Bachelor at Her Bidding (Bachelor Auction Book 2)(6)

Provided the chef stayed away from using undercooked eggs, soft cheeses or anything that might contain listeria, then if winning the bid and having a flashy dinner cooked especially for her made Hannah happy, that was fine by Rachel. She smiled at Hannah. “OK. Whatever your limit is, add another seventy-five dollars from me.”

Hannah blinked. “Are you saying you want to bid for him, Rach?”

“No. I just want to make sure you get what you want. I would’ve bought you a foot massage as a treat – but if you want to bid for that fancy meal, then count me in for a contribution to make sure you get it,” Rachel said with a smile.

“You, you’re just so…” Hannah reached over and hugged her. “Thank you.”

“Count me in as well,” Susie said with a wink.

“Us, too,” Lexy, Dayna and Lizzy said.

“Ladies, I think we’re going to get ourselves a bachelor,” Hannah said with a grin, and kept bidding.

“Six fifty, six fifty, do I see more?” Buck asked.

There was a pause.

“Going once. Going twice.” Another pause. And then finally, Buck said, “And sold to Hannah Phillips for six hundred and fifty dollars.”

Hannah whooped, and high-fived everyone else in their booth.

Then she turned to Rachel. “Happy birthday, honey.” The others chorused with her, “With lots of love from us.”

Rachel frowned. “Wait – what?” Was she in some parallel universe? Hadn’t they all just agreed to pay money toward the bid for Hannah?

“It’s your birthday the weekend after next,” Lexy pointed out.

“Ye-es.” Where were they going with this? Rachel had been expecting to go out somewhere with her friends to celebrate the evening, maybe to FlintWorks to see one of the local bands playing, or maybe to the cinema and then out for some pasta at Rocco’s Italian. “But we were just buying Ryan’s dinner date for Han. We all agreed.”

“Um, no. It was a cover,” Susie confessed. “We talked about this earlier – Lily kind of gave me the heads-up earlier, and we all decided to bid for Ry’s dinner as our birthday present to you.”

“And you’re not to pay anything toward the date. It’s on us,” Lizzy said.

They’d bought her a dinner date with a Parisian-trained chef for her birthday?

Then it hit her. Six hundred and fifty dollars. “But – but the amount of money you just bid…” She felt her eyes widen. “No, it’s way too much for a birthday present.” Especially as Hannah had her first baby coming and could do with using the money toward the crib, a stroller and the million and one other things a new baby needed. And Rachel knew that Lexy was on short time right now. She didn’t want her friends struggling for money on her behalf. She might only be working part time herself at the moment, until Dr. Majors retired fully later in the year and she took over full time, but her salary as a family doctor was decent enough.

“Rach, loosen up. It’s a joint present. We’re all putting in for it,” Hannah said.

“We could’ve bought you things separately – a spa day, perfume, jewelry or Sage Carrigan O’Dell’s biggest and best basket of chocolates,” Lizzy said, “but we talked about it and we thought this might be more fun. You get a gorgeous birthday dinner cooked by a gorgeous chef.”

They’d bought her a kind of date. With a man who’d admitted to the MC that he’d been pretty much railroaded into being one of the bachelors in the auction, so he clearly didn’t want to do the dating side of it, either.

But this was for Josh and Molly. Money to help them remodel the house and get Josh the equipment he needed.

So how could Rachel possibly turn this down? Apart from the fact that her sister’s and her friends’ hearts were most definitely in the right place and she didn’t want to hurt them by throwing their gift back in their faces, she knew how much Molly and Josh needed the money from the fundraiser.

She took a deep breath. “I know why you’ve done it, and I love you all to bits, but it’s way too much money for my birthday,” she said. “So I can only accept if I pay toward it, too. And I don’t mean the seventy-five dollars I offered Han, either. I mean I’m paying half.”

“You can’t pay toward your own birthday present,” Susie protested. “That’s totally unfair.”

“But it means that I put something into the auction, too,” Rachel said. “Otherwise I’m not contributing to the fundraising at all, apart from buying my ticket tonight and a few raffle tickets on the side, and that makes me feel bad. So either I pay half of the bid, or the deal’s off.” She folded her arms and looked at her friends. “Deal?”

“You always had a bossy side, even at school – despite being the baby of the family,” Lexy grumbled.

“I love you all,” Rachel said again. “And I appreciate what you’ve done for me, even though you were sneaky. And I’m not dating anyway – this is going to be just a really good dinner, not a date.” And that gave her the best idea ever for getting out of it being an actual date, though she’d keep it quiet from her friends until she’d agreed to it with Ryan Henderson. Given that he’d been pushed into it, she was pretty sure he’d agree to her plan. “But I’m still paying my share. Which is half.” She gave them a crooked smile. “Doctor’s orders. Which means you can’t argue.”