Happily Ever Alaska by Patience Griffin

Author:Patience Griffin [Griffin, Patience]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The next morning Lolly was up early. She wasn’t bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; more like buzzing with anxiety, and maybe some excitement. When it came to Shaun, her emotions were unpredictable and all mixed up. Not unlike the flavors in her famous fruitcake, where you never knew from one bite to the next what you were going to experience. A perfect metaphor for her emotions when she was around Shaun. She looked at the clock. She could either stay in bed and fret about it or get going. She crawled out of bed.

Going to Anchorage with Shaun brought back so many fun memories of the time they snuck off to Anchorage for twelve hours, each telling their parents they were sleeping over at a friend’s house. That evening, they’d gotten their pie/pi tattoos, cuddled at the movie theater, had burgers and fries at McDonald’s at one a.m., and then drove through the night to be back in the morning, hoping their parents were none the wiser. To hide the tattoo from her mom, Lolly had made a wide fabric wristlet to cover the bandage. It had worked for a while, but eventually her mom found out.

But it had been a magical day, which only begged the question, What would today bring? She couldn’t expect to share the closeness they’d felt then. The connection. The love. But the butterflies in her stomach wouldn’t listen to reason and fluttered away in giddy anticipation.

She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and frowned at her reflection. “Stop it. Today is about business only.”

Twenty minutes later, she heard Shaun pull up out front. Lolly opened the door and peered down the road, half expecting Patricia to come peeling around the corner in hot pursuit to block the trip. But the road was empty. Surely, Patricia knew what was going on, because gossip normally zipped through town with lightning speed. And Piney wouldn’t have been able to keep it a secret because she didn’t know the meaning of discretion. Still, no one was on Shaun’s tail. She waved to him when he got out of the Jeep, and put her finger to her lips.

When she’d shut the bedroom door, Thor was in bed with Jilly, cuddled up to her belly, sound asleep. She prayed they both stayed that way because she didn’t want an audience as she and Shaun pulled away together. The only thing Lolly had told her mother and sister was that she was headed to Anchorage to look at kitchen equipment. Not a word about who was driving her. Hopefully, Shaun was going to explain why he was doing this favor for her. Real reasons, and not some platitude about saving gas money or the planet.

Shaun was halfway to the house.

“Stay there,” she whispered. “I’ll grab our coffees and my bag and be right out.”

But he kept on coming. “I’ll help.”

What she needed help with was catching her breath. He looked great this morning. He had on a sage-colored oxford shirt with

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.