Perfect Timing Read Online Free

to gawk. Higher Grounds waitstaff and strangers did the same. Shanna’s performance on a steamy Lovett Street escalated as Aidan calmly reiterated his point. They were each other’s date for the town’s time-honored gala, a stunning send-off for Catswallow High’s newest alumni. Anything more, Aidan insisted, was all in her head. Shanna was undeterred. When her voice hit a shrill that couldn’t strike a higher pitch, not without rupturing a vocal cord, the moment seemed to climax. Isabel assumed that was it. She guessed Aidan thought the same thing as he stood up straight and stepped onto the curb. It was an ill-fated error as Shanna made use of the target, Aidan taking the full brunt of her flailing hand across his face.
    Everything stopped. Isabel stiffened harder than her wrought-iron chair. Her own hand gripped her cheek, feeling the sting twenty feet away. There was an echo of gasps, Jake Summerfield, a fellow Catswallow graduate, offering his input, “Damn, Roycroft, you sure can piss ’em off.” The commotion sputtered and rumbled, finally settling until it was only Aidan standing center stage. Isabel was sure that his face burned hotter than the August pavement, but his casual manner never faltered. Everyone, including Shanna, watched in arrested amazement. And because Aidan was at his best under pressure, in the limelight, he never missed a beat.
    He looked back, smiling. It was such an electric smile; Birmingham could draw kilowatts off it. “Nice shot,” he said, his tone never vacillating. “Let’s consider that closure. Forget any plan we had for Catswallow’s grand finale.” The haughty look on Shanna’s face evaporated, realizing she’d taken the drama one step too far. Her arctic-blue eyes peeled wide, but it was too late. A week before one tiny town’s mega event, a tradition survived and celebrated by generations, she’d lost the most sought-after date in decades. Aidan didn’t look her way again as he reached into the backseat of her car and retrieved a guitar case. Salacious whispers stuck eagerly to humid air as onlookers pretended to go about their business. Isabel refocused, returning to Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. But as she half expected, Aidan hesitated near the edge of her table. It was just long enough to say, “The farmhouse, Isabel, okay?”
    An “uh huh” rumbled from her throat. She didn’t look as he continued, alone, down Lovett Street.

    IT WASN’T WHAT PEOPLE ASSUMED. NOT THAT PEOPLE ASSUMED ANYTHING about Aidan and Isabel. Their relationship flew under the radar of Catswallow gossip, but it wasn’t the fare or
affair
the secluded setting of a dilapidated farmhouse might suggest. It was more like home base. The friendship meant everything to Isabel, a girl transplanted into a tin can container on a rural swatch of Alabama. Aidan lived in the next lot over, although most people assumed he lived in a McMansion near the country club. Aidan didn’t wear poor very well.
    His father, John Roycroft, abandoned his common-law wife before his son turned two. Rumor said he was an incredible musician, having missed his window by living in Catswallow. Aidan claimed no memory of him or his talent, but anyone who could hear saw the proof. His absence hadn’t made much difference. Aidan did all right by his mother, though the scene on Lovett Street wasn’t the best example of that. But Isabel also didn’t see it as entirely his fault. Popularity was a dubious honor that befell him like the demands of royal lineage. Isabel, on the other hand, was all commoner, if not carpetbagger, having moved to the tiny Southern town from New Jersey six years before. It was an awkward time for both, Aidan adjusting to being a singular object of interest while Isabel made a bumpy entry into adolescence. Aside from a Jersey drawl, vastly different from the soft twang of her new peers, it was clear that Isabel was no Southern belle. Nothing was right: her clothes, her attitude, her name, which this