Love Under Two Reluctant Heroes by Cara Covington (ebook reader screen TXT) 📗

for a new chef in November. Leesa had served in the army for five years as a cook. She’d been posted overseas, and she hadn’t minded the explosions, she’d said. It was just all the gunpowder residue that ended up in her food that she couldn’t take.

Though she’d said that jokingly, Rachel would bet one of the reasons she didn’t reenlist was because the constant sound of war had gotten to her.

Rachel turned her attention back to Kelsey. “Yes, ma’am. Grandma Kate invited me to join her. I thought I’d share her pot of tea, if you don’t mind.”

“I absolutely don’t mind.” Kelsey looked over from the stool she was sitting on and gave her a huge grin. Kelsey was also rubbing her very big belly—not as if it ached but more as if she was just loving on those two twin boys who supposedly had two more months left to cook.

“You sure you’re not due until April?” Rachel asked.

“Oh, didn’t we tell you about the pool?” Tracy said. “I’ll have to email you the spreadsheet, so you can guess when her actual delivery date will end up being.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting in on that pool myself,” Leesa said.

Bernice came into the kitchen and put two bills on the clip on the track just behind the stove area.

“Ah, customers for my meatloaf special.” Leesa grinned and turned to the stove to prepare the lunch plates.

“Are they teasing you about your impressive baby bump, sweetheart?” Bernice Benedict asked Kelsey.

“See? Even Aunt Bernice thinks your belly is impressive,” Tracy said.

“I don’t know,” Kelsey said. “Emily Anne is still hanging in there, and we were all certain she’d be in labor by the first of February.” It was the second week of the second month of the year now.

Rachel had met Emily Anne, of course. The pretty brunette with two hunky husbands was another soul—as were said husbands—who hadn’t been born here but who the people of this town had gathered in and called their own, anyway.

“I’ve only had one baby, and she came when she was good and ready.” Rachel walked over to stand next to her boss. A tactile person, she ran a hand down Kelsey’s arm. “Your little guys will, too. Come when they’re good and ready, that is.”

“How’s Libby doing?” Kelsey asked.

Bernice had gone to the soup pot and ladled up two bowls. She nodded to Rachel and headed back to the dining room to serve those bowls to a couple of hungry diners.

Rachel smiled, just thinking of her daughter, Elizabeth. The changes in Libby were just short of miraculous. Since they’d come to Lusty, she’d found a best friend—a sweet girl by the name of Bonnie Dorchester. She rediscovered her love of learning, thanks to her new school and wonderful teacher, Maria Parker.

Rachel had been so nervous about Libby’s first day of school. But she’d come home and reported no one had made fun of her or teased her—that everyone had been kind, especially Bonnie.

Just thinking about the compassion her daughter had found here still made Rachel want to tear up with gratitude. The last school Libby had been in, a couple of the kids had teased her unmercifully when she’d shown up practically bald.

It had been tough to be a frizzy-headed teenaged girl in a seventh-grade class.

So they had both been understandably very nervous about her new school. Libby’s hair had grown back a fair bit, but she’d decided, when Mrs. Parker had invited her to tell them about herself, that she’d share what she’d been through in the last few years. By the end of the first week, her daughter had been nearly back to the laughing, loving girl she’d always been. The change in her has been amazing. And all because she’d been shown acceptance and compassion by the people of Lusty.

“She’s doing awesome, thanks. I still can’t get over the difference in the way she’s being treated at school here compared to her last school in Waco.” No, not every kid had teased her, but it had been enough that Libby had suffered. Rachel had bled inside, because as far as she was concerned, her baby had suffered enough.

“Kids will be kids, but my experience is that in this town, there’s an extra layer of decency. There’s plenty of teasing, of course, because that’s where cousin speak comes from. But that teasing is never cruel.

“I didn’t find Lusty until my college roommate, Susan—who’s now my sister-in-law—invited me here to open a restaurant, wow, nearly ten years ago, now!” Kelsey rubbed her belly. “There is nowhere else on earth I’d rather be. This is a good place to set down roots and raise a family.”

“I’m beginning to believe that,” Rachel said. She did have one bit of good news to impart, which she’d share with her coworkers, shortly. She wanted Grandma Kate to be the first to hear it. It actually amazed her that she wasn’t jumping up and down and screaming out loud, thanks to the phone call she’d received a few minutes before.

I think I might be jumping up and down on the inside.

“Here are the cream puffs for Grandma Kate,” Tracy said, “as well as two for you.” She set a dinner plate down, along with two smaller dessert plates. “Go, sit and eat. I don’t want to see you back in here until Grandma Kate leaves.”

Rachel shook her head. “All right, y’all are the bosses.”

“Damn right.” Both Tracy and Kelsey said that at the same time. Then they laughed, and Rachel joined them.

She headed out, stopping at the beverage station. Rachel brewed a pot of Darjeeling tea, Kate’s favorite, and set it, the pastries, and two cups on her tray. She added sugar and milk and called it done.

Kate Benedict turned her gaze from the window and greeted her with a big grin. Rachel smiled back, because she simply couldn’t help it. She set out the snack and was about to set the tray on the table when Bernice swung by