Read Online Meeting Mr. Right by Deb Kastner - Free Book Online Page B

game.
    “Not a problem.” When Vee smiled at him—truly, fully smiled at him for the first time he could remember—Ben felt it all the way to his toes, and for a moment all of his thoughts about Veronica Jayne and dinners in expensive restaurants faded completely.
    Which came as a surprise even to him. What could that possibly be about?
    He was grateful, he supposed, that she hadn’t up and left him at the dinner table with his wandering mind and greasy fingernails.
    Yeah. That was it.
    Grateful.
    It couldn’t possibly be more. Could it?

Chapter Five
    Dear BJ,

    Thanks for the note and the encouragement. Take whatever time you need to modify the content I sent you for our project. You’re the presentation-software whiz, after all. At the end of the day, you’ve got the harder part of the undertaking—putting it all together cohesively. Once again I’m thankful I got paired with you.
    I’ve been praying about what you said, and I have decided that I’m actually going to do it! I’m really going to put myself out there for a change and see what happens, though let me tell you, it was no easy decision for me to decide to expose my true self for others to see. I can’t even put into words how nervous I am, but I know you’re right. I can’t keep living this way. I can’t serve God to the best of my ability if I’m too busy worrying about what other people think about me. I’ve got to get over it once and for all. The truth is, I’ve had walls up nearly all my life.
    You’re the one who has finally helped me break them down. Thank you for that.

    Truly yours,
    Veronica Jayne

    W hen Vee decided to do something, she never did it halfway. Go big or go home, as the saying went. If she was going to change her appearance and let people see the real Vee, she was going to do it right.
    Hair. Eyebrows. Nails. The works. Frankly, it sounded horribly uncomfortable at best, and blatantly painful at worst. But she was committed now, and that was that.
    It was Tuesday, and she had the day off both from Emerson’s Hardware and the fire station, so she decided to head for Amarillo, hoping to be able to pick up the most important facet on which her entire plan hinged—and the one thing she absolutely did not have.
    A dress.
    When Vee was little, her mother had put her in frilly dresses for special occasions, but once she got old enough to pick clothes for herself, dresses and skirts simply weren’t going to happen. Not in her wardrobe. She’d always worn slacks, even to church services, including weddings, funerals, Christmas and Easter. She wasn’t a girly-girl, and she’d never seen the point of owning a dress if she was never going to wear one. Dresses weren’t her style.
    At least not yet. Maybe it was like her habit of pulling back her hair—a relic of a choice she’d made years ago, a choice she might be ready to outgrow. She’d never know unless she tried. And tried quickly because she only had a week to pull the whole thing—or rather, pull herself —together.
    Every year on the Saturday before Easter the police and fire departments, in conjunction with the ladies’ charity group from church, hosted a special dinner for the less fortunate in Serendipity and the surrounding areas. It was one of the highlights of the year for Serendipity. The town folk were always generous in their donations, and the meal was generally an enormous success. This would be Vee’s first year in the middle of the action.
    Less than one week wasn’t a good deal of time to make any kind of personal transformation, much less the kind of makeover Vee had in mind, and she was all on her own in this. No fairy godmother to wave her wand like in the story of Cinderella. Not her friends. She knew better than to let them in on it. If anyone so much as cracked a joke about what she was doing—and they would—she knew herself well enough to know she’d bail on her plan.
    So that left no one, not even her mother to help her. And oh, how