Free The Wedding Planners of Butternut Creek by Jane Myers Perrine Page A

don’t that beat all,” Yvonne said. “Customs are different all over.” She placed the glass and bowl of soup in front of Hannah. “Try a few biscuits.” She handed Hannah the basket.
    “They’re really good,” said the little girl with a shy smile. “I like mine with lots of butter.”
    How sweet. For a moment Hannah considered smiling—until the faces of hungry children in Kenya surfaced in her mind. She swallowed hard and reminded herself of her decision not to allow those memories to haunt her. She had to learn how to live in this world, surrounded by healthy people who didn’t have to cover their beds with mosquito netting to stay alive, by people who lived in houses with clean water and enough food and, oddly, a choice between sweetened and unsweetened tea.
    Adam watched her, attempting to hide the expression of concern she’d seen on so many faces over the last months. When had she become an object of pity? Well, obviously during the last few months when she couldn’t fight off the effects of malaria. Everyone else on the staff recovered from that disease quickly and easily. Not Hannah.
    The soup looked delicious. As she reached for a spoon, the scent hit her and made her feel slightly nauseous. “I think I’ll try a biscuit,” she said, picking one from the basket. No butter. Her stomach didn’t feel ready for that, but the biscuits tasted wonderful as they were.
    “Yvonne,” Janey said in a soft voice and with an expression of yearning in her dark eyes. “Could we bake brownies tonight? I really like brownies.”
    “Sis, you’re shameless,” Hector lectured before turning toward Yvonne. “Don’t let her con you. She’ll say anything to get brownies.”
    “How adorable.” Yvonne leaned forward and took Janey’s hand. “Of course I’ll make you brownies. Let’s do that tomorrow after church.”
    “Thank you, Yvonne.” Janey grinned.
    “Now, dear.” Yvonne turned to Hannah. “If the soup doesn’t look good to you, I could fix you some bouillon or a poached egg if you’d like. Maybe some toast?”
    All this sweetness would raise Hannah’s blood sugar to disastrous levels if she stuck around.
      
    Adam had learned long ago not to push his sister for information or communication, and not to expect polite conversation, because Hannah considered it pointless. She believed anything that didn’t relate to medicine or healing others to be useless chitchat. Unfortunately, he always forgot that until the next time her determination to do things her way slapped him in the face.
    Sometimes he wondered where she’d come from. Like his mother, Adam was fairly laid-back. In grade school, he always received positive marks for “gets along well with others.”
    Their father was forceful, but Hannah had moved far beyond merely compelling. She radiated an intensity that scared all but the most confident of people. At least, she used to.
    Nor did they look alike. Adam and his parents were fairly standard and boringly Scotch-Irish with a little German ancestry tossed in, but Hannah looked as if she’d been abducted from a band of wandering gypsies. Their mother had claimed Romany ancestry, and that heredity appeared undiluted in Hannah’s dark eyes, olive skin, unruly hair, and wildly independent personality.
    He also knew better than to tell her to go to bed. She’d stay up for hours or days to thwart him, but he hadn’t been her little brother for all these years without learning a few tricks. She was immovable but not unmanipulatable. He’d stumbled on the method to induce her to do what he wanted when he discovered that if she thought he didn’t care, she’d do whatever he wanted.
    “How long are you staying?” he asked casually as he cleared the table.
    “Don’t know,” Hannah answered after she swallowed the last of her second biscuit. “A few days? A month? A couple of hours?”
    He placed the dishes in the sink and counted a few seconds before turning toward her. He leaned