Her Minnesota Man (A Christian Romance Novel) (11 page)

That made things difficult for a misfit like Laney, whose emotions required regular venting.

A wry smile tugged at her mouth. "So everyone's sitting out there with blue lips and frost on their eyebrows, drinking stone-cold tea and telling each other it could be worse?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Caroline gave her a look charged with meaning. "And there's a lot to be said for that attitude."

The phone rang
. Grateful
for the interruption,
Laney
grabbed the receiver.

"Good afternoon. Three Graces Tearoom."

"Hey," Jeb said. "How's your day going?"

She glanced at Caroline. "It could be worse," she said, although she really didn't see how. "What are you doing?"

"Fishing."

"That's good." Picturing him in his canoe on a tranquil lake, a hunched shoulder trapping his cell phone against his ear while he baited a hook, Laney exhaled some of her tension. "Catching anything?"

"A couple of walleyes, but they weren't keepers. Good thing I made reservations for the French place." He paused. "Why do you sound so wistful?"

Caroline was walking away, but Laney took the precaution of lowering her voice. "Because I'd rather be with you on the lake than stuck here, tangled up in an endless string of emergencies." Unlike her mother, Laney didn't thrive on the unremitting pressure that was the small-business owner's lot.

"What's going on?" Jeb asked.

"The furnace died." Laney twisted several tight curlicues of the phone's cord around her index finger. "And I can't get anybody to look at it until tomorrow."

"I'll round up some space heaters and get there as soon as I can," he said.

"No, we're okay for now. I've had the ovens going all day, and I've got my big fan set just inside the kitchen door to blow warm air into the dining room. But thanks."

"You're stressed out," he said. "Let's do the French place another time and just go to Willie's tonight."

"Comfort food," Laney said on a grateful sigh. "Yes." One of Willie's juicy cheeseburgers and some melt-in-your-mouth onion rings sounded a lot better right now than rushing home to change before making that long drive to the Cities.

"Pick me up here, Jeb, okay?" Noticing that the tip of her finger had turned purple, Laney freed it from the phone cord's strangling coils. "Megan's car is in the shop and she had to take her mother to St. Cloud, so I let her borrow Francine."

"You're doing favors for the woman who stole your boyfriend?" Jeb's voice vibrated with disapproval. "Laney, you
cried
over that guy."

"Yes, I cried over Luke," she snapped. "I cried over Tom and Nathan, too. I thought I was in love with each of them, but I was really just trying it on, like I might try on a pretty pair of shoes and be tempted to buy them even though they pinched my toes. So now I'm frustrated and ashamed, and I can't trust myself to recognize a good fit even if I find one, and—" She stopped and pressed two fingers against her throbbing left temple. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone off on you like that."

"You know I don't mind a little ranting." Jeb's voice had deepened and gentled; the warm sound was as soothing as the
softly
lapping waves of a tranquil lake. "But save it for tonight, when you don't have a tearoom to run."

She closed her eyes and nodded. "Okay. And on second thought, just wait for me at home. Mrs. Lindstrom is out of town tonight, and I promised to feed her cat. So I'll get the Graces to drop me off, and then—"

"The Graces?" he interrupted. "Have you lost your mind?"

"They're not that bad, Jeb." The Graces took turns chauffeuring each other around in the mile-long silver Buick they'd owned for as long as Laney could remember. Maybe they did drive a bit too fast, but they weren't as reckless as Jeb thought. "They've never had an accident."

"Only because everyone in town knows that Buick and stays out of its way."

"You're a fine one to talk about bad driving habits," Laney retorted. "You totaled two cars before your twenty-first birthday, and who knows what havoc you've been wreaking since you moved to California." Although to give him his due, whenever he drove Laney anywhere, he scrupulously obeyed the speed limit and every other law.

That was her mother's doing. Once Hannah had discovered Jeb's protective streak where Laney was concerned, she'd worked tirelessly to nurture it. She'd drilled into his head that Laney was never to be exposed to reckless driving, foul language, cigarettes, alcohol
 
.
 
.
 
. The list went on and on, but Jeb had kept every rule.

"I'll pick you up at the tearoom," he said. "We'll swing by to feed the cat, and then we'll go to Willie's. Just call when you're ready."

 
"No, wait," Laney said before he could hang up. "Would you mind coming early? Say, five-fifteen?"

Several seconds elapsed before Jeb replied in a flat tone, "You want me to have tea with the Graces."

"Would you?" Over the years Jeb had suffered countless indignities at the Graces' hands, and he probably still hadn't forgiven them for an incident involving a pink rabbit costume. But in their own eccentric way, the Graces adored him. "They can't wait to see you, Jeb."

"Get their claws into me, you mean." He made an amused sound in his throat. "Hey, I could ask them to help me find you a husband."

"Don't even joke about that." The Graces were dears, but their matchmaking schemes were often embarrassingly obvious to the parties involved, and Laney didn't want them interfering in
her
love
life.

"I'm surprised they're not already on the job," Jeb said.

Now that he mentioned it, Laney was surprised, too. Her great-aunts had never even attempted to fix her up with a man. Not that she'd have tolerated that, but still.

"Jeb, I'll see you later," she said absently, and hung up.

Why weren't the Graces trying to marry her off? Could they believe she wasn't ready for marriage? She thought about that as she greased the loaf pans for her lemon bread.

Maybe she
wasn't
ready. And maybe the reason she was having so much trouble finding the right man was that she hadn't yet found herself.

S
taring at a patch of blue sky through the tearoom's parted lace curtains, Caroline Grace Ryland sipped tea from a china cup and smiled to herself. Being seventy-nine was a pretty good deal as long as you had a sharp mind, good health, and plenty of friends whose lives needed meddling in. Caroline had all of those things, as did her sisters Agatha and Millicent, so they had nothing to complain about.

The firstborn of a set of identical triplets who shared a middle name, a house, a car, and a job, it was Caroline who dreamed up most of their plans for improving people's lives, although Aggie and Millie often had good ideas, too.

Their favorite activity was matchmaking. None of them had ever married, but that hadn't dampened their enthusiasm for nudging others toward matrimony. Over the years Caroline and her sisters had successfully married off more couples than they could count on all six of their hands.

Too bad the match they most wanted to see was the one they couldn't actively promote. Laney disapproved of the Graces' methods, said they were heavy handed, and maintained that she'd rather die than be subjected to one of what she called her great-aunts' "unsubtle introductions."

That was unfortunate, because the Graces had already discovered Laney's perfect man. It was true that he had a few more things to learn about life and love before he'd be ready for marriage, but so did Laney. So for now, all the Graces could do was wait—and pray that the girl wouldn't do anything hasty and irrevocable, like marrying the wrong man.

"Adding candied ginger pieces to this shortbread was a stroke of genius," Millie said as she pushed a plate of cookies across the table to Caroline.

"We shouldn't be eating these," Aggie chided their younger sister. "We could have served them to the customers tomorrow."

"I thought we'd come in early and whip up a fresh batch," Millie said with an injured air. "You know I wouldn't make extra work for Laney."

"It's not just the work. Those ingredients cost money, and right now she's pinching every penny." Caroline sighed and then added, "What an awful time for the furnace to give out."

"That girl and her pride," Aggie grumbled. "She knows she'll get all of our money after we kick the bucket. Why won't she take some of it now?"

"Because she has her mother's determined streak," Caroline said approvingly.

"I guess we should be grateful she's nothing like her father," Aggie conceded.

They rarely spoke of their nephew, the scoundrel who'd charmed them out of six thousand dollars and then skipped town with that floozy from Mankato.

"Don't even mention him." Millie's tone was uncharacteristically harsh. "I know the Christian way is to forgive, but
 
.
 
.
 
." She shook her head in disgust.

Caroline had never quite forgiven him, either. But God had healed Hannah's broken heart and Laney had grown into a strong, fine young woman.

Caroline reached for the teapot and topped off her sisters' cups before refilling her own. The most enjoyable part of their day was when the last table in the dining room had been cleared and they sat down, pleasantly exhausted, to their own afternoon tea. Of course, today was different because Laney hadn't let them finish their work. Insisting that Millie looked tired, she had ordered the Graces to relax while she served the day's last customers, two young mothers with three adorable little girls.

"She needs babies of her own," Millie murmured as they watched Laney help the little girls remove the beribboned hats and long ropes of fake pearls they'd
borrowed from the dress-up chest in the corner. "I wish we could hurry up and get her settled."

"I know," Aggie said. "Waiting for that girl to wake up and smell the coffee is—"

"Enough." Caroline put the teapot down with a thump. "We've discussed this to death." Reigning in her irritation, she added in a milder tone, "All we can do now is watch and wait."

"But we're women of action," Aggie complained.

"Not in this case. And it's time to face the possibility that things might not turn out the way we hope."

Millie's eyes widened. "Are you saying we might be wrong about this, Caro?"

"Wrong?" Aggie glared at Millie. "We're never wrong. Not when it comes to matchmaking."

"We're not wrong," Caroline said. "But Laney's in a hurry to get married, and that's dangerous."

"That's for sure," Aggie said. "We came close to losing her when Nathan put that gaudy rock on her finger."

Millie nibbled unhappily on a shortbread cookie. "There must be something we can do."

"We'll keep praying about it." Grasping a tiny pair of silver-plated tongs, Caroline selected two sugar cubes from the china bowl in front of her and dropped them into her tea. As she picked up her spoon to stir, a movement drew her attention to the front windows. The slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun struck a tall man from behind, casting his face in shadow, but that long, loose-limbed stride was unmistakable.

"Here comes Jeb," she said.

"Oh, good."
Aggie's
eyes twinkled with mischief.

"Let's go easy on him this time," tenderhearted Millie urged.

"That boy can take anything we dish out," Aggie said proudly.

They'd sure had fun with him over the years. When they had first met young Jackson Bell, they'd seen right off that although he was starved for love, he was fearful of accepting it. Not even Laney's mother had been allowed to hug him or speak tender words to him. So taking their cue from their adored elder brother's treatment of themselves decades earlier, the Graces had demonstrated their affection for Jeb by relentless teasing.

Caroline supposed that was a little nutty. But theirs was a complicated relationship because Jeb was a complicated boy. He wasn't a
good
boy, but underneath all that simmering anger he possessed a noble heart. His remarkable devotion to Laney was proof of that.