Read Online Love on the Line by Pamela Aares - Free Book Online Page A

dress had seen better days; the hem had come loose and needed mending. She wasn’t handy with a needle and thread, much to the consternation of the Albion Bay women’s quilting circle. Even Ryan had showed greater prowess with a needle. Her stomach tightened as she remembered the tender way he’d stitched up Belva. And the way he...
    No, she wasn’t going to start rolling thoughts about Ryan through her mind, not again.
    She fumbled with a needle and was poised to attempt her first stitch when her phone rang.
    “For goodness’ sake, Cara, don’t you ever check your messages?”
    Her mother had entered the realm of instant messaging and texting. An unreturned phone call was nearly as great a travesty as wearing white after Labor Day.
    “I got home late,” Cara said, wishing she didn’t feel she needed to apologize.
    “We’re making Thanksgiving plans. Since your father wants to go to Rome for Christmas, I thought we’d just have a simple family affair here for Thanksgiving.”
    Her mother’s idea of a simple family affair at Barrington Manor, the family estate overlooking the Hudson River, involved hordes of houseguests, miles of food and oceans of drink. And endless imported entertainment. Last year she’d hired the Beaux Arts Trio to play for the morning-after brunch.
    “I only have four days off for Thanksgiving this year,” Cara said. “I have to drive the bus on the following Monday.”
    “Don’t tell me there’s no one else in that town who could drive for a couple of days. They do drive out there, don’t they?”
    That her mother hadn’t gotten her head around Cara’s choice to live in Albion Bay didn’t surprise her. But after three years, Cara thought she’d warm to the idea or at least accept her choice. Her father was a different story. He’d never get it.
    “I really can’t,” Cara said. “I volunteered to help with the Thanksgiving bird count this year.”
    “We have birds here. Loads of them.”
    “Mom.”
    “Okay, okay. But if you’re not coming for a visit, I’m coming out there. It’s time that I see this place that has so transfixed you. And to make sure you haven’t been inhabited by an alien.”
    A visit from her mother was exactly what she did not need. There was no way to keep her mother in check for the duration of a visit.
    Her mother had been a socialite for most of her life, but in her midforties she surprised everyone and decided to get a degree and start a career as a psychotherapist. She was full of the wisdom of the recently converted and shared it freely. But that wisdom hadn’t yet stretched to comprehending the life choices of her children. She still saw Cara’s move to Albion Bay as a back-to-the-land phase that she’d grow out of. Cara hadn’t told her mother that before she’d fled New York, she’d nearly had a nervous breakdown or about the month of intensive therapy she’d slogged through after her best friend, Laci, had committed suicide. Maybe she should have. But at the time all she could think of was escaping, fleeing the world she’d watched take Laci down. The world that might’ve taken her down too if she hadn’t fled.
    She had tried, more than once, to explain to her mother that she’d fought a bottomless emptiness that scared the hell out of her. That the life that so suited her parents held no meaning. That moving to Albion Bay was no whim. It was her desperate attempt to restart her life.
    Having her mother interacting with the people of the town would blow her cover in a heartbeat. Her mother knew it and was at that very moment leveraging Cara’s life for purposes of her own. Cara considered pointing out that her mother was using emotional blackmail, but thought better of it. She wasn’t in the mood to be analyzed.
    “Look, I’ll think about coming back East for a visit, okay?”
    “Darling, I’d like to visit you,” her mother said in a softer tone. “Bring you some of your things.”
    “The rains are coming,” Cara