Plum Girl (Romance) by Jill Winters Read Free Book Online

everyone a reminder," B.J. announced. "Happy hour at Whiskey's this Friday night. I expect to see more people this week, especially my fellow twenty-somethings over here," he said, looking right at Lonnie and Matt. B.J. and Matt were both her age, but she didn't have the heart to tell them that she all but lived like a sixty-year-old anyway.
    "Hey!" Delia squealed in mock-annoyance-that-was-really-real-annoyance. "Many of us are young at heart, you know." Lonnie noticed her slip a sly glance at Lunther. What was that about? Lunther and Twit had met in law school, and now were both in their late forties. Delia, on the other hand, just recently celebrated her thirty-fourth birthday. Lonnie knew that because Twit had put her in charge of getting Delia a cake with her favorite flavors. Of course, per Twit's instructions, the cake had to be a surprise, so she couldn't ask Delia what her favorite flavors were in the first place. In the end, all of Lonnie's sleuthing had landed her back at chocolate, and no one had saved her a piece.
    B.J. went on, "I want to know why Lonnie never goes to happy hour. Lonnie, do you have a husband and five kids stashed somewhere we should know about?" He cracked up at his own suggestion.
    Great, now everyone was looking at her for some kind of reaction. She knew B.J. didn't mean any harm, but still, she didn't love being put on the spot. He was beaming at her with his quintessential trying-too-hard smile, and her heart turned over. She wasn't made of stone, after all. So she just smiled and said, "I'm going to get there one of these days, I'm telling you."
    "I don't know, Lonnie," Matt drawled. "You've said that before." His eyes were gleaming again, and his mouth quirked into a mischievous grin. He was just a troublemaker, that's all there was to it, but she couldn't help finding him entertaining sometimes.
    She returned Matt's smirk and announced to the room, "I'll go to happy hour this week, okay?"
    "I'm going to hold you to it this time," B.J. pronounced, and shifted his short, skinny leg to cross perpendicularly over the other.
    "I'd go, too," Bette offered with what Lonnie assessed as pseudo-regret. "But Reggie and I like to spend Friday nights having 'family time' with Skylar-Blaise and Burberry. It's just so utterly special, I couldn't miss a second of it."
    "Well, in conclusion, then—" Beauregard started.
    "Meeting adjourned!" Lunther exclaimed. Beauregard's mouth dropped into an awkward O... as if the words had literally been stolen right from him.
    Lonnie quickened her pace back to her desk when she heard her phone ring. She sprawled over the expanse of the desk, with her stomach settling against the layers of scattered papers, and grabbed it on the third ring. "Twit and Bell; Beauregard Twit's office," she squeaked out, her voice strained by her position.
    "Hey." It was Peach.
    "Hey! What's up? How's your day going?" She was careful not to pull the phone off the desk while she walked around and sat down in her chair.
    "Pretty good," Peach replied. "Iris is gone all day so it's just me and Cheryl. I had a few errands to run earlier, but now I'm just sort of killing time."
    "Cheryl doesn't work?" Lonnie asked, listening to Peach pop two bubbles before she answered.
    "Well, she's sort of into phone sales. She works out of her home. Out of her room, to be more precise."
    "What does she sell?" Lonnie asked. "Wait, is she agoraphobic or something?" she added, while simultaneously reading the message on her computer screen.
    NEW MAIL.
    "I don't think so. She just has no confidence. Iris hasn't been around much this week, so I've ended up spending more time with her, and she's actually not as lame as I originally thought." Lonnie mmm-hmmed and clicked on her inbox to get her new mail.
    "Actually," Peach continued, "she's really into cooking. That's what she sells—her recipes. But it's all mail order, so she doesn't have to deal with people much."
    Lonnie's stomach sank in disappointment. Two