Hero For the Asking (Reed Sisters: Holding out for a Hero 2) - Page 43

Spring opened her eyes to find her friend kneeling in front of her, brown eyes huge with concern. "Spring, what's wrong?" Kelsey asked again.

Spring wet her lips, took a deep breath and sat up straight. "It's...nothing, Kelsey. I..." She stopped and buried her face in her hands, unable to lie. "Everything's wrong," she wailed, the tears finally beginning to flow.

"Only a man could cause this kind of heartache," Kelsey pronounced confidently, her hand on her friend's shoulder. "I'm speaking from experience. Who is he, Spring? Not Roger. You never looked like this over him."

Shaking her head, Spring dropped her hands. "No, not Roger."

"Ready to talk about it?"

"His name is Clay McEntire. He's..." How did one describe Clay? "He's tall and blond and has blue-green eyes and a beautiful smile. He's a junior-high-school counselor who loves kids and tears himself up over their problems. He wears funny clothes and likes to tease and shows his affection for his friends through hugs and touches. He had a lot of problems when he was young, but he overcame them. He's sometimes moody and...and he needs reading glasses, but I don't think he knows it," she finished with a sob.

Kelsey was staring at her in unmistakable astonishment. "He, um, he sounds fascinating. Not your usual type, though."

Spring choked on a humorless laugh. "No. Not my usual type."

"But you're in love with him."

"Completely. Forever."

"And?"

"And nothing. He's in San Francisco and I'm in Little Rock."

"Is he in love with you?"

"I don't know," Spring answered slowly, twisting the lovely gold bracelet between shaking hands. "I just don't know. There were times when I thought he might be. When he— When we— Well, he made me feel very special. But, for all I know, that may be the way he treats every woman in his life."

"So this is why you've been driving yourself like a madwoman ever since you got back." Kelsey shook her head in reproval. "I can't believe you've been carrying this around inside you without even telling me about it."

"I just couldn't talk about it. It still hurts too much."

"What do you think the bracelet means?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's just his way of apologizing for the quarrel we had before I left."

"Are you going to keep it?"

She hadn't thought that far ahead. Of course the logical thing to do would be to return it. It was, after all, much too expensive a gift and would only serve as a painful reminder of an incident best forgotten, she told herself. Her fingers tightened around the bangle almost in protest at the thought of sending it back. Clay had chosen this gift for her. Sending it back would almost be like saying goodbye again. "I don't know."

"When it comes to this guy, you don't know much, do you, Spring?" Kelsey asked with sympathetic amusement. "I think you should keep it."

"You do? Why?"

"Because he obviously wanted you to have it. And because he sounds like a great guy."

"He is." Spring brushed another wave of tears off her cheeks. "Oh, Kelsey, he is."

"Tell you what we're going to do." Kelsey pushed herself to her feet, rising to her entire four feet eleven inches. "We're going to drag out everything fattening in your kitchen, cover it all with whipped cream and pig out while you tell me every detail of your vacation in California—and this time you're not leaving out a guy named Clay McEntire, you hear?"

"Oh, Kelsey, I don't think—"

"Spring, trust me. Talking about it will help. Keeping it all in will only rot your insides."

Spring gave an unwilling smile, already feeling a little better. Kelsey had always had this effect on her, ever since the two had attended the same church as kids. Kelsey had grown up in Romance, Arkansas, just down the road from Spring's hometown of Rose Bud. They'd considered themselves quite cosmopolitan when they'd moved fifty-five miles south to the big city of Little Rock—population 194,000 at last count—Spring, after her graduation from optometry college almost two years earlier, and Kelsey, after her divorce a year before that. Kelsey had quit a good job to work for Spring, and the relationship had proven quite satisfying, both personally and professionally.

Spring left out no detail of the brief affair with Clay. From that first kiss in the hallway on the night they'd met to the scathing quarrel in Summer's den on that last Monday night, Spring poured out the entire story to her warmly sympathetic, if rather startled, friend. Kelsey had been right. It did feel good to talk about it.

"And that's the end of the story," she concluded, toying with a last bite of a sinfully gooey chocolate-fudge brownie sans whipped cream.

Tags: Gina Wilkins Reed Sisters: Holding out for a Hero Romance
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