Read Online The Accidental Book Club by Jennifer Scott - Free Book Online Page A

to the About the Author page, then turning the book out for everyone to see. A photo of Thackeray, sitting in an antique maroon chair, a cigar dangling between the fingers of one hand, his hair brushed straight back in a way that looked wet and overly coiffed, took up half the flap. “Am I the only one who thinks he’s sexy?”
    “Ew,” May said, sauntering in with a glass of ice water. “Yes, you are the only one.”
    Mitzi picked up the wine bottle and waggled it at May. “What’s with the water?”
    May looked down at her glass, a hint of disappointment on her face. “Too many calories for a Tuesday. I’m on a diet.”
    “Lady, you are always on a diet,” Loretta said. “And you know what? Gravity takes it all in the end anyway. If I were thirty again, I would strike the word
diet
from my vocabulary. I’d let it all loose like a house made of Jell-O.”
    “Whatever,” May said. “You’re fabulous. And I’ve seen pictures of you and Chuck. You were a rail.”
    “I think you’re beautiful just the way you are, May,” Jean said from the kitchen.
    May glanced in that direction, blanched, embarrassed, and then gathered herself. She pointed at the photo of Thackeray. “He looks like a sharpei. You can’t even see his eyeballs.”
    “Pshaw,” Loretta said. “What do you know? You dated that guy with the out-of-control mole situation.”
    “Oh, that reminds me,” Mitzi said, turning to May. She patted a space at the table, inviting May to sit. “How’d your date go last night?”
    May blushed, as she always did when the ladies asked about her love life. Never married and with no kids, she was something of a curiosity for the group. Loretta once claimed that her culinary talents were wasted on having no man to share them with, but Mitzi accused Loretta of being sexist, and a loud debate on the merits of feminism had ensued. Jean had sat back and listened, sipping her wine and thinking that Wayne would have loved to have been a part of it, especially when it ended with everyone eating May’s cheesecake bites and drinking the pear wine Mitzi had brought and agreeing that one thing was right—nobody could cook like their curly-haired singleton. Later that same day, after everyone else had left, May had stuck around to help with dishes.
    “I have a confession,” she had said, twisting a sudsy washcloth around the rim of a wineglass. “All those guys I’ve been talking about?”
    Jean, who was busy covering leftovers, glanced at her. Even at the end of the day, May’s hair was beautiful, effortlessly curly. “Yeah?”
    May pressed her lips together, ducked her chin down a bit into the neck of her turtleneck. For someone so young and pretty, May always dressed so buttoned-up and conservative. Or, as Loretta put it,
A sexy librarian horn beast is lurking under there somewhere, but it’s trapped by all those buttons and snaps and embroidered appliqués
. “Made up. All of them. Fiction. Even the guy with the moles.”
    Jean glanced at her again, then a third time. “What?”
    “I just . . .” May dipped the glass in the water, held it up to the light. “I gave up. On men. And dating. I never liked it. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want kids. I like being by myself. But nobody ever understands that. They think that if you’re alone, you must be lonely, and I’m not lonely. I mean, look at today, right?” She rinsed the glass and set it, upside down, in the dish rack. “If I were married with kids, I’d probably be way too busy to join a book club. I wouldn’t even know you guys.”
    “But you’re only with us once a month. That’s hardly the same,” Jean said.
    “But it’s all I need,” May said.
    She picked up another glass and dunked it in the sink. “I don’t know. It’s just . . . It’s such a scary world. I’m afraid to bring more people into it. Half the time these guys . . . They ick me out. They’re either gross or they’re overgrown babies. They’re