Not Another Bad Date Read Online Free Page A

with hidden anger and resentment? Adele shook her head. No, she didn’t have hidden anger and resentment. Or at least she didn’t think she did, but…if it was hidden, how would she know?
    “Oh God,” she groaned. She was crazy.
    The telephone rang and saved her more mental torment. She rose and moved to the kitchen to pick up the cordless receiver. She glanced at the area code and groaned. Apparently her mental torment was not over. She really wasn’t in the mood to talk to her older sister, Sherilyn. The responsible one. The one with the perfect life. The one happily married to a dentist and happily raising a perfect teenage daughter in Fort Worth. The perfect sister due to have a perfect baby boy in four months. The one who wasn’t cursed or crazy.
    She thought about letting it go to voice mail, but in the end she answered because it might be important.
    “Hey, Sheri. How’re things?”
    “William left.”
    Adele felt her brows go up and her eyes widen. “Where did he go?”
    “He’s moved in with his twenty-one-year-old assistant.”
    “No.” Adele pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. She’d never liked William, but she’d never suspected he was so low as to abandon his pregnant wife.
    “Yes. Her name is Stormy Winter.”
    Adele supposed there were more important questions, but the one she asked was, “Is she a stripper?”
    “He says no.”
    Which meant she’d asked. “How’s Kendra?” Adele asked, referring to her thirteen-year-old niece.
    “Mad. At me. At William. At the world. She’s embarrassed that I’m pregnant and that her father’s moved in with somebody eight years older than she is.”
    Wow. Sherilyn’s life was more messed up than Adele’s. That was a first.
    “My life is a wreck.” Sherilyn’s voice broke, and she started to cry. “I don’t know how this happened. One day everything was per—perfect, then the next William’s run off.”
    Adele suspected there’d been signs that Sherilyn had chosen to ignore. “How can I help?” she asked, figuring there was really nothing she could do but listen.
    “I’m moving back to Cedar Creek. Come home with me.”
    Adele was home.
    “I need you, Dele.”
    Adele hadn’t been back to Cedar Creek since her father’s funeral seven years ago.
    Sherilyn burst into another round of sobbing before she pulled herself together and managed, “I nee-need my family in my time of cris-sis.” By the sounds of it, Sherilyn was beyond crisis and rushing headlong into a breakdown. “Please. I have to go home. I can’t stan-nd it here without William. All our friends kn-ow, and they pity me. My life is falling ap-part.”
    Sherilyn was the most capable woman Adele knew, and she knew a lot of very capable women. For that reason and many others, she and Sherilyn had never really gotten along for more than five minutes at a time. “Oh, Sheri…” For the first time ever, Sherilyn needed her, and Adele was the only real family she had left. But…Adele’s life was in Boise. She’d bought a house and planned on painting her office. She was thinking about getting a Pug.
    “Just for a little while. Until Kendra and I get settled in our new pl-ace.”
    She’d made a life for herself, and she had friends here. Good friends…who were married or getting married and had lives different from hers now. She was quite possibly cursed with bad dates and was very likely crazy. Maybe she needed a break. To get away from her life.
    Just for a few weeks. “When do you need me?”

Chapter 2
    T exans loved God, family, and football, though not always in that order. It all depended on the time of the year and your brother’s latest wife.
    Bless her heart.
    Sunday belonged to the Lord, and he ruled the pews of the Bible Belt. His word whipped the faithful into a religious frenzy with sermons of sin and redemption and charged the air with the electric buzz of his spirit.
    Can I get an Amen?
    God could have Sundays. Friday nights were devoted to high-school