Can't Hurry Love (Sunshine Valley #1) - Melinda Curtis Page 0,1
her own.
“This is a sign.” A slow grin worked its way across Clarice’s thin, leathery face. “I propose we match both Edith and Lola.”
She didn’t need to ask Mims twice. “I second.”
They both turned to Bitsy, who was staring at her cards as if she were a puzzled fortune-teller.
“Just one question,” Bitsy said finally, her gaze landing squarely on Mims. “Is either one of them ready for love?”
Chapter One
If Lola Williams had known Randy would be unable to honor his wedding vows…
If Lola had known Randy would toss aside her love like he did his dirty laundry…
If Lola had known Randy was untrustworthy, unfaithful, and untrue…
She would’ve returned to New York City before his wedding ring left a tan mark on her finger. But after one year of marriage and one year of widowhood, New York was out of reach, lost to her, a log at the bottom of a fast-burning fire.
Because of Randy.
Because of Randy, Lola was no longer doing hair and makeup for celebrities on Broadway. She was doing hair and makeup for the elderly at the Sunshine Valley Retirement Home and for the dead at the Eternal Rest Mortuary.
She might have salvaged her career on Broadway if she hadn’t believed theirs was the forever kind of union. But she was a dreamer. After Randy’s fatal car crash, she’d decided their love needed a grand gesture of mourning—a year’s worth—tying up the loose ends of his life bit by bit, until the only thing left to do was go through his clothes and his side of the closet on the anniversary of his death. Only then had she learned her husband had been sleeping around.
Sitting in her driveway, Lola tossed another pair of Randy’s tighty-whities on the bonfire.
She should move her folding chair back from the small blaze before it singed her eyebrows more completely than the afternoon’s revelation had made ashes of her heart. Those ashes clogged her lungs, deadened her limbs, and numbed her brain until she couldn’t do anything besides bend slightly, reach for another pair of undies, and toss them on the fire.
Cars passed by. And slowed.
Drivers stared. And scowled.
Across the street, Mrs. Everly’s mauve curtains twitched.
The familiar burn of being an outsider—Worse! That gal from New York City—made Lola wish she’d used Randy’s fifty-year-old bottle of whiskey to light the fire instead of nail polish remover. A swig of spirits might have given her the courage to do more than send answering glowers at passersby.
Couldn’t they see she was devastated? Couldn’t they see she’d hit rock bottom?
A dented and dinged white Subaru wagon parked at the curb. The governing board of the Widows Club looked at her with interest. Lola sank deeper into the creaky webbing of her folding chair.
Yesterday, she’d been thinking that joining the Widows Club and remaining single until her dying day would be the crowning achievement of her bereavement. Today, she was thinking twenty-nine was too young to join a group of widows.
The first widow to the sidewalk was Clarice Rogers. She wielded her hickory walking stick as if it were a gentleman’s cane. Trend-wise, Clarice had never moved beyond the 1970s—not in hairstyle, not in fashion, not in the use of sunscreen. Her long gray braids made her thin, sun-damaged face look even longer. Her lime-green geometric blouse had been in and out of style at least five times in the past five decades.
Bitsy Whitlock’s black patent loafers gracefully touched the pavement next. If Clarice was clinging to the seventies, Bitsy was an eighties girl. Her dyed blond hair was held back neatly with a big black velvet bow. Pearls adorned her ears and rimmed the crew neck of her turquoise sweater, which was held up by linebacker shoulder pads.
Rounding out the Widows Club board was Mims Turner, the driver of the Subaru and their president. She wasn’t stuck in any specific era. She looked like everyone’s grandmother with her short gray curls and navy I ♥ My Grandkids T-shirt. It was the neon-orange hunting vest with utility pockets that gave away the fact that she packed heat in her pink pleather purse.
The three conferred before walking to the edge of Lola’s driveway, stopping a safe distance from the cinders of her life.
“Lola, dear.” Mims straightened her orange hunting vest and waved a hand toward Randy’s smoldering underpants. “What’s this all about?”
Was it too much to hope that building a fire in her driveway made Lola a poor candidate for the Widows Club? “I found condoms in Randy’s