Saving You Read Free

the scrawny
side, and preferring to wear one’s hair in pigtails.
    Brandon shrugged. “That’s only six years.
Doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”
    “ But you think I’m crazy,”
Lucy said.
    “ No, I don’t,” Brandon
said, smiling. “You’re different. But in a good way. An interesting
way. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
    “ And I’ve never been out on
a date with anyone like you,” Lucy said. “I’m more into beta
males.”
    Brandon frowned. “Beta males? Like…feminine
guys?”
    “ Sort of,” Lucy said. “Guys
who aren’t afraid of their emotions. Guys who don’t mind letting a
woman take the lead if she’s more qualified or in the mood to be
the boss on a given day. Guys who aren’t a full foot taller than I
am.”
    Brandon frowned harder. “You’re
discriminating against me because of my age and height. Isn’t that
illegal?”
    “ I’m not discriminating,”
Lucy said, vaguely troubled by the notion that she was, whether she liked to
admit it or not. “And besides, I’m not an employer, I’m a girl, and
all’s fair in love and war.”
    Brandon sighed, nodding as he grabbed the
bread and pink box and tucked them inside his coat to stay dry.
“Gotcha. Forget I asked.”
    “ I’m sorry,” Lucy called
after him as he stomped toward the door, feeling awful for hurting
his feelings. “I’m not myself this morning. I didn’t mean
to—”
    The door closed behind him, cutting off
Lucy’s apology. She watched Brandon run through the rain to the
firehouse across the street with a miserable feeling in her
stomach. But this time, the misery had nothing to do with psychic
phenomenon.
    It was the feeling a girl gets when she
realizes she’s let a perfectly decent guy—a guy with hidden depths,
a sweet smile, and eyes that seem to be searching for answers, even
if they aren’t the answers he expects to find—slip through her
fingers.

Chapter Two
    “ Neither storm nor rain nor
heat nor gloom of night shall stay this bachelorette party from the
completion of its course!” Maddie thrust her fist into the air,
doing her best to rally the spirits of the seven women gathered at
Icing after closing the next day, each one looking more damp and
pitiful than the last. “Who’s with me?!”
    “ Isn’t that the post office
motto?” Kitty, Faith’s friend, flipped her dripping brown ponytail
over her shoulder and swiped her running mascara from beneath her
eyes. She was the wettest member of their party, having walked from
her apartment with a faulty umbrella, but the rest of the ladies
weren’t faring much better.
    Aria March’s jeans were wet to the knee,
while her sister Melody’s hair was standing up in a frizzy blond
poof. Maddie’s sister, Naomi, was barefoot after slipping and
falling trying to cross the slick concrete outside in heels, and
Faith—the bachelorette—was wearing camouflage duck-hunting galoshes
over her skinny jeans and looking less than ready to party.
    Lucy was the only member of the group still
dry, and that was because she lived above the bakery and hadn’t
been forced out into the torrential downpour yet.
    “ It is the post office motto,” Maddie
said, holding her dripping umbrella as far from her body as
possible, determined not to get her black cowboy boots any wetter
than they were already. “But I think it works. We can’t let a
little rain ruin our fun.”
    “ It’s more than a little
rain,” Faith said. “The city council ordered two hundred giant sand
bags to be delivered overnight. If the rain doesn’t blow through,
they’re going to start sandbagging Market Street to keep the river
from flooding the east end of downtown.”
    “ My grammy and grandpa are
from Pottsville, and they’ve already evacuated,” Lucy piped up.
“They’re going to stay with relatives up north until the river goes
down. They had two feet of water in their backyard this
morning.”
    “ And I heard the police
might be closing some of the county roads