Читать книгу Mission: M.d. - Linda Turner - Страница 9

Standing before the large round mirror of her antique dresser, Rachel studied herself with a critical eye. She never had been what she would call a girlie-girl. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d painted her fingernails, and she wasn’t one of those women who spent hours in front of the mirror, messing with her hair. Half the time, she twisted it up on top of her head, clipped it out of the way, and walked out the door without even looking at it twice. Lipstick was an afterthought, perfume was the smell of sugar and yeast that clung to her from the bakery. She wore jeans and a baker’s smock to work, and given the chance, tennis shoes.

So how was she supposed to dress to attract a man? she wondered wildly. It had been so long since she’d had a date that she didn’t even know where to begin.

More blush, she decided, frowning at her pale, reflected image. She needed more color in her face…and jewelry. Her neck looked bare, her earlobes naked. What did the kids call it now days? Bling-bling. That was what she needed. All she had, however, was a simple gold locket that her grandmother had given her. Would that date her? Or make her look like some kind of innocent who’d been living in a convent?

Undecided, she slipped it on, then added blush to her cheeks and painted on red lipstick. Stepping back, she frowned at her reflection. The woman who stared back at her in the mirror was a stranger. Dressed in red, her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, she looked hot, sultry, sexy.

It was the dress, she decided. There was no question that it was designed to appeal to a man. It hugged her slender figure and ever so slightly dipped between her breasts, revealing just a hint of cleavage. Paired with strappy, spiked sandals, the dress gave her the look of a woman on the prowl.

Suddenly having second thoughts, Rachel seriously considered chickening out right there and then. Maybe Abby and Lily and Natalie were right. There was another way to have a baby. What difference did it make if she actually met her baby’s father? It wasn’t as if she would have a chance to learn that much about his character. She was never going to see the man again.

She wanted a baby, not a relationship, she reminded herself. And with a sperm bank, she wouldn’t have to worry about some man calling all the time, wanting to get to know her—and his baby—better. All she wanted was his sperm. So what if it was clinical? What could be more clinical than picking a stranger out of a bar to be the father of her baby?

Don’t second guess yourself now, a voice in her head warned. You don’t have a lot of choices here, you know. Unless you want to get pregnant the old-fashioned way—by a man you fall in love with—you’ve only got two options. The sperm bank or seducing a stranger. If you want to know for sure that the father of your baby is not only intelligent, but a kind and caring man, then don’t you think you’d better meet him face-to-face?

Her heart stopped dead at the thought. Could she really pull this off? What if he guessed what she was up to? Any man in his right mind would be furious, and she couldn’t say she’d blame him. She intended to use him in the worst way a woman could use a man, but she truly had no other choice. She’d already tried the fairy tale, love and marriage, but there’d been no baby to make three.

And during the years of their marriage, Jason had made sure that she’d known who was to blame for that. She was the one whose hormones were out of whack. She was the one who was somehow deficient and didn’t have what it took to have a baby. And she’d believed the lying jackass.

The day she’d discovered the truth, she’d walked out. How could she have loved a man like that and never realized what a monster he was? How could she have been so blind? She’d promised herself then that she was done with men, with lies, with trust. Never again would she place her hopes and dreams in anyone else’s hands but her own.

She wanted a baby, and she didn’t have a clue how long it would take to get pregnant. Months? Years? The constant tick of her biological clock echoed in her ears at the thought. The women in her family had all gone into menopause by the time they reached forty. If she ran out of time…

Pain squeezing her heart at the thought, she grabbed her purse and turned her back on the woman in the mirror. When she locked her front door and slipped behind the wheel of her VW Bug a few minutes later, she tried to convince herself she was doing the right thing. All she had to do was shut her brain and conscience off and go after what she wanted. Other women did it all the time. So could she.

Of course, she’d been telling herself that for months, long before Lily and Natalie and Abby had called last week and asked her to be in their weddings, and she’d yet to do anything. And who could blame her? She was going to have sex with a stranger in order to get pregnant! And that wasn’t something she did lightly. On top of that, the father of her child had to be someone special. Someone who was caring and kind and smart, someone any child would love to claim as his father. And she’d decided there was only one place where she could find such a paragon…in a hospital. The father of her child needed to be a doctor.

Still, even after she’d come to that conclusion, she’d done nothing. Then she’d turned thirty-five on Monday, and she’d felt time slipping through her fingers, time she would never get back. And she’d known she couldn’t wait any longer. She had to do something. Now.

The man she was looking for wasn’t in Hunter’s Ridge, Texas. The town was too small, barely eight thousand people, and ever since she’d moved there five years ago and started running her grandmother’s bakery, she’d met just about every inhabitant of the place. The only doctors in town were pushing retirement and happily married to little white-haired old ladies. If she wanted to find someone, she would have to go into Austin.

The city was forty miles and a world away. No one knew her there, but her pounding heart took little comfort in that as she drove toward the city lights. She was about to make one of the most important moves of her life, and she was a nervous wreck. Her palms were sweating, her mouth dry, and every instinct she had urged her to turn the car around and race back to Hunter’s Ridge. In her head, however, she could hear her biological clock ticking. Her chin set at a determined angle, she headed for the medical center.

The bar she chose was trendy and popular, and a friend who was a nurse had told her that if she wanted to meet a doctor, this was the place to go. It was one of the favorite watering holes of residents and medical students alike. As Rachel pulled into the parking lot, she could well believe it. She couldn’t find a single parking space and had to park on the street.

Cutting the motor, she stepped from her car, her heart skipping every other beat. It was game time, she thought grimly. No more excuses, no more procrastinating. If she really wanted a baby, this was her chance. All she had to do was walk inside the bar and find a man who met her requirements for a father, then seduce him.

It should have been easy. The second she walked through the front door, she drew every male eye in the place. All she had to do was smile, find a seat at the bar and wait for someone to join her.

She didn’t have to wait long. “Hey, sweetheart,” a tall, dark-haired man greeted her with a leering grin as he sauntered up to the bar. “I bet you could use a drink. Bartender, the lady would like a beer.”

Taking a position just inches away from her, he never touched her, but he didn’t have to. He stroked her with his eyes, letting his gaze dip to her breasts, the curve of her waist and hips, then focusing on her mouth in a way that made Rachel’s skin crawl.

Just barely suppressing a shiver of distaste, she said, “Thanks, anyway, but I don’t like beer.”

“No problem,” he said smoothly, his eyes once again dropping to her breasts. “I appreciate a lady with class. How about a glass of wine? Champagne? You name it, it’s yours.”

She could have him if she wanted him—the offer was right there in his beady little eyes. Okay, here’s your chance, the irritating voice of reason drawled mockingly in her head. Just how desperate are you to have a baby?

Not as desperate as she’d thought, she realized. Not tonight, anyway. “Actually, I’m waiting for someone,” she said stiffly. “Thanks, anyway.”

His eyes narrowed with irritation, and for a moment, she thought he was going to refuse to accept no for an answer. Then a tall redhead walked in wearing a skirt that could only generously be called a mini. Just that easily, he lost interest in Rachel and moved to intercept the other woman.

Shaken, Rachel gave serious consideration to walking out then and there. But she’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. One of the disadvantages of looking for a father for her baby in a bar was that she would have to deal with bar flies who thought they were modern-day Casanovas. Okay, she’d dealt with her first one. She could do this.

Drawing in a calming breath, she ordered a Coke from the bartender, then waited to see which man in the crowded bar would step forward next. The place was packed with people in the medical field—she caught bits and snippets of conversation all around her about patients and surgeries and long hours of work and study. She tried to take comfort in the fact that she was in the right place. Surely somewhere in the happy-hour crowd had to be a decent man. The trick was finding him.

Later, she couldn’t have said how many men approached her over the course of the next hour. It seemed like dozens, though in reality it couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. And although most of them weren’t nearly as obnoxious as the first man who’d approached her, they either drank more than she liked, weren’t particularly attractive or didn’t seem to be as kind and caring as she’d hoped for. Discouraged, she sent them packing one by one.

By nine-thirty, the crowd had thinned significantly. The bartender told her that the second wave came in after eleven, when there was a shift change at the six hospitals in the area, but she couldn’t wait that long. She’d done nothing but sit at the bar and visit with the men who’d approached her, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so stressed. She was exhausted. And if tonight was any indication of things to come, finding a man to father her baby was going to be far more difficult than she’d originally anticipated. And she readily admitted she was worried.

Concerned, her stomach tied in knots, she kicked off her strappy high heels the second she got in her car and headed home barefoot. When the lights and the traffic of the city faded in her rearview mirror, she sighed in relief as she reached the deserted streets of Hunter’s Ridge. She really did love living in a small town. There was no fancy mall, no movie theater, and the sidewalks were rolled up at seven every night, but every time she drove down the familiar tree-lined streets, she felt as if she was driving back in time.

Tonight was no different. As she headed down Main Street, there wasn’t another soul in sight…except John Quinn, the deputy sheriff, who was making his rounds through the four-block downtown area. He grinned and nodded a greeting as she passed, then continued on his way. John was on patrol, she thought with a smile as she turned down her street. All was right with the world.

She’d left her porch light on, as well as a floor lamp in the living room, and in the darkness, her house looked warm and welcoming as she drove down the street. When she’d first moved to Hunter’s Ridge after she and Jason divorced, she’d almost bought a house in one of the new subdivisions on the outskirts of town. She was starting her life over and she’d thought she wanted something fresh and new she could make completely hers. Then a house right around the corner from her grandmother’s bakery came up for sale, and she’d stopped by to look at it. It was well over a hundred years old, had twelve-foot ceilings and aged plank flooring that bore the heel marks of countless generations that had come before. The kitchen was too small, the wiring needed to be updated, and there was no such thing as insulation in its walls, but the second she stepped inside, she’d fallen in love. She’d bought it on the spot.

The kitchen was still too small and keeping the place warm in the winter was no easy task, but given the chance, she would have bought it again in a heartbeat. Her only complaint was that the house next door was a rental that had not only fallen into disrepair but had been empty for more than a year. The owner had put it up for sale months ago, but as far as she knew, no one had even looked at the place.

As she pulled into her driveway, her headlights swept across the face of the house next door, and she hit her brakes in surprise at the sight of the lights blazing in the naked windows. Someone had moved in? When? She hadn’t even realized it had been sold.

Curious, she grabbed her high-heeled sandals and stepped out of the car, her eyes trained on the long windows of the Victorian house next door. There wasn’t a curtain or blind in sight, and standing in the darkness, she could easily see a man working in the living room. He was tall, but his back was to her as he tore Sheetrock off the walls. Covered in dust, his head covered with a ball cap, he could have been anywhere from thirty to a hundred and five.

If it hadn’t been nearly ten o’clock at night, she would have knocked on his door and welcomed him to the neighborhood. But he was busy and it was late—her grandmother would be calling any second.

The thought had hardly registered when her cell phone rang. The new neighbor forgotten, 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 on the streets at that hour of the morning in Austin or any other major city in the country, but Hunter’s Ridge was different. The last major crime wave to hit the town was three years ago, when a group of high school boys soaped the car windows of the high school principal and a dozen or so unpopular teachers. And yes, there was an occasional burglary, though those were few and far between. Most people didn’t feel the need to lock their cars at night, and some didn’t even lock their front doors. Rachel couldn’t think of a safer place in the country to live…or raise children.

That thought brought her back to her quest for a sperm donor—and her grandmother’s determination to find her a good man to marry instead. Did the unknown Robert know what her grandmother was planning for him? It didn’t matter. She wasn’t looking for a husband, or even someone to fall in love with. Robert, regardless of how nice he was, would have to be sent packing.

She wouldn’t be rude, she assured herself as she reached the bakery and unlocked the front door. She’d just be…reserved. And busy, of course, she silently added as she flipped on lights, then hurried to the back to get started on the day’s baking. After all, the mornings were the busiest time of the day for her. She was a baker, for heaven’s sake! Surely the man would realize that she didn’t have time to sit around and visit.

The rest of the morning crew arrived then— Sissy, Mick and Jenny—and for the next hour and a half, she had no time to even think about the unknown Robert and her grandmother’s plans to find her a man. There were fresh doughnuts to make and glaze, not to mention the pastries, bread and muffins the bakery was famous for. Up to her elbows in flour, Rachel was in her element.

As a child, she’d loved visiting her grandmother, standing on a chair at her side in the bakery kitchen, learning the ins and outs of how to make a piecrust that was flaky and tender and melted in your mouth. She’d made her first pie when she was six, using a recipe that had been handed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter for generations in her grandmother’s family.

If things turned out the way she hoped, she thought with a wistful smile, one day she’d have the opportunity to continue that same tradition with her own daughter.

She could just see her now, her dark curls tumbling down her back, an apron that was too big for her tied around her tiny waist as she stood next to her, rolling out the dough with fierce concentration. She’d have dimples…and blue eyes that danced with mischief and merriment….

Caught up in the fantasy, Rachel couldn’t have lost track of time even if she’d wanted to. It was barely six, and her first customers of the day were waiting out on the bakery’s old-fashioned porch for her to open for business. Promptly at six, she unlocked the front door and welcomed them in. Then the madness began.

She loved waiting on her customers, loved greeting them by name and sharing part of the morning with them. She knew their likes and dislikes, who was on a diet and who wasn’t, who liked soda instead of coffee, who had to rush to work, and who could sit at one of the sidewalk tables on the front porch and watch Main Street slowly come awake.

“Good morning, John. A dozen chocolate-covered doughnuts this morning?” she asked the deputy sheriff, who came in every morning to buy doughnuts for the sheriff’s department. “How about a cup of coffee to go?”

His weathered face folded into a broad grin. “You know me too well, Rachel. Better add a dozen glazed, too. It’s a two-doughnut day.”

“You got it,” she chuckled, and boxed up his order for him.

Thirty minutes after she opened the bakery for business, all the tables were full, and there was a line of customers out the door. Delighted, Rachel laughed and joked and completely forgot about the new man her grandmother had arranged for her to meet. Then suddenly, a stranger stepped up to counter and she knew this had to be Robert.

Surprised, she couldn’t have said what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the man standing in front of her. He was tall and lean, with a rugged face and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. After Jason’s betrayal, she’d been convinced that there wasn’t a man on earth who would ever get her attention again. But one look at Robert, and her heart lurched in her breast.

Shocked, irritated, she almost asked Sissy to wait on him, but her pride wouldn’t let her do that. Thankful he couldn’t hear the pounding of her heart, she forced a smile. “Hi. Gran said you’d be coming in this morning. You’re a sweetheart to humor her, but I’m not really interested. It’s nothing personal,” she added quickly when he lifted a dark brow in surprise. “I’m just not looking for a man right now. How about a pastry instead? Take your pick. It’s my treat. Okay?”