The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess Read Free Page A

But she couldn’t see the dog he usually walked at the
     end of it. She slammed on the brakes, the seatbelt biting into her sore muscles, but she didn’t care about that. She cared
     about him. He couldn’t lose his dog, too. He’d just buried his wife not that long ago.
    She threw open her door. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
    She couldn’t look down. She was too afraid to see whether or not a furry, gray body lay beneath the tire of her car.

Chapter Two
    “I only like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign.”
    —
Mae West
    M illie held her breath until she heard an indignant yip. Then she let it out in a relieved sigh, glancing down at the small,
     bearded dog. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought I hit him.”
    “No, you didn’t,” a deep voice assured her though it didn’t sound particularly relieved. Actually, it sounded a little disappointed.
     “You seem to be in a hurry, though, so I can hang onto this….”
    She forced herself to meet Charles Moelker’s amazing blue gaze. Instead of feeling relief that she hadn’t harmed the dog,
     her heart rate accelerated more. It was silly, this giddy little rush she experienced whenever she saw her handsome neighbor.
     She wasn’t a teenager anymore, hadn’t been one for a long, long time. Though now, with her new hair color, she didn’t
look
like it had been that long. She reached up, patting her hair to surreptitiouslycheck for more cobwebs, then she looked down at her yellow velour sweatsuit, which was smeared with streaks of dirt.
    Charles, even in faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt, looked like he’d stepped off the cover of
GQ.
His bright eyes made her think of the carefree summer days of her youth and Pierce Brosnan, her personal favorite, although
     Charles’ slightly graying beard made him look more like Sean Connery. While Kim had teased that he was starting to look like
     his dog, a miniature Schnauzer, Millie understood why he’d grown it. He didn’t care about his appearance right now… or much
     of anything else.
    She’d gone through a rough patch after Bruce’s death. But with the support of her friends, and the comfort of her memories,
     she’d never really felt as if she’d lost him. They’d been too close for too long for him to ever completely leave her. From
     that first night Pop had brought him home from the office, they had been inseparable, marrying the summer right after Millie
     graduated high school. That was old-fashioned, getting married that young, but she didn’t regret a minute of their time together.
    Realizing she had been silently staring at Charles for some time, probably with her mouth hanging open, she said, “I’m sorry.”
    “Your hair—I mean, your bowl.” He lifted an orange casserole bowl in his leash-free hand. “I was returning it.”
    When she had nearly run him and his little dog over. “I’m sorry,” she said again, inwardly grimacing about sounding like an
     idiot.
    Oh, she hoped Kim wasn’t anywhere around, lurking behind the trees and shrubbery, watching and laughing about this; Millie
     would never live it down, as Kim would be sure to share it at their next Red Hat Society chapter get-together. Millie peered
     around, but as short as she was, she could barely see across the evergreen shrubs lining her drive to the next door unit,
     let alone to Kim’s, which was another building down and across the street. The complex fit its name; all the buildings were
     carved into a woodsy hilltop with the dark brick walls and green slate roofs blending into the surroundings.
    Millie reached out, taking the bowl from Charles’s hand, nearly dropping it when their fingers brushed and a funny little
     current traveled up her arm. Probably just another muscle twinge courtesy of Kim’s class. She hoped.
    “Thank you,” he said, “for the casserole.”
    “No problem.” She loved cooking; that was why she’d probably never be able to permanently retire the Domestic Goddess tiara
     no matter