Read Online Always on My Mind by Susan May Warren - Free Book Online Page B

to break away from the past few months, figure out how to shake free of my mistakes.” She turned and zipped her duffel bag. “I just need time, and then . . . yeah, maybe I’ll be back. I can sublet your place when you and Max finally elope.”
    “Huh?”
    Raina dredged up a smile. “You know you’re itching to go back to Hawaii and tie the knot. I’m surprised you’re not planning it for the midseason break Max has coming up.”
    Grace wore an enigmatic expression.
    “You are! I knew it.”
    “I don’t know   —it’s just . . . We don’t want to make a big deal about it, and with the publicity Max has gotten since he did that PSA about Huntington’s, it might turn out to be a media mess. He’s got that golf tournament in Hawaii, so we just . . . I don’t know.”
    Raina touched her hand. “It’s perfect. At least one of us gets our happy ending.”
    She pulled away, but Grace held on. “Casper is still in town. He’s staying with Max. I know you two fought, but . . . maybe . . . ?”
    “I don’t want to see him. I meant it when I told him to go away.” She sighed. “Being with him will only remind me of this past year. I have to figure out a way to steer clear of dangerous men   —or at least the kind with adventure in their devastating blue eyes and charming smiles. The next man I date   —if ever   —is going to be boring.”
    She smiled, trying to coax one out of Grace, but it didn’t work.
    “Listen. I love your brother, or I thought I did. But it won’t work, Grace, and you know that. What I did will always be between us. He should just go back to Central America and become a treasure hunter. That’s what he wants, anyway   —he is just caught up in our summer fling. He needs to move on.”
    Grace winced but didn’t chase her words. “What if you run into my parents in Deep Haven?”
    Raina lifted the duffel bag onto her shoulder. “Deep Haven isn’t so small that I can’t avoid them for the next few months. And if I do, I’ll smile and keep pushing my grocery cart. They don’t have to know anything. Ever.” She stopped then, testing Grace’s expression for agreement.
    Grace sighed, nodded.
    Raina headed toward the door.
    “I think you have to wait to be discharged,” Grace said, picking up the bag of bagels.
    “I’m done with waiting. I’ve waited nine months to put my mistakes behind me. I have to move forward if I have any hope of breathing again.”

E VERGREEN R ESORT WOULD NOT go under on Darek Christiansen’s watch. No, he planned on wresting a heat wave of business from winter’s frigid grip, even if he turned into a snowman doing it.
    Darek chipped the last of the ice off the stairs to cabin one, dumping salt on the steps and decking before returning to the main path. Electric lanterns hanging from wooden poles lit the trail as if winding through a Narnia wonderland. Although, in another hour, it might be termed a dark and stormy night.
    The sun, long obscured by low-hanging clouds, lent peaked, waning illumination to the graying day, and the descending blizzard blotted out anything beyond twenty feet ahead of him. Wind howled, the snow like blades on exposed skin, the air so frigid that frostbite lurked with every passing minute.
    The kind of night that compelled a man to stay home, curled in front of the hearth with his wife and seven-year-old son.
    But not Darek. Because only he remained to rescue Evergreen Resort from the black hole of bankruptcy.
    He pulled the scarf over his nose and mouth, dampened with the moist air of his own breath, as he scooped another shovelful of snow from the walkway to cabin two. With the drifts already three feet high, his shoveling added another layer to the mountainous piles.
    More than once, he’d longed for the towering, shaggy evergreens that used to cordon off the property, creating an enclave of winterland joy. But after the forest fire a year and a half ago, the replanted trees would take years to