June Bride: Now and Forever Romance Read Free

something to do in between.
    June in California was a lot nicer than June in Michigan, where hot-and-muggy was practically all one word. The weather was obviously trying to seduce her back to the west coast. She found a tree-filled park not far from campus and settled at a picnic table with her computer and her Hotspot. She might as well begin looking for her dorm sisters. The sooner she made connections, the better off she’d be because they had all promised that they would help each other find work and have each other’s backs. She’d kept in touch for the first few months after moving, but Dwayne had wanted her to focus on him, and as a result, she’d lost track of her friends.
    “You don’t need those people,” he said. “You’ve got me. I promise to be all you’ll need for the rest of your life.”
    She snorted. Right. Until Miss Bimbo showed up.
    She scrolled through her old emails, looking for the Dorm Storm list they’d created, hoping desperately that she hadn’t deleted it.
    Her phone pinged with a message. She picked it up and burst out laughing when she saw the photo. It was Miss Bimbo herself, snarling at the camera and wagging a finger. Behind her, the “Home-wrecking Ho” sign was clearly visible. And Teresa sent a caption right out of The Wizard of Oz : “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!”
    Meredith didn’t have a dog, but the quotation was appropriate for the picture. She spent a few minutes texting back and forth with Teresa. “Great shot. Thanks for sharing.”
    “Dwayne is pulling his hair out, trying to farm out your workload to others.”
    “Tell him Sienna got my raise, so she can do my work.”
    “Ha ha! Gotta go.”
    Meredith set the phone down and took a deep breath of fresh air. She felt like a giant load had been lifted off her shoulders. Getting out of Michigan had been a good decision, even if she could never use Dwayne as a reference. Good riddance!
    She managed to locate four of her dorm sisters on Facebook before her Hotspot demanded to be recharged. As usual, she’d spent way more time than she’d planned looking at kittens and puppies and reading articles that had nothing to do with her. She’d friended the girls and hoped that they’d friend her back. Still no luck wading through old emails, but she’d have to work on that later. She needed to get back to the motel and charge her devices, not to mention get ready for her date.
    Something sparked inside her. She cocked her head to one side. Was that another feeling?
    She experimented. “Time to get ready for my date.” A tingle. “With Christopher Dann.” A definite tingle. “Well, what do you know,” she said to her MacBook. “I do believe the feeling is coming back.”
    By the time she reached the motel, she was starving. Dinner was still a while away, so she bought crackers out of the snack machine, plugged her devices in to charge, and went through her suitcases to figure out what to wear. She changed into her Hawaiian-print skirt and a long-sleeved maroon tee and slipped into black flats. She didn’t want to look any taller than she was, at least not until she had a chance to see how Chris felt about height issues.
    There was that tingle again. She glanced at herself in the mirror and was surprised to find a smile on her face. She still had time to do a little searching for email contacts, so she sat down at the little table near the window and booted up her computer.
    She avoided Facebook. Too time consuming. Instead she went straight to email.
    The first subject line on the screen sent her good mood plummeting into a dark hole. It was from Dwayne. “Screw you, you’ll have to sue me for your last check.”
    Meredith hit delete, but she was shaking inside. She closed her computer and went down the hall to get ice and a Pepsi. Then she settled on the bed with her yearbook, a pen, and a notepad, and made a list of every page where Chris’s sweet face appeared. Soon she was smiling