Page 16 of The Gingerbread Bakery
And when he invited her to his place, she said yes.
ChapterSeven
Now
Annie was getting dressed when her phone rang.
‘Hey, Haze. I thought we were meeting at nine?’ Annie glanced at her watch. She wasn’t late. She couldn’t be late. Too much to do today. First the spa with Jeanie and the girls, then finishing up her special gift for the bride and groom, and then helping Kira set up the tables and flowers. And if she could manage it, she had a few dozen cookie orders that needed filling before Monday. Worse-case scenario, she could just skip sleep, she’d done that plenty of times before.
‘The appointment got moved to the afternoon.’
‘Okay, great.’
‘But that’s not why I called.’ Hazel sounded frazzled and, frankly, that was ominous on the day before the wedding.
‘What’s going on?’ Annie put her phone on speaker while she brushed some mascara on her top lashes.
‘Have you seen Estelle?’
Annie paused mid-mascara-swipe. ‘Why would I have seen Logan’s grandmother at eight-thirty in the morning, Haze?’
‘I don’t know, but no one else has seen her, either.’
‘Wait. Hold on. Are you telling me that Logan’s grandmother, hisbeloved Nana, is missing the day before his wedding?!’
‘Uh. Yes.’
‘Hazel! What the hell?! Have you tried calling her?’
‘Of course I did! I was supposed to take her to get her hair done today and I called her to confirm, and she didn’t answer her cell phone, so I called the house and Henry said she left early this morning.’
‘Left to go where?!’ Annie was shouting and pacing in her tiny bathroom, which was really only two steps in one direction and two steps in the other. She was getting dizzy.
‘I don’t know!’ Hazel wailed, having moved far beyond frazzled into panicked territory.
Annie sat on her toilet lid and took a deep breath. ‘Okay, let’s calm down for a second. Didn’t Henry know where she went?’
‘Honestly, he seemed kind of confused about the whole thing. He said Estelle had to go out to pick something up. Or maybe someone? I don’t know. He was talking in circles about some kind of surprise, but I’m worried, Annie.’
Okay, so a missing elderly person was not ideal but, as elderly folk went, Estelle was pretty with it. Annie was reasonably certain that Estelle wasn’t lost and confused somewhere, but she also knew that, if Logan caught wind of this situation, he would be a mess on the day before his wedding and Annie couldn’t have that.
‘I’ll go look for her,’ Annie said, rising from her seat and hastily finishing her makeup routine. ‘She’s probably just around town somewhere getting a gift. I’ll track her down and then we can all rest easy for tomorrow, okay?’
‘But then you’ll miss the mani-pedis.’
‘I’m sure I will have found her by then.’
Hazel let out a worried little sigh.
‘It’ll be fine. Everything will be perfect. Don’t worry.’ Annie would make sure of it. ‘And don’t mention anything to Jeanie about Estelle, either.’
‘Are you sure? Maybe I should come with you.’
‘No, you promised Kira you would help with the favors.’
‘Oh, right. I would send Noah, but he and Logan are taking some of the Ellis cousins ice-fishing today.’
‘Dear God,’ Annie muttered. ‘I swear, if those two idiots fall through the ice, I will revive them and re-kill them myself.’
