Total Surrender by Rebecca Zanetti Read Free Book Online Page A

a woman who smiled often. Well, until they’d moved to Utah. “I guess I could take a photography class.” Her eyes sparkled. “Unless you’re planning to get married and give me a grandchild, in which case I’d be a nanny.”
    Piper grinned. “Don’t hold your breath on that one. I’ve only been dating Brian for three months.” She’d taken the job with the commander at that time, and they’d moved to town.
    Her mom’s eyes clouded. “I was just kidding.”
    Piper sipped her drink. She’d started dating Brian the first weekend they’d arrived in town, and while he had a serious side, he was quite sweet. Definitely focused, which she liked. “Why don’t you like Brian?”
    Her mom sipped more wine. “I like Brian just fine. But he’s so…”
    “Safe?”
    “Rigid. Boring. Focused.” Rachel picked at her dinner. “Life is supposed to be fun, and romance should be crazy.”
    Piper shook her head. “Crazy romance didn’t work so well for you, considering you ended up as a single mom. Working your butt off with one yogurt shop that turned into ten—you worked so hard.”
    Rachel kicked her under the table and paled slightly. “Enough.”
    Piper frowned. “Fine. Do you think you could find some happiness with us in Utah?”
    “I’ll certainly try.” Rachel dumped Parmesan cheese on her plate, her gaze averted.
    Piper chewed slowly and swallowed. “Are you sure everything is okay? You get sketchy every time I talk about my—the commander.” Was there still a sort of tension there? The good kind? How crazy would it be if her parents actually ended up together? The commander was more than able to take good care of Rachel, and the idea seemed rather romantic, really.
    “Everything is fine.” Her mother still didn’t meet her gaze.
    “Right.”
    Rachel pursed her lips together. “He gave me you. For that, I’ll always owe him.”
    Warmth bloomed through Piper. “You’re one of a kind, Mom.”
    “Let’s talk about something else.” Rachel cleared her throat just as a rap echoed on the back sliding glass door.
    Piper jumped up. “I wondered if Earl would smell dinner.” Sharing a grin with her mother, she pushed aside curtains and tugged open the door. “Hi, Earl.”
    Their neighbor stood on the back porch, his sixty-year-old frame braced against the wild wind, several mason jars filled with canned fruit in his worn hands. “I brought you peaches.”
    “Thank you.” Piper moved aside. Why didn’t the guy just ask her mother out and stop pussyfooting around about it? The guy was in excellent shape, retired, and seemed to love golf and canning foods. As a widower, he could probably get a date with any single woman in the small suburb outside Salt Lake City. Yet he continued to court Rachel like afriendly neighbor. “Would you like to join us for lasagna?” Piper asked.
    He pushed his glasses up a straight nose, brown eyes twinkling. “Why, I’d love to.” Putting the peaches on the counter, he turned and frowned. “I received an e-mail from my nephew after you fixed my bank account information. He said you might have goofed up his account?”
    Piper bit back an unkind remark about his nephew, the one and only relative the poor guy could claim. “Nope. I just changed your passwords so he couldn’t take any more money from you.” She smiled as she lied. Once she’d seen how much money the jerk had taken, she’d sent him a nice little computer virus to melt his hard drive.
    Earl shrugged wide shoulders. “That’s what I figured. He must not understand much about computers, either.”
    “They are confusing.” She was not letting her kind neighbor be taken advantage of again by his drug-sniffing shit of a nephew. So she smiled and patted Earl’s arm. “Have a seat, and Mom will dish you up.” She cast her mother a look to be nice and not get her feathers ruffled. The sweet neighbor obviously made her nervous.
    Earl cleared his throat. “I want to double-check your front