Down the Aisle by Christine Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

the house, before having us put it back where it was to start with.”
    Galen couldn’t fault him there. That had totally happened a couple months back and the beer and burger he’d supplied hadn’t made up for the emotional trauma.
    He yanked the sweat-soaked t-shirt over his head and used it to wipe his face. “You think you’ll be ready to move in by fall?”
    Shane and Cat had picked a turn of the century fixer-upper since Cat had always wanted to live in a haunted house and Shane had always wanted to do whatever Cat wanted.
    “Hope so. I’m getting sick of driving all over town back and forth.” Shane bent low and started piping caulk around the drain of the tub. “Plus, I think I found a dog, and we need the space. It’s a golden retriever that lives next door to my parents. The people are getting too old to take care of him and are looking to find him a good home. Cat is talking about pot-bellied pigs, and there’s no way that’s going down. If I get a dog now, I’ll have squatter’s rights and she’ll back off.”
    The words “back” and “off” weren’t in his sister’s vocabulary, but he let his buddy hold onto the dream.
    “Any news on the baby front?” Shane asked, looking up from his finishing work.
    Galen hesitated and shook his head before taking another swallow of water. He’d considered telling Lacey this morning about the email he’d gotten the other day, but there were still a million things that could go wrong, and the look on her face when he’d come home from his jog had only cemented the fact that she couldn’t take another let down. At least this time, if it didn’t work out, it would only be his heartache.
    So it was back to the waiting game. It seemed like they were always waiting for something lately. Ovulation, a phone call, a letter, an interview. Every month, when his broken-hearted fiancée walked out of the bathroom with that look on her face, he wanted take her away from it all. To just be like fuck it and forget the whole thing. If he could be with her forever, he’d die a happy man. But he knew how badly she wanted a family, and if he was being honest with himself, he’d never imagined his life any other way. So they kept on keeping on. Even when shit got hard.
    “Nothing yet. I think she’s still caught up with what happened when Katya changed her mind.”
    That had been a rough one, too. So close, yet so far. It had been their first try at adopting. They felt like the gods were smiling down on them when they were picked by a teenage mom-to-be who was due to give birth in the spring. A week before her due date, she backed out, saying that she and the baby’s father were getting back together and had decided to raise the child themselves. Lacey had been inconsolable, and they had seriously considered pulling their name from the list. But in typical delicate-on-the-outside, steel-on-the-inside Lacey fashion, she rallied and a couple weeks later, she was back in the saddle.
    Still, he could see a hairline crack in that steel that hadn’t been there before, and a part of him wondered how many more blows she could take before she shattered. But maybe this time…
    He shut off the hopeful feeling blooming in his chest and stood abruptly. “It’ll be fine. We’ll get through it.”
    “Well, we’re all pulling for you,” Shane said, and then, clearly unsure of what to say next, promptly changed the subject to baseball.
    As they talked and tossed insults at one another’s favorite teams, Galen’s thoughts went back to Lacey. It had been so hard to leave her, but until she was willing to open up, there wasn’t much more he could do. Maybe she was right. With only a week until the wedding, things were getting hectic. After that, they’d have some uninterrupted time alone for their honeymoon. He pinched his eyes closed and pictured him and Lacey, arms wrapped around each other on the beach. When he opened them, he was resolved. She could hide her head in the