Read Online Dune Road by Jane Green - Free Book Online

coming from miles around to hear the bands; and more recently it has become even more popular because of its reputation as a singles’ meeting place.
    Not every night, but on Thursdays and Sundays the place is packed with singles ranging in age from twenty-something to fifty-something, all squeezed together, looking over one another’s shoulder to see if anyone more interesting has just stepped into the room.
    “This is horrendous,” Kit shouts above the music as Tracy muscles her way back from the bar with margaritas in hand. “It’s so damned noisy. How long did they say it would be for a table? ”
    “Forty minutes,” Tracy says with a grin. “More time for us to have fun.”
    Kit casts a glance over at Edie, who is clearly hating this.
    “I’m sorry, ladies,” she says, “but I can’t hear anything.”
    “Me neither,” Charlie shouts. “I hate to be a killjoy, but this really isn’t my scene. I had no idea this place got so busy on a Thursday. I think I’m going to head home.”
    “Don’t leave me here!” Kit says in horror. “I may be single but I’m not desperate.”
    “Okay, okay.” Tracy nods her head. “It is a bit loud. You want to go somewhere else? ”
     
    “This is more like it.” They settle at a quiet table in the corner of the Greenhouse, a brasserie next to a popular garden center on the outskirts of town that opened last year, and has quickly become one of the most popular restaurants in town.
    The English owners, Alice and Harry, have lived in Highfield for six years and, once the twins were in preschool, Alice started to think about going back to work.
    She had been a caterer, back in London, a few lifetimes ago, and every time she and Harry went out to eat, they found the food mediocre and the prices astronomical.
    “I don’t think I’m being ridiculous,” Harry would say, “resenting going out for a neighborhood hamburger which costs twenty-six dollars. Twenty-six dollars! Even if it’s organic Kobe beef with gold-leafed tomatoes, how can they possibly charge that much? ”
    “It’s not the food,” Alice kept explaining, “it’s the lease. The landlords are charging so much the restaurants have to keep the prices high or they’d all go out of business.”
    “What this town needs is a decent brasserie,” Harry kept muttering. “Somewhere that serves fresh pastries for breakfast, great salads and sandwiches for lunch, and casual suppers.”
    “They don’t have that in suburban Connecticut,” Alice would say.
    “That’s the point. They ought to.”
    “Well, why don’t we start one? ”
    “We? Because I’m running the garden center. I couldn’t possibly find time to start a restaurant.”
    “So,” Alice said, with a familiar twinkle in her eye. “How about opening something at the garden center? We could convert one of those big old greenhouses in the lower field.”
    “What? So everyone could wilt in the heat? Do you have any idea how hot those things are? ” Harry laughed.
    “Hello? Air conditioning? And you can treat the glass now too. Plus, blinds. You could have lovely natural rush blinds.”
    “And how do we afford air conditioning, a professional kitchen, lovely natural rush blinds? ”
    “Investors, my darling. Plus the money we have from the divorce.”
    Alice came to America a long time ago, when she was married to Joe Chambers. So odd to think she’d had another life before this one, a life as the wife of a successful investment banker, who transferred to New York only for Alice to discover that their marriage wasn’t as rock solid, or her husband as faithful, as she had once thought.
    Joe, it turned out, was a serial philanderer. He loved Alice, or so he said, but he couldn’t resist the charms of a pretty woman, and there were many, many pretty women.
    Alice might have been able to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t happening, to stay in their pretty little cottage in Highfield while Joe spent Monday to Friday in New York City,