Debra Ullrick by The Unintended Groom Read Free Book Online Page A

though, and he knew keeping it strictly business was going to be a challenge.
    * * *
    The early morning sunrise peeked through the curtain in Abby’s sparsely furnished bedroom. Snuggled under the red-and-white quilt Mother had sent along with her, Abby rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
    Her thoughts drifted to the calamitous dinner from the night before.
    Poor Harrison had been so mortified.
    Not her; she laughed the whole time—inwardly of course.
    The near-four-year-olds’ antics had more than tickled her, even when they’d tossed glazed carrots at one another and a piece had landed in her hair. And even when they’d dumped mashed potatoes and gravy onto the floor, or when they’d spilled their milk all over the white linen tablecloth.
    The whole thing had been hilarious to her, but not to Harrison, who had profusely apologized, repeatedly. She had assured him none of it had bothered her, that nothing in this world was worth getting fidgety over, and that they were just things that could be washed.
    Other than those few incidences, everything had gone quite well. Dinner conversation flowed freely until the boys had fallen asleep with the sides of their faces resting in their dessert.
    She and Harrison cleaned them up before he left with the promise of arriving early the next morning.
    Speaking of arriving early, Abby tossed her quilt off and went to the window and pulled the curtain back. Dark clouds drifted toward the direction of town bringing with them a Rocky Mountain rainstorm. Didn’t matter. She wouldn’t let anything stop her from today’s mission.
    While she donned her peach satin bustle gown and plumed hat, she couldn’t help but think about Harrison’s boys again. The longing to have her own children chopped away at her heart. Why did she think moving away from her beloved nieces and nephews would solve her problem? At the time, it sure made sense. Of course, back then she didn’t know that the town committee wouldn’t let her start her business without a male partner.
    And back then, she didn’t know that the man God had placed in her life would have two adorable little boys who would capture her heart with a single look, either.
    Abby closed her eyes and sighed.
    What was she going to do?
    Ever since Doctor Berg, who she’d only gone to see because she had missed several of her monthly cycles in a row, had told her she had womb death, her life had never been the same. The drying up of her womb, something most women started in their forties, meant she would never bear children. Hearing that diagnosis had crushed any hopes she had of being a mother. That dreadful day she had fled from his office and cried until her heart felt numb with grief. Grief for the children she would never carry. That same day, when she told her fiancé, David, about it, he immediately broke off their engagement, telling her how important it was to not just him, but any man to have offspring of his own. Watching him strolling around town with another woman on his arm and later, holding his baby, had been much too painful for her to endure.
    Same thing with her siblings. While she was extremely delighted for her brothers and sisters, seeing them happily married with children reminded her daily of what she herself would never experience—a loving husband and a house filled with children.
    It was because of all that she decided to open a dinner theater far away from Paradise Haven. She loved how when she was on stage acting, or sitting in the audience watching, she was transported into another world.
    A world of happily ever afters.
    A world she could participate in, instead of standing on the sidelines and being an observer only.
    Of course, none of it was reality, but still, it helped take her mind off the pain of her reality.
    Thinking about reality, she needed to hustle her body downstairs. Harrison would be there any minute to pick her up.
    At the bottom of the winding staircase, Abby saw Veronique heading toward the front