Free The Groom Wanted Seconds: A Novella by Shirley Jump Page B

regular cream cheese and 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning)
    8 ounces fresh baby spinach
    Parmesan cheese
     
    You don’t have time to be dicing and prepping, because you’ve got a big decision to make and not a lot of time to make it. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook the spaghetti, drain it, and return it to the pot. Add the spaghetti sauce and cream cheese, stir, then add in spinach and stir until it's wilted.
     
    Pour the spaghetti mixture into a greased pie plate. Top with grated Parmesan cheese. Bake for 30 minutes. Easy and done, and leaves you plenty of time to go after what you really want.

C HAPTER 9
     
     
    She ran.
    But this time, instead of running from her problems, she was chasing after them. It had taken her about twenty seconds to realize that there was no one else in the world she wanted to talk with about Smoots or Houdini or bike tires. No one but Jeremy.
    “Jeremy! Wait!”
    He turned around, and when his gaze met hers, she could see the light fill his eyes, his face. A light of hope, and she took a deep breath, praying she was making the right decision.
    “You were right,” she said, then paused to catch her breath. “I am afraid. Afraid of losing you, afraid of taking the chance of falling for you again. And please, don’t say anything, not until I tell you why.” She drew in a deep, fortifying breath, then she barreled forward, the words tripping over themselves, because if she didn’t say them now, she never would. “When you said we should get married, I panicked, thinking that I would end up married to someone who didn’t know me at all, someone who would never know the way to my heart. Someone too wrapped up in the minutia to see the big picture or to open up and really love me, if that makes sense.” She paused, worrying her bottom lip. “I thought if I found someone else, someone who did the poetry and love songs and romance, I’d be happy. I’d feel loved. I was wrong.”
    “You met someone else over the summer?”
    She could hear the hurt in his voice. How she wished she could take it away. But where would that get them? Jeremy was right, she was the one with the wall up between them and she needed to tear it down if they were ever to have a second chance. “I met one of those charming, romantic guys that you see in movies or read about in books. He swept me off my feet.”
    “Great.” Jeremy nearly spat the word.
    Damn. This was hard. She didn’t want to say it, but she had to. “It seemed great, at the beginning. I got all caught up in the romance of it, and got lost. I let this…fiction lead me to believe it was something real, when it wasn’t. I realized that all the romance and fiction was a mask for a guy who only wanted one thing. And when he got it, he was gone.” Her hand strayed to her abdomen, and her eyes filled. “I had a flat tire, and he wanted nothing to with fixing it. I made a huge mistake, and trusted too much and…” She shook her head. “I almost ruined my life.”
    His gaze raised to her face, concern flooding his blue eyes. “Are you okay?”
    Of all the things she had thought Jeremy would say, asking her how she was would be at the bottom of the list. Those three words told her more than any other three words she’d heard before or since. All this time, she had doubted his love for her, when really, it was her own feelings that had been shaky.
    No more. Where had those doubts and that fear and that worry about everything being just so gotten her? Nowhere she wanted to be, not until now.
    She smiled, then took a step forward, jumping off that bridge, not even worrying anymore if she could undo the locks or not. “I want a man who will be there when I have a flat. A man who will give me loving advice about avoiding that flat in the first place, and most of all, a man who knows me inside and out. Who remembers my coffee order and sends me a silly pen to congratulate me on a deal, and who works hard to build a career and a life for us.