Cupid, Texas [1] Love at First Sight by Lori Wilde Page A

overweight ).
    If Natalie had to put up with Aunt Carol Ann’s unsolicited advice about her limp and her hair, Lace had it worse. Carol Ann was always giving her diet books and signing her up for online weight loss newsletters.
    Natalie knew her cousin used the weight as insulation against the opposite sex. Something had happened in high school with a boy that Lace had had an unrequited crush on. As far as Natalie knew, Lace had never had a boyfriend.
    While Natalie had had a couple of boyfriends, she and Lace had something ironic in common. They both answered letters to the lovelorn pretending to be Cupid when neither one of them had ever had a successful love relationship.
    Well, that is, until this morning.
    Wait a minute. Hold the stallions. She didn’t know for sure that she was in love. She couldn’t just jump off a cliff because of these feelings. She didn’t even know the man.
    But when he’d looked into her eyes, when he’d touched her . . . wow, just wow.
    “Natty?” Aunt Carol Ann was at her elbow.
    “Uh-huh?”
    “Are you okay? You look like you’ve got a fever.” Her aunt placed a palm on Natalie’s forehead. “Hmm, cool as a cucumber.”
    Natalie stepped away, but tried not to let her irritation show. “I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.”
    “Is something wrong?” Lace asked, temporarily snapping out of her perpetually dreamy state.
    Gram used to say about Lace, “I’ve never seen a child daydream the way that one does. She lives in her own little world.” In that regard, to stay with the princess analogies, Lace was more like Sleeping Beauty than Snow White.
    And which princess are you?
    Natalie shook off the question. She wasn’t a princess at all. She was too practical for any of that regal nonsense, but her favorite childhood fairy tale had been Cinderella. She easily identified with hard work and sacrifice, and like Cinderella, she tried to stay cheerful in the face of her responsibilities. She smiled at Lace. “Everything’s wonderful. How are you, cousin?”
    Lace’s face dissolved into a beatific smile. “I got the new adenium hybrid that I ordered six weeks ago from Thailand to bloom. I’m so excited. You have to come by the greenhouse and take a look. It’s the color of peppermint candy cane. I hope to transplant it into the garden by the end of next month.”
    Aunt Carol Ann frowned. “A den what?”
    “Adenium is a genus of flowering plants in the dogbane family known as Apocynaceae.” Lace gestured enthusiastically.
    “Huh?” Carol Ann looked confused.
    “It’s a rare strain of desert rose,” Natalie translated for their aunt.
    “Oh. Well, why didn’t she just say that?”
    Lace rolled her eyes.
    Natalie winked at her cousin and gestured toward the buffet table. “Help yourself to some of Pearl’s chicken salad sandwiches.”
    “Limit yourself to two,” Carol Ann called after Lace.
    The door opened again and Junie Mae came in with Great-Aunt Delia. Delia didn’t drive anymore, so Junie Mae always swung by to pick her up.
    Delia was Grandmother Rose’s younger sister. She toddled in, bracing herself on an ivory-handled cane. At seventy-seven, she was the oldest volunteer. Her body might have been compromised by osteoporosis, but her mind was a steel trap. To keep her mental faculties sharp, she did find-a-word puzzles, practiced water aerobics five days a week at the Cupid senior citizens’ center, and took acetyl-L-carnitine supplements. She’d recently heard that learning a foreign language could help stave off Alzheimer’s, so she’d bought the full course of Rosetta Stone Spanish.
    “ Hola! ” Delia greeted.
    “Warning,” Junie Mae said. “She jabbered Spanish all the way over here.”
    “ Todos ustedes deben aprender a hablar a español. Vivimos en Texas .”
    Carol Ann blinked owlishly. “Huh?”
    “Learn Spanish and you’ll know what I’m saying,” Delia said smugly.
    “You enjoy being a handful, don’t you, Auntie?”
    “No more