Read Online The Bad Luck Wedding Cake by Geralyn Dawson - Free Book Online Page B

started walking back the way they’d come. This time she saw the anthill and stopped. “Shh. Don’t scare away the frogs.”
    Tye didn’t care about hunting horny toads anymore; he was searching for answers. “The fiancé then? Is he going to run your shop?”
    “I’m running The Confectionary. It’s not part of the Donovan Baking Company. It’s my shop and no one else’s. It’s my dream and I’m not letting anyone take it away from me. Especially not a pretty-boy banker’s son.”
    Now that threw Tye for a loop. Pretty-boy banker’s son? Before he could figure out what to say, she’d dived for another toad. “Ooh,” she said a moment later, staring down at her hands.
    Tye reached for his handkerchief. “They can squirt blood from their eyes when they feel threatened.”
    “Handy little characteristic, I guess.” She deposited the horned lizard in the sack, then accepted Tye’s handkerchief to wipe her hands.
    “Are you feeling threatened, Claire? Is that why you won’t tell me your story?”
    Her tone was as dry as West Texas in July. “Look in my eyes and figure it out, McBride.”
    He laughed. He couldn’t help it “Don’t squirt me, friend. Talk to me. That’s what friends are for, you know, and I’m thinking you can use one. You helped me today. Now let me help you. Who’s this pretty-boy banker’s son?”
    “Reid Jamieson.” She spat the name like a curse. “Now leave it alone, Tye. If you’re my friend you’ll leave it alone. I don’t want to talk about this. It won’t help anything.”
    “Sure it will. Believe me, Claire, I have plenty of experience in keeping painful troubles bottled up inside. Let it out. It’ll be good for you. Besides, you’ve got me curious as a calf in a new pasture.”
    “Well” She drew herself up straight and cracked her words like a whip. “Heaven forbid you don’t get your way. You’re a man, aren’t you, and men’s needs and wants and wishes always come first.”
    “Whoa now, Claire.”
    She didn’t whoa . The words poured out. “I didn’t love Reid Jamieson and I couldn’t go through with it. I’m sorry for the embarrassment I caused the family, but they should have listened to me. I told them and I told Reid. The very day of the wedding I went to him and told him I couldn’t marry him. If he showed up at the church and waited at the altar, well, it’s his own fault.”
    If Tye were a horny toad, he’d have squirted blood from his eyes that very minute. Being a man, he settled for backing away.
    “You said you left your fiancé in Galveston. Do you mean, left him at a church in Galveston? At the altar of a church in Galveston?”
    She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “With a boutonniere in his buttonhole.”
    “So you ran away from home?”
    “No.” She stared at him as though he were stupid.
    He couldn’t argue with her.
    Her eyes burned like a blue gas flame. “I left home. There is a difference. I took my half of my dowry and all my jewelry and set out to build a new life and a new business. This is my life I’m living, not my brothers’ lives or my da’s life or my mother’s life. Mine. My talent is mine, my business is mine. My independence is mine. And no one is going to take it away from me. I don’t care if he owns every bank in Texas.”
    “Jamieson owns every bank?”
    “I don’t know,” she scoffed, disgusted. “I didn’t mean it literally.”
    “But you did mean that you left your fiancé. So you’re not really engaged. You’re not taken.”
    “That’s exactly my point.” She threw out her arms. “There shouldn’t be any taking in marriage. It should be all giving . Nobody is ever going to take anything from me. Not ever again.”
    With that, she turned and flounced back toward the buggy. Tye opened the burlap bag and stared down at the two horned lizards imprisoned inside. “She’s not engaged, but she’s a lady. Goddamnit, she’s not safe.”
    Tye took a step to follow Claire, but then