Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch by Victoria Pade Read Free Book Online Page B

so, rather than going right in, she plucked a few wilting leaves from the bright red geraniums that grew in a pot hanging beside the door.
    But that only bought her a moment before Emily appeared just inside the wooden screen.
    â€œFirst—are you all right?” Emily demanded, sounding as if she, not Abby, were the oldest sister when, in fact, she was the middle one.
    â€œI have a splitting headache, but other than that I’m okay,” Abby answered as she crossed the threshold into a large entryway with a center table occupying a fair share of the space.
    â€œI can’t believe you did this,” Bree said from directly overhead. Voices tended to echo slightly in the entryway because it was open to the ceiling of the second floor, surrounded on the upper level by a banistered walkway off which the bedrooms opened. The echo lent power to Bree’s disapproval.
    â€œWhich part can’t you believe?” Abby asked her youngest sister as Bree came around to the oak staircase and descended it to join her and Emily in the entry.
    â€œAll of it,” Emily said as if the question had been directed at her. “What were you doing letting that guy carry you out of that bar last night? And where did you go with him? And why didn’t you call so we didn’t have to sit up all night wondering if you were okay or in trouble or sick or who knows what?”
    Bree picked up where Emily left off. “We take you out to get your mind off the wedding and Bill, and the next thing we know, some stranger is carting you off like a sack of potatoes. By the time we got through the crowd in that place, all we saw was him driving away with you.”
    â€œAnd then when you weren’t here when we got home and didn’t come home all night, ” Emily continued, “we didn’t know what to think. Or if we should call the sheriff or if calling the sheriff would end up with him finding you boinking that cowboy somewhere.”
    â€œBree!” Abby said with an embarrassed laugh.
    â€œLooks to me,” Emily contributed, “as if it’s a good thing we didn’t call the sheriff because boinking that cowboy is just what he’d have caught you doing.”
    Emily was as conservative as Abby, so it was an indication of how put out she was that she’d even say a word like boinking.
    â€œI was not boinking anybody,” Abby informed them.
    â€œOh, no? You spent the whole night with him and here you are now, with your clothes all messed up as if you were wrestling around in them. Your hair has gone crazy. And you’re reeking of men’s cologne,” Bree declared.
    â€œMaybe it isn’t only her hair that’s gone crazy,” Emily pointed out.
    They were concerned about her but they were also peeved and goading her, too, to find out what had really gone on in the past twelve hours.
    Continuing in that vein, Bree said, “Geez, Abby, this isn’t like you.”
    â€œYeah, we didn’t think you’d carry the wild-woman thing this far. We’ve been scared to death that our getting you drunk made you do something dangerous.”
    When all else fails, try guilt.
    â€œOkay, okay. I’m sorry,” Abby said, finally moving from the entryway.
    She was badly in need of an aspirin and something to drink that would remoisten a desert-dry mouth. She could have gone to the kitchen at the back of the house by heading straight down the hallway from the foyer. But her sisters were blocking that path, so it was easier to take a left and go through the formal living room, pass under the yellow-stained-glass-lined archway that connected the dining room and finally to the kitchen from there.
    Bree and Emily trailed her like ducklings.
    â€œSo what happened?” Bree finally asked outright.
    The kitchen was very large, divided in half by a low row of cupboards so the appliances and butcher’s block were on one side, and a breakfast nook big enough to