Hold on My Heart Read Online Free Page B

already engaged, and she couldn’t wrangle a proposal out of Seth after more than a year of cohabitation? Not that she’d really tried, but still—Marti was taking cuts in line. Libby should get married first.
    “You’re twenty-two years old, Martha,” her father said again. “You are not getting married.” His hands thumped down hard on the arms of his chair.
    “In two months? What kind of wedding can you plan in two months?” Ginny said.
    “I don’t really think that’s the issue here, Gin,” Libby interrupted. “How about the fact that they don’t actually know each other?”
    Marti frowned. “We
do
know each other, all the important stuff anyway, and we can plan a perfect wedding. Libby can help us make the arrangements, and it will be amazing because we love each other.”
    “We do.” Dante nodded and took another bite of lettuce.
    Help them make the arrangements?
Libby was a business event planner, not a wedding planner.
    “Marti, this is nonsense. You can’t possibly expect your father and me to blindly endorse your marrying someone we just met. And someone you barely know. This is all very abrupt.” Libby’s mother took a gulp from the wineglass in front of her.
    Dante nodded sagely. “I totally understand you feeling that way, Mother Hamilton. Marti is precious, and you want what’s best for her. So do I, and I’m it.”
    Jaws dropped, but none so far or so fast as her mother’s.
    Her father’s fist thumped down on the table, his voice low in his throat. “Young man, don’t you presume to tell us what’s best for our daughter. Getting married at her age is not…” Suddenly his face blanched. “Oh, God. Martha. You’re not…”
    Beverly’s intake of breath was a strangled sort of whimper, but Marti’s eye roll was teen-queen dramatic. “Geez, Daddy! No, I’m not pregnant.” She looked over at Dante, not the least bit chagrined. “At least, if I am, it’s too early to tell.”



CHAPTER
three
    “T his area used to be quite the posh place to visit.” Libby’s father stood out front, gazing at his newly purchased yet very old schoolhouse. Marti was with them, too, but he wasn’t really speaking to her since she refused to undo her engagement, and Libby wasn’t really speaking to him since he had spent her previously unbeknownst-to-her wedding money.
    Still, being with each other was better than staying at home and listening to her mother sniffle and sigh. The one-two punch of the ice-cream parlor and Dante the shaggy bridegroom had been too much for her. She was lying on the sofa at home with a cold washcloth on her forehead.
    Libby’s father shielded his eyes from the sun. “In the 1880s, the trolley line from downtown Monroe ended right over there. And over on that side, that building was a coach stop. The Mason Bridge Inn. Folks used to stop in there for a spirituous libation.”
    “You mean a beer?” Libby asked.
    Her father nodded. “Or a julep. Maybe I should try to get a liquor license.”
    Libby shook her head. “Whoa. Slow down there, cowboy. You’re getting ahead of yourself again. So far we have twenty-seven things written on this to-do list, and we haven’t even gone inside yet.”
    In spite of being annoyed by her father’s haphazard choices, Libby had agreed to help with his schoolhouse-to-ice-cream-parlor transformation.She had the skills necessary to keep even him on track. And she sure didn’t have anything else to occupy her time. No interviews lined up, and the last one in Chicago had gone so epically bad she was certain there would be no offer.
    She’d been so ready for it, too. All dressed up in her best sexy but professional suit, with a portfolio of event photos arranged on her iPad to share with her future employer. She’d rehearsed answers for every possible question as she drove from Monroe to the city, even the most obvious one.
    Chicago was a big town, but the event-planning community was tight, and her poster-child-for-bad-judgment