Quest (Shifter Island Book 4) Read Free

yours…”
    “Blame my grandmother.”
    “I gave this a lot of thought, Al! I really did. You guys are so different. It’s… it’s hard to pick something that’s right for five different people. And you all said you liked what I picked.”
    “We did. We do.”
    There was something else going on here, Allison realized. Julie had stopped looking at the dress. She was focused completely on Allison, and she was seeing something that was making her incredibly unhappy. For a second, Allison felt a bolt of irrational fear, as if Julie were one of those cancer-sniffing dogs and had just determined that Allison’s days were numbered.
    It took some doing for her to ask, “What are you worried about? Really.”
    Julie heaved a sigh. Then she seized Allison in a huge, bone-crushing hug. “I’m so sorry , Allie!” she moaned.
    As if somebody had died. Or was dying.
    Allison stepped carefully back. “I’m really gonna need you to tell me what’s going on.”
    “Oh, Allie.”
    “Jules. For heaven’s sake.”
    Julie hung her head. “I thought it was gonna be you,” she said rapidly, to her shoes rather than to Allison. “I always thought it was gonna be you. You know—first. That you were gonna be first.”
    “First what?”
    “To get married .”
    Julie’s head bobbed up, and she peered earnestly at Allison as if to say, There. Now it’s all out in the open. And as if she expected Allison to haul off and clock her—hit her so hard she’d go flying through the changing room’s flimsy door, out into the middle of the salon, a scene worthy of a reality show. A scene that would appear in all the promos for next week’s episode.
    “Marry who?” Allison asked, bewildered.
    Tears started to flood down Julie’s cheeks. “Oh, Allie …”
    I’ve lost my mind, Allison thought. Or everyone else has. Or maybe I’m imagining all this. Maybe it’s all just…
    She began to wish that her bosses had said “no” to her vacation request. That they’d pointed to the growing pile of work she needed to do, the meetings she needed to attend, the clients she needed to contact. That they’d told her there was no way they could let her leave town for a week.
    Back home, things made sense. And people very seldom cried big crocodile tears, unless they were four years old.
    “I-I should—” she stammered.
    “When I first met Matt,” Julie whispered, “you already knew him . Mr. Fantastic. You guys—you were so perfect for each other. And I just… I thought Matt was nice. Remember, I told you he seemed nice? Our first date didn’t go too great, but I said I’d go out with him again. I thought it was nothing huge. But you and him —that was huge.”
    Him.
    Luca.
    The gorgeous guy she’d bumped into at her favorite sandwich shop near campus. The one she’d felt magnetically drawn to, the one who’d prompted her to skip the rest of that day’s classes—and a lot of classes during the weeks that followed—because she couldn’t bear to walk away from him.
    The one who’d wanted her to go live on an island somewhere, away from her family and friends.
    “Jules, that was four years ago,” Allison said quietly. “I haven’t even heard from him since then.”
    “But you were so right for each other.”
    “Julie—”
    Suddenly, Allison was glad for the changing room’s lack of mirrors, which meant she didn’t have to look at her own face, that she couldn’t see how she’d responded to Julie’s statement.
    All the mirrors were outside, in the main room of the salon. In here, the lights were a little dimmer, and the walls were a soft, soothing shade of pale blue. The same blue as the sky outside, Allison thought. Washed out a little by the late-summer heat.
    She forced herself to think of the sky as she pushed her bare feet into her shoes. To forget what Julie had just said. She didn’t want to think about what had happened with Luca four years ago, no matter how completely right being with him had seemed at