Falling for You by Julie Ortolon Read Free Book Online Page B

he asked.
    “Certainly.” She closed her eyes, deciding to deal with Bobby later.
    “Should we meet there, or would you like for me to pick you up?”
    She thought fast. If Chance picked her up, she wouldn’t run the risk of arriving first. Nor would she have to juggle with Adrian and Allison for who got what vehicle. Between the three of them, they only had a Jeep, their aunt’s luxury sedan—which was big and awkward for her to drive—and Adrian’s motorcycle. But then they all worked within walking distance of the cottage, so transportation was rarely a problem. “I’d rather you pick me up, if that’s okay.”
    “I’ll be glad to drive. Do you still live in the old Bouchard Cottage?”
    “Yes,” she answered, not a bit surprised he knew where she lived since the Bouchard Cottage was on the historic walking tour. Anyone who was up on the island’s history knew who lived there.
    “I’ll see you shortly before four, then.”
    She turned off the phone, feeling dazed. She had an appointment to meet an innkeeper. Several innkeepers. The first step toward making her dream a reality!
    “Hot date?” Bobby asked from the doorway.
    She turned, laughing. “Yes, in a manner of speaking, I have a very hot date.” And she could hardly wait.
    On Wednesday, Chance left the bank and drove the few blocks to where Aurora’s family had lived since before the Great Storm of Nineteen Hundred. In Galveston, everything fell into two categories: pre-Storm and post-Storm.
    On the gulf side—or beach side—of the island, where he lived, nothing had survived the wall of fury that had slammed into the Texas coast, killing more than six thousand people in Galveston alone. While the hurricane had failed to wipe “the New York of the Gulf” from existence, it had left a permanent mark that had literally reshaped the island.
    After the storm, a massive concrete retaining wall, known as the seawall, had been built along the beach, seventeen feet high and stretching for miles. In the years following the wall’s completion, massive amounts of dirt had been pumped by pipeline to fill in behind the wall, physically raising the level of the island’s east end.
    Just as noticeable and lasting a reminder, though, was the boundary that marked where the devastation had ended, a boundary where the pile of broken houses, pier pilings, carriages, and the bodies of the dead had become so great that even one of the worst hurricanes in recorded history could no longer push it inland. Everything on the gulf side of that barrier had been destroyed, while the downtown area and a small circle of neighborhoods around it had survived remarkably intact.
    The St. Claires lived within that boundary among treasures from a more romantic age, beautiful Victorian, antebellum, and Greek Revival homes, from small cottages to lavish mansions. Some had been restored, but many had not. Older families lived in homes they’d inherited but could barely afford to maintain next to New Money couples who were renovating houses from the ground up. The gay community mingled with the straight; wealth lived among the middle class; and everywhere tropical flowers offered a colorful contrast to rugged Texas oaks.
    That jumble of people and plant life was one of the things he liked best about Old Galveston. There were no geographic lines of distinction, no good neighborhoods or bad neighborhoods, no rich areas or poor areas, no white, Hispanic, or black sections. Everyone lived side by side.
    Unfortunately, the invisible lines of social status weren’t nearly as vague. The Old Money families might live beside new wealth or old poverty, but they knew who was one of them and who wasn’t. In that respect, Galveston was famous for its snobbery.
    Chance accepted this with a resigned sigh, a fact of life as old as Galveston itself, as he pulled to a stop before the one-story white house just east of downtown. He could already hear the whispers that would ripple all the way out