“Since nobody’s volunteering anything, I’ll butt my nose in and ask. What’s the matter now?” Alice might have looked like a mild-mannered little old lady, but she was really a storm trooper, Shay had decided, undaunted by any assignment.

“Mitch wants to get married,” Shay said despondently.

“Gee, that’s terrible,” came the sardonic response. “The man ought to be horsewhipped.”

“It could be terrible,” Shay insisted sadly. “I might be just like my mother and she was—you know how she was.”

“Your great-uncle Edgar was a chicken thief, but I’ve yet to catch you in somebody else’s coop.”

Shay had to chuckle. Maybe she’d have a piece of pie after all. “Your point is well taken, but the fact remains that marriage scares me to death.”

Alice refused to smile; she was clearly annoyed. “Mitch Prescott is a very fine man and you’re going to fool around and lose him,” she fretted.

“Have some pie,” Shay said.

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Alice snapped. “Good night and I’ll see myself out.”

Shay stood up. “Please, don’t go.”

“You should have said that to your man, Shay,” Alice replied, and she walked stiffly out into the living room.

Shay followed, clenching and unclenching her hands, feeling like a miserable child. “I did. He wouldn’t stay with me. He didn’t want Hank to wake up and find him here.”

“At least one of you has some sense,” Alice murmured, her exasperation fading into tenderness. “If Mitch were your husband, there wouldn’t be so many logistical problems, Shay.”

“I can’t marry him just so we won’t have to explain going to bed!”

“You can’t marry him because you’re afraid, yet you love him, I know you do. And he loves you.” Alice sighed, poised to leave. “Take a chance, Shay. Take a chance.”

“I did that once before! And the man I loved ran off with a librarian!”

“It’s a damned good thing that he did, kiddo, or you might never have found yourself. Look at you. You’re in business for yourself. You’re strong and you’re smart and you’re beautiful. What in Sam Hill do you want, a written guarantee from God?”

Shay just stared at her grandmother, stuck for an answer.

“That’s what I thought. Well, you’d better not hold your breath, Shay, because we don’t get any guarantees in this life.” With that, Alice Bretton opened the door and walked out.

Shay went to the window and watched until her grandmother was safely in her car, then returned to the kitchen and sat staring at her half-eaten piece of pumpkin pie with its dollop of whipped cream. She stuck a finger into the topping and dolefully licked at it.

Some Thanksgiving this was. Hank was asleep and Alice had gone home in a huff and Mitch…She didn’t even want to think about Mitch.

The next day she woke up with a chest cold and had to stay home, trusting Barbara and Louise, the two women she’d hired through the culinary program at the college, to run the business.