Love Me True (Love Me Book 2)

Chapter 1

Faye ended the phone conversation with Lia and reached into her locker, grabbing her bag. It had been a long day, and she was ready to go home. Her stomach gave a grumble as she thought of the potato soup she had in the slow cooker and the dough for her fresh bread that was waiting to be baked.

Her mind wandered away from food and back to the phone conversation she had just had with Lia. Lia was impetuous and didn't always think before she acted, and when she got an idea stuck in her head, it was almost impossible to remove. It wasn't like her to obsess over something though, and that was exactly what she was doing. She was obsessing over that man's roof.

Faye had cringed when she had heard him laughing at Lia. It made Lia see red and now nothing would budge her from her quest to get his roof fixed. Sighing, she threw her bag over her shoulder and turned to leave just as Chloe entered the room.

"There you are!" she exclaimed as she blocked her way. "I have a favor to ask."

Faye looked up at Chloe, she was a beautiful woman. She was tall and willowy, had long thick hair that was the color of rich mahogany, her green eyes were surrounded by the thickest lashes she had ever seen, and her skin was perfect. She made Faye feel plain by comparison.

Faye tried not to look at herself in the full-length mirror behind Chloe, she knew she looked horrible after the long day she had had. Her mousy brown hair was falling out of her long braid, her soft brown eyes were ringed by shadows, and her scrubs were stained and wrinkled and did nothing to hide the few extra pounds she had gained in the last few months. The good friend that she was, she had joined Lia in her stress eating after her breakup with her fiancé, and her five-foot frame showed every ounce she gained.

"Sure Chloe, what do you need?" she asked. Faye's biggest weakness was that she couldn't say no to her friends.

Chloe raised an eyebrow. "You should probably hear the request before you agree to it," she suggested.

Faye only smiled and waited for the request.

Chloe shook her head in exasperation. "My father has a colleague who is working on a book comparing emergency medicine around the world. He arrives tomorrow, which is why I asked Lia to cover the second half of my shift."

Faye nodded, thinking of her dinner and wishing she would get to the point.

Chloe smiled as she read her thoughts. "He needs a place to stay, he's here for a month at least. He's going to shadow some of the doctors in the E.R."

"And you want him to stay in my garden apartment?" Faye guessed.

"Yes," Chloe agreed. "He's willing to pay rent, and I thought it might be a win-win for all involved. He wouldn't have to stay in a hotel for a month, and you could make a little extra money."

It was no secret to Faye's friends that she needed all the money she could get. She had a massive house that had been left to her and her siblings, and it was a millstone around her neck. She had to maintain it and it wasn't cheap.

"Sure, when do you want to bring him by to look at it?" she asked with a smile, getting to the details so she could go home. It would mean that she would have to spend her morning off cleaning and she suppressed a weary sigh.

"His flight gets in at about six, and I thought we would go to dinner first. How does eight sound? I'll call you if we're going to be later."

Faye nodded and said good night, passing Chloe as she headed out of the locker room and down the corridor, calling goodnights as she went. Her drive home was short and when she walked into her kitchen she gave a blissful sigh at the smell of the potato soup. Unwrapping the bread dough, she slid it into the oven and then walked through the silent house and up to her room to shower and change.

She knew she would sleep well for a change, she was too tired not to.

By the time she had showered, returned to the kitchen, and finished preparing her meal; she had the next day's schedule mapped out in her head. Looking on the bright side, which she always tended to do no matter how hard life was, she realized that the extra cash would be a Godsend. The recent storms had done some damage to the roof and it needed to be repaired.

She giggled as she thought that she had better not let Lia see it because she would probably try to fix it herself.

"Have you finally lost your marbles?" her brother Hayes asked as he walked into the kitchen, dressed to go out for a night on the town. He reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water then sat across from her at the table.

"You should probably stop eating so many fatting meals Faye, I've noticed you've started gaining weight since that friend of yours came to stay." Hayes had the same brown hair and eyes that Faye did, but he was tall and lanky and six years younger than Faye's twenty-nine years.

"We can't all have the metabolism of a twenty-three-year-old," Faye said, letting the insult roll off her shoulders. She was used to it. Hayes and their sister Alyssa had been spoiled before their parents had died seven years earlier, and Faye hadn't had the time or energy to devote to straighten out the situation since it took everything she had just to make sure that they had food on the table.

"Did you look for a job today?" Faye asked. "I could really use some help around here. We need to put a new roof on the house."

Hayes had graduated a month earlier and had done nothing but sleep during the day and party with his friends at night.

"No, and I don't intend to. Alyssa turns twenty-one at the end of the year, and she has agreed to sell the house when she does. Then I'll live off that money."

Faye shook her head. "I don't think you realize that this house is not worth what it once was, especially in the condition it's in, and whatever we get has to be split three ways." Although by rights most of the money should probably go to Faye since she had sunk thousands of her own into it since her parents had died leaving them nothing but the house and some money earmarked for Hayes's and Alyssa's education and even that hadn't been enough. Faye had to take a mortgage out against the house to help pay their way through school.

"Then you should have taken better care of it!" he yelled, standing up and slamming the chair against the table.

"Well, it was either that or pay for your education and feed you, which would you have preferred?" she asked in an even tone. She was used to Haye's outbursts and didn't let it rile her.

He rolled his eyes at her dramatic statement, not believing it for a minute, and grabbed his keys off the counter, banging out the door without a word. No longer hungry, Faye cleaned up her mess, put the leftover soup in the fridge, and took herself off to bed, giving into a rare bout of melancholy as she wondered what her life would have been like if her parents had lived. Perhaps she would be married by now, or have her own house, a nice little house in the country with a dog and cat.

As she walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. "Dumpy, frumpy little Faye, who would want her?" She heard her brother's voice ringing in her ears.

It was something she had overheard him say to Alyssa one day when they had been talking about the house and what they would do with their share of the money. Hayes was going to travel, and Alyssa was going to get a new car, clothes, and rent her very own apartment. Alyssa had asked what Hayes thought Faye would do with her share and then she had suggested that maybe she could give Faye some beauty tips so she would be able to catch a husband. Hayes had laughed and said, 'Dumpy, frumpy little Faye, who would want her? She'll die an old maid.'

Fighting back tears she brushed her teeth and then turned out the light on her reflection.

She needed her bed, she was tired, and everything would be better tomorrow.

Her last thought was that she should probably drive over to Lia's tomorrow and make sure she didn't kill herself on her neighbor's roof.