The All You Can Dream Buffet Read Online Free Page A

set up her campsite. She parked in a wide spot beneath a sheltering of tall pines, which had been shorn of their lower branches to allow open views of the rolling hills around the farm. The spot gave Ruby a sweet vantage point over the lavender and the shop. She hooked her camper and trailer up to the amenities.
    It was mid-afternoon, and Ruby was sleepy the way she had been as a child. That was the other thing about pregnancy. Sleep could overtake her like a spell, so insistent she had no choice but to crawl into whatever hole she could find and succumb. Just now she didn’t bother to open up the kitchen trailer but crawled into her camper, propped open the door to the breeze, and fell onto the bed.
    Most of the camper was the bed, with a portable toilet tucked in a closet. She’d gutted the camper when she was eighteen andwanted to explore the country, then put in the biggest, softest bed she could find and added bigger windows to let breezes flow over the mattress. Storage was tucked beneath the bed, and shelves with netting held the little things that made life rich: books and a brush, socks for cold nights, maps of her travels. The walls had been covered with fabric to make it more feminine, in a pattern of pastel stripes that made it feel more homey. Over the fabric, she’d découpaged photos of her life—her father and her; one ancient picture of her mother and father and her together, before Ruby got sick; her mother laughing, long blond hair tumbling over her brown shoulders and bikinied back; various pets, friends. And Liam. Lots of Liam. She needed to cover them with something but hadn’t yet had the heart to do it.
    Sprawled on top of the bed, she kicked off her shoes and let the breeze cover her. It was a habit to gaze up at his beautiful, beautiful face with the high-bridged nose and luscious lips. He had the most alluring mouth on the planet, a mouth she wanted to kiss all the time. He wore a goatee, which she thought was gilding the lily. It was so unnecessary to—
    A knock on the side of the trailer shook her out of her reverie. “Hey, sweetheart,” Lavender said. “I brought you a bowl of fruit and some saltines. I’ve never been pregnant myself, but my sisters used to say saltines saved their lives.”
    Ruby sat up, blinking. “Thank you,” she said, and put her hands over her heart. “That’s so kind.”
    “And this is the wireless password.” She handed over a lime-green sticky note. “Noah put in a super-duper router four or five months ago, so it should be fine even with all of us accessing it.”
    “Thanks! I can get online through the phone, too, so no worries.”
    Lavender gazed around the camper. “This is so you, kiddo. Love it.” She slapped the side of the door. “You rest now. I’ll fix us some supper.”
    “Oh, you don’t have to do that! I was planning—”
    “Don’t be silly. I can cook vegan, you know. Not like your generation invented plants.”
    Ruby chuckled. “Thank you, then.”
    Propped against a pile of exotically embroidered and mirrored pillows, Ruby slid her laptop out of its special padded shelf and fired it up. She entered the network name and password into the settings, made sure the connection worked, and then checked her blog quickly for any spam. It was still the cherry blog from a few days ago. She’d need to get something up tonight or tomorrow. Some bloggers wrote every day, but Ruby never liked to be pinned into anything too tightly. Of the Foodie Four, only Ginny blogged every day, and she’d been doing so for almost seven years. Amazing.
    The four had come together nearly five years ago, over the course of a few months. Lavender had found a series on herbs that Ruby had written and contacted her, asking to use it on her blog, and they started to chat back and forth. Valerie contacted Lavender about wine and lavender pairings, just brainstorming, and she joined the group. Ginny had been the last addition. Her blog had barely begun to capture