Woman Most Likely To... by Jennifer Greene

From the Publisher

Susan Sinclair can do anything right – raise her daughter, take care of her mother, have a terrific career...it's no wonder she's worn out! So she retreats back to the family homestead, where her sassy mother still lives. Back in Copper Creek, Michigan things sure haven't changed much; the locals still drive rusty pick up trucks, the air is still fresh...and the man she thought she'd left behind is there...he's still rich, he's still handsome, he still drives her crazy. He's Jon Laker and he's Mr Wrong.

Publishers Weekly

At the start of this sweetly sanguine offering, Susan Sinclair, her widowed mother, Lydia, and her daughter, Becca, are at critical junctures in their lives. Susan, a successful businesswoman, has come home to scenic Copper Creek, Mich., to check up on her mother, who, Becca claims, has gone nutty. Upon her arrival, she discovers that Becca has a bigger problem. She has gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Fears of ending up like Lydia, who was unhappy in her one-sided marriage, kept Susan from marrying Becca's father, Jon Laker, and now Becca is worried that she'll foul up her own future. As for Jon, he would love to have the exasperating Susan back in his life if only she would stop running from him and commitment in general. Greene's (Devil's Night, etc.) writing possesses a modern sensibility and frankness that is vivid, fresh and often funny. She also manages to tackle important issues such as abortion without making light of them or resorting to melodrama. Lydia's "born-again hip" manner of speaking may be far-fetched for some (does any grandma say "way cool?"), and readers will undoubtedly be frustrated that it takes so long for Susan and Jon to work through their issues. Still, readers will rejoice when the couple finally get it right. (Oct. 1) Forecast: Blurbs from Jennifer Crusie and Susan Elizabeth Phillips will help Greene, who has hitherto only written Harlequin series romances, break out her first single-title contemporary. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

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Chapter One

Late May

Susan Sinclair rubbed her sticky hands on the backs of her jeans. At nine o'clock on a winsomely warm May night, she'd much rather be dancing naked with an unforgettable lover and a rose between her teeth, but that just didn't seem to be an option.

Baking, truth to tell, was never what Susan would willingly call an option, either, but every six months she went through the ritual. Bought four dozen eggs. Unearthed the cake pan. Put on some old CDs on the player and donned her fifteen-year-old lucky U of M sweatshirt.

An outsider wouldn't likely understand the critical importance of the Sinclair Sunrise sponge cake. Cripes, Susan didn't, either. If it were up to her, she'd just buy a cake from the bakery and have done with it. Unfortunately, the sacred family sponge cake was A Tradition. More annoying yet was that Becca and Lydia could both do this. Her daughter had been making the impossible cake since she was a freckle-faced ten-year-old, and her mom ... her mom could make the cake blindfolded and handcuffed.

Susan wouldn't call herself competitive. She just happened to be -- occasionally -- as stubborn as a goat and more tenacious than a hound. Which meant that every six months, when no witnesses were around, Susan tried making the cake.

So far, it hadn't been going too well.

She pushed up her sleeves -- again -- took another deep, bracing breath and reached for a fresh egg from the third carton. One of the more ticklish problems with the recipe was needing to separate twelve eggs.

She could separate a white from a yolk, for Pete's sake. She wasn't helpless in akitchen. It was just ... she'd been at this for two hours already and so far had only successfully separated four eggs. Naturally, having done this before, she'd known enough to buy several spare cartons of eggs, but at this point she was running out of bowls. Every bowl and saucer she owned seemed to be filled with congealing whites and yolks, extending a sticky trail from the counter to the table.

She cracked yet another egg on the counter edge.

The damn thing slipped.

Goo dribbled over the lip of the counter, down the cupboard face and then oozed to the floor. At least the poor thing wasn't lonely. A considerable amount of goo from its sister eggs had already oozed to the floor.

Susan's lips firmed.

Her eyes narrowed.

Her condo -- her wonderful, elegant, beautifully decorated and well-loved suburban condo -- was normally ultra-clean. Susan liked her stuff tidy. The kitchen decor included a white tile floor, a Corian countertop and sink in more of that dazzling toothpaste white and a colorful, original Prateek hung on the breakfast nook wall. Two hours ago, her place could have been photographed for a magazine spread.

Not anymore.

Well, enough was enough. She made $92,500 a year. Had a responsible buyer's job that she'd learned and earned from the ground up. She'd raised a daughter alone, worked her way through a degree at the University of Michigan, paid her bills on time, was a self-supporting, self-reliant tough cookie of a woman. There was a time she'd fiercely wanted love in her life, but there was only one man she'd ever really wanted, and thinking about him just ruffled all her emotional feathers -- and annoyed the hell out of her. So forget that. The point was the cake.

She was way too smart to let a #$*#&((* cake beat her. It would be like letting the family down, and Susan didn't let down the people she loved. That was an absolute for her, because if you let down someone you loved, it could haunt your heart forever and ever. So maybe the cake would seem like an itsy-bitsy issue to an outsider -- but not to her. And since she had to leave tomorrow for a West Coast business trip, tonight was the last free time she had in a blue moon to conquer this dadblamed recipe.

Resolute, calling on the powerful force of her indomitable spirit -- and all baking gods within hearing distance -- she scooped up another egg and firmly cracked it on the edge of a stainless steel bowl. For no reason whatsoever, the shell splintered. It happened so fast. Sure, most of the white made it into the bowl, but quicker than a blink, the yolk had plopped in there and broken and blended with the white. Susan gazed at the newest mess, flabbergasted. How could this possibly keep happening?

It had to be the chicken, she thought darkly. None of this was her fault. Somewhere there was a farm where a delinquent chicken -- with attitude -- had deliberately produced this faulty batch of eggs. It was the chicken with the oppositional defiance problem who needed counseling. Not her.

The more Susan imagined the crazy fantasy, the more she found herself smiling ... and then outright laughing.

Okay, okay, so she was a complete failure in the kitchen. Always had been, probably always would be. Yeah, she'd try the cake in another few months -- and probably fail again. So it cost her sanity and completely destroyed her kitchen. She didn't really care.

When it came down to it, her life was good.

More than good.

She'd struggled for so many years, but finally her life seemed to be on a solid, peaceful track. Becca was thriving in her first teaching job. Her mom seemed quietly happy. A few troubling thorns had poked into Susan's job, but she had huge hopes this West Coast trip would give her the means to fix those. All in all, her life was going as smooth as a baby's bottom.

For once, there was absolutely nothing serious to worry about.

Who could ask for more?