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Wish Upon a Matchmaker
Marie Ferrarella
Four-year-old Ginny Scarborough has picked out her new mummy – Danni Everett, the local celebrity chef who hired Ginny’s widowed father, Stone, to renovate her house.Danni can’t deny the immediate zing she feels for the handsome contractor. So why was Stone holding back when everything between them felt so right?
“You don’t want to be labeled a culinary tease now, do you?” Stone asked the question so seriously, for a moment Danni didn’t realize that he was kidding her.
“Heaven forbid!” She laughed. He was being kind, and she appreciated it.
“Good, then go whip up something. Impress me with your ability to create something delicious out of nothing.”
“I’ll do my best.” It felt good to laugh, she thought. Good to feel useful again. A surge of deep gratitude spiked through her. “You’re a good man, Stone Scarborough.”
He shrugged off the compliment, not comfortable with its weight. “I’m only as good as I have to be,” he told her.
Why that sounded like a promise of things to come to her she didn’t know, but it did.
And it sent a little thrill of anticipation through her.
About the Author
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA
Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.
Wish Upon a Matchmaker
Marie Ferrarella
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To
Andrew Gallagher,
who mentioned
his daughter’s name
to me
and inspired a story.
Prologue
“Are you the lady who finds mommies?”
The high-pitched, rather intelligent little voice cut a hole in Maizie Sommers’s mental haze. For the last half hour, the successful Realtor had been busy putting together an ad for her newest local real estate listing so that it could be entered on her website. Finding just the right words to place the proper emphasis on the twenty-year-old ranch house’s best features had been nothing short of a challenge. The term fixer-upper carried such a negative connotation.
Absorbed in the task, Maizie had only vaguely heard the front door to her office opening and closing. It had registered as just so much background noise. Part of her thought she’d only imagined it.
Especially when she’d glanced in the direction of the door and hadn’t seen anyone come in.
But there obviously was a reason for that. The person who had come in was only approximately half the size of an adult.
Maizie stopped working and after looking around, she half rose in her seat and looked over the edge of her desk. Ten small fingertips were firmly pressed against it. The little girl pushed herself up as far as she could go, standing on the very tiptoes of her black patent-leather shoes.
Maizie put down her pen and smiled at the child, judging her to be around four, or possibly a small five. Slight and a strawberry-blonde, her newest visitor had exceptionally intelligent-looking blue eyes. She was going to be a knockout in a dozen years, Maizie judged.
“Hello.”
The girl, who more than anything resembled a perfect little doll, tossed her head—sending her curls bouncing—and paused only a moment to politely return the greeting, “Hello,” before she got back down to business.
No doubt, she was a woman on a mission.
“Are you the lady who finds mommies?” the pint-size strawberry-blonde asked again. “My friend Greg said you found one for his dad and that she’s really nice and now they’re all very happy.”
Maizie never forgot a name, especially not a child’s name. The little girl was talking about Greg and Gary Muldare. After Sheila, Micah Muldare’s aunt, had come to see her, lamenting the young widower’s state, she and her two dearest friends had strategized and gotten the boys’ father, Micah, together with a bright, up-and-coming dynamo of a lawyer, Tracy Ryan, who solved Micah’s legal problems and along the way wound up becoming Mrs. Micah Muldare.
Word was getting around faster and faster, Maizie mused with a smile. She’d had walk-in clients before—both for her professional services and for her unofficial ones, but none of her clients had ever come in the economy size.
“What happened to your mommy, dear?” Maizie asked the girl kindly.
And just what was the child doing here by herself? Had the little girl run away in order to come see her? Her own daughter had been precocious, but even she hadn’t been this independent at such a young age.
There was just the slightest hint of sorrow in her voice as the girl said, “Mommy died before I could remember her, but Daddy remembers, and it makes him sad when he does. I want Daddy to be happy like Greg’s daddy is.” Her voice took on conviction as she said, “My daddy needs one. He needs a mommy,” she clarified in case that had gotten lost in the shuffle of words. “Can you find him one? And make her pretty, because my daddy said he wants one as pretty as me. That’s why he’s with Elizabeth now,” she confided. “She’s pretty, but she’s not a mommy, just a lady.” Lowering her voice as she raised herself up as far as she could on her toes so that only Maizie could hear, she said in what amounted to a stage whisper, “I don’t think she likes kids.”
Before Maizie could recover or comment on either the little girl’s request, or her summation of her father’s current relationship, the door to her widely sought-after real estate agency opened a second time in the space of less than five minutes.
It wasn’t that Maizie was unaccustomed to a lot of foot traffic, thanks to both her reputation and the popular shopping center location of her agency, she was more than used to a constant flow of humanity. However, the two people who worked for her were currently out showing properties, and she had no appointments on her calendar for at least an hour. She’d been promising herself a quick lunch now for the last ninety minutes—the second she finished writing the ad.
But something far more interesting had come up and her neglected stomach was pushed into second place.
Humor curved the corners of Maizie’s mouth. She’d never had a walk-in who wasn’t able to see over her desk before.
But just as Maizie had gotten her newest would-be client to tell her story, an utterly frazzled-looking woman suddenly burst into her real estate office. The second she did, the woman made a beeline for the tiny visitor who was standing on the other side of Maizie’s desk.
“Virginia Ann Scarborough, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” the blonde demanded as she fell to her knees and smothered the little girl in a huge hug that utterly reeked of relief as well as panic.
“No,” the little girl replied in a small, somewhat contrite voice. Her pained expression told Maizie that the girl was merely enduring the hug. Apparently, unlike the distraught woman who’d found her, she hadn’t been at all afraid.
“I was trying to find a mommy for Daddy,” the child explained, as if that would clear everything up and exonerate her as well.
“You know you’re not supposed to run off like that, Ginny,” the woman chided.
Making a swift survey of the little girl, the woman appeared satisfied that the only thing worse for wear were her own nerves. She rose to her feet and only then turned her attention to the other person in the room.
“I’m very sorry about this,” she apologized to Maizie. “I hope my niece didn’t break anything.”
“I wasn’t in here long enough to break anything, Aunt Virginia,” the girl protested indignantly.
Maizie rose from behind her desk, a little bemused. “Are you her guardian?” she asked the woman, nodding at the little girl.
“I’m her aunt.” She slanted an exasperated look at the little girl that was nonetheless laced with love. “Her long-suffering aunt. I swear, Ginny, if you weren’t named after me …” Ginny’s aunt let her voice trail off, then flashed another apologetic smile at Maizie as she took a firm hold of Ginny’s hand, her intent clear. She was taking the little girl out of the office. “I’m sorry about all this—”
“No, please, wait,” Maizie coaxed in her best maternal, nurturing voice. “You look a little frazzled. Let me get you a nice cup of tea.” She glanced down at Ginny. “And I think I might have some lemonade for you if you like.”
“Yes, please,” Ginny said with restrained enthusiasm.
“No, really, we’ve been enough trouble already,” Virginia protested.
“Nonsense. You’re no trouble at all and I must say my curiosity has been piqued,” Maizie admitted as she went to the small island against the wall that housed an all-in-one unit, combining a small refrigerator, a stove with microwave features and a sink on one side. With a minimum of movements, she made a hot Chai tea for Virginia and poured a glass of lemonade for the small whirling dervish who’d been named after her.
“Now then, Ginny,” Maizie began, addressing Ginny as she handed her the glass of lemonade, “you said something about your daddy needing a wife.”
Hearing that, Virginia’s eyes widened in stunned amazement. “Ginny, you didn’t—why would you do that?” the woman demanded of her niece.
“Because she finds them,” Ginny told her aunt, nodding at Maizie. “Greg said so,” she said with the conviction of the very young.
“This lady runs a real estate agency,” Virginia pointed out, her nerves beginning to fray no doubt.
“Perhaps I should explain,” Maizie interjected, coming to Ginny’s rescue. “My friends and I dabble in matchmaking on the side—there’s no charge,” she said quickly in case the other woman thought this was some sort of a scam, “just the satisfaction of bringing together two people who were meant for each other but who might never—without the proper intervention—come together,” she said. Her eyes shifted to Ginny. “Like your friend Greg’s father and Tracy Ryan. My friends and I supply the ‘intervention,’ so to speak,” she told Virginia.
“Is that why you begged me to bring you here, to the ice cream parlor?” she asked her niece.
“They have very good ice cream,” Ginny piped up innocently.
“See what I’m up against?” Virginia asked Maizie wearily.
Maizie did her best to appear sympathetic. In her line of work, she’d had a great deal of practice. “Are you her father’s sister?” she asked.
Virginia nodded. “His name is Stone Scarborough. I’m his younger sister. I moved in with him to help out after Eva—Ginny’s mother—died. That was a year and a half ago. I’m still helping,” she added.
And you want to move on with your life, Maizie surmised from the other woman’s choice of words and her tone.
Maizie sat back in her chair, her mouth curving in a smile of anticipation. She could sense the thrill of a challenge taking hold. Nothing she loved more than being challenged.
“So, tell me about your brother,” she coaxed Virginia.
“I don’t know where to start,” Virginia said with a sigh.
“At the beginning is always a good place,” Maizie encouraged.
“I guess it is.” Taking a deep breath, the other woman began to talk, with frequent interjections coming from Ginny.
Maizie listened attentively to both.
And a plan began to form.
Chapter One
Stone Scarborough stared at his younger sister, trying to make sense out of what she had, rather breathlessly, just told him.
Whatever it was, Virginia seemed very animated about it and he’d managed to glean that it had something to do with the business card she had just pressed into his hand. But her narrative came out so disjointed he found himself feeling the way he had back in the days when he’d walk into the middle of a movie with his late wife—Eva never managed to be on time for anything no matter how hard she tried—and he was forced to try to make heads or tails out of what he was subsequently watching.
In addition to Virginia’s overwhelming flow of words, his daughter, Ginny, seemed to have caught the fever and was fairly bouncing up and down right in front of him. It was as if both were experiencing a massive sugar attack.
In an attempt to sort out the verbiage, Stone held his hand up to get Virginia to stop talking for a moment, regroup and begin at the beginning.
“Run this by me one more time,” Stone urged his sister. “From the top,” he added.
His sister Virginia shook her head, her light blond ponytail swishing from side to side. “You know, for a brilliant man, you can be so slow sometimes.”
“Must be in comparison to the company I keep,” he said drolly. If he practiced for a year, he’d never be able to talk as fast as his sister—or his daughter. “Humor me,” he instructed, looking down at the card in his hand. “Why am I calling this woman?”
Taking a breath, Virginia recited the facts. “The number belongs to Maizie Sommers. She’s a Realtor who owns her own company. She said she needs the name of a good general contractor to recommend to her clients.”
He had never believed in coincidences or good fortune without there being strings of some sort, no matter how invisible, attached.
Consequently, Stone regarded the card in his hand with more than a smattering of suspicion. “And she just walked up to you and said, ‘Hmm, you look like you probably know a good general contractor,’ as she handed her card to you?”
“No.”
Virginia closed her eyes, doing her best to get herself under control. She knew she’d gotten too excited, but the picture that Maizie Sommers had painted for her earlier today had filled her with hope. It had been a very long time since she’d seen her brother with more than an obligatory smile on his lips.
And, like her niece, she really didn’t care for the woman he was currently seeing. Try as she might, she couldn’t get herself to warm up to Elizabeth Wells—and she definitely didn’t see the woman as being Ginny’s stepmother. For one thing, the woman was not the patient sort.
“Okay, from the top,” Virginia announced. “And this time,” she told her brother, “try to pay attention, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stone replied, executing a mock salute and doing his best to be patient.
Stone had just been on the receiving end of disappointing news. The owners of a house he was scheduled to begin work on had just changed their minds and canceled the project on him. That didn’t exactly put him in the best of moods.
He didn’t have time to waste like this. There were cages he needed to rattle in order to replace the work he’d lost. But Virginia had gotten right in his face and insisted that he listen to her.
“Well?” Stone prodded.
Virginia took a deep breath. She decided that she would stay as close to the truth as possible without coming right out and telling her brother that he was being set up—not to take a fall, but to fall in love. If he even suspected that, he would never agree to any of this. And he needed to agree because, at the very least, he would wind up earning some money doing what he did best these days—working with his hands.
Five years ago, he’d been an aerospace engineer. But that industry was all but dead in Southern California, so he had fallen back on what he’d done while working his way through college. He’d worked in construction.
But now that was on shaky grounds. The economy had taken a bite out of everyone’s livelihood and his line of work was seeing a definite downturn. Remodeling was a luxury people felt they could put off until later without any major consequences. Virginia was confident that her brother wouldn’t turn down work.
She just had to sell him on how this had all come about.
“Okay, from the top,” Virginia said, echoing his words, then started with her narrative. “I took Ginny out for some ice cream.”
Stone looked a wee bit exasperated. “Just what she needs, more sugar.” He loved his daughter more than life itself, but there were times when getting her to behave was a challenge—one that wore him out. Stone slanted a glance toward his only child. Ginny had been in constant motion since she and Virginia had walked in. “Is that why she’s bouncing five inches off the ground?” he asked.
“You’re interrupting,” Virginia accused, frowning at him.
