Read Online Cold Feet in Hot Sand by Lauren Gallagher - Free Book Online Page A

honeymoon.
     
    Deanna let her face fall into her hand and groaned. One fuck-up in the heat of the moment, and the consequences just kept on piling up.
     
    You brought it on yourself, girlfriend. Deal with it.
     
    She took a deep breath, clicked away from her conspicuously sparse inbox, and tried to focus on the parts of her job that weren’t affected.
     
    She couldn’t shake her constant awareness of the absence of Nick’s name on her list of new messages, though. The day didn’t seem right without their constant e-mail banter. It was always kind of a bummer when Nick was out of the office for any reason. Though he and Deanna didn’t work together directly, they saw each other in the halls, stopped into each other’s offices to shoot the breeze, sometimes had lunch together, and usually shot bantering e-mails back and forth throughout the day. He was her office buddy, and the days always dragged by when he was out sick or on vacation.
     
    And now there was a good chance that was gone. Oh, he’d
     
    still be here. They’d still pass in the halls, and they’d still interact on occasion when their jobs demanded it. But what they’d had up until this point? The us-against-the-office friendship that kept them sane between eight and five? They’d fucked that away. Literally.
     
    But Nick wasn’t the only one she usually e-mailed with throughout the day. At this point, she didn’t even know if Kristina was back in town, or if she’d stayed for a few days to decompress in the place she should have had her honeymoon. She had no idea where Kristina was, how she was feeling what she was doing. This was probably the longest they’d gone without speaking in years.
     
    The lack of contact with Nick and the complete radio silence with Kristina was surreal and unsettling. It was wrong , damn it.
     
    A knock at her door startled her.
     
    “It’s open,” she called out, and she was more than a little relieved when Jennifer, her only other close friend here besides Nick, stepped into the office.
     
    “Hey,” she said. “How are you doing?”
     
    Deanna shrugged. “I’m all right.”
     
    Jennifer closed the door and took a seat opposite Deanna. “So what happened? I’ve heard through every grapevine in the building that Nick bailed on marrying your sister.”
     
    “They split up.” Another shrug. “Isn’t much else to tell.”
     
    “But how do you feel about all of it?”
     
    Deanna fidgeted in her chair, struggling to keep eye contact. “I’m not thrilled, if that’s what you mean.”
     
    “Upset?”
     
    “Of course I’m upset,” Deanna said. “My friend and my sister just called off their wedding at the last second. What’s not to be upset about?”
     
    Jennifer’s eyebrow quirked in that way they always did when she saw right through someone. “Yeah, but, I don’t know. Every time I’ve seen you around the office today, you seem out of it. Like it’s bothering you.”
     
    “Shouldn’t it be?”
     
    “Yeah, but it seems like it’s bothering you… differently.”
     
    “Differently, how?”
     
    “You tell me.”
     
    Deanna kept her gaze focused on her desk. She could usually
     
    talk to Jennifer about anything and everything, but not this. Not when it involved someone else in the office.
     
    What could she say, anyway? “ Well, Nick called off the wedding, but then I helped him seal the deal by sleeping with him on what was supposed to be his wedding night, so now no one is talking to anyone and it’s all a monstrously huge mess. ”
     
    “Jesus, Dee ,” Jennifer said. “What in the world happened?”
     
    Deanna swallowed. “It’s a long story.”
     
    “I’ve got time.” Jennifer leaned a little closer. “Talk to me, Dee.”
     
    Chewing the inside of her cheek, Deanna struggled to hold eye contact with Jennifer. Though she didn’t like the idea of talking to a co-worker about a tryst with another, she desperately needed to get this off her chest. And