Beale Street Blues by Angela Kay Austin Read Free Book Online Page B

gorgeous and you can't stop thinking about him?"
    "What do you know? Who said I can't stop?" If Annette knew about her dreams, she'd have absolutely no leverage what-so-ever.
    "You did." She laughed, again. "I'll call you back later. I'm about to hop on the train."
     
     
    Darling popped the trunk of her car, carefully reached in and pulled out the wedding dress that for some reason, she hadn't been able to part with. The lace and beads were hand-stitched. Back then, she weighed about twenty pounds less. She remembered with pain the day she saw the dress. She'd been out lunching with her mother and Annette. After lunch, they did some window shopping. When they passed the bridal shop, they all looked at each other with one thought. What the heck, why not take a look? Who knew they'd actually find something. The moment they saw it, they knew it was the one . The thing was she'd bought it before Steve had proposed.
    Annette stored the dress at her house for months until Steve actually asked her to marry him. Now the thought made her laugh. Maybe that should've been her first clue that there was something crazy going on with her. She had been absolutely obsessed with him since they first met. No one could ever live up to the type of fantasy she'd created.
    She put the dress back into her trunk. As soon as she could, she'd put it back in storage. Instead, she grabbed the other bags of clothes she no longer had a need for: evening gowns, shoes and extravagant purses, then walked into the consignment store to make her monthly drop off. Plus, she could use a few more reasonably priced suits. They always had a great selection.
    An hour later, with cash and new suits in hand, Darling drove the streets of Memphis with no place to go. The city seemed strange and different, now. Her high school friends were just that. They were so far apart in who they were now that it made it difficult for them to relate. And her family, her parents, she didn't want them to know how far she'd fallen, because she and Steve couldn't agree on anything. Every extra dollar went to her lawyers and her part of the mortgage until things were finalized.
    Just how had that happened? He left her! Why did she have to continue to pay the mortgage?
    For some reason, she ended up in front of her high school.
    Her high school had been a big deal when she was a kid with both a junior high and high school on the same campus. They provided more college preparatory classes than any other public school back then. Now, the junior high was some type of weird annex and the grounds didn't look as beautiful as she'd remembered. Through the eyes of a child, she'd thought the place was huge. Because she'd taken the bus to school, it seemed like it was on the other side of the world. But, it was only about fifteen minutes from her parents' house. And now, it seemed small and old. Falling apart.
    Just like me
    She looked over at the bags resting on the seat beside her and cried.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    T he stench of the weight room at the hotel—an odd mix of sweat and rubber—didn't bother Jaxon as he loaded more weight onto the bar. A weird sense of relief flowed through him as he laid across the bench and braced himself for what was to come. He gripped the warm metal and forced the bar to move with his will as much as his strength. The ache in his muscles increased with each pump and he welcomed it every time. Sweat rolled down his arms dripping onto his face. Into his eyes.
    He rested the weights and grabbed his towel to wipe away his perspiration. As soon as he dropped the towel back to its resting place, images of Darling flooded him again. Nothing he did allowed him to push thoughts of her out of his mind. Damn! The metallic ringing and the grunting sounds of the men and women tackling the weights around him alerted him. He sat, doing nothing. The mirror across the way reflected what he already knew. This woman knocked