Soft Serve Sweetie (Plus Size Romance 2) by Lynn Cooper

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    IT WAS MID-MORNING IN early April, and already the temperatures were sweltering. What happened to springtime? There didn’t seem to be any transition of seasons anymore—at least not in South Carolina. One minute a body was shivering in the bust-ass cold; the next, it was drenched with sweat from overwhelming heat and humidity. Even inside his patrol car with the air conditioner set on high, the morning sun was searing officer Zane Barrett’s face through the windshield.
    It was a typical Monday morning, too.  Instead of hitting the snooze button, he had accidentally turned off the alarm clock.  Running late left him playing catch-up all day.  A feeling he detested.  To make matters worse, his partner had called in with a stomach bug.  Zane and Knox had been a team for the last seventeen years.  They were assigned to each other as rookies.  Both had graduated the police academy at twenty-three.  Now, they were two middle-aged men, having turned forty within three weeks of each other.  Hell, Knox wasn’t just a partner, he was like a brother. 
    They spent a great deal of time together and always shared in each other’s ups and downs.  The one thing Zane was glad they didn’t share at the moment was the potent stomach virus that had been circulating around the department.  Zane considered himself damn lucky to have a strong immune system.  As a bachelor, getting sick really sucked the big one.  He couldn’t think of anything worse than feeling bad and being alone. 
    Knox was lucky to have found his “Miss Right” early on.  He married the love of his life—his high school sweetheart, Sadie. They tied the knot a week after he graduated from the police academy and shared the kind of marriage that Zane envied.  The kind that’s full of love and laughter.  The kind that lasts forever and doesn’t come along very often.  The kind his parents had.  Zane hadn’t planned on still being a bachelor at forty, but the woman for him hadn’t come along yet.  And he wasn’t about to settle just because the clock was ticking.
    Truthfully, he stopped actively looking for his better half a long time ago.  When Knox pressed him on the issue, Zane would just shrug and say, “She’ll find me.”  Of course he didn’t buy into his own bullshit and neither did his partner. The odds of his perfect woman finding him were slim to none. Some folks just weren’t meant to be married.  Maybe he was one of them.
     
    CHERRY MERCER WAS BARRELING down Oakgrove Avenue in her 1987, two-toned Buick sedan.  Yeah, she was a twenty-one-year-old college graduate, working at an ice cream parlor and driving a 28-year-old car.  One she had purchased her senior year in high school from a sweet old lady in her neighborhood.  One with a broken visor that was useless against the blinding glare of the sun.  Yep, life was good, if you didn’t mind being eyeball deep in student loans with your plus-size butt sticking to the cracked vinyl seat of your antique car. 
    She felt bad for complaining, though.  Her parents had been good people and raised her to be grateful to God for all things, and things could always be worse.  At least the old clunker could get her from point A to point B.  Today, that was from her place of employment to the First Savings and Loan on Main Street.  She was running behind and needed to make the mid-morning deposit before the lunch crowd hit.  Working at Pete’s Ice Cream Parlor at least had one perk—free soft serve for employees—and that was a real bonus when a gal was driving a relic without air conditioning. 
    With the window down, her blonde, wavy hair was whipping in the wind.  And, unfortunately, her vanilla-chocolate swirl was dripping at an alarming rate.  Without realizing it, the faster she licked her ice cream, the harder her foot pressed the accelerator.  Knowing she was nearing the end of Oakgrove Avenue, she forced herself to let up on the gas