Free Fortune's June Bride (Mills & Boon Cherish) (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country, Book 6) by Allison Leigh Page A

suitcases were fastened tight and waiting by the back door to be loaded into the truck in the morning, that Aurora stood staring out the dark window in her bedroom.
    Sleep was the furthest thing from her mind. Because she couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened in Galen’s truck if her mother hadn’t chosen that particular moment to open the front door and yell down at her.
    * * *
    “Oh, my stars and body!”
    Aurora flinched a little at the expression she hadn’t heard in years and warily looked over the hot dog she was just lifting toward her mouth.
    “Is that you, Aurora McElroy?”
    She lost her appetite for the hot dog altogether and carefully set it in the paper basket sitting on the round umbrella-covered table in front of her.
    “It is!” The woman who’d been speaking was waving madly as she pushed a giant baby stroller across Cowboy Country’s Main Street toward Aurora. Her black hair was a glossy sheen under the brilliant sunlight, and even before she reached Aurora’s side and pulled off the überstylish sunglasses she wore, Aurora knew the eyes behind would be equally dark and shining.
    She swung her legs around the bench and stood. “Roselyn,” she greeted before her old college roommate yanked her close for the same quick kiss-kiss-hug-hug embrace she’d favored even a decade earlier. “This is a surprise.”
    “Isn’t it?” Roselyn tucked her glasses on the top of her head, her eyes widening for emphasis. “Here I bring little Toni and Tiffani to the park for a speck of entertainment with some furry creatures, and look who I find? Never in a million years would I have expected to see
you
here. What are you even doing in Texas?”
    “I come from here,” Aurora said drily. “I guess you don’t remember. And I could say the same about seeing
you
here.” Anthony had hailed from Red Rock, Texas. A town that was nowhere near as small as Horseback Hollow, but still one that didn’t have the cachet that he desired. It was their common Texas background that had drawn them together at the beginning.
    “Oh.” Roselyn was waving her hand around. “Anthony’s always teasing me about my memory. You haven’t changed a bit!” She smiled brilliantly and her white teeth were so straight and bright that Aurora felt like squinting. “Mind if I sit?” She ran her hand—perfectly manicured as always and wearing a gloriously oversize wedding set on her ring finger—over the front of her scarlet blouse and Aurora realized the other woman was pregnant.
    There was certainly no other reason Roselyn St. James—ever successful, and ever
perfect
—would have a bump the size of a basketball beneath her undoubtedly silk shirt.
    Aurora automatically gestured to the other bench. In contrast to Roselyn’s hands, hers bore calluses on the palm and her nails were perpetually short and unvarnished. “You’re pregnant.”
    Roselyn smiled beatifically as she sat. She was wearing a short white skirt with her scarlet blouse that not even
un
pregnant women would be able to carry off so well, and her long legs were as shapely as ever. “Seven months.” She practically purred with contentment. She rested a languid hand on her belly and her diamonds glinted in the sunlight. “Anthony and I are both thrilled, of course. We didn’t think we’d have any more children after the twins, but—” She lifted her shoulder and gave a throaty little laugh. “They’re nearly three now. And you know how these things happen. Wait until he hears about you.”
    Aurora felt a nervous start. She hadn’t seen Anthony since he’d broken the news to her that he needed his diamond ring back, because he’d just eloped with her college roommate. “He’s here?”
    “Didn’t I say?” Roselyn rolled the expressive eyes that had helped land her a successful run on a daytime soap opera before she’d even finished her second year of college.
    A run that had ended only a few years ago when she’d chosen to give it