“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

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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.

He suppressed a sigh and waved his sister on. “Sorry, continue.”

“Anyway, we went to that old-fashioned ice cream parlor at the Brubaker Mall, and I got her an ice cream cone. They had so many wonderful flavors to choose from, I couldn’t resist so I decided that I’d get one, too—it’s been a while since I just indulged in a treat,” she explained by way of a sidebar.

“The point, Virginia, Get to the point,” Stone directed. Ever since they were children, the shortest distance between two points for Virginia had never once been a straight line; it always wound up being an elaborate journey—a very pronounced squiggly line if he didn’t adamantly put his foot down about it.

“Okay. While I was getting myself a cone, Ginny decided to go exploring—” Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Virginia slanted a side glance in her brother’s direction. She was waiting to get the inevitable explosion out of the way.

Stone was looking sharply at his daughter. “Ginny, you know better than to go running off like that.”

Rather than protest, Ginny surprised him by looking down contritely at her shoes and murmuring, “Yes, Daddy.”

It wasn’t that his only child was willful. She was just extremely exuberant and given to incredibly energetic enthusiasm. This apparent remorse, however, was a whole different side of her he’d never seen before.

Had something put the fear of consequences into his little girl?

Concerned, Stone glanced back at his sister for a further explanation.

Virginia instantly obliged. “I caught up with Ginny just next door. She’d wandered into a real estate office,” she told him.

Stone could only stare at his sister. Ginny in a toy store he could understand, but what could have possibly attracted his precocious child to walk into a real estate office?

“Why?” he asked, looking from Ginny to his sister and then back again, waiting for one of them to give him a satisfactory answer.

Virginia was at a loss as to how to explain this part and was about to say she had no idea why Ginny did half the things she did when Ginny suddenly said, “I heard you say that you didn’t know if you could find enough work to pay the bills, so I asked the lady if any of the houses in the pictures needed fixing—’cause you could do it.”

Virginia was as stunned as her brother with her niece’s creative explanation. It took her a beat to pick up the lifeline that had just been thrown her way.

“As it turned out, she did,” Virginia confirmed belatedly. “Your daughter charmed her,” Virginia said, putting her arm around Ginny’s small shoulders, “and instead of just ushering us out, the woman said that as a matter of fact, she was currently looking for a good general contractor for her reference file. Naturally, Ginny and I told her you were the best, so she gave me her card and said that you should call her when you had the time.”

It sounded like a fairy tale, but in there somewhere Stone assumed was the truth, otherwise, why had the woman given his sister her card? And, since he suddenly found himself unexpectedly free, what did he have to lose by calling?

“Well,” Stone said slowly, looking the card over again, “I could always use another contact but …” He glanced at his daughter, concerned and reading his own interpretation into what she’d just said. “Honey, we’re going to be just fine,” he assured her. “I don’t want you worrying about things like bills for a long time to come. I’ll take care of us,” he promised.

“Yes, Daddy.” Ginny smiled at him. It was the same smile he’d seen on her mother’s face, Stone thought with a pang. A smile he missed seeing. “I just wanted to help,” she told him.

“You do, honey, just by being you, you do,” Stone assured her. He regarded the card again. No time like the present, he decided. “Okay, let’s see what this Maizie Sommers has to say.”

Ginny crossed her index finger and middle finger on both hands and held them up for him to see as he took out his cell phone.

We’ve got a great little girl, Eva. God but I wish you were here to see her, Stone couldn’t help thinking as he called the number on the card.

He had no way of knowing that his daughter wasn’t crossing her fingers because she was hoping he’d wind up with a job. Ginny was hoping that the “nice lady at the agency” would do for her father what she’d already done for Greg’s father and that was to find her father someone who would be her new mommy.

Stone returned his daughter’s hopeful smile as he heard the phone ringing on the other end.

It rang a total of two times and then he could hear the other end pick up. A sunny voice was saying, “This is Maizie Sommers, how can I help you?”

Stone turned away from his daughter and his sister, focusing his attention on the person on the other end of the call.

“Ms. Sommers, this is Stone Scarborough—” He got no further than that.

“Ah, yes,” Maizie said warmly, “the general contractor. I’ve been waiting for your call.”

Her admission caught him off guard. “You have?” Was business on her end bad, too? And if so, then what sort of work could she possibly have for him? Still, he’d called so he might as well see where this actually wound up leading.

“Absolutely,” she replied. “Are you by any chance available tonight?”

“Tonight?” he echoed, wondering if he’d just made a big mistake.

Something didn’t seem right. Maybe this woman wasn’t looking for a general contractor but for something else entirely. Granted this Maizie Sommers didn’t sound as eager and excited as Virginia had when she’d told him about this, but the woman was incredibly cheerful. Too cheerful to be talking strictly about work.

Several possibilities ran through his head, but he tamped them down until he had more to go on. No point in thinking the worst—yet.

“Yes. Or if that’s too short a notice for you, then perhaps tomorrow evening might be better for you.”

She kept specifying evenings, which made it sound way too much like making arrangements for a date. “Why not in the daytime?” he asked suspiciously.

The woman took the question in stride, making it sound as if she was already prepared for it. Maybe he was being too suspicious, Stone told himself.

“I’m afraid the woman I’m giving your name to isn’t available during the daytime,” Maizie told him. “At least, not until the weekend. She’s busy taping her program during the day,” Maizie explained.

“Her program?” Stone repeated, confused.

This was a lot like talking to Virginia, he thought, wondering if vague obscurity was a gender thing or if he was just slow, the way Virginia had accused him of being. Either way, he was in need of either a further explanation—or subtitles.

“Yes, she has a daily cooking show broadcast on a cable network and right now, her weekdays are taken up taping the program before a studio audience. When she first came out here and signed her contract,” Maizie continued proudly, “I sold her this lovely house. That was about six months ago.

“I got her a really good deal on the house, but that was because the owner was in a hurry to sell. The house needed a lot of work and it was sold as is. She didn’t have the time then, or, I suspect, the money, for repairs. The poor dear was just starting out. But the program’s doing really well and she feels that she can finally afford to have the house fixed up the way she’d like.” Maizie paused for a moment, letting that all sink in before she asked him, “Are you interested, Mr. Scarborough?”

It was work. He was more than interested. “Yes, of course I am.” But he had a question of his own. “Don’t you want to see some of my work before you refer me to someone?”

She liked the fact that he was cautious and that he wasn’t trying to rush her into any sort of an agreement. For her part, she had already researched his background and had seen all she needed to. Virginia Scarborough had shown her a photograph of her brother and given her enough background information to get her started in the right direction.

She felt she had the perfect match for Ginny’s father. Matches usually didn’t present themselves this quickly. They ordinarily took a little time. However, this time she’d thought of Danni almost immediately.

That, to her, was a very good sign.

“Your sister and daughter speak quite highly of you, Mr. Scarborough.”

“And that’s enough?” he asked rather skeptically.

“Yes,” Maizie told him with feeling, and then added with a slight chuckle, “of course, what I saw on your webpage didn’t exactly hurt, either.”

“My webpage?” Stone echoed, confused. He turned to look quizzically at his sister as he said it. This was all news to him.

“Yes, your sister very kindly gave me the URL address. I must say it was very impressive, Mr. Scarborough,” Maizie said warmly. “If my house was in need of work, I would hire you in a minute.”

He supposed that was good news, but he was still a little confused. “Thanks,” he murmured belatedly.

Poor man was probably still trying to figure out what hit him, Maizie thought, amused.

“So, do I have your permission to pass your name on to my client?” she asked. Maizie had learned that it never paid to appear to take things for granted. People liked the illusion of being in charge of their own fate—even when they weren’t.

“Yes, of course,” Stone said with feeling. If this was on the level—and it was beginning to sound that way—he definitely wanted the work. He made a point of never turning anything down.

“Wonderful,” Maizie said, enthused. “I’m sure you’ll be hearing from her shortly,” she promised. “Just so you know, her name is Danni Everett.”

“Danni Everett,” he repeated.

Despite what the woman on the other end of the line had said about a cooking program on one of the cable channels, the name was not familiar to him. But then, he didn’t exactly spend his days watching cable channels or any other channels for that matter. When he wasn’t working—or trying to land work—he spent time with Ginny. That meant being outdoors, not locked in some room with the TV on, tuned to some brain-crushing program.

Stone politely ended the call and then turned to look at his sister again.

“My webpage?” he asked. “I thought we were going to discuss that.” The last he remembered, he’d told Virginia he’d get back to her. She’d obviously decided to go on without him.

“We did discuss it,” Virginia told him innocently. “You said we’d talk about it when you had time. I decided that would take too long so I just put a few simple things together. You can change it any way you want.”

“Oh, thanks,” he said sarcastically.

Virginia sighed. Stone had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the present century for his own good. “Look, I do your accounting for you. I’ve got access to all your old jobs and the before-and-after photos you always take.”

Photos, he thought, that his sister had insisted he take before and after undertaking each job that came his way in order to keep an accurate record of the work that he did do. He was a detail man only insofar as the actual construction work that he did. The other details, organizing the before-and-after photographs, keeping them readily accessible, well, he wasn’t so good at that. But luckily, he now had to admit, Virginia was.

And apparently, she’d put that talent to work. But Stone didn’t want her thinking she was off the hook just yet.

“Just how long has this webpage been up?” he asked.

“About a week,” Virginia answered. However, she avoided looking at him when she said it.

“No, it’s longer than that, Aunt Virginia,” Ginny piped up. “You told Maizie it was up for two months.”

Virginia offered her brother a forced smile. “I exaggerated,” she told him.

“To whom?” he asked. “Her or me?”

“Um…”

The time didn’t matter as much as the actual deed. “The point is, Virginia, you put up the webpage without telling me.”

“I was waiting for the right time to tell you,” she answered. It looked as if she had waited too long. With a sigh of surrender, she said, “I guess this is it.”

Virginia took her netbook out of her purse, turned it on and then typed in the appropriate address. Once the website was up, she turned the computer around so that the screen faced him.

“What do you think?”

Stone took in the various photographs he’d taken of his work, work he was very proud of and with good reason. Still, he shrugged carelessly. “Not bad.”

That sounded like typical Stone, Virginia thought. He wasn’t exactly heavy-handed with his praise. Nonetheless, she splayed a hand over her chest, tilting her head back dramatically as she cried, “Oh, be still my heart. I don’t know if I can handle such heady praise.”

Stone got the message. And, in all honesty, the website did look rather impressive. She’d done a commendable job.

“Okay, good.” He paused. “Better than good,” he amended.

Virginia did a rapid movement with her hand, urging him on. “Keep going,” she coaxed.

The phone rang just then. “Later,” he told his sister. Taking his cell out again, he answered the call. “Hello?”

“Is this Scarborough Construction?” an exceedingly melodic voice on the other end of the call asked.

He thought he detected just a trace of a Southern accent in the woman’s voice. He caught himself trying to place it.

“Yes,” he replied, wondering if this was the woman the Realtor had just told him about. Could she have gotten back to them so quickly?

He was all set to doubt it, but then he heard the woman with the melodic voice say, “Maizie Sommers gave me your phone number. I was wondering if we could get together tomorrow evening … if you’re free, that is. I’d like to show you around my home and explain to you what I’d like to have done.”

He felt as if he were standing in the direct path of a city-owned snowplow. “Sure. What time?”

“Any time after four would be fine.”

“Four-thirty?” he suggested.

“Perfect.” She rattled off her address, then said, “I’ll see you then.”

“Four-thirty,” he repeated, confirming the time just before he hung up. Turning around, he saw both his sister and his daughter smiling at him. Widely. “What?” he asked uncertainly.

“Nothing,” Virginia replied quickly.

But she knew if she didn’t say something, he might grow suspicious. Her brother was the type who, upon finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow would look around to see if there was a group of leprechauns somewhere, having fun at his expense.

“I can just hear the sound of bills getting paid,” she answered cheerfully.

“Well, don’t count your checks before they’re written,” he cautioned, thinking of the job that had just fallen through earlier. “You never know how these things can turn out.”

“Sorry,” Virginia murmured. “Don’t know what came over me.” There was a time, Virginia couldn’t help remembering, when her brother was just as optimistic as she was. She missed those times.

I hope you’re as good as Ginny thinks you are, Maizie Sommers, Virginia said silently. I can’t wait for my brother to fall in love again and become human, like he was with Eva.

Chapter Two

Sometimes, when Danielle Everett thought about it, it still took her breath away.

Three years ago, she was living in Atlanta, struggling to pay off not just her student loans but also the mountain of medical bills her father had left in his wake. At the time, she was working at an insurance company, living on a shoestring and feeling her soul being sucked away, bit by bit, with every passing day.

Back then, Danni was vainly trying to keep her head above water and wondering if her utterly unfounded optimism would eventually erode because from any angle she looked at it, her optimism had absolutely nothing to hook on to.

All she wanted back then was to wake up in the morning and not feel as if she were struggling against an oppressive feeling. She didn’t want to feel that if she ever let her guard down, she’d be a victim of the dark, bottomless depression whispering along the perimeter of her very being.

Back then she’d never dreamed that she could actually wake up grinning from ear to ear—the way she did these days.

Granted she was as exhausted now as she had been back then, but then the exhaustion had come from trying to keep her footing on the treadmill she was running on—the treadmill that threatened, at any moment, to pull her under. Now she was exhausted from trying to do ten things at once. The difference being was that these were ten things she loved doing.

Back then she’d been a company drone, an anonymous, tiny cog in a huge machine, expected to perform and make no waves. These days she was her own person. And, in many ways, her own boss as well. She took suggestions, not orders. Which made a world of difference to her everyday existence.

And all because of a skill, a talent she’d never even thought twice about.

Danni cooked like a dream and baked like a celestial being.

It all started innocently enough. She began by cooking for friends, then for friends of friends. Friends of friends who insisted on paying her for her time and skill. Before Danni knew it, she had branched out to catering full-time. There was no room left to squeeze in her day job.

The happiest day of her life was the day Danni handed in her resignation to Roosevelt Life Insurance’s actuarial department. Her second-happiest day was the day she paid off the last of her late father’s medical bills. Her last student loan payment followed a year later.

She was finally solvent and didn’t owe anyone anything!

By then Danni realized that she was doing far more baking than cooking. A few heady connections later and she found herself being courted to star in a brand-new cooking show.

Initially, Danni had some serious doubts about going in that direction and she hesitated about making the commitment, which also meant relocating cross-country. After all, weren’t there more than enough cooking shows already all over the airwaves? Their life expectancy was projected to be somewhere a little longer than that of a common fruit fly—but not by all that much.

By then Danni had become too successful catering parties for an established clientele to want to set herself up for failure again.

She had no gimmick, she protested to the agent who had approached her with the idea of cooking before a live audience. She had nothing to set her apart from all the other chefs on TV.

“I think you’re selling yourself short, Danielle,” the agent, a thin, diminutive man named Baxter Warren told her with more than a little conviction. “A lot of people—the right people,” he emphasized dramatically, “think you make desserts to die for.”

As the words came out of his mouth, the agent paused for a moment, looking as if he had just had a world-altering epiphany. And then his thin lips split into a wide smile.

“That’s what we’ll call the show. Danielle’s Desserts to Die For.”

“Most people call me Danni,” she’d told him.

“Danni’s Desserts to Die For,” he amended, then nodded his head. “Even better.” Baxter gave her a penetrating, almost mesmerizing look. It was easy to see that he was exceedingly pleased with himself. “You can’t say no.”

She didn’t.

Danni had packed up her pots—Baxter told her she could buy a complete designer set of new ones once she landed in Southern California, but she’d insisted on bringing the ones that she’d been using. The ones her father had given her before she’d even hit her teens. They had belonged to her grandmother and to Danni the pots were the very embodiment of family history. They represented who and what she was.

She’d also brought along a box full of recipes. Recipes that she habitually—and unconsciously—augmented each time she prepared them.

With her prized possessions safely packed away, Danni had flown from Atlanta to begin a new life in the land of endless summers and endless beaches: Southern California. The cable station where her half-hour program was scheduled to be filmed was located in Burbank. Baxter had encouraged her to find either an apartment or a house in the area.

But the pace in Burbank was too frantic for her and she longed for something a little more sedate and laid-back, as well as a town that was a little less populated. What she was looking for was something to remind her of the Atlanta suburb that she’d left behind.

She was searching for a little bit of home in a completely unfamiliar environment.

She found what she was looking for in Bedford, with the help of a Realtor one of the cameramen working on her new show had recommended.

Maizie Sommers.

Moreover, Maizie, with her low key approach, her soft voice and especially her kind smile, reminded her a great deal of the mother she’d lost years ago.

What Danni appreciated most of all was that her association with Maizie was not terminated when escrow closed. When the woman urged her to call if she ever had a problem or needed anything—or just to talk, Danni believed her.

As a matter of fact, they’d talked several times since Danni had sent out her change-of-address postcards to the people back in Atlanta and Danni had even dropped by the woman’s office a couple of times, always bearing some sort of new dessert she was currently trying out.

For her part, Maizie never put her off or told her she’d come at a bad time. On the contrary, she’d greeted her like a long-lost, beloved family member—like a daughter.

“You do realize that just the pleasure of your company would be more than enough,” Maizie told her when she’d dropped by a week ago. “You really don’t need to bribe me—although, I must say, you really outdid yourself this time with these little glazed Bundt cakes.” Maizie had sat at her desk, examining the mini cake in her hand from all angles. It appeared perfect from all sides. “Have you thought about either writing a cookbook or marketing these? You’ll make a fortune,” Maizie prophesized.

Danni had modestly demurred, but the idea about writing a cookbook remained in the recesses of her brain. Maybe someday.

Each time she reflected on the changes that had come into her life in such a short amount of time, it always astounded her. She could hardly believe that at long last, there was enough money in both her savings and her checking account for her to be a little—hell, a lot extravagant if she wanted to be, instead of always having to count pennies, constantly be vigilant and deny herself even the smallest of indulgences.

Danni almost gave in to the cliché to pinch herself. Life was that perfect. For the first time in her life, she was living in her own house, a house she’d paid for, not a house she was merely renting and that belonged to someone else.

The rush she felt when she put the key into the lock of her own front door for the very first time was one she couldn’t even begin to describe. It was unequal to anything else she’d ever felt.

But Danni wasn’t so enamored with the idea of ownership that she was blind to the house’s flaws. She wasn’t. She was very aware that the house came with warts. Quite a few warts.

The two-story building, built somewhere around the early 1970s, was in need of a new roof, new windows that kept the air out, not invited it in, and the three bathrooms were all but literally begging to be remodeled. The kitchen, which to her had always been the heart of the house, needed a complete makeover as well. To anyone else, these might have been a deal breaker, but Danni had fallen in love with the layout and had bought the house for an exceptionally good price. So she’d signed on the dotted line, promising herself that if and when her show’s option was picked up and renewed, and if it subsequently took off, she would give the house a much-needed facelift.

That day had come.

Her last visit to Maizie had been to tell the helpful Realtor that she was finally at a place where she could afford all those renovations they had talked about.

“What I need now,” she’d said over an enticing small pyramid of a dozen glazed wine cupcakes, “is for you to recommend a reliable general contractor who can do it all. I really don’t want to have to deal with a half a dozen or more men, all at odds with one another.”

There’d been a slight problem with her request. The man Maizie had been sending people to for the last eight years had recently relocated to Nevada to be closer to his daughter and her family. Consequently, Maizie had told her she’d be on the look-out for someone reliable and that she would get back to her as quickly as she could.

Danni had no doubts that the woman would find someone.

And Maizie had.

When she came home yesterday, bone weary after a marathon taping session, the first thing she’d seen was the red light on her answering machine blinking rhythmically as if it was flirting with her. Danni had stopped only long enough to drop her purse and step out of her shoes before listening to the message.

She waited less than that to call Maizie back. Five minutes after that, she was on the phone, dialing the number that Maizie had given her.

Danni wanted to call while her lucky streak was still riding high. There was a part of her—a diminishing but still-present part—that expected she would wake from this wonderful dream, her alarm clock shattering the stillness and calling her to work at the insurance company back in Atlanta.

Before that happened, she wanted to take full advantage of this magic-carpet ride she found herself on.

The man who Maizie had recommended sounded nice on the phone. He had a deep, rich baritone voice that was made for long walks on the beach beneath velvety, dark, star-lit skies.

He looked even better, Danni thought as she brought her vehicle to a squealing stop in her driveway and all but leaped out of her car. He was on time, she noted ruefully. And she was not.

“Sorry,” Danni declared, approaching the man who looked as if the stereotypical description of “tall, dark and handsome” had been coined exclusively for him. She put her hand out. “Traffic from Burbank was a bear,” she apologized.

His fingers closed around her hand, his eyes never leaving hers.

Stone had been all set to leave.

He absolutely hated being kept waiting and felt that the people who were late had no regard for anyone else’s time and no respect for them, either.

But the attractive, bubbly blonde’s apology sounded genuine enough rather than just perfunctory and it wasn’t as if he were awash in projects and could turn his back and walk away from this one.

So far, it had been a very lean year for him and the savings he’d put aside to see himself and his daughter—and sister if need be—through were just about gone.

Danni suddenly paused just as she was about to unlock her door. She half turned and looked at him over her shoulder as a thought occurred to her that she had just taken his identity for granted.

“You are Mr. Scarborough, right?” she asked belatedly, punctuating her question with a warm, hopeful smile.

Even if he wasn’t, Stone caught himself thinking, he would have temporarily changed his name just to be on the receiving end of that smile. But, with a clear conscience, he could nod and say his full name, just in case the woman had any lingering doubts.

“Call me Stone,” he told her. There, that should set her mind at ease about his identity. After all, he reasoned, how many men were there with that first name?

“I’m Danni,” she said, her smile all but branding him. “But then, you already know that.” There was just the slightest hint of pink tint on her cheek as she turned away.

She opened the front door and despite the fact that it was July and the sun had yet to go down, the interior of the house was all but utterly enshrouded in darkness.

“The first thing I’m going to need is light,” she told him.

“That usually happens when you turn up the switch,” he pointed out dryly, indicating the one that was on the wall right next to the doorjamb.

Danni laughed then, even as she did exactly as he’d suggested. “I mean light from above.” She pointed toward the roof, which was some eighteen feet up, thanks to cathedral ceilings. “Like a skylight. This room appears incredibly gloomy in the winter, even when the drapes are opened. And I’d really rather not have to leave the lights on all day long.”

As she spoke, Danni dropped her purse near the front door and saw him looking. “I could use a small table there,” she admitted. “Haven’t gotten around to that, yet. Haven’t gotten around to a lot of things yet,” she admitted ruefully in a moment of truth. “They said the pace here in Southern California is laid-back.” Danni just shook her head about that. “They lied.”

“They?” he asked, curious.

“The people back East.”

There it was again, that accent he couldn’t quite pin down. This was probably his one chance to ask her the question.

“How far back East?” he asked.

“Atlanta.” She saw the look that came over his face. He assumed a triumphant air, as if he was congratulating himself on a guess well played. “Is it that obvious?”

“No, not that obvious,” he told her. “Just that you weren’t from around here.”

She laughed shortly, thinking of the people she’d been interacting with since she’d transplanted herself. She had the kind of face and manner that drew people to her. Not only that, but it drew them out as well. People would find themselves telling her things they wouldn’t even whisper into their priest’s ear.

“Is anyone from around here?” It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but obviously, not for Stone.

“My wife was,” he told her, then added, “and my daughter is.”

Is and was.

Danni was instantly aware of the switch in tense.

He mentioned his daughter in the present tense, but not his wife. Did that mean he was divorced, or—?

She’d always been interested in people, in the way they felt, thought, what their background was, but she also knew that men didn’t like having to answer too many questions at any given time, so she let the questions bubbling up within her all go for now.

Except for one.

“Are you hungry?” she asked Stone. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine,” he assured her.

Yes, you certainly are, she couldn’t help thinking. But her Southern training couldn’t accept no for an answer. It wasn’t in her DNA.

“No coffee? Tea?” He shook his head at each suggestion. “How about water?” she coaxed. “Everyone likes water.”

He laughed at her comment and decided he was waging a losing battle. The woman would obviously remain uneasy until she’d given him something.

“All right. I’ll take some water,” he told her, all but raising his hands over his head like a prisoner being taken into custody.

“Great,” Danni declared. “Water it is. And dessert,” she added in a lowered voice, talking quickly. So quickly that he had to replay the words in his head in order to realize what she’d just said. “Kitchen’s this way,” she told him, leading the way to the rear of the house.

“I don’t need dessert,” Stone told the back of her head. At the moment, it was the safest place to look. If he lowered his eyes for even a second, he knew he’d regret it. The view was far too tempting. Her hips were moving at a tempo that was all but synchronized with the beating of his heart.

“Sure you do. Everyone needs dessert,” she assured him.

Reaching her final destination, Danni went straight for the refrigerator and the secret weapon she used to win everyone over.

Her dessert.

Chapter Three

This was obviously a man who did not like being told what to do, Danni decided as she placed the large plate of freshly made dessert on the table. When he was growing up, his mother probably had to suggest that he drink his milk, otherwise, she was willing to bet, he went out of his way not to touch it just to prove his independence.

In some ways, she supposed she could relate to that. While she liked being polite, she was never anyone’s pushover.

Maizie Sommers had sung this man’s praises, which meant that in the Realtor’s experience, the contractor got an overall A rating for both the quality of his work and the prices he charged. That was certainly more than good enough for her, Danni thought. There was no way she wanted to antagonize the man on top of already being late for their appointment and having kept him waiting.

So Danni put on her very best smile and graciously accepted his refusal of her dessert.

“Don’t worry, I won’t force-feed you. But it’ll be right there, waiting for you, just in case you wind up changing your mind,” she told him, moving away from the table. “Okay, why don’t I show you what needs doing?” she offered cheerfully.

Stone barely nodded. “That sounds like a good idea,” he agreed.

Danni began to regret not wearing a sweater. Did this man take time to warm up, or was he always going to be a wee bit cooler than an artic breeze?

It wasn’t that she required Stone Scarborough to ooze personality and charm, it was just that she knew the work she had in mind wasn’t going to be something that could be accomplished in a day or a week—or a month, even if the man moved in to do it. Since this would be a long, drawn out process and they would be around each other for a long stretch of time—unless he had a magic wand in his arsenal or a squadron of eager elves at his disposal—she definitely didn’t want to feel uncomfortable in her own home for the duration of the renovations.

That meant, quite simply, that they had to get along.

More than that, it required, in her opinion, that they liked each other, at least to a modest degree. She wasn’t looking for a best friend, but neither was she looked for someone who behaved as if he might appear on the cover of Grouches Inc., Monthly some time in the very near future.

So, as she showed the general contractor around her two-story house, Danni did her best to break through what she viewed as his crusty outer shell, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t wind up just coming up against a crusty inner shell.

“Have you been a general contractor long?” Danni asked, trying to draw him into a round of pleasant smalltalk.

She actually knew the answer to her own question—she’d Googled Stone Scarborough during the very short lunch break she’d taken at the studio and found the contractor’s website—but it was the first question that occurred to her. In her experience, people liked to talk about themselves. It tended to put them at ease.

“Long enough to get it right,” Stone answered crisply. “I can give you references from former clients if you’d like,” he offered.

It couldn’t hurt, Danni thought. “I’d like,” she echoed out loud.

More than his caliber of work—which, because Maizie had recommended him she assumed was top-drawer—Danni wanted to talk to the women whose houses Stone had worked on. She wanted to find out if he’d been as monotone with them as he was being with her. At least then, if his personality came across the same way with them as it did with her, she wouldn’t feel as if she’d offended the man.

“Then I’ll get them to you tomorrow morning,” Stone promised her. “Do you want to wait until you’ve had a chance to look them over, or do you want to go ahead and tell me what you had in mind by way of changes for this house?”

Danni looked around for a moment, as if making up her mind one final time before speaking. As it happened, she’d already decided and she wasn’t seeking other’s opinions on his work to see if he was equal to the project. She just wanted to know if he ever turned out to be a “real, live boy” or continued being as wooden as Pinocchio for the entire time he worked on their renovations.

Turning toward him, Danni summed up the answer to his question regarding the work she wanted done in one succinct word. “Everything.”

Because he was waiting for an answer to the first part of his question first, her answer initially confused him. “Excuse me?”

“Everything,” Danni cheerfully repeated. “I need a great many changes made to this house, from top to bottom.”

Stone found that that made no practical sense at all to him. “If you want to change everything, why’d you buy the house in the first place, if you don’t mind my asking?” He knew that in her position, he wouldn’t have. But then, he’d come to realize that the female mind worked much differently from the male one.

For one thing, logic appeared to have little or no place in it, or in making final decisions.

“No, I don’t mind,” Danni replied.

From her tone, he felt she wasn’t just putting on an act or pretending not to mind the personal question he’d just asked—God knew that he would have. So far, she sounded pretty guileless, considering her gender. Maybe she wasn’t so typical, after all.

“I bought the place because it had a price range I could afford,” she admitted honestly, “the front yard had a great orientation for my flower garden and, as they say in real estate, the house looked like it had ‘a lot of potential.’”

Stone shook his head when she was finished. “That’s usually real estate speak for ‘the house is a real clunker.’”

“But it does have potential,” Danni insisted. “I can see it.” And she really could. When she walked through the fifty-year-old house, she could visualize the changes she wanted. The transformation would make the two-story house into a showplace.

Stone merely shrugged. It was her money. “If you say so,” he conceded. And then he got back to something she’d said about the property’s orientation. “You have a flower garden?” he asked. When he’d come up the front walk, he hadn’t seen a single bud and when she’d brought him into the kitchen, he had a view of the backyard—which also barren. Where was this so-called flower garden of hers?

Her smile held promise rather than embarrassment. “Not yet. But I intend to.”

Stone took a wild guess. “This is more of that ‘potential’ the property has, right?”

The woman practically beamed at him, as if to congratulate him that he was finally getting the hang of it. “Right.”

Why did she feel as if she were on trial? Maybe he was just trying to see if she committed to this and wouldn’t lose interest and send him on his way in the middle of the job. If that was what he thought, he didn’t know her. Once she signed on to something, she remained committed for the duration.

For the time being, she decided to stop trying to make a personal connection with the man and just get his input on the house. Danni continued showing the contractor around.

Stone quietly followed the woman through the first floor, listening to the sound of her voice as she pointed out room after room, giving him a thumbnail summary of what she wanted changed or added or redone in each one.

The first floor was comprised of a living room, a dining room, a kitchen that fed into a family room and a slightly larger than closet-size bedroom that was located all the way in the rear, just off the family room. The entire floor had one bathroom.

The second floor, with its wide-open staircase and carved wooden banister, contained three more bedrooms, including the less-than-masterful “master suite.” There was a bathroom between the two bedrooms and another bathroom within the master suite. The second floor also had a recreational room which, she discovered when he corrected her, was called a “bonus room” in Southern California.

Stone listened without comment as she pointed things out, saying things like “I’d like bookshelves all along that wall” when they were in the bonus room, and “a walk-in closet here would be nice,” in the master bedroom. He neither nodded, nor said a word one way or another until the “tour” was over and they came back downstairs to the kitchen.

Unable to endure the man’s silence any longer, Danni finally asked, “Well? What do you think? You haven’t said a single word during the whole tour.” Did that mean he wasn’t going to take the job? Was she just wasting her time with him?

“You were right,” he replied quietly.

She watched him, waiting for him to continue. Right? Right about what? She’d done a lot of talking in the last twenty minutes.

“Yes?” she asked.

“When you said ‘everything.’” He’d thought she was kidding at the time, but it was obvious that she had to be serious. Every room needed to be redone in order to make it more useful, more pleasing to the eye and part of the twenty-first century.

He had one all-encompassing suggestion for her. “You just might be better off tearing everything down and starting from scratch.”

“Not everything,” Danni protested. “I actually do like the fireplace in the living room, and the staircase. And the balcony in the rec—The bonus room,” she corrected herself.

In response, she saw what looked like a hint of a smile on his lips. At least she’d managed to make a very slight connection, Danni congratulated herself. It looked like the man was human, after all. And that meant that there was hope. Maybe they would be able to get along in the long run.

She crossed her fingers.

Stone watched her for a long moment. Just as she was going to ask what he was thinking, he said, “You like the balcony, huh?”

The feature, visible from the street, was what had attracted her to the house in the first place. That and the colors it’d been painted: gray and Wedgwood-blue. Like her parents’ house had been, back in Atlanta. It made her a little homesick to see it, even though the actual structure looked nothing like her old home.

“Yes,” she responded, then after a beat, asked, “You don’t?”

He dismissed the appendage under discussion with a wave of his hand. “Well, since the balcony doesn’t look out onto anything but the cul-de-sac and the house across the street, I was going to suggest you close that up and extend the bonus room by the balcony’s square footage.”

Danni rolled the idea over in her head, trying to picture a large window rather than the two sliding-glass doors currently there. The glass doors separated the bonus room from the balcony. The latter ran the width of the room, which in turn was the length of two of the three garages. Because the bonus room ended over the second garage, the third one had never been finished. Something else she wanted Stone to add to his list. She wanted the garage to be finished and to have an attic put in, complete with stairs that folded out onto the garage floor.

“It’s worth considering,” she told him. “I’ll think about it.”

The balcony would continue to thrive, he could see it in her eyes. He had one more suggestion for her. “It might be less expensive if you just sell this place and get something more to your liking.”

She looked at him, confused. Didn’t he want the work? “Are you trying to talk your way out of a job, Mr. Scarborough?”

He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. “Just wanted you to be aware of all the possibilities.” He paused, letting that sink in and then informed her, “All those suggestions you made during the tour, they’re not going to come cheap.”

How dumb did he think she was? “I didn’t expect them to. That’s why I waited before looking into having it done until my contract was renewed,” she told him. “I wanted to be sure the money was there before I started to undertake all this.”

That was commendable, Stone thought. He’d seen far too many people who harbored grandiose plans, only to allow themselves to get overextended and in over their heads when they neglected to take escalating prices and building costs into account.

He took another long look at her. The woman might look like one of those fluffy blondes who seemed to be almost everywhere you looked in Southern California—most of them would-be actresses—but she seemed to have a head on her shoulders.

Maybe they would be able to work things out, after all.

“When would you want me to get started?” Stone asked, then added a coda. “Provided, of course, that the estimate that I’m going to work up for you doesn’t turn your hair gray.”

As he talked, she subtly directed him back toward the kitchen table—where the coffee she’d made and the dessert she’d left were still waiting for them.

“I’m sure it won’t,” she told him. “And even if it did, there’re enough hair-care products out there to restore my hair to its natural shade,” she assured him with an easy, unself-conscious laugh. “Ms. Sommers seemed really sold on you and I trust her judgment implicitly. And I really liked what I saw on your website,” she added for good measure. “Some of those before-and-after photos were absolutely incredible.” That had really impressed her and confirmed the man’s abilities.

Stone had always believed in doing the best possible job he could, bar none, but he’d never been very comfortable being on the receiving end of praise. Now was no different.

He shrugged off her words, and murmured, “My sister was the one who put together the website,” as if that were enough to deflect the compliment and allow him to remain anonymously in the shadows.

“Your sister,” Danni echoed. The information didn’t diminish her response to his work and actually enhanced it slightly, expanding it in another direction. A direction she naturally followed.

“So, it’s a family business?” Danni assumed.

“No” was his first response, but then he reconsidered. He had to admit that in the last couple of years or so, Virginia had become exceedingly involved in helping him run his construction company—in more ways than just one. “Well, actually, yes in a way,” he amended. “Virginia put together that website and she handles the accounting end of the business.”

Initially, Virginia had done freelance accounting for several small businesses in the area, his among them. But of late, his business had been taking up more and more of his sister’s time. It would be nice, he caught himself thinking, to be able to pay her accordingly.

If this woman was serious about two-thirds of the things she said she wanted done to her house, he could afford to pay Virginia more money—not that she ever asked for more. That wasn’t her way—but he knew he’d be lost without her, not because of her accounting—or the fact that she had put together that website behind his back which, lucky for her, had turned out well—but because she was always there to help him with Ginny.

If not for Virginia, he would have had to resort to turning over Ginny’s care to complete strangers and he didn’t like the idea of people who weren’t family or friends looking after his little girl. Especially since Ginny was not all that easy on some people’s nerves. Strangers—even strangers who were paid for the job—were not always all that patient.

Virginia was.

“That sounds pretty much like a family business to me,” Danni was saying, unaware that there was a wistful smile on her lips. She would have given anything to have a brother or sister around to work with, to be there for them—and have them be there for her. She had some cousins, a couple who had relocated here as a matter of fact, but it wasn’t the same thing. “You have any other family?” she asked.

What was with all these non-work-related questions? “Why?” he asked.

“No reason,” Danni replied with an innocent shrug. “Just curious. I guess I just like knowing things about the people I’m dealing with.”

Stone had momentarily been captivated by the movement of her shoulders as they rose and fell in an innocent shrug.

But he came to fast enough.

“All you need to know is that I take pride in my work and I stand behind everything I do,” he informed her.

The woman nodded in response, then continued looking at him without saying a word. It was against his better judgment, but he decided there was no real harm in it, either. So he told her what she was obviously waiting to hear for reasons that completely escaped him.

“I have a daughter. Ginny. She’s four,” he added, “going on forty.”

The smile he received in return made the surrender of this small piece of information oddly worth it.

“My father used to say the same thing about me,” Danni recalled fondly. He’d always followed it up by telling her to slow down, that there was no hurry, the years would all be waiting for her no matter how long she would take to reach them.

“Well, my condolences to your father, then,” Stone told her. There wasn’t so much as a sliver of a smile as he said that.

Danni’s own smile didn’t appear to waver, but when he looked closer, Stone realized that what he was seeing was pain etched into the edges of that smile. She was far too young for that sort of pain.

“Too late for that,” she told him. “He passed on a few years ago.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that,” Stone told her stiffly. Then, to his surprise and horror, he heard himself saying, “Ginny’s mother did, too.”

He had absolutely no idea what possessed him to share that with her. Only that it somehow seemed appropriate at the moment.

Rather than gush or give him empty platitudes the way he expected, the woman whose house he’d just finished touring and whose table he was currently sitting at, reached over and placed her hand on his. The soft, gentle, fleeting contact seemed to convey the level of her sorrow, their common shared sorrow, far better than a battalion of words ever could have.

“Are you raising her by yourself?” she asked. There was compassion in her voice.

Sometimes it felt that way, but that was unfair. Virginia dealt with Ginny far more than he did—unless he was between jobs and had the time to spend with Ginny. “My sister moved in to help when my wife died.”

“Your sister the accountant who does your website?” she asked just to keep the details straight.

The smattering of a smile grew just for a moment before returning to a neutral expression. “That’s her.”

Danni smiled broadly again. “Then it really is a family business, isn’t it?”

He considered the situation for a moment, then realized he had no idea why he was fighting the concept so stringently. He wouldn’t have been able to take on any new jobs if it hadn’t been for Virginia. At the same time, his sister had placed her life and her own business pretty much on hold because of him.

That needed to change.

Soon.

Just not yet.

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