Wish Upon a Matchmaker

by Marie Ferrarella

  Chapter Five

  When she was taping her cable cooking program, or meeting with the handful of business clients—she liked keeping her hand in the catering business just in case the cable program disappeared, as so many did—Danni made certain that she always dressed well. That meant wearing either attractive dresses or flattering skirts and matching tops. Either way, she always completed the outfit with killer high heels.

  She usually picked the heels before she picked the outfit.

  On her few days off, Danni did a complete about-face and dressed as casually and comfortably as possible. That translated to wearing either jeans or shorts when it was hot, accompanied by a colorful cotton T-shirt, the bottom of which usually conducted a flirtatious relationship with her midriff. And although she’d slip on a pair of mules if she was going to the mailbox or into the garage, for the most part, Danni would walk around her house and patio barefoot.

  So, when Stone rang the front doorbell—after issuing one last warning to his daughter to remember to be on her very best behavior—and the door opened, he didn’t recognize the barefoot female standing in the doorway at first.

  The young woman looked far more like a carefree first-year college student than she did the central figure in a currently up-and-rising cable cooking program.

  So much so that at first glance, Stone thought he was looking at the woman’s younger cousin or maybe her kid sister. Since there didn’t seem to be anyone else coming up behind the young woman, he asked, “Is Ms. Everett around? I’m Stone Scarborough and I’m supposed to start working on her house today.” For emphasis, he nodded at the oversize toolbox he was holding. He took it with him to every job, a last Christmas present from his late wife.

  Before the young woman in the thin sky-blue T-shirt—a T-shirt that seemed to be adhering to her torso closer than a second skin—could respond, Ginny, not to be left out, introduced herself.

  “And I’m Virginia Scarborough,” Ginny announced proudly to the pretty lady in the doorway. “Everybody calls me Ginny so they don’t get confused between me and my aunt Virginia. You can call me Ginny, too,” she told her, grinning from ear to ear. “Daddy told me you were a godmother. Does that mean you’re God’s mother?” Ginny asked, curious. “’Cause Aunt Virginia told me God already has a mother. Her first name’s Mary, is that your first name?”

  “Ginny, what did I tell you about talking too much?” Stone asked, trying to curtail his mini inquisitor, as well as his own impatience.

  Ginny instantly looked down on the ground, as if that would summon a subdued nature. “Not to,” she replied, mumbling the answer into her small chest.

  “No,” he answered patiently, “I said to remember to breathe in between sentences. You have to breathe, Ginny,” he told her firmly. It was the only chance a person had to get a word in edgewise when his daughter started with her nonstop rhetoric.

  That said, Stone raised his eyes to look at the petite, barefoot young woman. She appeared to be extremely amused by the whole scenario being acted out right in front of her.

  “Sorry about that,” he apologized. “Ginny tends to get carried away sometimes when she meets new people.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Danni assured him. She smiled warmly at the little girl. “I understand completely.”

  Ginny’s eyes were all but shining.

  “You do?” she asked, clearly thrilled and stunned at the same time.

  “Absolutely. Sometimes I get so excited about something new, I don’t know what to say first, so all the words seem to come tumbling out all at once, and they even get tangled up sometimes,” Danni told her as solemnly as she could manage.

  Ginny was literally beaming, Stone noted, as the little girl turned to momentarily look back at him. “She’s nice, Daddy.”

  Danni suppressed a delighted laugh. “Glad I passed inspection.” And then she looked at Stone. “And I do know who you are, Mr. Scarborough,” she assured him. “We met when you came by to see my house and to work up an estimate after I told you what I wanted done. You told me I might want to consider buying another house. I didn’t want to.”

  Amused by what she assumed was the reason for his repeated introduction, Danni said, “In case you’re wondering, my memory is just fine. And the cookies that I bake just have the ingredients you can easily buy over the counter in any supermarket—nothing more,” she informed him, ending her statement with a wink.

  For some reason, the wink seemed to go straight to his gut.

  For one of the very few times in his life—possibly the very first—Stone felt flustered. Because she looked so different from their first meeting, he didn’t fully recognize the woman who would be signing his checks for a while. Maybe it was too early in the morning. Looking more closely now, he realized his mistake.

  “I didn’t mean to imply, that is—I didn’t completely recognize you at first,” Stone finally managed to say. “You look like your own kid sister,” Stone added, at a loss as to how to rectify the situation and backtrack gracefully.

  Was he actually telling her that she looked like a kid? The smile curving her mouth was somewhat bemused. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Danni commented.

  He didn’t want her to think he was trying to get too personal—or flirt with her. “It’s not supposed to be either, just an observation,” he explained honestly.

  Danni put her own interpretation to his response. “I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was fishing for a compliment,” she told him. “It’s just that nobody’s ever said anything like that to me before, that I look too young,” she added in case he wasn’t following her line of thinking.

  Stone thought of protesting that she didn’t look too young, but that really wasn’t the truth, because she did. So instead, he fell back on logic. “Do you have mirrors in the house?”

  Danni blinked. “Yes, of course I do.” There was one right over there, on the far wall, and she nodded toward it.

  “Do you ever look in any of those mirrors when you’re dressed like that?” he asked pointedly.

  Aside from the shorts and clingy T-shirt, she was wearing her hair in two separate ponytails, jauntily perched high on her head. They swished back and forth as she moved. She didn’t even look as if she was twenty, much less any older.

  Danni looked down at her clothes, then back up again at him. She didn’t need a mirror, she could just imagine that someone coming in, expecting to see the star of a new cable cooking program might think she was just some young relative hanging around.

  She was also blessed with her mother’s skin, which seemed to defy age and didn’t turn to leather despite her love of the outdoors—although lately, that love wasn’t something she was able to indulge in very often.

  She supposed, if it was a choice between looking older than she was or younger than she was, she’d choose the latter.

  “Point taken,” Danni told her contractor. Looking up, her wide smile was back in place. “Now, can I offer you something to eat or drink before you get started?”

  He didn’t believe in taking a break before getting started. Besides, he liked doing what he did and was eager to get started.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to begin working. Not really sure just how much time I can devote to anything today,” he said, casting an apprehensive side glance toward his daughter.

  The way he looked at his daughter was not wasted on Danni.

  “Don’t worry about Ginny,” she told him, easily taking the little girl’s hand in hers. “I have a project that needs some very valuable little-girl input,” she said, addressing her words to Stone as well as to his daughter.

  “What’s input?” Ginny asked.

  “Words,” Danni said simply. “I want to find out what you think of some of these new desserts I’m going to be making for my viewers.”

  “Cool,” Ginny declared, her eyes wide enough to pass for the proverbial saucers.

  “But first, I’m goin
g to have to make the desserts. For that, I’m going to need an assistant to help me. She needs to be about this tall.” Danni held her hand up to indicate approximately Ginny’s height. “Would you have any idea where I can find someone like that?”

  “Me!” Ginny declared, raising her hand in the air as if she were in school, trying to get the teacher’s attention. “Me, I can help and be your ’sistant,” she told Danni with enthusiasm.

  “You?” She glanced at Ginny, pretending that she was just seeing the little girl for the first time and was seriously considering the possibility of taking her up on her offer to help. “Are you sure that you have the time to help me?” Danni asked, keeping a perfectly straight face.

  “Yes! Daddy said he was going to be here at least an hour, maybe two,” she told her new best friend. “Or more,” she added with a whisper. “So I can be your ’sistent!”

  Danni peered over the little girl’s head toward the man she had hired to bring new life to her house.

  “An hour or two?” she questioned. She’d expected him to be here for most of the day. Just how fast did this man work?

  Stone subtly indicated his daughter with his eyes, then looked back at her. “I thought that two hours might be all you could handle.”

  Danni smiled then, the same smile he’d seen the other day, the one that looked as if it had enough wattage to light up a good part of the first floor in the dead of night.

  “I think you might be underestimating me, Mr. Scarborough,” she told him.

  “Apparently,” he agreed, thinking of what he had just witnessed. In a few easy words, she’d seemed to have made a friend for life out of his daughter. Danni had certainly won the little girl’s heart and made her feel useful at the same time. “And it’s Stone,” he told her. Addressing him formally just seemed out of place in this situation. “My name,” he clarified.

  “Yes, I know,” she replied with the same warm smile that for some reason made him feel unseasonably hot.

  Stone forced himself to look away. If he didn’t, there was a very real danger of his just standing there, staring at Danni, being completely mesmerized by the woman, by her smile, and by the utter unassuming power she was able to wield over his firecracker of a daughter.

  “I’ll just go get started,” he murmured, pointing toward the door and the driveway beyond where his truck was parked.

  “You do that,” Danni agreed. “And my assistant and I will do the same.” She looked down at the little girl. “Right, Ginny?”

  “Right!” the little girl declared happily.

  Even though Stone allowed himself a slight, private smile, he still couldn’t help wondering if this woman knew just what she was letting herself in for. Ginny could tire out a legion of saints once she got going.

  He knew that whenever either he or his sister gave Ginny a time-out, it wasn’t done so that she could sit in her room, reflecting on what she’d done wrong; it was so that he and Virginia could get a little break, a breather, before they began trying to regroup and prepare for the next onslaught of Ginny, The Tireless Warrior Princess.

  From what he’d observed, although Danni seemed to be energetic and she was certainly imaginative, he wasn’t all that certain that the newest cable personality would be equal to not just putting up with, but surviving his daughter.

  He decided to work as quickly as possible and get as much done as he could before the call for help—following Danni’s complete surrender—rang out through the house.

  * * *

  Stone glanced at his watch.

  Immersing himself in his work—which required that he completely gut the first room he’d chosen to work on, the downstairs rear bedroom—he realized that he’d apparently lost track of time. Before he knew it, more than two hours had gone by. Two hours where the only sound he’d heard were the sounds he’d created himself when he turned his power tools on and used them.

  Stone stood now in the middle of the barren room, looking at what was left after he’d ripped away the plasterboard and what had once been some rather awful-looking rust-colored shag rugs. He shook his head as he regarded the pile of off-colored orangey-rust. It was incredible what bad taste an entire generation had adopted, he’d thought when he began separating the pieces of rug from the floor.

  But he wasn’t thinking about bad taste at the moment, or even envisioning what he would eventually turn this room into. He was concerned that he hadn’t heard any sounds coming from the kitchen where his daughter and Danni were supposed to be working.

  Granted the machines he was operating tended to drown most things out, but they hadn’t been on nonstop.

  Taking off the safety glasses he was wearing and turning off the sander he’d been using on a particularly stubborn section of plasterboard, he left the room and went in search of his daughter. He sincerely hoped nothing was wrong and that he hadn’t lost one client before he really had her, but he couldn’t help having his doubts.

  He needed to check on his daughter and what she’d done to Danni.

  The moment he walked out of the back bedroom, he realized he could smell it. Smell a tantalizing aroma that suggested something exceptionally pleasing to the palette was going on in the oven.

  As he approached the kitchen, Stone looked around and saw no one. He did detect a slight ticking sound, once he acclimated himself to what he first presumed was the silence. He quickly realized that what he was listening to was a timer. A timer that had exactly ten seconds left before it suddenly announced the end of its journey.

  Rather than ring, the timer, jauntily mounted on the refrigerator, began to buzz. Buzz loudly and continuously, pulsing demandingly until someone paid attention to it, shut it off and took out whatever it was timing.

  “Ginny?” he called. “Ginny, where did you go off to?” And what have you done with Danni?

  “I’m right here, Daddy!” Ginny announced, all but bouncing into the kitchen from the direction of the living room.

  Danni strode in right behind her.

  Stone hadn’t noticed until just now that for what was a rather petite woman, the cable channel's new cooking darling had a really long pair of legs.

  A very attractive, really long pair of legs.

  He caught himself staring at them as he watched Danni hurrying into the room, and for just a moment, he forgot that he’d been taught as a child that it wasn’t very polite to stare.

  The word polite really wasn’t entering into the equation at all at the moment. But other words, other sensations and feelings, were.

  And not exclusively for Stone.

  Because even as she hurried over to the stove, Danni saw her contractor staring. And it wasn’t at the stove.

  A warm shiver danced down her spine.

  Chapter Six

  “Where were you?” Stone asked, tearing his eyes away from Danni and making a conscious effort to focus only on his daughter.

  “We were in the living room,” Ginny answered before Danni had a chance to explain anything to her father. “Danni’s got this really awesome gaming system.”

  And it was crystal clear to Stone, by the look on his daughter’s face, that she was absolutely enamored with the video gaming system.

  And just possibly, with the owner of the gaming system as well.

  “You have kids?” he asked Danni. She’d only mentioned having a goddaughter when he’d called to cancel on her because he didn’t have a sitter for Ginny. Who bought a gaming system for a goddaughter who was dropped off occasionally?

  Danni shook her head. “No.”

  His eyebrows drew together into one perplexed, wavy line. The woman certainly didn’t look like a computer geek or gaming nerd. But those were the only two options that might explain why someone over the age of eighteen would have a sophisticated gaming system—or any gaming system for that matter.

  “Then why do you have a gaming system in your living room?” Stone asked her.

  Danni went with the very obvious: She had money and she li
ked pleasing a child in her life.

  “Because, even though I don’t have a child, I do have a goddaughter and she likes to play competitively. I found some age-appropriate games for her—which meant I needed a system to play them on. It also meant I had to learn how to play and hold up my end if I ever hoped to have a chance of winning.” She glanced over at Ginny. “She’s very sharp, your daughter.”

  Danni would get no argument out of him on that count. “Like I said, four going on forty.”

  “I’m gonna be five very soon,” Ginny volunteered to Danni proudly.

  “Too soon,” Stone commented. He could vividly remember bringing her home from the hospital, thinking, as he held her, that she was liable to break at any second. The fear stayed with him for a while.

  Ginny sniffed as she put her hands on her very small, barely noticeable little hips and told her father in the oldest voice she could muster, “I can’t stay a little girl forever, you know.”

  Danni laughed. “Sounds like she’s already on her way to growing up.”

  Stone sighed as he shook his head. “Don’t I know it. Well, I’ll take her off your hands now.”

  Danni looked at him in surprise. “You’re finished for the day?” By her reckoning, he’d only been at it for just a little under two hours.

  “I gutted one room.” But that wasn’t why he was getting ready to pack up and leave for the day. “I thought my daughter would have tired you out by now.”

  Danni laughed softly. “We Georgia girls are a lot heartier than we look,” she informed him with a touch of pride.

  “I like your accent,” he realized. That slight lilt in her voice he heard every now and then, the comfortable way she had of talking, it had a pleasing effect on him.

  Danni had tried very hard to lose her accent, paying very close attention to the cadence of those who did not drawl, twang or have a nasal intonation.

  She wanted to sound like a Midwesterner.

  What she definitely didn’t want was for someone to think that her Georgia accent was actually a gimmick she was falling back on to distinguish her from some of the other cable channel chefs.