Forever My Soldier (Love Conquers Life Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

salad,” Bella says with total pride, and I can’t help but giggle at her excitement.
    “Wine?” she asks as she shows us to the kitchen.
    “Sure.”
    “Carter, do you want a beer?”
    “Nah, I’m good. I’m driving, and it’s snowing. Thank you, though.” He places his arm around my shoulders.
    I spot the tickets sitting on the snack bar in Derek’s kitchen. “Derek, are these the tickets for the event?”
    “They are. What do you think?”
    “I think they’re gorgeous.”
    “We’ve already started to sell them to family members of people who work for the office, but we need to sell a lot more. I’m not sure how we’re going to do it in such a short period of time.”
    A huge smile spreads across my face. “What, baby?” Carter says as he looks down at me.
    “I know how we’re going to sell those tickets. My mother wants to apologize and make things up to us? She will do that by getting involved in this event and helping us sell these tickets.”
    “Do you think she’ll be willing to do that?”
    “She has no choice. She owes me, and I’m cashing in. I’ll be letting her know that if she ever pulls anything like this again we’re done, but this will be her way of making it up to us.”
    I watch as everyone gets excited because my mother and stepfather have some serious connections. My father does too, and of course I’ll be talking to him about getting some tickets sold as well, but most of this will be on my mother. The tickets are only seventy-five dollars each, and for my mother’s friends that’s nothing.
    Bella pulls the lasagna out of the oven. “I’m taking care of getting some top models and agents to the event, but we really could use your mom’s help.” She pauses to check dinner. “We’ll be ready to eat in about fifteen minutes.”
    “What else is there left to plan for the event, Derek?” I ask, so I can make a mental list for my mother.
    “Well, Carter found us a DJ who was willing to donate his time to the cause, so that is squared away, but we need to come up with a way to celebrate the ball dropping at midnight.”
    Bella scoops lasagna onto four plates, and we all move into the dining room to continue our conversation while we eat. “Do you want to watch it on a big screen in the room, or do you want an actual ball to drop?” Bella asks Derek as she sits next to him.
    “I’m not really sure how we would make an actual ball drop, so I guess we need to have a screen set up to watch it on TV.”
    “I’ll ask my mom if she has any ideas when I see her tomorrow. If anyone can come up with something, it’s her. It would be cool if we could set off red, white, and blue confetti poppers or something.”
    “It would be pretty cool to have big pieces of confetti flying around at midnight,” Carter adds. We all eat in a comfortable silence for a few moments. I’m pretty sure we’re all thinking about the event.
    “Is there going to be a silent auction?”
    “I wanted to have one, but I haven’t been able to get anyone to respond with donations. I got some small ones, but they aren’t good for a silent auction. I was thinking about either selling tickets for them or putting them aside and saving it for something else. The other idea I had was to give everyone who came a ticket and pick winners as a door prize,” Carter says.
    “That’s not a bad idea.” My mom can get us silent auction items too, but I won’t tell him that until I talk to her. That is right up her alley. “I’ll get some autographed book sets that can be auctioned off. Also I have a friend online that’s an artist, so I’ll see if she can get me something as well. She loves to donate to causes like this.”
    Once we’re done eating, we all pitch in to clean up. Carter and I both tell them they did a great job with dinner and agree to rotate whose house we will meet up at going forward. After we’ve cleaned everything up, we sit down to a quick game of cribbage. We’re discussing plans