Twice A Hero, Always Her Man

She’d stopped believing in happy endings…

Widowed TV reporter Ellie King had given up on looking for heroes ever since her beloved husband was killed in a robbery gone wrong. Because she could have used one then, but there was no one around—or was there?

...until a hero walked back into her life.

Detective Colin Benteen had been the first on the scene to comfort Ellie’s husband, to hold his hand when it was clear his wounds were fatal. Now, years later, Ellie is interviewing the handsome officer when she realizes who he is—a single parent (to his niece), all-around good guy and proof that once in a lifetime can happen twice! But Colin might not be the only one who needs convincing...

She knew that she didn’t really owe him an explanation.

After all, he was a public servant and this had been done in the service of the public. The public had a right to know. But she had made him a promise, so she felt the need to explain why she’d gone back on it.

“I know I promised that you’d have the final say, but I’ve got people I answer to and they insisted that the segment go on tonight as is. It turned out pretty well, I thought.” She crossed her fingers that he saw it that way, too.

“You lied to me.” It wasn’t an accusation but a flat statement. It carried with it not anger, but a note of genuine disappointment. And that made her feel worse than if he’d launched into a tirade.

“I didn’t lie,” she replied. “I had every intention of showing you the clip first.” When he said nothing, she felt uncomfortable, despite the fact that this ultimately wasn’t really her fault. “The station manager wanted to air it before the other stations got it. I’m sorry, but these things happen. Listen, if you want me to make it up to you—” she began, not really certain where this would ultimately go.

He cut her short with two words. “I do.”

* * *

Matchmaking Mamas: Playing Cupid. Arranging dates. What are mothers for?

Twice a Hero, Always Her Man

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To Charlie

For stepping up

And

Taking care of me

When I couldn’t.

After all these years,

You still manage to surprise me.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“Oh, Maizie, it’s just breaking my heart, seeing her like this.”

Maizie Sommers quietly pushed the gaily decorated box of triple-ply tissues she kept on her desk toward her friend, waiting for the woman to collect herself. Connie Williams had called her first thing this morning, asking to see her.

Maizie knew from her friend’s tone of voice that she wasn’t asking to see her in her professional capacity—at least not in her professional capacity as an award-winning Realtor.

But Maizie had another vocation, an altruistic one that was near and dear to her heart, as it was to the hearts of her two dearest, lifelong friends, Theresa Manetti and Cecilia Parnell. All three were career women who did quite well in their respective chosen fields. But it was the one avocation that they had in common that brought them the most joy. The one that carried no monetary reward whatsoever, just one that made them feel good.

All three were matchmakers.

It had begun quite innocently enough. The three of them had been friends since the third grade. In the years that followed, they had gone through all the milestones of life together, great and small—not the least of which was widowhood. And all three were also blessed with children. Maizie had a daughter, as did Cecilia, while Theresa had a daughter and a son.

Their four children were all successful in their own rights—and they were also maddeningly single. Until Maizie decided that her daughter, an ob-gyn, needed more in her life than just delivering other people’s babies. She needed a private life of her own. Joining forces with her two friends, Maizie began to closely monitor and review the wide variety of people all three of them dealt with.

Thanks to their professions—Theresa ran a catering company, while Cecilia had a thriving housecleaning service—Maizie quickly and secretly found the perfect “someone” for her daughter.

Theresa and Cecilia were quick to follow her example, and soon all three of their children were matched to their soul mates, as well.

Nothing bred more success than initial success and so a passion was born. Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia began helping the children of other friends, all while always managing to keep the principals involved in the dark, thinking it was fate rather than three very artful women that had intervened in their lives for the better.

So it didn’t surprise Maizie at all to be sitting in her office today across from one of her friends, quietly waiting for the request she knew was coming. Connie wanted her to find someone for her daughter, a reporter with a prominent local news station.

Connie pulled out a tissue and wiped away the tears that had slid down her cheek despite her best efforts to the contrary.

“Ellie puts up a brave front and whenever I ask her, she tells me that she’s fine, but she’s not fine. A mother knows, Maizie,” the older woman insisted, stifling a sob.

Maizie offered her an understanding smile. “Truer words were never spoken,” she agreed. Then, gently, Maizie asked her friend, “How long has it been now?”

“Two years,” Connie answered. She didn’t even have to pause to think. She knew it to the exact day. Remembered how stricken her daughter had been when she’d found out that her husband, a recently discharged, highly decorated Marine sergeant had been killed while trying to save a couple who were being robbed at a convenience store.

“She goes on with her life, goes on with her career, but I know in my heart nothing’s changed. If anything, she works harder these days, spends long hours both in the field on assignment and at the studio, overseeing the editing of her work, but it’s like everything froze inside her since that day.”

Maizie nodded. “I can imagine how awful it must have been for Ellie to find out that the news story she was being sent to cover involved her own husband.”

There had been a mix-up when the story had come over the wire and the name of the hero of the piece had been accidentally switched for the name of the owner of the convenience store where the robbery had occurred. When Ellie and her cameraman had arrived on the scene, the ambulance had already come and gone. It wasn’t until she was in the middle of covering the story, talking to the two grateful people her husband had saved, that her cell phone had rung. Someone from the hospital was calling her to notify Ellie that her husband had been shot and had died en route.

“Ellie went numb when the call on her cell came in. The poor thing barely kept from fainting in front of everyone. Her studio was exceedingly sympathetic, and Ellie, well, she just froze up inside that awful, awful night and she still hasn’t come around, no matter what she tries to tell me to the contrary.”

Connie looked at the woman she was counting on to change things for her daughter, her eyes eloquently entreating her for help.

“Maizie, she’s only thirty years old. Thirty is much too young to resign from life the way she has. Ellie has so much to offer. It’s just killing me to see her like this.” Connie pressed her lips together. “If I say anything to her, she just smiles and tells me not to worry. How can I not worry?” she asked.

Maizie placed her hand over her friend’s in a comforting gesture, one mother reaching out to another. “I’m glad you came, Connie. Leave this to me.”

The woman hesitated, her gratitude warring with a host of other feelings—and one main one that she gave voice to now. “If Ellie knew I was trying to find someone for her—”

“You’re not,” Maizie pointed out. “Let me look into this and I’ll get back to you,” she promised. In her mind, she was already summoning her friends for an evening card game, happily telling them that they had a brand-new assignment of the heart.

Nothing was more satisfying to them—except, of course, for the successful execution of said operation.

Maizie couldn’t wait.

Chapter One

It felt as if mornings came earlier and earlier these days, even though the numbers on the clock registered the same from one day to the next. Even so, it just seemed harder for Elliana King to rouse herself, to kick off her covers and find a way to greet the world that was waiting for her just outside her front door.

It wasn’t always this way, she thought sadly. There was a time that she felt sleeping was a waste of precious hours. Those were the days when she would bounce up long before the alarm’s shrill bell officially went off, calling an end to any restful sleep she might have been engaged in.

But everything had changed two years ago.

These days, her dreams were sadly all empty, devoid of anything. The first year after Brett had been taken from her, she’d look forward to sleep because that was when he visited her. Every night, she dreamed of Brett, of the times they’d spent together, and it was as if she’d never lost him. All she had to do was close her eyes and within a few minutes, he was there. His smile, his voice, the touch of his hand. Everything.

She’d been more alive in sleep than while awake.

And then, just like that, he wasn’t. Wasn’t there no matter how hard she tried to summon him back. And getting up to face the day, face a life that no longer had Brett in it, became progressively harder for her.

Ellie sat up in bed, dragging her hand through blue-black hair Brett always referred to as silky. She was trying to dig up the will to actually put her feet on the floor and begin her day, a day that promised to be filled from one end to the other with nothing but ongoing work. Work that was meant to keep her busy and not thinking—not feeling.

Especially not feeling.

Work was her salvation—but first she had to get there.

Still trying to summon the energy to start, Ellie glanced at the nightstand on her left. The nightstand that held her phone, the lamp that was the first piece of furnishings Brett and she had chosen together—and the framed photograph of Brett wearing his uniform.

A ghost of a smile barely curved her lips as she reached out to touch the face that was looking back at her in the photograph.

And without warning, Ellie found herself blinking back tears.

“Still miss you,” she murmured to the man who had been her whole world. She sighed and shook her head. “Almost wish I didn’t,” she told him because she had never been anything but truthful with Brett. “Because it hurts too much, loving you,” she admitted.

Closing her eyes, Ellie pushed herself up off the bed, taking the first step into her day.

The other steps would come. Not easily, but at least easier. It was always that first step that was a killer, she thought, doing her best to get in gear.

She went through the rest of her morning routine by rote, hardly aware of what she was doing or how she got from point A to point B and so on. But she did, and eventually, Ellie was dressed and ready, standing at her front door, the consummate reporter prepared to undertake a full day of stories that needed to be engagingly framed for the public.

She knew how to put on a happy face for the camera.

No one except those who were very close to her—her mother; Jerry Ross, her cameraman; and maybe Marty Stern, the program manager who gave her her assignments—knew that she was always running on half-empty, because her reason for everything was no longer there.

Several times Ellie had toyed with the idea of just bowing out. Of not getting up, not going through the motions any longer. But she knew what that would do to her mother and she just couldn’t do that to her, so she kept up the pretense. Her mother, widowed shortly before Brett had been killed, would be devastated if anything happened to her, so Ellie made sure nothing “happened” to her, made sure she kept putting one foot in front of the other.

And just kept going.

“But sometimes it’s so hard,” she admitted out loud to the spirit of the man she felt was always with her even if she could no longer touch him.

Ellie took a deep breath as she opened the front door. It was fall and the weather was beautiful, as usual. “Another day in paradise,” she murmured to herself.

Locking the door behind her, she forced herself to focus on what she had to do today—even though a very large part of her wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over her head.

* * *

“I know that look,” Cecilia Parnell said the moment she sat down at the card table in Maizie’s family room and took in her friend’s face. “This isn’t about playing cards, is it?”

Maizie was already seated and she was dealing out the cards. She raised an eyebrow in Cilia’s direction and smiled.

“Not entirely,” Maizie replied vaguely.

Theresa Manetti looked from Cilia to Maizie. She picked up the cards that Maizie had dealt her, but she didn’t even bother fanning them out in her hand or looking at them. Cilia, Theresa knew, was right.

“Not at all,” Theresa countered. “You’ve got a new case, don’t you?” She did her best to contain her excitement. It had been a while now and she missed the thrill of bringing two soul mates together.

“You mean a new listing?” Maizie asked her innocently. “Yes, I just put up three new signs. As a matter of fact, there’s one in your neighborhood, Theresa,” she added.

“Oh, stop,” Cilia begged, rolling her eyes. “You know that’s not what Theresa and I are saying.” She leaned closer over the small rectangular table that had seen so many of their card games over the years as well as borne witness to so many secrets that had been shared during that time. “Spill it. Male or female?”

“Female,” Maizie replied. She smiled mysteriously. “Actually, you two know her.”

Cilia and Theresa exchanged puzzled glances. “Personally?” Cilia asked.

Maizie raised a shoulder as if to indicate that she wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually spoken with her friend’s daughter.

“From TV.”

Cilia, the more impatient one of the group, frowned. “We’ve been friends for over fifty years, Maizie. This isn’t the time to start talking in riddles.”

She supposed they were right. She didn’t usually draw things out this way. Momentarily placing her own cards down, she looked at her friends as she told them, “It’s Elliana King.”

Theresa seemed surprised. “You mean the reporter on Channel—?”

Theresa didn’t get a chance to mention the station. Maizie dispensed with that necessity by immediately cutting to the chase.

“Yes,” she said with enthusiasm.

“She didn’t actually come to you, did she?” Cilia asked in surprise.

“A girl that pretty shouldn’t have any trouble—” Theresa began.

“No, no,” Maizie answered, doing away with any further need for speculation. “Her mother did. Connie Williams,” she told them for good measure. Both women were casually acquainted with Connie. “You remember,” Maizie continued, “Ellie was the one who tragically found out on the air that her husband had been killed saving a couple being held up at gunpoint.”

Theresa closed her eyes and shivered as she recalled the details. “I remember. I read that her station’s ratings went through the roof while people watched that poor girl struggling to cope.”

“That’s the one,” Maizie confirmed. “As I said, her mother is worried about her and wants us to find someone for Ellie.”

“Tall order,” Cilia commented, thinking that, given the trauma the young woman had gone through, it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Brave woman,” Maizie responded.

“No argument there,” Theresa agreed.

Both women turned toward Cilia, who had gone strangely silent.

“Cilia?” Theresa asked, wondering what was going on in their friend’s head.

Maizie zeroed in on what she believed was the cause of Cilia’s uncharacteristic silence. Maizie was very proud of her gut instincts.

“You have something?” she asked.

Looking up, Cilia blinked as if she was coming out of deep thought.

“Maybe,” she allowed. “One of the women who work for me was just telling me about her neighbor the other day. Actually,” Cilia amended, “Olga was making a confession.”

“Why?” Theresa asked, puzzled.

Maizie went to the heart of the matter. “What kind of a confession?” she pressed.

“She told me she offered to clean the young man’s apartment for free because it was in such a state of chaos,” she explained. “And Olga felt she was betraying me somehow with that offer.”

Theresa still wasn’t sure she was clear about what was going on. “Why did she offer to clean his place? Was it like a trade agreement?” she asked. “She did something for him, then he did something for her?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Cilia quickly corrected, guessing at what her friend was inferring was behind the offer. “She told me that she felt sorry for the guy. He’s a police detective who’s suddenly become the guardian of his ten-year-old niece.”

Maizie was instantly interested. “How did that happen?”

“His brother and sister-in-law were in this horrific skiing accident. Specifically, there was an avalanche and they were buried in it. By the time the rescuers could get to them, they were both dead,” Cilia told her friends. “Apparently there’s no other family to take care of the girl except for Olga’s neighbor.”

Theresa looked sufficiently impressed. “Sounds like a good man,” she commented.

“Sounds like a man who could use a little help,” Maizie interjected thoughtfully.

Maizie took off her glasses and gazed around the table at her friends. Ideas were rapidly forming and taking shape in her very fertile brain.

“Ladies,” she announced with a smile, “we have homework to do.”

* * *

“But I don’t need a babysitter,” Heather Benteen vehemently protested.

“I told you, kid, she’s not a babysitter,” Colin Benteen told his highly precious niece, a girl he’d known and loved since birth. Life had been a great deal easier when the only role he occupied was that of her friend, her coconspirator. This parenting thing definitely had a downside. “If you want to call her something, call her a young-girl-sitter,” he told Heather, choosing his words carefully.

“I don’t need one of those, either,” Heather shot back. “I’ll be perfectly fine coming home and doing my homework even if you’re not here.” She glared accusingly at her uncle, her eyes narrowing. “You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” Colin countered with feeling.

Heather fisted her hands and dug them into her hips. “Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” he told his niece patiently, “that I know the temptation that’s out there.” He gave her a knowing look. “I was just like you once.”

“You were a ten-year-old girl?” Heather challenged.

“No, I was a ten-year-old boy, wise guy,” he told her, affectionately tugging on one of her two thick braids. “Now, humor me. Olga offered to be here when you come home and hang around until I get off.”

She tried again. “Look, Uncle Colin, I don’t want to give you a hard time—”

“Then don’t,” he said, cutting Heather off as he grabbed a slice of toast.

Heather was obviously not going to give up easily. “I don’t like having someone spy on me.”

“Here’s an idea,” he proposed, taking his gun out of the lockbox on the bookshelf where he always deposited his weapon when he came home at night. “You can get your revenge by not doing anything noteworthy and boring her to death.”

The preteen scowled at him. “So not the point,” she insisted.

He wasn’t about to get roped into a long philosophical discussion with his niece. She had to get to school and he needed to be at work.

“Exactly the point,” he replied. “Olga will be here when I’m not, just as she has been these last few weeks—and we’re lucky to have her. End of discussion,” he told her firmly.

“For there to have been a discussion, I would have had to voice my side of it,” she pointed out, all but scowling at him in a silent challenge that said she had yet to frame her argument.

Colin paused for a moment as he laughed and shook his head. “Sue me. I’ve never raised a ten-year-old before and I want to get this right.”

The impatient look faded from her face and Heather smiled. She knew that they were both groping around in the dark, trying to find their way. Her uncle had always been very important to her, even before she’d woken up to find that the parameters of her world had suddenly changed so drastically.

She gave him a quick hug, as if she knew what was really on his mind. Concern. “We’ll be all right, Uncle Colin.”

“Yes, we will,” he agreed. He pointed toward the front door. “Now let’s go.”

For the sake of pretense, Heather sighed dramatically and then marched right out of his ground-floor garden apartment.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Colin found himself halfway around the city, tackling a would-be art thief who was trying to make off with an original painting he’d stolen from someone’s private collection in the more exclusive side of Bedford.

The call had gone out and he’d caught it quite by accident because his new morning route—he had to drop Heather off at school—now took him three miles out of his way and, as it so happened today, right into the path of the escaping art thief.

Waiting for the light to change, Colin saw a car streak by less than ten feet away from him. It matched the description that had come on over the precinct’s two-way radio.

“Son of a gun,” he muttered in disbelief. The guy had almost run him over. “Dispatch, I see the vehicle in question and I’m pursuing it now.”

Turning his wheel sharply, he made a U-turn and proceeded to give chase. Despite his adrenaline pumping, he hated these chases, hated thinking of what was liable to happen if the utmost care as well as luck weren’t at play here.

He held his breath even as he mentally crossed his fingers.

After a short time and some rather tricky, harrowing driving, he pursued the thief right into a storage-unit facility.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath. Did the guy actually believe he was going to lose him here? Talk about dumb moves...

He supposed he had to be grateful for that. Had the thief hit the open road, he might have lost him or someone might have gotten hit—possibly fatally—during the pursuit.

As it was, he managed to corner the man. Colin jumped out of his car and completed the chase on foot, congratulating himself that all those days at the gym paid off. He caught up to the thief, who had unintentionally led him not only to where he had planned on hiding this painting that he’d purloined but to a number of others that apparently had been stolen at some earlier date.

It took a moment to sink in. When it did, Colin tried not to let his jaw drop. Things like this didn’t usually happen in Bedford, which, while not a sleepy little town, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, either.

“Wow, you’ve been quite the eager beaver, haven’t you?” Colin remarked as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on the thief’s wrists.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” the thief declared. “Never saw these other paintings before in my life,” he swore, disavowing any previous connection.

“And yet you came here to hide the one you stole this morning,” Colin pointed out. “Small world, wouldn’t you say?”

“I never saw these before!” the slight man repeated loudly.

Colin shook his head as he led the thief out to his waiting car. “Didn’t your mama teach you not to lie?” he asked.

“I’m not saying another word without my lawyer,” the thief announced, and dramatically closed his mouth.

“Good move,” Colin said in approval. “Not much left to say anyway, seeing as how all these paintings speak for themselves.”

Desperate, the thief made one last attempt to move Colin as he was being put into the backseat. “Look, this is just a big misunderstanding.”

“Uh-huh.”

Panic had entered the man’s face, making Colin wonder if he was working for someone else, someone he feared. “I can make it worth your while if you just look the other way, let me go. I’ll leave the paintings. You can just tell everyone you found them.”

Colin smiled to himself. It never ceased to amaze him just how dumb some people could be. “Maybe you should have thought of the consequences before you started putting this private collection together for yourself.” He saw the thief opening his mouth and sensed there was just more of the same coming. “Too late now,” he told the man.

With that, he took out his cell phone and called in to the station for backup to come and collect all the paintings. There were going to be a lot of happy art owners today, he mused. They wouldn’t be reunited with their paintings immediately, since for now, the pieces were all being kept as evidence, but at least they knew the art had been recovered and was safe.

He glanced at his watch as he waited for his call to go through.

It was just nine thirty, he realized. Nine thirty on a Monday morning. His week was off and running.