A Cowboy's Forever Faithful (Sweet View Ranch Western Cowboy Romance book 1) (Sweet View Ranch Western Christian Cowboy Romance) by Jessie Gussman

Author:Jessie Gussman [Gussman, Jessie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessie Gussman
Published: 2024-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Bernadine used her key to open the aquatic center. She had been coming to water aerobics for over three years. She usually beat the teacher, Ellen O’Riley, and eventually the aquatic center had just given her a key.

That might not be the way normal towns did things, but Sweet Water was a little different. Even though they had an Olympic-caliber training center right in town. Or right outside of town, as the case was.

Regardless, Bernadine ignored the ache in her back and pushed her glasses further up her nose. Her hands were too shaky for her to get her contacts in anymore, and she’d taken to wearing her glasses everywhere. She lost her husband fourteen years before and had celebrated her seventy-fourth birthday just a couple of weeks ago.

She was pretty spry for her age, but she had what the doctors called an essential tremor. They assured her it wasn’t Parkinson’s, but whatever it was, it made her life a lot more difficult.

She wished she would have appreciated her youth while she had it, because old age stunk. It was hard, and...ever since she’d lost her husband, she wished she had someone to share it with. Surely getting old would be easier if there were two of them to face it together.

But getting married at her age seemed...maybe foolish. It wouldn’t be what she wanted, which was a lifetime spent with someone, someone who knew her inside out, could finish her sentences, had seen her at her worst—which would have been childbirth for her or maybe the day her husband had his heart attack. Whichever. Still, someone who had seen her at her worst, knew her foibles and admired her strengths, and covered her weaknesses.

Anyone she met now at her age, they would only have a decade together, or maybe two if they were very blessed. Not long enough at all to know someone the way she’d known her husband.

Still, staying home and crying over spilled milk wasn’t going to do her any good either. So, a few years ago, she’d lugged her body off the couch, even though she didn’t want to, and had set off to try to find some friends and do something productive with her life.

That’s when the aquatic ladies had been born.

She dragged her housemate, rode along with her, and there were a bunch of older and getting older ladies who got their old, creaking bones out of bed before the crack of dawn and came to take a dip in the pool.

Ellen had been faithful in teaching them, and the few times that she had missed, Bernadine had taken over.

Maybe she’d try to start her own aerobics class. She surely ought to be able to do it by now. Being that she was a three-year veteran.

She was in the ladies’ locker room starting to change, she had her swimsuit out of her bag, when Ellen walked in, bleary-eyed, looking like she hadn’t slept a wink, and making Bernadine think for the first time that maybe the rumors that had been going around about her were true.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.