Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom by Sara M. Barton Read Free Book Online Page A

communicating her deep disappointment in grunts and groans. I
made a point of taking the long way, heading down side streets and
tiny lanes that wandered along a meandering route, adding a couple
of extra minutes to the trip. The parking lot of the tiny church
was nearly full when I finally pulled my Ford Focus into an
available spot at the back of the property. Florence didn’t even
bother to wait for us. She practically sprinted into the
stone-faced building with Olympian determination.
    “What is that all
about?” I asked Lacey, my concern rising. “Does Florence strike you
as a little unbalanced?”
    “Honey, in a world
where there are more women than available men, you’d be shocked at
the lengths to which the desperate will go to snag a
mate.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Seriously. You’re
still young enough and pretty enough that men still pay attention
to you, but when you get to be my age, it’s ‘Slim Pickens time’,”
she confided, referring to the gangly rodeo rider and actor, who
appeared in old cowboy flicks. “On the rare occasion that a
good-looking, well-educated, half-decent man appears on the scene,
it’s a no-holds-barred fight to the finish for the single
females.”
    “Competition is that
fierce?” I asked, amused.
    “Are you kidding?”
Lacey shook her head. “Come down to the senior center at noon on
any given day. You’ll see more jockeying for position between the
challengers than on Kentucky Derby day. We sometimes take bets on
who will hit the finish line first.”
    “That doesn’t sound
like something Laurel will want to get mixed up in,” I decided, as
we entered the church. “My mother isn’t exactly the competitive
type.”
    “Kiddo, if your mother
wants something enough, she’ll do whatever it takes to get it,
whether it’s a man or marrying off her only
daughter.”
    “She’s been waiting for
me to settle down?”
    “Good heavens, we were
beginning to think you’d die an old maid, Scarlet!” Lacey poked me
in the side.
    A touch of guilt rolled
over me. All this time, I thought Laurel was content enough with
her lot in life, even though she never got over the death of my
father. It never occurred to me that she worried about my romantic
life.
    “Now that you and Kenny
seem to be heading towards matrimony, it’s only natural that Laurel
might consider her own situation and want a little something for
herself.”
    “I never thought of it
that way.”
    “Well, you should. She
may be your mama, but she’s still a woman and she still has
needs.”
    “Hmm....”
    “As long as there are
stars in the sky and sunsets that take your breath away, romance
lives. It doesn’t matter how old you are on the outside. The heart
is ageless.”
    Those words stayed with
me as I sat beside her, listening to Reverend Hoskins’ sermon on
the role of human kindness in everyday life. Were any of us ever
too old for love?
    Unlike my fairly chaste
and proper mother, Lacey had a long history of having men pursue
her after her divorce. The husband who dumped her for another woman
decided a year or two later that he had made a mistake, but by that
time, it was too late. Lacey had moved on emotionally. She never
wanted for male attention. Why hadn’t she remarried? It wasn’t like
she hadn’t been asked. Maybe she just hadn’t met the right man. Or
maybe she deliberately raised the bar too high to make sure no one
ever broke her heart again. Like me, she’d been badly burned and
found trust to be in short supply.
    I spied the back of
Florence’s gray-haired head three pews away, where she was squeezed
in between a squirming child with inattentive parents and a
heavyset man with a girth the size of Cincinnati. Why, if there
were empty seats available, would she subject herself to such
discomfort? The answer was easy to discern the moment I spotted Dr.
Van Zandt’s shiny bald dome one row up.
    “Each of us has some
small part to play in the lives of those around us. We can choose
to