Bowled Over by Victoria Hamilton Read Free Book Online

setting Tabby down. The little girl retrieved her fairy wings—she never went anywhere without fairy wings—and flitted around the kitchen. Interested in an outsider’s take, Jaymie brought Anna up to speed on her ongoing trouble with Kathy Cooper as Tabitha sat down in the corner to play tea party—her new favorite game—with her dolls.
    Anna said, “I met her one day when I took some papers to Craig Cooper’s office. He’s been organizing the bed-and-breakfast accounts.”
    “Kathy works for him.”
    “She works for him?” Anna frowned and shook her head. “I didn’t know that. She wasn’t working while I was there. She was in kind of a hurry, just leaving, actually. They seem really tight, as a couple, you know? It’s nice. I saw them kissing,” she said, with a grin. “They didn’t know it, but Icould see them through the front window before I came in. When the door chime sounded, they jumped apart! I guess they figured afternoon delight wasn’t very professional looking.”
    Jaymie said, “I wish I saw that side of her. If I knew what it was I did to Kathy, I’d correct it. I’m determined to make this better. I can’t believe I let it go all this time.”
    “You’ll make it up. No one could stay mad at you, Jaymie,” Anna said.
    Jaymie returned home, showered and dressed carefully in shorts and a cute red, white and blue T-shirt, both new. The downside of spending the winter writing a cookbook—and testing recipes—was that her clothes from the previous summer were a little too tight. Descending to the kitchen to pack for the day spent on the riverfront, she found that Becca was ahead of her, a surprise in and of itself, and was collecting things in the kitchen. She stood staring at the pile she had already mounded on the trestle table, but her expression was blank.
    “What’s up?” Jaymie asked.
    Becca, dressed in white capris and a blue blouse with a red scarf as a belt, twiddled her fingers. “I’ve forgotten something, but I can’t think what.”
    Jaymie regarded her sister for a long moment. Becca was the kind who was so organized, she had a list of all her lists, and that was not a joke. For her not only to have forgotten something, but to not have a list to remind her of what she had forgotten, was unheard of. Grabbing a step stool, Jaymie climbed up and reached into the top cupboard for her vintage plaid Thermos bottle. Just because it was July, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have tea, even if she had to drink it out of a melamine mug.
    All of a sudden, though, she turned and stumbled comingdown off the step stool as a thought struck her. “Becca! Are you…you really like this guy, Kevin, don’t you?”
    Her sister nodded. “I hope you like him, too,” she replied, holding her younger sister’s gaze.
    “Do you
love
him?”
    Becca shrugged, but colored a bit. Jaymie smiled. Well, that explained that. Only love could make Rebecca Leighton Burke disorganized. Jaymie didn’t have anything more to say about it; she just began to pack the blanket—vintage, of course—and other necessities: sun block, first aid kit, antacids. A vintage Red Flyer wagon was the mode of carrying it all to the park. Nobody in town lived far enough away to drive.
    She wondered, though, as she mechanically packed, why her stuffy and bossy older sister found it so easy to fall in love and make a commitment, while Jaymie was so cautious, so afraid to get hurt. Joel’s defection still bothered her seven months later, even though she wouldn’t take him back if he begged. In fact, she spent more time pondering Joel than thinking of Daniel. Not good.
    But maybe it was natural. Seven months wasn’t really
that
long to mourn a breakup, she supposed, especially since she would have married Joel if he had asked her.
And
she would have regretted it. Now she couldn’t see him and Heidi, his new girlfriend, together without noticing all the things about him that drove her mad: his constant