What The Heart Wants Read Online Free Page B

black hair was pulled into a single braid down her back and she had flawless skin the color of rich dark chocolate.
    “Oh,” Anna shrugged. “I’m… I’m not interested,” she stammered, silently wishing she had the kind of personality that would allow her to pull off the assortment of necklaces of varying lengths and colors and rings on every one of her fingers like this woman wore.
    “Aw, honey, judging by that little display out there,” she said, waving a hand toward the window indicating the gas station, “Eric is. And you’re only a woman after all. Trust me when he turns on that charm of his, aint no woman eighteen to eighty who could refuse him. But he is ten gallons of heartbreak in a five gallon bucket. And pardon my intrusion, but,” she said, gesturing for Anna to sit with her. She leaned across the table, blocking the side of her mouth as if telling a secret, “you’re a bit too… inexperienced to put up any kind of fight.”
    Anna felt her face get hot and knew her cheeks were probably getting as red as a tomato.
    The woman chuckled, though not unkindly. “So my advice to you is to stay more than a stone’s throw away from that man, Miss. Goode,” she said, standing with a huff and walking away without a goodbye.
    “That’s Maude Mays,” a pretty little waitress said as she came over in a pale yellow diner dress and a white apron to clear Maude’s dishes off the table. She had a remarkably small frame with wheat colored hair and big blue eyes. She looked about sixteen. “She sees things,” the girl said, emphasizing “sees” in a way that implied Maude was either a psychic or suffered from hallucinations. “My name’s Ashley,” she smiled cheerfully. “You must be Mam’s family.”
    “Yeah,” Anna answered, smiling. “she was my great aunt.”  
    Ashley nodded, her ponytail swinging with the motion. “But Maude is right you know. My mama calls the O’reilly brothers ‘trouble with a capital T’. My older sister is twenty and my mama said if she ever hears she fancies either of the O’reillys that she’s not paying her car payment or cell phone bill anymore.”
    Anna laughed, feeling a little homesick. Though Viv would likely be the kind of mother that told her she should go ahead and fall into bed with either, or both, of the O’reilly brothers. Seperately. Or at the same time. You only live once, after all.
    “So what can I get for you?” Ashley asked after handing off the plates to a passing busboy and pulling out her server book.
    Anna ordered coffee and three different kinds of danishes. Viv would have had something to say about that as well. Her mother had become a bit of a fitness fanatic after she turned forty and had been nagging Anna for years about her eating habits. She was predisposed to, as her mother put it, ‘become rather hippy’ though otherwise in good shape. She somehow managed to possess the metabolism of a growing teenage boy who could sock away meal after meal without having to worry about putting on much weight to the envy of all her coworkers who swore that if they even looked at a doughnut, they gained five pounds
    She cradled her coffee in her hands which she decided to take with milk but without her usual sugar since she was about to binge on desserts. Maybe her mother’s lectures weren’t entirely lost on her.
    Taking a sip, she considered how different her life was now. She had hardly been in Stars Landing twenty-four hours and she had already had more excitement than she had had in a full year back home.
    She picked at her danishes, feeling much like an outsider in her own life. Because in what universe could tiny little insignificant Annabelle Goode have acquired a farm, a comically overweight cat, and a town full of quirky characters? Then, of course, there was the matter of the two incredibly attractive men that had crossed her path in just a matter of hours. Sam with his rugged next door neighbor charm, kind eyes and random baby