Crossroads by Wendy Saunders Read Free Book Online

heart was still thundering in his chest and he could still taste her on his lips. He pressed his forehead against the cool wood of the door and took a deep breath. So this was how she wanted to play it was it? Pushing him away so he wouldn’t get hurt? Well fuck that, this time there was no way he was giving her up without a fight. He was going to damn well protect the woman he loved even if it meant going up against a demon.
     

Chapter 4.
    Jonathan Bailey rose slowly from his kneeling position on the cold hard floor. He leaned heavily on the shelving he had just been restocking as he straightened his aching back, wincing as he felt his knees click. He gazed through the window at the rapidly melting snow and breathed a sigh of relief; his bones were definitely looking forward to the warmer weather. Glancing around the quiet store his eyes flicked to the clock which hung above the cash register. Good, he’d be closing up soon. There was no use denying it, especially in quiet contemplative moments like this, but he was getting too old to manage the store by himself. He knew his wife Eunie loved the store and helped immensely. Despite her rather frightening reputation for being a busy body and the town gossip she had a good heart, one she didn’t let the rest of the town see. She would perch on her throne behind the cash register and freely dispense her mind and opinion to the good people of Mercy, often with brutal practicality and razor sharp honesty. It wasn’t always appreciated or even warranted but the residents had come to accept her the way she was. He was the only person who knew the real Eustacia Bailey.
    They’d never been blessed with children. They’d never spoken of it, even after the first ten years of their marriage and their joint failure to produce a child. She’d begun to change after that. As more of their friends and acquaintances subsequently married and produced large families with ease, the harder it had been on Eunie. Sure he’d wanted kids, he’d dreamed of passing the store on to his son or daughter just as the store had been passed to him by his father and grandfather before him. But he’d accepted along the way that some things were just not meant to be. It always sat there between them, the unspoken heartbreak and regret but as the years rolled by, the sharper her tongue became and the harder it was to dredge up the past. They had made a comfortable life for themselves, there had been good times and laughter but he wondered if by keeping them tied to the store, to the legacy left by his family, he had held them back. Perhaps when it became clear to them there would be no children they should have created a new dream together.
    He looked around at the general store which had been in his family for three generations, realizing how much he loved it. It held so many memories of his own family, of his childhood and his parents and of his life with Eustacia but perhaps…perhaps it was time to let it go. Lately he had been thinking more and more about selling the store and retiring. He could take Eunie on one of those fancy cruises, somewhere warm and exotic where his bones wouldn’t creak and complain like an un-oiled hinge. He’d never had the chance to take her on a honeymoon as his father had suffered a stroke just before their wedding and he’d had to take over the store. Yet she’d never complained, well he thought with a silent chuckle, she’d never complained about him, though she damn well complained about nearly everything else.
    A small smile played on his lips as he scooped the empty cardboard cartons off the floor beside the newly stocked shelves, his mind still caught up in a lifetime of memories. Eustacia Bailey may have henpecked him to within an inch of his life, liberally and often with great gusto but the truth was she had been the sun and the moon to him for the last fifty years.
    ‘Jonathan!’ her familiar tone snapped, ‘what are you doing standing around with that