Read Along Came Love for Free Online Page B

willing to
keep things simple that he had grown into a platonic relationship.
It was comfortable.
    "Don't you want to get married and have kids,
Uncle Jake?" Sammie Jo asked.
    "No!" Jake answered too quickly. When Sammie
Jo completely shut up, he realized he'd been too harsh with an
answer. "Look pumpkin, I've been married, and it's not for me."
    "You were married before?" Sammie Jo asked,
her hands gripping his waist.
    Jake honestly thought Sammie Jo knew.
    "It was a long time ago, and best left in the
past."
    "But who was she?" Sammie Jo prodded, turning
her full attention to Jake.
    "Pumpkin, you ask too many questions." Jake
tried not to show his frustration.
    "Did she hurt you terribly?" Sammie Jo's
voice clouded with emotion, her feelings spilling over.
    "Terribly," he admitted in a comical way, not
realizing until that moment that he spoke the truth.
    "You need a good woman, someone who will
stand beside you through thick and thin. I'm going to start working
on finding you a good woman, Uncle Jake. You deserve it. I don’t'
want you to be lonely in your old age."
    Old age? Did Sammie Jo see him as old? He
glanced in the rearview mirror and frowned, yep, he had a few gray
hairs. He'd never paid much attention.
    Okay, so it was too late to have the house
full of kids he had wanted so badly years ago. He still had plenty
of time to settle down, if he wanted. Only he didn't. He didn't
need a wife. Did he?
    Sammie Jo was so serious, so touched by his
admission that she hugged her Uncle as he drove.
    "Look, pumpkin, this role you've taken on to
pair every single person in the universe together, it won't work,
honey."
    "You're right. I've got to start at home
first, then work my way into the rest of the world."
    "No pumpkin. Sometimes playing cupid gets you
into trouble. Ms. Courtland pointed that out the other day. It
wasn't the math she was concerned about, although you will have to
take tutoring for that. No, it was this note passing cupid you and
Clay have cooked up at school. It's got to stop. You see, grown ups
have a way of handling things their own way. You embarrassed that
Ms. Douglas, she had just lost her husband, and well, you don't go
pairing off someone like that."
    "But Uncle Jake, you are so wrong. When she
is so alone, and so lonely, and needs someone. We all love Ms.
Douglas, and we know she likes Mr. Abernathy."
    "How do you know that?"
    "A woman can tell these things," Sammie Jo
sighed heavily and leaned on her Uncle's back.
    A woman? Good grief, he was in way over his
head, this time.
    Then it hit Jake out of the blue, in his
desperation to explain something to Sammie Jo. She needed a woman
to explain it to her. Not a man, and certainly not him. He was no
love expert. And he knew just the woman.
    She'd started this, she could finish it.
    ***
    That same evening Ms. Hughes called.
    "Mr. Travers, I wonder if I might impose upon
you to help out at the
    school dance this Friday?" she asked
tentatively.
    Jake felt at a complete loss as to how to
answer. School dance?
    "Well, I really don't know how long I'm going
to be here, Ms. Hughes." Jake tried to be tactful.
    "Oh, is Mr and Mrs. Travers back then?" she
asked.
    "No, no, they won't be back till Saturday."
Jake admitted before thinking of another out.
    "I see. Well, I normally wouldn't ask, but we
are so short handed. One of the teachers in student council had to
quit and it has left us extremely short handed. We have no one to
decorate the gym for the dance, and this is the first dance this
year."
    The frustration in her voice had Jake
reconsidering. "I suppose I could help out. What exactly did you
have in mind?"
    "Well, we need someone to volunteer to string
lights across the gym, and maybe, well, I hate to impose, but we
need a chaperone. Two of the mothers that normally do it are sick,
one expecting a baby, the other with the flu. I have one teacher
volunteering, but only one. I so need people and it seems as though
I can't get anyone with spare time.