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Young or not, that’s precisely what he planned—until just recently. Guilt nipped him again. “Let me guess. You think you can help me find the perfect woman.”
“That is my business.” One finely arched eyebrow lifted, tugging that intriguing little mole along with it. “Care to let me try?”
“No.”
“Why not? If you don’t believe in my service, what do you have to worry about?”
It wasn’t quite a dare, but it seemed awfully close. He narrowed his eyes. “What’s in it for you?”
“Nothing, really. I’ll even waive my usual fee. Call it a goodwill gesture.”
Good will, my butt, Cam thought. But two could play her game, and he was curious just how far she would go with her little matchmaking scheme. Make the stakes high enough, and she would back down.
“All right,” he said slowly, stalling so he could think. “But let’s sweeten the pot with a deadline. Forget true love, I’ll give you until...Valentine’s Day to find me a woman worth a second date. If you succeed, I’ll pay you twice your normal fee. Heck, I’ll even do a testimonial if you want.”
“And if I fail?”
She wasn’t backing down, he realized. Time to tighten the screws. Cam leaned forward, offered his most carnivorous smile. “If you fail, you’ll take out a full-page ad in the Traverse City Record-Eagle admitting you’re a lousy matchmaker, admitting, Miss Daniels, that you are a fraud.”
That should do it, he thought, as he watched her eyelids flicker in shock.
“That would destroy my business.”
“If you believe in your service, what do you have to worry about?” he said, parroting her earlier comment.
Her lips thinned, settling into a tight line. He knew he had her. She wouldn’t agree, which suited him fine. He had no desire to be fixed up with strange and probably desperate women. Feeling magnanimous, he decided a heartfelt apology on her part would suffice. As well as a solemn promise to take his name off her business’s mailing list.
But then she stuck out her scarred right hand.
“You have a deal, Mr. Foley.”
Maddie rather liked the way her announcement caused Cameron Foley’s mouth to slacken in surprise. Opened or closed, it was a nice mouth, the bottom lip slightly fuller than the top one. But there was nothing soft about his features, nothing that could be called feminine. Cameron Foley was all man, from the slight stubble that shaded his strong jaw to the clearly defined muscles of his forearms. He reminded her a little of the actor Dennis Quaid, ruggedly masculine, cocky, just a bit reckless. And incredibly sexy. The unexpected direction of her thoughts shocked Maddie. In her line of work, of course she noticed such details about men. But this wasn’t some mere clinical observation—the little tug of attraction was as unmistakable as it was unwelcome and pointless. She lowered the hand that he had yet to shake and fiddled with a paper clip while she waited for him to find his voice.
Finally, he said hoarsely, “I do?”
To lighten her own mood she quipped, “Practicing for the wedding already?”
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he bit out, his face darkening like a thundercloud. “I’m not looking for another wife. No one can replace Angela.”
“Please forgive me. I was only teasing, but it was in extremely poor taste. You’re right. No one will ever hold that same place in your heart.” Her tone earnest, she continued, “But perhaps I can introduce you to someone whose company you’ll enjoy. Someone you’ll want to take out on that second date. So, do we still have a deal?”
Maddie wasn’t sure why she felt so compelled to help him. She had far more to lose than he did. But something about Cameron Foley tugged at her, making her want to reach out. Perhaps it was because despite all of his angry denials, he seemed so lonely.
He hesitated a moment, looking torn, before giving a jerky nod. And Maddie got the feeling that even though he’d been the one to set the terms, his participation in their wager would be begrudging at best. Well, the race went to the swift, so Maddie pulled her chair closer to the desk and booted up the computer.
“Terrific. I’ll need to gather some background information. Standard stuff like date of birth, height, weight, health history, that kind of thing. If you’ll take a seat we can get started.”
He backed up a step. “I don’t have time for that today. Driving into the city for this little discussion has put me behind schedule as it is. Some of us have real work to do.”
Ignoring the insult, she said, “Tomorrow, then?”
“Busy. Sorry.” He tucked his hands in the front pockets of a pair of well-worn jeans, looking not the least bit contrite.
The chair’s upholstery creaked as Maddie leaned forward and rested her elbows on the desk. “Do you plan to win this bet by default, Mr. Foley? I realize Valentine’s Day is nearly eight months away, but that’s not a lot of time. It will be a few weeks before I even have your video and background ready.”
“No video.”
“No video,” she repeated, and blew out a sigh of frustration. “So, you want to see them, but they can’t see you, is that the idea?”
“I don’t need to see them.” He inclined his head, smiled mockingly. “If you’re as good as you say you are, Miss Daniels, I’d be a fool not to trust your expert judgment. Besides, this way you can’t claim afterward that I only picked women I knew wouldn’t suit me.”
“Oh, I’m good,” she assured him, and had to quash the urge to blush when one of his eyebrows inched up in unmistakable male speculation. It didn’t seem to matter that she knew he was deliberately baiting her.
“Of course, I’ll have to do a more thorough screening than usual, which means taking up more of your time,” she said as sweetly as possible. “I’ll need to know everything about you, Mr. Foley, your likes, dislikes—all the telling little quirks and habits that often come through in my clients’ videos. So, when do we start?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw as he pulled his hands from his pockets and settled them on his hips. He glanced away, and she thought he might be ready to renege on the hasty bargain they’d struck. But then his gaze drifted back to hers and his lips twitched with a smirk.
“When you buy that ad in the Record-Eagle, I want it to be in color. It’ll attract more attention that way—and it will be more expensive.”
She fought the urge to roll her eyes. Such a reaction would be neither professional nor, as her mother would point out if present, ladylike. Still, she made a mental note to write in Cameron Foley’s file that the man could be insufferable when he thought he was on the winning side of an argument.
“Fine, but it won’t come to that.” An idea occurred to her then. “I have a little stipulation of my own.”
“And that is?”
“The second date, you’ll bring roses—a dozen, long-stemmed and red. And you’ll take her to the Trillium,” Maddie added, naming one of the area’s nicest and priciest restaurants. “You do own a suit, I hope, because you’ll have to wear one.”
She pretended not to hear him mutter something obscene about neckties.
“So, when do we get started?” she asked again.
“Thursday is the best I can do, say noon, and you’ll have to come to me.” He nodded toward the wrinkled paper on her desk. “You know where I live.”
He walked to the door and opened it, but hesitated at the threshold. Turning, he smiled, losing all semblance of the outraged man whose grief had propelled him to stomp into her office fifteen minutes earlier, demanding an explanation, expecting an apology. But, if possible, his calm demeanor and that devilishly sexy grin on his face made Maddie even more determined.
“I’m going to win,” he said with conviction.
“Yes, Mr. Foley, you are.” She allowed herself a moment to enjoy his startled expression, before adding, “Just not the way you think.”
It was dark when Maddie arrived at her apartment, the converted upstairs of a souvenir shop in Traverse City’s quaint downtown. The shop had long since closed for the day, but several nearby restaurants and bars were open, so the streets were cluttered with tourists—“fudgies” as the locals liked to call them. The term was both derogatory and affectionate. The area’s economy—including its fudge shops—largely depended on downstaters, but no one particularly cared for the staggering crush of humanity that invaded the northern Michigan town almost as soon as the ice melted on the bay.
Maddie had no view of Lake Michigan’s lovely aqua water from her tiny living room window, and a closet might have been more spacious than the place’s only bedroom. It was a definite step down from the comfortable house she’d grown up in, and a huge tumble from the large Grosse Pointe estate she’d last called home. Its main selling points were cheap rent and a central location. She could walk to work—a definite plus since she didn’t care to drive even though she had a car, and the exercise was good physical therapy.
She toed off her flats, leaving them on the mat by the front door. A lamp burned cheerfully in her living room thanks to a timer, but other than that the place was dark and quiet. Lonely quiet, which was why she preferred to work late. No reason to rush home to an empty apartment. An empty life.
As she crossed the room to draw the blinds, she glanced hopefully at the answering machine. No messages. She picked up the phone, dialed the familiar number and waited. Her mother answered on the fourth ring, the South thick in Eliza Daniels’s honeyed tone.
“Hello, Mother. It’s Maddie.”
“Why, Madison, this is a surprise. It’s rather late. Your father and I were just getting ready for bed. How are you, dear?”
“I’m fine.” The polite response slipped effortlessly from Maddie’s lips. She shook her head, tried again with the truth. “Actually, Mother, I’m not fine. In fact, I’m having a really bad day.”
On the other end of the line, Eliza made an appropriately sympathetic sound. “I’m sorry to hear that you’re under the weather. Is it your...infirmity that’s giving you trouble?”
If it hadn’t so perfectly summed up the awkwardness of their relationship, Maddie might have chuckled at the discreet euphemism and the way her mother’s tone grew hushed whenever she used it.
“I am a bit sore today, but that’s not what’s bothering me. Do...do you know what today is?”
“Today? Hmm. I’m afraid not.”
For some reason—call it blind hope—Maddie had expected her mother, of all people, to know, to remember.
“Today should have been Michael’s birthday.”
“Michael’s birthday?”
“If he’d been born on his due date, he would have turned one...today.”
Maddie had spent her lunch hour beside his small gravesite—a gravesite only she had ever visited. Silence greeted her stifled sob, and she kicked herself mentally for seeking comfort and commiseration where neither had been forthcoming in the past.
“A good night’s sleep is what you need, dear. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“My baby will still be dead in the morning. No amount of sleep is going to change that. Why can’t we ever talk about what happened, Mother?” she be-seeched.
Eliza Daniels considered an emotional outburst as gauche as wearing white shoes after Labor Day. It simply was not done. She went on as if Maddie had not spoken. “Do you have any of those pills left that the doctor prescribed after the accident? Perhaps you should take one.”
Ah, yes, as far as her mother was concerned, there was nothing a little Valium couldn’t fix. Maddie shook her head in sad acceptance. Arguing would be pointless. “Yes, perhaps I’ll do that. I should have thought of it myself. Thank you, Mother.”
Relief evident in her tone, Eliza replied, “You’re welcome, dear. Sleep well.”
“I’m sure I will. Give Daddy my love.”
Maddie hung up, feeling even more fatigued. Her limp was more pronounced as she trudged down the short hall to the bathroom and turned on the tub’s faucet. She wouldn’t resort to a tranquilizer, but a nice long soak might ease the aching pain in her knee and hip. She added a capful of lavender-scented bubble bath.
She shed her clothing, secured her hair in a quick topknot, and gingerly lowered her scarred body into the bathwater. As it had for the past several months, work remained her best source of escape, so she redirected her thoughts to Cameron Foley and the unconventional bargain they’d struck earlier in the day. He said he wanted to be left alone, but despite his vehement words, Maddie hadn’t been convinced. It was the aching loss evident beneath his gruff words that had prompted her to put her livelihood on the line to find him a match. He seemed so in need of a happy ending.
“A happy ending,” she mused aloud. The words echoed in the tiny bathroom, taunting her.
Cameron Foley had accused Maddie of being a fraud, and perhaps she was. At the very least, she knew she was guilty of living vicariously. There would be no happy ending for her.
She glanced at her left hand, which was ringless now. The sad truth was that as hard as she worked to find matches and mates for her clients, at twenty-eight, Maddie Daniels was divorced, broken and alone. And she had long since given up any hope of knowing or deserving the kind of true love that caused Cameron Foley to still mourn a wife who’d been dead three years.
Chapter Two
Thursday dawned clear and bright, the perfect weather for a drive. The roads were dry, the sun a warm, glowing orb climbing higher in the eastern sky. Even so, Maddie’s footsteps were hesitant as she walked to the parking lot behind the souvenir shop. Her slow pace had nothing to do with the stiffness in her leg and hip. In addition to her trepidation about seeing Cameron Foley again, she hated to drive.
Biting her lip, she slid onto the front seat of her car and fastened the safety belt even before inserting the key into the ignition. Since the accident fifteen months earlier, she’d gotten past the paralyzing fear of being in an automobile, but not the passionate dislike of operating one.
Driving five miles under the posted speed limit, she pulled onto Highway 22 and headed north toward the tiny, artsy town of Suttons Bay. To her right, sunlight danced on the calm waters of the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay. To her left, vacation homes dotted the hillside. The farther she drove, however, the more rural the landscape became. She smiled as row after row of cherry trees replaced man-made structures on the rolling countryside. The trees were heavy with fruit now, their boughs seeming to bend under the weight of sweet cherries that already looked ripe and inviting. This was cherry country, and despite the constant development pressure farmers felt to sell off the prime land their orchards occupied, the local people were proud of their crop. Eighty percent of the nation’s cherries were grown here and in a handful of other Michigan counties.
Recalling the statistic, Maddie wasn’t surprised when five miles outside of Suttons Bay, she spotted the big red sign that read Foley Cherry Farm.
“Of course.”
She might have guessed Cameron’s occupation. His tanned face and forearms, as well as the well-worn denim that had hugged his powerful build, had all hinted at time spent outdoors.
Gravel crunched under her tires when she turned the car onto Mockingbird Lane, nothing but a plume of dust visible through her rearview mirror. It had been a dry spring, and summer wasn’t promising to be any wetter. Cherry trees lined either side of the road as far as she could see, lush with fruit and postcard perfect. Finally, a large farmhouse came into view. It was set back from the road on the crest of a hill, its lowest level partially built into the slope. A big bay window jutted from the stone facade, above it two cedar-shingled gables gazed cheerfully out over the orchards.
It was a beautiful home, a serene setting, but Maddie’s pulse throbbed in her temples as she parked the car and gathered her briefcase. What kind of mood would Cameron Foley be in today?
Shrugging off her nerves, she walked to the front door. It was yanked open before she could knock. A girl of about six stood in front of her. She wore denim overall shorts and a pink shirt. Her dark hair was pulled into a pair of adorably crooked pigtails. There were matching bandages on her knees and a smudge of something that looked like flour on one of her chubby cheeks.
She eyed Maddie speculatively before asking, “Who are you?” The words whistled out from the darling gap between her two front teeth.
Maddie leaned forward at the waist. When she was nearly eye level with the girl, she replied, “I’m Maddie Daniels. And who might you be?”
“I’m Caroline Foley. I live here.”
“You’re lucky. It’s a nice house.”
The girl shrugged, then her pixie face scrunched comically. “Are you the know-it-all I heard Daddy telling Mrs. Haversham about?”
The insult, delivered so earnestly in the child’s squeaky voice, caused Maddie to chuckle. “Yes, that would be me.”
So, Cameron Foley had a daughter, a delightful little imp of a girl who apparently had inherited her father’s gift for being blunt. The envy she felt was instantaneous and accompanied by a painful mental chorus of “if onlys.”
“Oh, Miss Daniels!” a woman called, rushing into the foyer behind Caroline. She was about sixty and as plump as a Thanksgiving turkey. “I’m Mrs. Haversham, Cam’s housekeeper. He told me to expect you.”
Maddie shook off her melancholy and sent Caroline a wink as she straightened. “So I hear. And call me Maddie, please.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Maddie.” Mrs. Haversham wiped a pair of thick hands on the apron she wore and glanced over her shoulder when a timer chimed.
“I hope I haven’t come at a bad time. Mr. Foley did tell me noon.”
“Not at all. That will be my apple pie. Cam is in the orchard. He said to send you out when you got here.” She turned to Caroline, surreptitiously wiping the flour from the little girl’s cheek with a grandmotherly pat. “Dearie, why don’t you show Maddie the way?”
Maddie followed Caroline around the side of the house, across the lawn and into the orchard, falling farther behind with each tentative step she took. Walking on a sidewalk often proved a trial, but walking on an uneven dirt path littered with nature’s debris had Maddie wishing she’d brought the cane she’d relegated to the back of her closet. She hated the thing and the way it advertised her disability, but using it would have been far less humiliating than what happened to her next. She stumbled, her foot twisting on an exposed root, and her world tilted. Windmilling her arms like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon did nothing to restore her precarious balance, but it did send her briefcase flying. To her utter mortification, Maddie landed with a jarring thud on her backside in the middle of Cameron Foley’s orchard.
“Caroline!” she called. The little girl had danced several yards ahead, propelled by the boundless energy of youth, but she bulleted back now, eyes huge at the sight of an adult sprawled on the ground.
“Gosh, are you hurt?”
“No.” Unless she counted her pride, Maddie thought wryly. “But I think I’ll just rest for a moment. Could you, um, go find your father and ask him to meet me here?”
Maddie watched Caroline shoot down a row of trees, envying the girl’s surefootedness. When she was alone, she put dignity aside and crawled on all fours to the briefcase and the smattering of papers that had tumbled out of its exterior pockets. She gathered them up, stuffed them back in and was preparing to use the case as leverage to help her stand when an incredulous deep voice stopped her cold.
“What the heck happened to you?”
