Read Redemption: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 3) for Free Online Page B

Emma.”
    It was about as much of an introduction as they had time for, because Jessica flipped the
Closed
sign to
Welcome,
stuck a wedge under the front door to keep it propped open, and greeted the customers who’d been waiting outside by name.
    “Mike! Pete! So sweet of you to come to the opening!”
    “Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” one said.
    “Kyle!” Jessica shook hands with the customer right behind them.
    “Mike owns Mike’s Hardware, three doors down,” Janna whispered in Sarah’s ear. “Pete’s a carpenter who stops at Mike’s every day, and Kyle’s the hot cop with the spiky hair.”
    Mike was sweet and friendly. Pete sniffed his coffee and gave a hearty thumbs-up. And Kyle… Yep, the cop was hot, if not quite on par with Soren. But then again, no man ever was. Not a one.
    Sarah’s mind started wandering over to the biggest mistake of her life, but she dragged it away again. The baby wasn’t a mistake, and she had work to do.
    Luckily, there was enough work to pull her mind away from several lifetimes’ worth of mistakes. Within seconds, she was ringing up coffees and muffins and sandwiches to go. It was a pleasant kind of rush in which the customers bantered with each other and with the staff. A lot like the store she’d been slowly taking over from her aging parents back home, in fact. Everyone knew everyone, and they all faced their daily routines with smiles instead of complaints.
    It was nine-thirty before the steady stream of locals started to peter out, which was just when the tourist crowd started to trickle in, spending twice as much money and time as the previous crowd.
    “The saloon next door has delicious barbecued spare ribs,” Janna said when they asked about other places in town. “You should try it for dinner. Twenty-five beers on tap, and a kids’ menu, too!”
    Janna was a born hustler, but she was more than that. She practically glowed with pride when she talked about the saloon, and her words came from the heart. She plugged Mike’s Hardware, too, along with a few other places around town.
    “Lazy Q stables has great trail rides…” Janna would tell tourists looking for something to do.
    The stable, from what Sarah gathered, was just outside town, and Emma lived in an apartment above the barn. Sarah’s mind ran over everyone she’d met, practicing their names. Emma had taken an apartment over from Cole when he moved in with Janna. Janna was Jessica’s sister, and Jessica was Simon’s girlfriend. It was like one big, happy family, and part of Sarah wished she belonged, too. Her hand slid to her belly, and she could barely hold back a wistful sigh.
    “A tuna wrap and a soda to go, please.”
    She stuck on a smile and rang up the next customer. And the next, and the next, until at some point the door jingled and she looked up. It wasn’t a customer coming in, but Jessica, flipping the sign back to
Closed
and turning around with a triumphant whoop.
    “We did it!”
    Sarah smiled the first genuine smile she had all day and tapped the side of the register. “A pretty successful day, I’d say.”
    The four women who’d worked their tails off all morning — Jessica, Sarah, Janna, and Emma — traded high fives, toasted each other with smoothies, and sat back for the first time in hours, enjoying the cool whir of the ceiling fan.
    “We did it,” Jessica said again.
    “You did it,” Sarah pointed out.
    Jessica shook her head. “I couldn’t have done it without you three. We did it.”
    We.
Sarah let the word burn itself into her memory as she looked around the café. It felt good to be part of a
we
, and for a brief time, her hopes soared. Maybe everything really would work out. Maybe she’d found a place to stay.
    But then her gaze wandered to the wall separating the café from the saloon, where Soren was probably just getting ready to open for the afternoon, and her heart sank. How could she possibly stay?



Chapter Seven

    Soren slid behind the wheel of