Wendy’s eyes widened as she gave her sister a measured look.
Unable to meet her sister’s gaze, Colleen turned away.
“You really like the guy.” Wendy stated, her voice soft.
“No, I don’t, I just don’t—I didn’t…” Colleen pounded her fist against the counter, frustrated at the emotions racing through her body.
“Colleen, we just—”
“I don’t want to know.” She rushed past her sister, avoiding the outstretched hand. “And by the way,” she hissed, flying back into the kitchen and propping both hands on her hips, “since when do you wear a toe ring?” With a jerk of her chin, she whirled and left the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
She tiptoed up the stairs, gasping for air. What in the world had happened in the past month to cause her orderly life to spiral so rapidly out of control?
****
Matt pulled up to the yellow ranch house at precisely ten the next morning, luckily a Saturday. He figured ten o’clock gave everyone time to sleep in but at the same time wouldn’t interfere with lunch. He sat in his little car and stared at the reindeer and sleigh on the lawn, not sure what he would say to the woman who had captured his heart in just a few short days. If she truly had been detained, then this would be a good time to ask for another date. Hope flickered in his heart.
But if something else… He took a deep breath and got out of the car. Like his classroom lectures, he would rely on instinct for the right words.
A tall dark-haired man answered the door. One arm cradled a newborn. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Colleen McLachlan. Is she home?” His gaze zeroed in on the baby. Matt had forgotten how tiny newborns were and grinned at the tiny fists waving above the blanket.
“You must be Matt. Come on in.” The tall man turned and led the way deeper into the house.
Matt shut the door and found himself in a neat entry, a flight of stairs to one side and a hall table with a large vase on the other. He followed the man down the hall. When he entered the kitchen, he spied an older couple at a breakfast nook overlooking a slate patio.
The tall man set two cups on the island counter. “I’m Colleen’s sister’s husband, Rob, and this…” he tilted the baby so Matt could see his face, “…is our new addition, Ryan.”
Matt stretched over the counter for a better look. “He’s beautiful. Congratulations.” At the same time, he noticed movement from the breakfast nook.
A large, muscular white-haired man thrust out a hand. “I’m Colleen’s father, Mick McLaughlin, and you are…”
As the older man grasped his hand with an iron grip, Matt managed not to grimace. “Matthew Berk, sir.”
Mick nodded toward a woman, the spitting image of Colleen, still seated at the table. “This is my wife, Maggie.” He crossed his arms over his chest and fixed Matt with a steely glare. “So Colleen landed her plane at your ranch?”
Matt’s gaze never wavered from the light blue eyes pinning him like a bug on a display board. “Appeared right out of the sky.” He looked around the room. “Is she up yet?”
“Up and gone,” said Rob. “She asked to borrow my car early this morning. Said she was skiing up at Roundtop.”
Wendy wandered into the kitchen wrapped in a pink robe. She rubbed her eyes, yawned, and bumped into Matt. “Matt! What are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d catch your sister. I had a great time with you last night, Wendy,” Matt hurried to say, flustered at Colleen’s absence, “but—”
Wendy waved a hand in the air and shuffled over to the coffeemaker. “Don’t bother, Matt. I know you were bored silly. I looked over when we were all on stage singing ”Jingle Bells” and you had your chin in your hand with your eyes shut.”
Mick set his coffee cup on the table with a loud thump. “Where were you singing “Jingle Bells” on stage?”
“At the Irish pub on the other side of town.” Wendy settled into the maple rocker and pulled a throw across her lap.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Maggie murmured as she lifted her coffee to her lips.
Rob motioned Matt to a stool. “Milk or sugar?”
“No thanks. I drink it high test.” Matt looked over at Wendy, humming softly, and swinging a slippered foot in the air. “How can you not have a hangover?”
Both eyebrows raised and a grin on her face, Maggie glanced over at Matt. “Apple doesn’t—”
“Cut it out, Mags.” Mick smoothed his white hair back over his head. “I’m not so bad.”
“What can I say, you’re Irish.” Maggie patted her husband’s hand.
“So are you, lassie.” With a chuckle, Mick winked at his wife.
These people take their Irish roots seriously, Matt reflected as he observed the loving exchange between the older couple. Following a twinge in his chest, he looked over at Wendy. “Will your sister be home this evening?”
Wendy’s gaze went from Matt to her mother. “Um-m…Mom?”
Her mother shrugged. “Well, I don’t know, dear, I didn’t talk to her. Rob?”
“All I know is she said I’d have the car back in time for work on Monday.”
“So let me get this straight. None of you know when your daughter slash sister is going to be back.” Matt studied each of them, unsure whether to believe their stories. What kind of family didn’t keep track of each other…or were they protecting her? “Am I right?”
“Hey, you have to know Colleen. She is a true free spirit.” Wendy rocked back and forth.
“I learned a long time ago not to worry if we didn’t hear from her for a while.” Maggie looked over at Matt.
“So let me get this straight.” Mick leaned forward, eyebrows raised. “You had a date with my oldest daughter but went out with my youngest daughter. How exactly did that come about?”
The five adults looked at each other. The only sound in the room was Wendy’s humming. Finally they all looked at her.
“Wendy Louise.” Mick turned on the bench seat and looked at his youngest. “Do you know something about this?”
As she stared wide-eyed from one to the other, Wendy’s foot stopped swinging in midair. “She made me do it!”
“What!” Matt jumped off the stool, knocking over his cup. Coffee spilled across the counter. “She made you go out with me?”
Rob, still with the baby in one arm, grabbed a towel and tossed it over the spreading coffee. “Hey, calm down, fella, we’ve all been there.”
“I don’t get it.” Matt returned to his stool and stared around the room, thoughts bouncing around his head like ping pong balls. Colleen had definitely been interested when she was at the ranch. He focused his gaze on the older couple sitting in the breakfast nook.
They eyed him warily.
“Is it because I’m not Irish?” Matt clenched and unclenched his hands, hidden under the counter.
Mick threw back his head of wild white hair and laughed, his shoulders bouncing up and down.
Maggie’s lips curved in a grin.
What was so funny? “My mother’s mother was Irish,” Matt sputtered, unable to believe this family could be that Irish. Mick laughed harder, one hand on his shaking belly. Rob and Wendy had by now joined in.
Anger rising in his chest, Matt stood and turned to go.
“No, wait, Matt.” Maggie jumped up from the table and placed a gentle hand on his arm. “Please, sit. I’m sorry. Our family sometimes has a funny sense of humor. I can see it’s not funny to you at all.”
Matt looked at the woman as she tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. She looked so much like Colleen…beautiful, adventure-seeking Colleen. He dropped to the stool. When Rob offered the carafe, he held out his empty cup. “I thought she was interested in me. I guess I was mistaken.”
“Oh, she was interested, all right.” Wendy nodded and resumed her rocking. “Boy, was she—” She broke off, wide eyes suddenly fixated on her red nails.
Mick eyed his daughter. “Wendy,
ever since you were a pipsqueak, you couldn’t keep a secret. Out with it now—” He turned and winked at his wife “—lassie.”
Wendy looked down at her cup and traced the top of it with one finger. “Well, she didn’t exactly tell me not to tell anyone…” She sat up and leaned forward, her cup in both hands propped on her knees, a gleam in her eye. “She said she was a cougar.” Wendy threw back her head and laughed. “I mean, it just cracked me up. She had this look on her face like the world was coming to an end—”
Matt shook his head at Wendy’s comment. “What do you mean, she’s a cougar?”
“Well, apparently, you’re my age, Matthew. Thirty-two, right?”
Matt nodded. Thoughts bounced through his brain as he tried in vain to make the connection. “So?”
“Well, she’s not.” Wendy’s raised eyebrows disappeared beneath her curly blond bangs. “She is so not thirty-two.”
“I can’t believe you having fun at your sister’s expense, Wendy.” Maggie frowned at her youngest. “Sounds to me like she was distraught. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re not being more supportive.”
Wendy’s mouth dropped open as she regarded her mother. “You’re kidding me, right? You’re talking about Miss Perfect? The woman who plans every iota of her life down to the last minute detail? There is no way she would…” Wendy tilted her head and fixed Matt with an appraising look. “Would…” She glanced back at her mother. “I can’t believe it, Mom. I think you’re on to something.” She sat back in the rocker and resumed rocking, staring at her red fingernails. “I never thought I’d live to see it.”
“What?” Rob moved the baby to the other arm and patted his son’s back.
Brows bunched over his nose, Mick looked back and forth between his wife and daughter. “What?”
The two women shared a smile.
Every once in a while, Matt’s mom and sister got that same look on their faces. They knew something. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. “What were you going to say, Wendy?”
Wendy looked at her mother, who nodded her head. She turned back to Matt. “Colleen does like you, Matt. But if she thinks the age difference is inappropriate, there is no way she will allow herself to get involved with you.”
Matt could tell from her expression that she felt sorry for him. “Well, that’s ridiculous.” Puzzled, he drummed his fingers on the counter.
“When Colleen makes up her mind…” Mick shook his head. “It would take quite a man to persuade her otherwise.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Yessiree, quite a man.”
At those words, Matt jumped off the stool and braced his hands on the counter. “I’ve got an idea…” He looked at the family around him, “…but I’m going to need your help.”
Chapter Seven
Monday morning Matt leaned back in his scarred wooden chair and propped his boots on an equally scarred desk. The hallway outside his office stood empty. Matt and his two colleagues had the fourth floor to themselves. The week before the Christmas holiday, students and staff had deserted the campus.
Mitch Collins picked up a dart from Matt’s desk and tossed it toward the dartboard on the wall. When the dart landed an inch above the bull’s eye, he patted himself on the shoulder. “Just like riding a bike.”
“Are we here to play darts or what?” Frank Walls looked out the window and fingered his bow tie. “I have a computer program to fix.”
With a lazy rhythm, Matt tapped his pencil on the desk. “I need a hand with a project I’m working on. Since you two are supposedly my best friends, I figured you could help me out.”
“What do you need, buddy?” Mitch retrieved the dart and dropped it into the container on Matt’s desk. “I’m all ears.” He pulled a cigar out of the front pocket of his denim shirt and collapsed in the wooden armchair in front of Matt’s desk.
“This building’s designated no smoking, Mitch.”
“So who’s smoking?” He chomped on the unlit cigar and smoothed a stray gray hair into the ponytail secured by a leather thong.
“I met this girl—” When Matt caught his friends’ simultaneous wide-eyed looks of surprise, he paused.
“I knew it! Just a matter of time.” Mitch smiled and twirled his cigar.
“Actually she’s not a girl—”
Bushy eyebrows shot up and the cigar froze in mid-twirl. “Oh, really? I must say I’m shocked.”
“I mean she’s a woman—she’s forty-three years old.” Matt dropped his boots to the floor with a loud thump.
The pony-tailed professor relaxed in his chair and resumed chomping on the cigar. “All right, Matthew, going for the older woman.”
Explaining things to his friend the proverbial bachelor was going to be harder than he thought. The man dated a different beautiful, and usually young, woman every week. Matt shook his head. “Our ages are irrelevant. We’re just very…um…compatible.”
Mitch crossed his legs and smoothed his pressed blue jeans. “Got a lot in common, do you?” He looked at Matt as he held the fragrant cigar under his nose. “Is she an almond grower?”
“Well, no.” Matt looked down at his desk blotter.
“In agriculture?”
“Not really.” Annoyed at the direction the conversation was taking, he opened the middle drawer of his desk and tossed the pencil inside.
“Does she live around here?” Mitch leaned forward and propped his arms on his knees.
“No…no….”
Mitch raised one eyebrow. “Then what exactly do you have in common, son?”
Matt leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. What did they have in common? He thought of the night Colleen had appeared in his study, her long, tanned legs bare…and the time on his couch in the study when she thought he was sleeping. Can’t very well use those as examples. He sat up and looked at Mitch. “Her dad’s favorite candy is marzipan from Germany and I sell almonds to Germany…”
“Yeah?” Mitch waved his cigar hand with a go on motion.
“…for marzipan!” Matt threw out his arms to the side in a Ta Da! gesture.
“Uh huh.” Mitch stuck the cigar between his lips and squinted at Matt, one corner of his mouth turned down. “Well, I’m glad we got that settled. So where do we come in?”
“She has this idea she’s too old for me so I thought if we set her up on a blind date with a guy and really exaggerate the old part, maybe she would realize…”
“Like I said.” With a wide grin, Mitch crossed his arms. “Where do I come in?”
“Well, you’re the oldest of the three of us.”
“Yeah, but chicks dig me. Let Frank do it.” His hand waved toward the third man. “He’s nerdier than I am.”
Frank hadn’t moved from the window since the conversation began. At Mitch’s last statement however, he turned and studied his colleagues a moment before he responded. “Be that as it may…I don’t think Helga would understand.”
Matt chuckled at the image of Frank’s wife. Frank had met her in Germany at a university computer symposium where Helga was the event coordinator. After a whirlwind courtship, they married and returned to California. Currently pregnant with twins, Frank’s wife called him multiple times throughout the day.
Frank threw his hands in the air and strolled to the door. “Seriously, Matt, she would not understand. The language barrier is bad enough.”
Matt looked from Frank back to Mitch, who studied his cigar as he twirled it in his fingers. “That leaves you, my friend.”
Mitch puffed out his chest. “Buddy, one look at me and she’d forget all about you.”
“Well…” Matt stood and circled Mitch’s chair with crossed arms. “I guess we’ll just have to do something about that, won’t we…buddy?”
****
Colleen perched on the stool at the counter and absently spun her little red phone with one finger. “Do you want me to take him for a while?”
Her sister lounged in the maple rocker, sipping a cup of herbal tea. The bab
y slept against her shoulder. “I’m perfect just like this.” Bobbi smiled. Her gaze traveled from Colleen, to Wendy across from Colleen, to her mother at the breakfast nook.
Mick and Rob had gone out to breakfast before Rob wrapped up a case at his office.
“I’m so glad all of you are here with me. I feel blessed.” She wiped at a tear with the cuff of her robe.
“Oh, jeez, there go the hormones again.” Wendy broke off a piece of coffeecake and popped it in her mouth.
“Stop teasing your sister, Wendy, and stop picking at the cake.” Maggie wagged a finger as she went to the cupboard and retrieved saucers. She set them on the counter and cut four slices of coffeecake. “Family is important at a time like this. I remember when Colleen was born.” With a smile, she glanced up at Colleen and then back down at the cake. “Mick and I were stationed in Germany. My girlfriends came to see me but I would have given anything for my mom and my sister to be there.” She took a piece of cake and a fork and set them on the countertop near Bobbi. “I am so grateful to be here with you.” She leaned down, kissed Bobbi on the head, and plucked a tissue from the decorator box before sitting at the breakfast nook with her slice of cake.
Wendy jumped up and grabbed a tissue to dab beneath her eye. “Oh, Colleen, I’m so glad I can be here for you now you’re out of a job.” She sniffed.
Maggie waved her fork at Wendy and lowered her eyebrows. “Stop it, young lady. That might be you some day.”
“Yeah, right.” Wendy winked at Colleen as she reached for the cake.
Bobbi’s lips curved up as she struggled to hide a smile. “Settle down, you guys.”
The baby gurgled and waved a tiny fist in the air.
In the midst of the noise, Colleen’s ring tone played “Fly Me to the Moon.” She stopped the still-spinning phone and glanced at the display—Rob. Odd…why hadn’t he called the house phone? She picked up and punched a button to connect. “Hello?”
“Hello, sis-in-law, are you awake?”
“It’s ten o’clock, Robert, of course I’m awake. How was breakfast with Dad?” She took a sip of coffee, savoring the rich brew.
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