she reached for her phone as she unlocked her front door. “Hi, Gran,” she said in amusement. “I’m safe at home. You can stop worrying.”
“No, I can’t!” Evelyn Martin retorted. “I’ve been a nervous wreck all evening. So tell me everything. Are you okay? Tell me you didn’t do anything!”
“I’m fine,” she assured her. “Really.”
“Fine, my eye,” her grandmother retorted. “If you were fine, you never would have come up with this harebrained idea. I should have called your mother.”
Alarmed, she warned, “Gran, you promised!”
“I know, but I’m worried, darn it! I’m afraid some creep is going to hurt you or kill you and give you some awful disease. And then what? How am I going to explain that to your mother? She never liked me, you know. She’ll blame me, and then Ted will have to side with her and I’ll never see him again.”
Sinking down into her favorite easy chair, Rachel fought a smile. “Mom would never try to come between you and Dad. You know that. And I don’t know why you think she doesn’t like you. She really respects you a great deal. You started your own business when most women didn’t even know how to balance a checkbook.”
“I had to. We would have lost everything after Clarence died if I hadn’t gone to work. And Ted would have had to go live with Clarence’s aunt Myrtle, and he would have hated that. The woman starched her underwear, for heaven’s sake, and smoked cigars!”
Rachel grinned. “I hate that I never met her. She sounds like a real character. A lot like you, Gran.”
“I don’t starch my underwear.”
She chuckled at her grandmother’s indignant tone, then sobered. “No, but you do your own thing. And that’s what I’m doing. If I’d thought you were going to go tattling to Mom, I never would have told you my plans. You promised, Gran.”
Evelyn Martin was big on promises, and they both knew it. “Okay,” she huffed, “I won’t tell her. It’s your story to tell, not mine. But I still think you shouldn’t rush into this. There are a lot of nice men out there. In fact, there’s someone I want you to meet….”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Rachel said quickly. “You’re not setting me up again. Remember what happened the last time you tried that? He was a kid, Gran. Barely twenty-two! I felt like his mother!”
Far from apologetic, Evelyn laughed gaily. “There’s nothing wrong with younger men, sweetie. Your grandfather was three years younger than me.”
“Three I could handle. We’re talking thirteen, Gran! He still lived with his parents.”
“Get them young, you can raise them up the way you want,” she retorted, only to laugh when Rachel just huffed in frustration. “Okay, okay, so he was a little young. This one’s not. I think he’s around your age. You’ll like him. He’s cute and clever. If he was a little older, I’d go after him myself.”
“Gran!”
“Well, it’s true. Always appreciate a good man, Rachel, regardless of their age.”
“I do,” she replied. “They’re just few and far between.”
“Actually, they’re more common than you think,” her grandmother told her. “You just can’t see them because of Jason. And who can blame you? What that man did to you was criminal! He lied to you for seven years. No one in their right mind would blame you for hating his guts. Just don’t paint all men with the same brush, sweetheart. Give them a chance.”
“I do give them a chance.”
“Yeah, right,” Evelyn laughed. “Sweetie, I’ve seen you whenever a customer gets a little friendly. You’ve got No Trespassing signs posted all over you.”
“I do not!”
“Remember that in the morning when Robert shows up at the bakery.”
“What? In the morning? C’mon, Gran, give me a little time to at least prepare myself.”
“You’ll do fine,” her grandmother assured her. “Just be nice. He’s a lovely boy. You’ll like him. Now, go to bed, sweetheart. You’ve got to look your best in the morning. Call me after you meet him.”
“But—”
The line went dead, leaving her sputtering. With a groan of frustration, she shut her cell phone with a click and didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. Dammit, she should have seen this coming. When she’d told her grandmother her plan to find a nice medical student to father a baby for her, Evelyn had been nothing but supportive. That only should have been enough to set off Rachel’s alarm bells. Her grandmother might be eccentric and outrageous at times, but when it came to family, she was a strict traditionalist. She believed in love and marriage, then babies.
Which was why Rachel had been so surprised when her grandmother hadn’t given her much grief over her plan to have a baby. She should have known better, she thought wryly. The only reason Evelyn had gone along with her was because, no doubt, she planned to introduce her to every known bachelor within a hundred miles of Hunter’s Ridge before she had a chance to get pregnant. And all Rachel could do was grin and bear it. Her grandmother loved her—she just wanted the best for her. How could Rachel fault her for that?
She would, she promised herself, be nice tomorrow morning when Robert, the lovely boy Evelyn wanted her to meet, put in an appearance. Then she would make it very clear to him that as much as she appreciated him humoring her grandmother, she was currently taking a break from the dating scene. If he was as nice as Evelyn claimed, he would wish her luck, have coffee and a Danish on her, then be on his way with her grandmother being none the wiser.
Pleased that she would be ready for the charm of the unknown Robert, she stripped off her dating finery, took a quick shower to wash off the smell of cigarette smoke that clung to her from the bar, then fell into bed with a tired sigh. It was going on eleven—she should have been in bed two hours ago. She was exhausted, and her eyes drifted shut before her head ever hit the pillow.
Next door, the lights from her new neighbor glowed in the darkness, and the sound of someone hammering floated on the night air. Already dreaming, Rachel never noticed.
The alarm went off at the ungodly hour of four in the morning. Already awake, Rachel hit the off button and rolled out of bed. She’d always been a morning person, but adjusting to the early hours of a baker had been difficult, even for her. When she’d first moved to Hunter’s Ridge to take over the bakery for her grandmother, she’d fallen asleep over dinner every night for the first three months. She was better now—she could occasionally stay up as late as eleven, but she’d learned early on that she had to hit the ground running when the alarm went off in the morning, or she’d sleep right through the breakfast rush.
In the kitchen, her coffeemaker clicked on. By the time the smell of brewing coffee drifted through the house, she was dressed and fighting with her hair. Wild and untamed, it had to be pulled back into a loose ponytail, then braided. After that, all she needed was mascara and a little lip gloss and she was ready. Taking time only to fill her travel mug with coffee, she headed for work.
She loved the morning, loved walking to work, regardless of the weather. She wouldn’t have risked being out
