by Linda Turner
Frowning, Tom jotted down both names in his notebook. “I’ll question them. Can you think of anyone else who might hold a grudge against you?”
“We had a fight earlier this evening,” Turk admitted. “I went home around eleven-thirty and went to bed.”
“Alone?”
He nodded grimly. “The sirens woke me up around three. When I realized how close they were, I grabbed my medical bag and ran out the door.”
“He didn’t do this, Tom,” Rachel said huskily. “And neither did Mildred and Benny. It was probably just some teenagers pulling a prank.”
“Then how did they get the key to the padlock?”
She didn’t have an answer to that, and they all knew it. “I don’t know. I suppose someone could have slipped in the back door of the bakery when everyone was occupied at the counter, though you would think someone would have noticed. Oh, and I had new tires put on my car at Pete’s Tire Shop on Monday. I didn’t bother to leave just the car key— Pete and Gran have been friends all their lives. One of Pete’s workers could have slipped the padlock key off, but all of those guys have been with him for years. I just can’t see any of them doing that.”
“I’ll check it out,” he promised. “In the meantime, I want you to replace the attic door with a steel door with a dead bolt.”
“I’ll give Joe Schmidt a call later this morning and see if he can do it today.”
“How much damage is there?” Evelyn asked. “Are we going to need to completely remodel it?”
“Thanks to your quick phone call, the damage isn’t nearly as bad as it could have been,” he replied. “Most of the fire was contained in the attic, but there is some smoke damage downstairs. And water damage, of course,” he added. “Everything’s pretty waterlogged.”
“It could have been worse,” Rachel said. “It could have burned to the ground.”
“You were lucky,” Tom said. “If you think of anyone else who may have done this, give me a call.”
Quietly wishing them good-night, he walked out, leaving behind a silence that no one seemed inclined to break. Evelyn finally sighed. “We’re not getting anything done sitting around here staring at the walls. We need to get over to the bakery and get to work.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Turk said quickly, stepping over to the couch and blocking her path before she could even think about rising to her feet. “There’ll be no work for you tonight. The only exercise you’re going to get is walking to your bed. C’mon. I’ll help you.”
Far from impressed with his bedside manner, she lifted a delicately arched brow at Rachel. “Are you going to let him talk to me like that?”
Her lips twitched. “I do believe I am. I don’t want anything to happen to you, either.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m just going to mop up some water.”
“We’ll see how you’re feeling in the morning and talk about it then,” Rachel promised her. “For now, I’d feel better if you went back to bed and tried to get to sleep.”
“While you clean up the bakery all by yourself? I don’t think so!”
“She’s not doing it all by herself,” Turk promised her. “I’m going to help her.”
Startled, Rachel wanted to jump at his offer, but now that the emergency was over, she couldn’t impose on him any more than she already had. Not after he’d made it clear earlier in the evening that he wanted nothing more to do with her. “You don’t have to do that,” she said quickly. “I appreciate the offer, but this is my problem. I can handle it.”
“I want to help.”
“No.”
Glancing back between the two of them, Evelyn said, “Yes! Or I’ll help you.”
“No—”
“No, you won’t.”
Delighted when they both turned on her at once, Evelyn grinned. “Good. Then we’re all in agreement. Now that that’s settled, I’m going to bed. Keep your phone on, Rachel. I’ll call if I need anything.” And without another word, she sailed down the hall to her bedroom.
Frustrated, Rachel wasn’t the least bit amused when Turk grinned at her. “If you’re trying to impress Gran, you can save it. She’s gone to bed, remember? She’ll never know if you go home or not.”
“That’s okay,” he said easily as he fell into step beside her when she headed home to change into work clothes before going to the bakery. “I’ll just stick around, anyway. Just in case you need my help.”
Miffed, she didn’t understand why he was doing this. He was the one who’d told her to have a nice life! But they reached her house then, and there was no time to demand an explanation. While she was changing, he went to his own house and returned a short time later in paint-splattered jeans and a battered gray sweatshirt he’d cut the sleeves out of. Seconds later, they turned the corner onto Main Street and she forgot all about her irritation with him. A dozen or more people were waiting for her on the bakery’s front porch, including Lawrence and Harvey and all of her employees, as well as some of her favorite customers.
Stunned, she stopped in her tracks. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We heard about the fire,” Stu Butler said. “We thought we’d help you clean up.”
“Yeah,” Mick added. “You can’t do this all by yourself. Jenny called me, and I called Sissy, and we started calling people. Everybody brought their mops and buckets, and we’ve got more people coming. Let’s get started.”
Touched, Rachel didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. “You guys are sweethearts. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Give us free doughnuts for a month when the bakery’s up and running again,” Lawrence called out from the back of the crowd.
“You got it,” she promised when everyone laughed.
“All right! Then let’s get started. We’ve got a lot of work to do!”
That was an understatement if there ever was one. There was standing water everywhere, not to mention an attic that was full of soggy insulation. Armed with mops and buckets, shovels, face masks and plastic trash bags, all supplied by Stu, who’d opened his hardware store to get what they needed, everyone went to work.
Three hours later, Rachel couldn’t believe what her friends and customers had managed to accomplish. All the wet insulation in the attic had been bagged and carted outside, the bakery kitchen and dining room had been mopped dry, and fans had been set up in the attic and downstairs to blow the walls and ceiling dry. The smell of smoke was still strong in the air, and extensive repairs still had to be done before the bakery could open for business again, but overall, Rachel was pleased with the progress that had been made.
“You don’t know how much I appreciate this,” she told her friends as she gave them each a hug. “It would have taken me days to do all this. Thank you so much.”
“No problem,” Lawrence said with a grin. “It’s the doughnuts, sweetie. Most of us haven’t missed breakfast at the bakery in years. We’re all going through withdrawal and we haven’t even got through the first morning yet.”
“I’ve already thought that out,” she chuckled. “Starting tomorrow, I’m going to run the bakery out of my house. So if you can just get through today…”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when a huge cheer went up from the crowd, and she found herself being hugged all over again. Laughing, she returned the hugs and promised to see everyone in the morning. Then she turned around, and everyone had left…everyone, that is, except Turk.
Sitting at one of the chrome tables in the bakery dining area, his long legs stretched out before him and his arms crossed across his chest, he looked as if he was prepared to wait for her forever if he had to. Her eyes met his, and just that quickly, her heart was pounding. “I thought you’d left,” she said huskily.
“Not until you do,” he replied quietly. “You looked so tired, I was afraid you might not be able to find your way home.”
Until then, she hadn’t noticed that it took all her energy just to remain upright. “I guess I a
m a little tired,” she admitted. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
His expression turned somber, and just that quickly, she knew he was thinking about last night. And as much as she wanted to forget it, to pretend that it had never happened, she knew she couldn’t. It was right there between them every time their eyes met, and she hated it. If he’d just let her explain.
“Would you like to come back to the house for some coffee?” she asked impulsively. “I could make breakfast.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know. I want to. I don’t know what I would have done without you this morning.”
“You had a lot of help,” he pointed out. “I didn’t do any more than anyone else.”
“Yes, you did,” she insisted huskily. “You have every right to hate my guts and you still helped. Why? You could have walked away. I certainly wouldn’t have blamed you if you had. No one would have.”
“You needed help,” he said simply. “Nothing else mattered.”
He would have said the same thing to a stranger, and that hurt. “If you could set aside your anger for that, can you set it aside long enough to listen to me?” she asked quietly. “There’s something I need to tell you. Maybe then you’ll understand why I did what I did.”
He should have said no. He wasn’t interested in listening to excuses. He knew who she was now and there was nothing to talk about. But her eyes were dark with a pain he couldn’t ignore, and dammit, he wanted a reason to forgive her. Before the fire last night, he’d dreamed of her, rolled over and reached for the phone in his sleep before he even realized what he was doing. He was in trouble. Big trouble. She’d somehow gotten to him, and he cared about her more than he wanted to. There was no way he could make himself walk away from her.
Later, he knew that was going to bother him, but for now, all he could say was, “Coffee sounds good. Let’s go.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to cry. Sudden tears glistened in her eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. “Let me lock up, then we can go.”
Ten minutes later, she joined him at her kitchen table and served them both steaming cups of coffee and thick slices of banana nut bread. Turk would have sworn he wasn’t hungry, but the second he took a bite of the bread and it melted in his mouth, he realized he was starving. “This is fantastic!”
She smiled. “It’s Gran’s recipe. She won first place at the state fair with it.”
“I can believe it. What’s wrong with the men in Hunter’s Ridge? Your grandfather died years ago, didn’t he? Evelyn’s a damn fine-looking woman. Why didn’t some man snatch her up years ago?”
“Oh, they tried,” she chuckled. “But the only man she’s ever loved died thirty years ago. She hasn’t given anyone a second glance since.”
“Your grandfather was lucky to have a woman love him that much.”
She smiled at the memory of her grandfather. “He wasn’t the only one who was lucky. He adored Gran and didn’t care who knew it. They had a wonderful relationship.”
Watching her, Turk felt an emotion he couldn’t put a name to tug at his heart. She looked so sad and wistful, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she’d never come close to having the kind of relationship her grandparents had had. Did she think she never would? Was that why she’d decided to get pregnant by a stranger? She’d given up any hope of finding happiness with a man and just wanted a baby to help cut the heartache of loneliness?
Torn between irritation and confusion, he wanted to hit her with a dozen questions, but in the end, he only asked one. “What is it you wanted to tell me?”
She hesitated, only to abruptly come to her feet and walk over to the coffee pot to refill their mugs. She didn’t, however, return to the table, but stood instead with her back to the table as she cupped her mug in both hands and stared unseeingly out the window over the sink.
“I got married my senior year of college,” she said huskily. “I was young and silly and in love. The only thing we needed for everything to be perfect was a baby.”
His jaw tightened. “You already told me—”
“I didn’t tell you this,” she said quietly, and turned to face him. Turk had never seen such stark pain on a woman’s face in his life. “I tried to get pregnant the first year we were married…and the next…and the year after that. I never could.”
“Why? You did go to the doctor, didn’t you? What did he say the problem was?”
“He couldn’t find anything.”
“Then your husband was the one with the problem.”
“The doctor said the same thing, but Jason refused to be tested. He didn’t want to be blamed for my infertility.”
“But you weren’t infertile—that’s the whole point! What a jerk. It’s not that difficult to be tested. If he wanted a baby—”
“But he didn’t,” she cut in. “I did. He really wanted nothing to do with fatherhood or babies. That’s why he had a vasectomy before we were married without telling me.”
“What?”
“Seven years after we got married, he finally confessed,” she said flatly, hugging herself. “I wanted to try in-vitro, and he refused to even consider it. We had a big fight, and when I accused him of not wanting a baby, he finally admitted it. I filed for divorce three days later.”
Stunned, Turk couldn’t begin to imagine what she must have felt. She’d tried to get pregnant for seven years, and all the while, the jackass she’d been married to had known she was wasting her time. And he’d never said a word.
Furious for her, he could only imagine what she’d felt when she discovered the truth. “You must have been devastated,” he said huskily.
“I’ve never felt so betrayed in my life,” she said simply. “I wasted seven years of my life on a liar. Do you know how stupid I felt? I tried everything to get pregnant. And every time I failed, he blamed me. I had to be the one with the problem—there was nothing wrong with him. My hormones were off…I needed estrogen…I had some kind of female problem…I was sterile. He had one excuse after another for my infertility. And like a fool, I believed him. It had to be me. So I went to one specialist after another, had test after test after test, and the doctors could find nothing.”
When tears pooled in her eyes, he almost reached for her then and there. She’d been through hell, and the one person in the world she should have been able to trust the most had turned out to be the last man on earth she should have believed. No wonder she’d decided to have a baby by herself. She’d probably never trust another man in her life, and he couldn’t say he blamed her.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before now?” he asked gruffly. “It explains a hell of a lot.”
“It’s not something I generally talk about,” she admitted with a grimace. “No one likes admitting they’ve been taken in by a liar. Especially when they were married to the jackass for seven years.”
“The only thing you had on your mind was getting pregnant,” he pointed out. “How could you have guessed that the jerk had had a vasectomy? It’s not like it was tattooed on his forehead or anything. And he was your husband. If he’d never given you any reason to doubt him in the past, why wouldn’t you believe him?”
“I was married to him,” she said with a shrug. “I should have known what kind of man he was.” Her eyes meeting his, she added, “And that doesn’t excuse my own behavior. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just wanted a baby so bad I was desperate.”
“You have plenty of time, Rachel.”
“Technically…maybe. But I can hear the clock ticking, which is why I came up with the crazy idea of just getting pregnant by the first decent man I could find, then walking away. It was a stupid plan—I know that now. And just for the record, you were never part of that plan. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. And even after I met you, I never tried to trick you.”
He couldn’t deny that—he hadn’t forgotten that she’d insisted he use a condom. “So…this plan of yours�
�are you through with it? Because if you’re still looking for a sperm donor, we have nothing more to say to each other.”
“No more crazy plans,” she assured him thickly. “I promise.”
When tears spilled over her lashes and she quickly wiped them away, he wanted to reach for her, to pull her into his arms and assure her that everything was going to be all right. But he couldn’t. Not yet. She’d destroyed his trust in her, and it would take time to get that back. In the meantime, he intended to move very, very slowly. She already had his heart tied up with string—she just didn’t know it. And he intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.
“Now that we’ve got that settled, why don’t you go to bed?” he told her. “It was a long night. You’ve got to be exhausted.”
If circumstances had been different, she would have asked him to stay just because it had been a long night, and she didn’t want to be alone. She ached to feel his arms around her, but it wasn’t going to happen. She only had to look at his face to know that.
Her heart breaking, she forced a weak smile. “I am tired. I’ll probably be out the second my head hits the pillow.” Suddenly remembering that he should be at his clinic, working, she gasped, “Oh, my God! I completely forgot you’re supposed to be at the clinic! You shouldn’t have stayed and helped with the cleanup—you had work to do!”
“It’s okay,” he assured her. “I called and canceled my morning appointments. I’ll catch a quick nap and go in after lunch.”
When she walked him to the door, she knew she should have thanked him again, then let him go. But the ache inside her was too deep. Giving in to it, knowing he was going to stiffen the second she touched him but unable to stop herself, she stepped forward to give him a quick hug. “I’ll see you later,” she said huskily. “Thanks again, for all your help.”
He didn’t return her hug, but then again, he didn’t push her away, either. “Get some sleep,” he replied. “I’ll check in on you later and make sure you’re doing all right.”
Standing at her front door, she watched him cut across her yard to his and waited him for him to turn and wave. He never did. Before she even shut the door, tears were streaming down her face. Hurt, exhausted, emotionally spent, she made her way to her bedroom and crawled into bed, clothes and all. With a sob, she buried her head in her pillow and gave in to the heartache ripping her apart from the inside out. Her pillow soon damp with tears, she cried and cried and never knew when she fell asleep.
