Read Online Iris in Bloom: Take a Chance, Book 2 by Nancy Warren - Free Book Online Page A

Christmas.”
    “Uh-huh?” She stopped screwing her silver screw into its pre-drilled hole so she could give him her full attention.
    “He said he was sorry but he couldn’t take my case. For personal reasons.”
    “Oh, he’s not.” But of course she knew he was. Oldest crime in the book.
    “Screwing my wife? Oh, yes he is.”
    “How can people be so awful? So disloyal? Your wife and your best friend? The two people on earth you should most be able to trust.”
    “I don’t know. But I found another lawyer. A woman who is happily married. She’ll represent me in my divorce.”
    He pushed pieces together and made a drawer. “And the sooner I’m free the better.”
    Daphne Chance loved to get as many of her offspring under her roof at the same time as possible as often as practical. Birthdays and major holidays were good bets that she’d be entertaining a hefty portion of her brood under her roof, at least for a few hours.
    Since Iris knew this, she let her mother invite whoever she wanted to the birthday party, figuring that she’d already done her embarrassing worst by inviting Geoff.
    To her delight, Iris got an email from her older brother, Evan. He and his fiancée Caitlyn were driving the two hundred miles to come for her party and spending the weekend with Daphne and Jack.
    After the horror story Evan had almost married, the Chance family had heaved a collective sigh when they met the woman who’d stolen his heart for good. Caitlyn Sorenson was not the woman any of them could have imagined Evan with. She’d chosen to run a country medical practice in a small town. To everyone’s surprise, Evan had followed her lead and given up his huge time and soul-sucking corporate law practice to join with a single partner in a two-person law firm.
    And yet when you saw them together it was obvious that Caitlyn was exactly right for him. Since he’d settled with her, Evan had never appeared happier.
    Since Daphne had kept on inviting people she’d gone way past the number that could fit around her huge dining table so the dinner would be buffet style. “I’m always intimidated cooking for you,” Daphne said as she went over the menu one more time.
    “Mom, I love your food. It’s nice for me to have a break from cooking.”
    “And you want your favorite cake for dessert?”
    “It wouldn’t feel like my birthday without your strawberry shortcake.”
    “Okay.” It was true, too. Daphne’s strawberry shortcake was as much a part of celebrating her birthday as was the dinner gathering.
    On the day of her party she wore her favorite dress. It was a midnight blue, and very flattering to her figure. Maybe she was dressing up a little more than she usually did but it was her birthday. Of course she should look her best. She wore it with a Lapis lazuli and amethyst pendant and her dangly amethyst earrings. She took the time to do her makeup properly and even spent an unheard of half-hour on her hair.
    While she was doing that, she took Happy Birthday calls from her friends and the sibs who couldn’t make it. She had a wall of greetings on her Facebook page and her email box was satisfyingly full of messages.
    When she arrived at the house she’d grown up in it was full of noise. Six of the Chance kids were here and there was the usual boisterous catching up to do.
    “Here she is, here’s the birthday girl,” Jack announced, getting up and pulling her in for a hug. “My beautiful girl. Look at you all grown up.”
    He made her sound like she was eighteen instead of thirty-three. She kissed his cheek and whispered, “Has it been very bad today?”
    “Not too bad,” he whispered back, his eyes twinkling. “She only had me go into town three times for things she forgot.”
    There was no time for more as her sibs dragged her into the large living area. Nothing would ever make this room elegant. Architectural Digest would never knock on the door and beg for a photo shoot, but with all the newspapers and books