.” Nana was on a roll. “A girl’s gotta have some adventures, whatever it takes, especially when she could kick off at any moment.”
    “Don’t say that,” said Cissie.
    “Kick off?” asked Sam.
    “She plays football!” said Stephen.
    “I knew it!” Sam crowed.
    They bumped chests in a Neanderthal display of approval.
    Laurie laughed and kissed Nana’s cheek. “Ready to be shaken down?”
    “Where’s my catalogs?” Nana asked the boys. “I’m itching to buy gift wrap. A ton of it.”
    Sam and Stephen stared at each other in delight and ran to get the catalogs. Twenty minutes later, they were gone and the chicken pie was in the oven.
    “I’ll get the Jameson,” Nana told Cissie. “Meet me on the front porch for a cigar. It’s time you learned to smoke one. Give you some hair on your chest.”
    “I don’t smoke cigars. They stink. And I don’t want hair on my chest.”
    But she’d go. She’d sit upwind of her grandmother while she smoked her cigar and drank her whiskey and water, no ice, and talked about the world as if it were her oyster, which it had always been.
    It was five thirty in Kettle Knob, definitely happy hour, Cissie supposed. And after what she’d heard today, she’d have a glass of wine, although she wasn’t big on drinking wine, except on Saturday steak nights with Nana.
    She’d have a glass of merlot.
    Make that two.
    She leaned on the counter, shocked at herself for guzzling that first glass, and wondered what the world was coming to. She’d talked to Boone Braddock. The library was shutting down and becoming a county office for waste management. She’d have to work in a strip mall, far enough away from Nana that she’d be worried about her. And definitely too far for Sally and Hank Davis to continue volunteering.
    “Whatcha so down about?” Nana asked her on the porch.
    Dexter strolled out to keep them company. He sat on his haunches and took in the view. A steady wind blew from the northwest, across the mountaintops, maybe all the way from the Dakotas. Why not? It seemed as if they could see that far.
    It was hard to be down about anything when you were looking at a vista so majestic and peaceful that it literally took your breath away. The Smokies were like a cluster of worn old women with rounded shoulders, millions of years of wear and tear softening their lines but not breaking them. No storm or wind, not even time, could move these mountains. They’d be here long after Nana and Cissie were