Bachelor at Her Bidding (Bachelor Auction Book 2) (2 page)

“Rach, you can’t
refuse to date for the rest of your entire life,” Hannah said.

“No? Watch me,” Rachel said with a smile. “Han, stop worrying. I’m perfectly happy with my life how it is. I’m back home in Marietta, near my mom and dad, Susie and Ricky; I love my job; and I like my apartment.” The first two were true – it was good to be home and so close to her parents, her brother and her sister, and Rachel had always loved her job as a family physician. But the last one was a slight fib, because her apartment was tiny. Rachel’s sister, Susie, and her two closest friends were also good friends with Rachel’s two closest friends, and since Rachel’s return to Marietta three months ago they’d taken to meeting up on Thursday evenings for something to eat and a catch-up. Today was her turn to host the evening, and her living room was barely big enough to seat the six of them together.

But Rachel had no intention of complaining. As a divorcee come home to Marietta from Missoula to lick her wounds, she knew she was already enough of an object of pity in the town. She’d heard what Carol Bingley in the pharmacy in Main Street had said about her, and she was pretty sure the rest of the town shared her opinion.
I’m not surprised Rachel Cassidy’s divorced. Always had her nose in her books when she was growing up – she never even had a date for the prom. A woman like her would never get to keep a man.

It was a little more complicated than that, but no way was Rachel giving the town gossip any juicy titbits. The last thing she wanted was for anyone – even her sister and their closest friends – to think that her life in Marietta was anything less than perfect right now.

“Your job isn’t going to keep your bed warm at nights, Rach,” Dayna pointed out.

“A hot water bottle and a down-filled comforter will do that just fine,” Rachel said firmly.

Susie, Rachel’s sister, sighed and shook her head. “I know Nick hurt you, honey, but he couldn’t see past the end of his nose. He was a total idiot and he wasn’t good enough for you in the first place.”

“Thanks for taking my part, Susie, but that subject’s closed,” Rachel said, fixing her smile in place. She knew her sister’s views on her ex-husband – and she hadn’t even told Susie the worst of it. Because it made her feel too ashamed. “I’m not interested in dating ever again and there’s an end to it, OK?”

She was relieved that the pizza delivery boy rang her doorbell only a few seconds later. With food on the table, her friends might just chill out and let her be.

“You’re not saved by the bell,” Dayna warned, almost as if she’d been able to read Rachel’s mind, “but we’ll shut up for now.”

After pizza, conversation turned to the weekend.

“You’re not on call on Saturday night, are you, Rach?” Lexy asked.

“No-o.” Where was she going with this?

“Good. Then you’re coming with us to the Bachelor Auction,” Lizzy said.

Rachel wrinkled her nose. “I want to support the fundraiser, and I’m more than happy to donate something for the raffle as well as buy a ticket to the auction, but I can’t really see myself actually going to a Bachelor Auction,” she said. “Like I said, I’m not interested in even looking to date anyone – and isn’t that the point of the auction, to buy yourself a date?”

Dayna rolled her eyes, “You don’t have to bid for anyone, Rach. Just drink margaritas with us and look at all the gorgeous men.”

“Don’t forget the huckleberry pie,” Susie added. “Jason Grey’s donating the food for the evening, and the pie at Grey’s is to die for. And I second looking at the gorgeous men.” She gave Rachel a cheeky wink. “I’m married, yes, but I’m not dead. I can still appreciate good eye candy.”

“And then there’s the red velvet cheesecake,” Lexy said.

“Thirded on the desserts and the men,” Hannah said, “and it doesn’t matter that I’m happily married and…” She patted her bump and grinned. “Well, I’m with Susie. We can still look and enjoy. So can you. Come on, Rach, it’ll be fun.”

Now she’d already admitted to being off duty, Rachel was fresh out of excuses.

“It starts at eight, so we’ll meet at seven downstairs in Grey’s. I’ll get our names down with Lily Taylor for a table for six, and we’re going dress up and drink margaritas – that’s virgin margaritas for you, Han – and then we’re going to enjoy some serious eye candy,” Susie said.

And what could Rachel do but give in? “OK. I’ll do it.”

‡

S
aturday night saw
Rachel walking arm in arm with her sister down Main Street toward Grey’s Saloon.

“It’s picture-postcard perfect, isn’t it?” she said to Susie. “With a fresh sprinkle of snow on the sidewalks and all the shop fronts lit up, Marietta has to be the prettiest town in the West.”

“Sure is.” Susie squeezed her arm. “Rach, are you sure you don’t regret moving back here from Missoula? I mean, don’t you miss all the bright lights?”

“Absolutely not, to both,” Rachel said with a smile. “I always loved coming home to Marietta. And now I get to do the job I love among the people I love. It doesn’t get better than this.” She wasn’t going to admit the loneliness she sometimes felt. That was nothing to do with Marietta and everything to do with what Nick had said to her – words that were branded across her heart.
You’re just not enough for me. You’re not
her.

How stupid she’d been, to marry a man who didn’t even love her.

She pushed the thought away and concentrated on the building on the corner. Grey’s was one of the oldest buildings in Marietta, and although it was a respectable saloon nowadays it had once been the town bordello. And it hadn’t really been updated much since it had first passed to the Greys in the 1800s. “Hey, Susie, did you know that the bordello girls used to walk up and down on that balustraded balcony to parade their wares?”

“Who told you that?”

“Chelsea Collier.”

“Figures. What she doesn’t know about the history of Marietta isn’t worth knowing.” Susie smiled at her. “Come on. Time for margaritas.”

They pushed through the swing doors together and stopped in front of the long wide bar so they could scan the room for their friends.

As well as the booths down the long wall opposite the bar, there were a dozen extra cocktail tables with fold-out chairs. Clearly the team organizing the fundraiser was expecting a big turnout. Which wasn’t so surprising – Marietta looked after its own. In back was a makeshift stage.

“There’s Lexy and Dayna,” Susie said. “And they’ve already got the first round in, by the look of it.” There was a pitcher of margaritas and five glasses on the table in their booth, along with another drink that looked like a non-alcoholic cocktail especially for Hannah.

“Susie! Rach!” Lexy and Dayna greeted them with a wave and they hurried over to join them.

Rachel shrugged off her coat. “I just need to change my shoes. Just as well I brought my highest heels, seeing how you’re all dressed up,” she said with a smile.

“It’d be crazy to walk around in a Montana winter in anything other than sturdy boots,” Susie agreed. “Your feet would
freeze
.”

Once Lizzy and Hannah had arrived, they paid for their tickets and registered their names for bidding, even though Rachel had no intention of actually bidding for anyone. Instead she bought a pile of raffle tickets; local businesses had donated plenty of gifts which were set out on one of side tables in the overflow area upstairs.

At every seat there was a brochure – clearly done by Josh on his computer – containing details of the bachelors.

“Well, lookee here,” Dayna said as she flicked through one of the brochures. “Now there’s a surprise. Ryan Henderson’s one of the bachelors.”

Rachel searched her memory and came up blank. “Ryan Henderson?”

“He’s one of the cooks here at Grey’s,” Susie explained. “He was in my year at school – two years above you, Han and Lizzy. He’s Phyllis’s grandson.”

Now Rachel recognized the name. “Phyllis Henderson, the math teacher?”

“The one who got me through my exams,” Dayna said. “That would be her.”

A vague memory stirred in the back of Rachel’s head. “Weren’t his parents killed when he was in elementary school?”

“Yes,” Susie said. “That’s why he lived with his grandparents.”

Rachel frowned as another memory came back. “But I thought he left Montana years ago to go live in Europe?”

“He went to train as a chef in Paris. He was always good at languages and what have you.” Lexy smiled. “He was the only boy in our year who took home economics – and he made way better brownies than Mrs. Barnes.”

“I think I remember him now,” Rachel said. “So he’s back in Marietta?”

Susie nodded. “He was a pastry chef at a fancy restaurant in Bozeman. I heard that he was going to set up his own restaurant, but then Phyllis got sick and he came home six months ago to look after her.”

“How do you mean, sick?” Rachel asked. She had a feeling that Phyllis might be registered with the family doctor practice where she worked part time, but Phyllis hadn’t been in to the office for an appointment and Rachel hadn’t done any house calls to her.

“She’s got the beginnings of dementia, like my grandfather,” Lizzy said with a grimace. “So Ry works at Grey’s while she’s at day care, four days a week, and he looks after her the rest of the time.”

On his own? That was a huge undertaking. As a family doctor, Rachel knew that dementia wasn’t the easiest of illnesses for families to deal with. If you cared for someone with dementia, you needed a lot of support. “What about his grandfather?”

“He had a stroke and died a couple of years ago. Ry wanted to come back to Marietta back then and look after Phyllis, but she wouldn’t let him.” Dayna looked sad. “Though even she has to admit she’s struggling now.”

“Dementia’s hard,” Rachel said softly. “You lose your loved one bit by bit.” It was a long goodbye, in Rachel’s experience, and not a kind one. She’d seen the disease bring families to their knees. And to have to face that on your own…

“What’s Ryan offering?” Lexy asked.

“Dinner – and a fancy dinner made by Ryan Henderson’s going to be something really special,” Susie said.

“The red velvet cheesecake he makes here is to die for, so what else he can make…” Lizzy shivered. “I agree. It’d definitely be worth bidding for dinner made by him.”

*

“Hey, look,” Susie
said, tipping her head to tell everyone to look up.

Some of the bachelors were hanging over the balustrade to get a view of the audience. Rachel didn’t know all of them, though she recognized Beau Bennet from Copper Mountain Security, Jesse Grey, and Jett Casey, the former Olympian skier.

And a man who just had to be Ryan Henderson.

Clearly the bachelors had been asked to dress to fit whatever they were offering, because Ryan was wearing a white chef’s collarless tunic with a double row of buttons down the front, black trousers with a grey pinstripe, and a tall chef’s hat. Although the hat covered most of his hair, what she could see of it was dark and slightly curly. His eyes were a dark, soulful brown.

But what she really noticed was his mouth. A couple of days’ growth of stubble did nothing to disguise how full, sensual and beautiful his mouth was. The mouth of a man who understood pleasure.

A tingle ran down her spine, and she stifled it immediately.

Ryan Henderson had more than enough to deal with, looking after his sick grandmother as well as holding down a job. He didn’t need the extra complication of someone like Rachel in his life. And she wasn’t intending to bid on him anyway – or on
any
of the bachelors. She didn’t need complications, either. After Nick’s betrayal, trusting anyone again was going to be very hard indeed – and she wasn’t sure she’d ever quite be able to do it.

So it would be better not to start anything that she couldn’t finish.

Her family, her friends and her job were enough.

They had to be.

Rachel enjoyed the first “lot” hugely. Buck had been the local auctioneer for years and years, and was well known as the best cattle auctioneer in the county. He’d dressed tonight just like he did for cattle auctions, too – a string tie, a rodeo belt buckle the size of a small side plate, and a massive Stetson which covered his comb-over. And he was clearly enjoying auctioning off the beefcake as much as he enjoyed auctioning off beef, discussing the specimen’s haunches, points, teeth and muscles, then the way he kept the bidding super fast.