Read Online One Summer by JoAnn Ross - Free Book Online

tables inside and out, and what the owner was promoting as the best coffee in town. A fact with which Adèle, who still made hers the old-fashioned Louisiana way, with chicory, couldn’t argue.
    As luck would have it, a couple vacated one of the tables on the front patio just as Adèle and Charity Tiernan arrived.
    Also fortuitously, the sun had made its way through the clouds, burning away the mist. After suggesting Adèle sit down, the vet went inside and placed their orders.
    “I love this bakery,” she said when she returned outside to the table. “I can see why Kelli chose cupcakes for her wedding.”
    “They were certainly popular,” Adèle agreed as the day flashed back with blessed clarity. “You caught the bouquet.”
    “I didn’t exactly have a choice, since it smashed against my chest,” the vet said with a wry smile as she peeled back the yellow paper on a cupcake topped with a seashell executed in buttercream. Adèle’s lemon coconut was adorned with a yellow rose. Along with the fabulous taste, Adèle admired the pretty blond baker’s attention to detail. It was the same sort of perfection she aimed for in her own work, whether it was serving as a housekeeper when she’d been a younger woman, painting as she used to love to do while living in the coast house, or, these past years, knitting.
    “You didn’t exactly look thrilled,” Adèle said, remembering.
    “I’m not the least bit superstitious, so I’ve never believed that old saying about the woman who catches the bouquet’s destined to be the next married.” Charity licked a bit of coconut/pineapple cream cheese frosting off her thumb. “Still, I’m not sure marriage is in the cards for me.”
    “Why not?”
    Adèle had discovered that one of the advantages of getting older was that you didn’t have to beat around the bush. You could flat out say things and ask questions that might be considered out of line for a younger person. She’d always spoken her mind, but there’d been a time when she would have been subtler.
    Now, as she entered the twilight of her years, she’d come to the conclusion that there really wasn’t any point in wasting time with tact.
    “I’m all for the idea in theory, but I’m starting to wonder if I lack a marriage gene. My parents have each been married so many times, I’ve given up trying to keep track of anniversaries.”
    “Just because they behave like butterflies, flitting from flower to flower, doesn’t mean you’re destined to. After all, you were engaged once. And called it off at the altar, from the way I heard it told.”
    Adèle cringed inwardly when she heard those words escape uncensored. Direct was one thing, but that comment had bordered on rude. Something she’d always prided herself on never being. But more and more often, especially since her fall, she’d found herself saying her thoughts out loud. There were times she worried about that, but Sofia De Luca, who’d been her closest friend for decades, had assured her that she did the same thing, even more often since her husband died. And wasn’t Sofia the most down-to-earth, commonsense person Adèle had ever met?
    If she was bothered by the idea of having her private life fodder for Shelter Bay’s gossip line, the young woman didn’t show it. Instead, she merely shrugged.
    “It wasn’t exactly at the altar,” she said mildly. “Actually, I called it off a few minutes before the ceremony. But after the entire church was filled with guests.”
    “That must have been difficult.” And, Adèle considered, brave. She wasn’t certain she would’ve had the courage to disappoint so many people. Then again, it had been a moot point, since she’d adored her Bernard.
    “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Charity took a bite of cake. “Looking back on it, I think I was in a state of shock, because I walked down the aisle myself, which caused a bit of a stir—”
    “I can see how that would get everyone’s attention,”