Once Upon a Matchmaker

Okay, she’d allow herself one more kiss.

Just one more kiss, and then she’d call a halt to this, tell him that he was being incredibly hasty and foolish and a whole host of other things as well, ending it by saying that one of them had to be sensible.

In a second, in just another second, she’d tell him all that and more.

More.

The single word shimmered in her head, a silent entreaty to the man who was knocking out all the carefully laid foundations of her world. Very effectively reducing her to a pile of palpitating rubble.

She had one last card to play.

“What about your sons?” Tracy asked as, tapping the last of her strength, she created yet another chasm between their lips.

“Let them get their own women,” Micah told her, kissing her again.

Melting her again.

Dear Reader,

When I first came up with the idea of MATCHMAKING MAMAS, it was going to be only a three-book series. But as you might have noticed, I have a great deal of trouble letting go.

This time around, our ladies, Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia, bring together two people who really need one another in more ways than one. Tracy Ryan is an extremely successful lawyer who is a dynamo in the courtroom but very lonely when she closes her door at night. Micah Muldare, a senior reliability engineer, had an extremely happy marriage that ended when his wife died of a brain aneurysm, leaving him with a mountain of medical bills and two very young sons. But a ring of hackers hijacking computers places his future—not to mention his freedom—in jeopardy just as his aunt turns her attention to his non-existent love life. Maizie brings Tracy and Micah together, and the lady lawyer stays to fix more than his legal problems. She fixes his heart, and he returns the favor.

I hope you enjoy this latest installment of one of my favorite series. As ever, I thank you for reading, and from the bottom of my heart I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All the best,

Marie Ferrarella

About the Author

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

Once Upon
a Matchmaker
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To

Gail Chasan

who, mercifully, gets

my sense of humor

Prologue

“He’s a good, decent man,” Sheila Barrett said.

The “he” the tall, striking woman referred to was her nephew, the young man she’d taken into her home and raised when her sister and brother-in-law were killed in a car crash.

That had been nearly twenty years ago. Micah Muldare was more like a son than a nephew to her and, like a mother, she worried about him. In her opinion, she had good cause to be worried. He’d all but become an emotional hermit.

“But ever since his wife, Ella, died, he’s become almost driven, throwing himself into his work. If I even try to mention socializing, he tells me he’s too busy.” She pressed her lips together, trying to suppress the wave of sadness welling up within her. “It’s like he’s always trying to outrun the pain.”

Sheila didn’t usually pour out her heart this way, even to a good friend like Maizie Sommers, but at this point, she needed help getting through to her nephew. If anything, the situation was getting worse, not better.

“What about his sons?” Maizie asked. “Didn’t you tell me that he has two little boys? How is he with them?”

Sheila nodded, pausing for a moment to take another sip of the exotic-tasting tea she’d ordered. Maizie, a real estate agent, had suggested that they meet here in this little café to discuss what was bothering her. The problem, it seemed, was right up Maizie’s alley.

In addition to having her own real estate company, Maizie, along with her two lifelong best friends, Theresa Manetti and Cecilia Parnell, dabbled in matchmaking. Initially undertaken just to match up their own single children, they’d come to enjoy such success that now they did it for their friends. Knowing about this sideline, Sheila had come to her, worried about Micah and looking for help.

“Gary and Greg,” Sheila confirmed. “They’re five and four, and he adores them. But the boys are seeing less and less of their father because he’s immersing himself in his career. And it’s not helping,” she confided. “Any of them.”

“Work is never a substitute for a good relationship,” Maizie maintained.

Sheila couldn’t agree more. “The boys need a mother and Micah needs someone to love who loves him back.” She looked at her friend, feeling somewhat uneasy. “I don’t usually meddle in his life—”

“And I’m sure he appreciates that, but sometimes those we love need a little push in the right direction. Nothing wrong with that,” Maizie assured her.

“He’d be really upset if he knew I was even discussing his life like this—”

Maizie flashed the other woman an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry. This’ll all be discretely handled. Let me see what I can do,” Maizie told her. “Mother’s Day is coming up,” she noted, thinking that could somehow be utilized in this case, then promised, “I’ll get back to you before then.”

The wheels in Maizie’s head went into high gear as she began to consider possibilities. Operation Micah Muldare had begun the moment Sheila had sat down at her table.

Chapter One

So this was what all the secrecy, giggling and whispers had been about.

Micah Muldare sat on the sofa, looking at the gift his sons had quite literally surprised him with. A gift he wasn’t expecting, commemorating a day that he’d never thought applied to him. He’d just unwrapped the gift and it was now sitting on the coffee table, a source of mystification, at least for him.

His boys, four-year-old Greg and five-year-old Gary, sat—or more accurately perched—on either side of him like energized bookends, unable to remain still for more than several seconds at a time. Blond, blue-eyed and small boned, his sons looked like little carbon copies of each other.

They looked like Ella.

Micah shut the thought away. It had been two years, but his heart still wasn’t ready for that kind of comparison.

Maybe someday, just not yet.

“Do you like it, Daddy?” Gary, the more animated of the two, asked eagerly. The boy was fairly beaming as he put the question to him. His bright blue eyes took in every tiny movement.

Micah eyed at the mug on the coffee table. “I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Micah told his son. “Actually, I wasn’t expecting anything at all today.”

It was Mother’s Day. Granted he’d been doing double duty for the past two years, being both mother and father to his two sons, but he hadn’t expected any sort of acknowledgment from the boys on Mother’s Day. On Father’s Day, yes, but definitely not on this holiday.

The mug had been wrapped in what seemed like an entire roll of wrapping paper. Gary had proclaimed proudly that he had done most of the wrapping.

“But I put the tape on,” Greg was quick to tell him.

Micah praised their teamwork.

The mug had World’s Greatest Mom written on it in pink-and-yellow ceramic flowers. Looking at it now, Micah could only grin and shake his head. Well, at least their hearts were in the right place.

“Um, I think you guys are a little confused about the concept,” he confided.

Gary’s face scrunched up in apparent confusion. “What’s a con-cept?”

“It’s an idea, a way of—”

Micah abruptly stopped himself. As a reliability engineer who worked in the top secret missile defense systems department of Donovan Defense, a large national company, he had a tendency to get rather involved in his explanations. Given his sons’ tender ages, he decided that a brief and simple explanation was the best way to go.

So he tried again. “It’s a way of understanding something. The point is, I’m very touched, guys, but you do understand that I’m not your mom, right? I’m your dad.” He looked from Gary to Greg to see if they had any lingering questions or doubts.

“We know that,” Gary told him as if he thought it was silly to ever confuse the two roles. “But sometimes you do mom things,” he reminded his father.

“Yeah, like make cookies when I’m sick,” Greg piped up.

Which was more often than he was happy about, Micah couldn’t help thinking. Greg, smaller for his age than even Gary, was his little survivor. Born prematurely, his younger son had had a number of complicating conditions that had him in and out of hospitals until he was almost two years old.

Because of all the different medications he’d been forced to take, the little boy’s immune system was somewhat compromised. As an unfortunate by-product of that, Greg was more prone to getting sick than his brother.

And every time he did get sick, Micah watched him carefully, afraid the boy would come down with another bout of pneumonia. The last time, a year and a half ago, Greg had almost died. The thought haunted him for months.

Clearing his throat, Micah squared his shoulders. His late mother, Diane, had taught him to accept all gifts gracefully.

“Well, then, thank you very much,” he told his sons with a wide smile that was instantly mirrored by each of the boys.

“Aunt Sheila helped us,” Gary told him, knowing that he couldn’t accept all of the credit for the gift.

“Yeah, she drove us to the store,” Greg chimed in. “But me and Gary picked it out. And we used our own money, too,” he added as a postscript.

“‘Gary and I,’” Micah automatically corrected Greg.

The little boy shook his head so hard, his straight blond hair appeared airborne for a moment, flying to and fro about his head.

“No, not you, Daddy, me,” Greg insisted. “Me and Gary.”

There was time enough to correct his grammar when he was a little older, Micah thought fondly.

Out loud he marveled, “Imagine that,” for his sons’ benefit. A touch of melancholy drifted over him. “You two are growing up way too fast,” he told them. “Before you know it, you’re going to be getting married and starting families of your own.”

“Married?” Greg echoed, frowning as deeply as if his father had just told him that he was having liver for dinner for the next year.

“To a girl?” Gary asked incredulously, very obviously horrified by the mere suggestion that he be forced to marry a female. Everyone knew girls were icky—except for Aunt Sheila, of course, but she didn’t count.

“That’s more or less what I had in mind, yes,” Micah told his sons, doing his very best not to laugh at their facial expressions.

Covering his face, Gary declared, “Yuck!” with a great deal of feeling.

“Yeah,” Greg cried, mimicking his brother, “double yuck!”

Micah slipped an arm around each little boy’s very slim shoulders and pulled them to him. He would miss this when the boys were older, miss these moments when his sons made him feel as if he was the center of their universe.

“Come back and tell me that in another, oh, ten, fifteen years,” he teased.

“Okay,” Gary promised very solemnly. “We will, Daddy.”

“Yeah, we will!” Greg echoed, not to be outdone.

Micah’s aunt, Sheila Barrett, stood in the living room doorway, observing the scene between her nephew and her grandnephews. Her mouth curved in a wide smile. While she lived not too far from Micah, it felt as if this was more her home than the place where she received her mail. She took care of the boys when her nephew was at work, which, unless one of his sons was sick, was most of the time.

“They picked that mug out themselves,” she told Micah, in case he thought that this was her idea. “They absolutely refused to look at anything else after they saw that mug. They thought it was perfect for you.”

“And of course you tried to talk them out of it,” Micah said, tongue in cheek. His amusement was there, in his eyes.

Sheila shrugged nonchalantly. “The way I see it, Micah, little men in the making should be as free to exercise their shopping gene as their little female counterparts.”

“Very democratic of you,” Micah commented, the corners of his mouth curving. Aunt Sheila had always had a bit of an unorthodox streak. He learned to think outside the box because of her. He sincerely doubted that he would be where he was today if not for her. “Well, just for that, I’m taking all of you out for lunch.”

“Aunt Sheila, too?” Greg asked, not wanting to exclude her.

“Aunt Sheila most especially,” Micah told his younger son. There was deep affection in his voice. “After all, Aunt Sheila is the real mom around here,” he emphasized pointedly.

Clearly confused, Greg turned to look at the woman who came by every morning to take him to preschool and his brother to kindergarten. Every afternoon she’d pick them both up and then stayed with them until their father came home. Some nights, Aunt Sheila stayed really, really late.

“Aunt Sheila has kids?” Greg asked his father, surprised.

Sheila smiled, answering for Micah. “I have your dad,” told the boy.

They had a special bond, she and her sister’s son. When the world came crashing in on him when his parents were killed in a car accident while on vacation, Micah had been twelve years old. Injured in the accident, too, he’d been all alone at that San Jose hospital. She’d lost no time driving up the coast to get to him. She’d stayed by his side until he was well enough to leave and then she took him home with her. There was no looking back. She’d raised him as her own.

Greg was staring at her, wide-eyed, his small face stamped with disbelief. “Dad was a kid?”

“Your dad was a kid,” she assured him, biting her tongue so as not to laugh at the expression of wonder on the little boy’s face. “And a pretty wild one at that.”

“She’s making that part up,” Micah told his sons. “I was a perfect angel.”

“When you were asleep, you looked just like one,” Sheila agreed, then added, “Awake, not so much.”

“Can you tell us stories about when Daddy was a kid?” Gary asked eagerly.

Sheila’s smile was so wide, her eyes almost disappeared. “I sure can.”

“But she won’t,” Micah interjected with a note of finality. “She’s going to save those for when you’re older.”

Gary’s forehead crinkled beneath his blond bangs. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you that when you’re older, too,” Micah promised him. Changing the subject, he asked, “Now, who’s hungry for pizza?”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a chorus of “We are!” rose up. It was hard to believe that two little boys could project so much volume when they wanted to.

Micah gazed at his aunt who’d made herself comfortable in the love seat opposite Micah and the boys. “I thought we’d go to that little Italian restaurant you like so much. Giuseppe’s.” The boys bounced up to their feet. His aunt rose to hers, as well. “Luckily for me, it’s kid-friendly.”

“As it happens,” his aunt said, placing a hand on each boy’s shoulder in order to usher them out the front door, “so am I.”

“You know there’s no one here to impress, right?” Kate Manetti Wainwright said to her friend, Tracy Ryan, as she stuck her head into the latter’s office.

It was Sunday and the law firm was closed. Or should have been. The sound of typing must have drawn Kate to Tracy’s small office, which meant an interruption.

Tracy looked up from the brief she was working on. “You’re here,” she pointed out.

“But I’m not supposed to be.” And neither was anyone else, she added silently. “I just stopped by to grab the sweater I left here on Friday.” She held up the powder-blue article of clothing as exhibit A. “And besides, I don’t count.”

“You do to me,” Tracy told her, flashing a quick, fleeting smile at her friend. “And for your information, I’m not trying to impress anyone, I’m just trying to catch up on my workload.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “You already work twice as hard as anyone here,” she pointed out. “How much catching up do you possibly have to do?”

Tracy’s slender shoulders rose and fell in an absentminded shrug. “Enough,” she said evasively, then, cocking her head, she leveled a piercing gaze at the woman who had been her friend all through law school. They’d been each other’s support group through the bad times, and each other’s cheering section through the good ones. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked. After all, today was Mother’s Day and, unlike her, Kate was lucky enough to still have one.

Kate feigned innocence. “As a matter of fact, I do—and you’re coming with me,” she declared as if she’d just thought of it.

Instead of automatically demurring, Tracy felt she needed to arm herself with information first so that she could come up with a good reason to say no. Kate didn’t take “no” easily. “And just where is it that I’m supposed to be going, too?”

“Giuseppe’s. Lilli and I are taking my mother out for Mother’s Day,” she said, referring to her brother Kullen’s wife.

Tracy shook her head. “That’s okay, I’ll just stay here and finish this brief.”

“I’m not taking no for an answer, Trace,” she informed her friend.

“It’s Mother’s Day,” Tracy said out loud, taking care not to lace her protest with emotion. “I’m sure your mother doesn’t want you dragging a stray along on her afternoon out.”

“Then you definitely don’t know my mother—and you’re not a stray,” she tagged on as an afterthought. “You’re more like family.” She smiled at her. “Like the sister my mother never got around to giving me,” she told Tracy.

Tracy suppressed a sigh. Mother’s Day was particularly difficult for her on two counts. The mother she adored was no longer part of her life. She hadn’t been for close to three years now. Moreover, added to that was the numbing fact that her blink-and-you’ve-missed-it marriage that came and went four years ago had left her pregnant and hopeful. Tracy had always loved children and the idea of being a mother herself was thrilling. But the thrill became tragedy when her baby came into the world prematurely—and stillborn.

That, more than the painfully short marriage she’d endured, had left her with the feeling that she was one of those people who was meant to go through life alone. She faced that the same way she faced everything else she found overwhelming: she threw herself into her work. Buried herself in a hundred and one details. Anything so that she didn’t have any time to think, to dwell on her own situation—or lack of one.

When the loneliness came at her full force, as it did sometimes, Tracy just worked a little harder until she was able to make herself numb again.

The important thing was not to feel. Since she was a normally caring person, she channeled her emotional connections into the cases she took on—and the people whose hand she figuratively held while she worked on their cases.

“I am not taking no for an answer,” Kate repeated with more feeling, adding, “And don’t worry, this isn’t some kind of a setup. Jackson is out of town on bank business this weekend, so it’s just going to be us girls,” she promised. “C’mon,” Kate coaxed, “It’ll be fun.

“That can wait,” she insisted, nodding at the brief on Tracy’s desk. “Unless it suddenly grows legs—and if it does, we’ll have bigger problems than just your workload—it’s not going anywhere,” she concluded with finality. Her tone left no room for a rebuttal. Tracy was coming with her even if she had to find a way to carry the woman out of the office and to the restaurant.

For now, she made a show of tugging on Tracy’s arm, gently but insistently nonetheless.

With a sigh, Tracy gave in. She supposed that being around pleasant people was preferable to being here by herself. Except for the very low hum of her computer, the office was bathed in silence. Silence allowed memories to pop up, painful memories that were liable to sneak up and ambush her at any time.

She knew the danger in that. Dwelling on either one of her losses for even a minute tended to devastate her. As long as she outran the memories or banked them down, she was all right. She could function. She desperately needed to function.

The alternative, sinking into a darkness where grief could eat away at her until there was nothing left, was not an option she was willing to accept. She’d been there once, and once was more than enough.

“Okay, I guess a girls’ afternoon out does sound pretty good,” Tracy agreed.

“Great!” Kate declared, already way ahead of her. Coming around to Tracy’s side of the desk, she nimbly pressed a combination of keys to save the document Tracy had been working on, and then shut down the computer. “Done,” she informed Tracy, then hooked her arm through her friend’s the moment Tracy got up from her chair.

“Knew you’d come around,” Kate told her, doing little to hide the triumphant note in her voice. “Let’s go. I don’t want to keep my mother waiting. Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Nikki and Jewel were going to be there with their mothers, too?”

It was in the form of a question, but Tracy knew her friend was dispensing information slowly. Tracy could acknowledge Kate was a dynamo in the courtroom and the complete opposite in a private setting.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Kate added. “My mom and those women have been friends forever. I knew she’d enjoy things more if they were there, too.”

What was that saying Mom used to say? In for a penny, in for a pound, Tracy recalled. Since it was Mother’s Day, she’d follow the old adage.

With a nod of her head, Tracy allowed herself to be dragged along.

Tracy had met Theresa Manetti a couple of times, once at Kate’s wedding, the other at Kullen’s. The woman reminded her a little of her own mother. Consequently, she had taken an instant liking to the intelligent, savvy woman as well as the two women she’d introduced as her “best friends since third grade,” Maizie Sommers and Cecilia Parnell.

She’d discovered that by combining the three women’s characteristics, she came practically face-to-face with her own mother. She savored the experience for a moment, then refocused herself to enjoy the individual company of each of the women.

“See,” Kate said as she, Lilli and Tracy all sat down at the extended table, “I told you it was going to be girls’ afternoon out.”

Theresa laughed shortly. “You’re stretching the word, dear,” she told her daughter. “I haven’t been a girl since the last century.”

“It’s all in your attitude,” Maizie told her. “Me, I’m never getting old.”

Theresa suppressed a laugh and asked Cecilia, “What’s the female counterpart to Peter Pan?”

“Happy,” Tracy chimed in without hesitating.

Maizie smiled her approval. “I do like the way you think, Tracy.” Picking up the menu, she began to scan it. “So, what looks good?” she asked the others.

“Offhand, I’d say he does,” Theresa Manetti answered. She wasn’t looking at the menu but at the occupant of a table three tables away.

Maizie looked up at the dark-haired man her friend was referring to. She pretended to look surprised. In reality, all three of them—she, Cecilia and Theresa—knew exactly where Micah Muldare would be sitting, thanks to prior arrangements with Sheila.

“You were saying about Peter Pan?” Maizie teased. And then she leaned forward, squinting just a little. “Oh, I think I know the woman he’s with.”

Now all the women at the table were looking in the direction Theresa was. “A little old for him, isn’t she?” Cecilia asked.

“That’s his aunt, Sheila Barrett. I sold her a condo a few years ago,” Maizie explained, slanting a glance toward Tracy.

“Then she’s really a client, not a friend,” Tracy guessed.

Maizie smiled as she looked at the newcomer. “She’s both.”

“Mother makes friends easily,” Nikki confided.

Tracy looked at the table in question. “Cute little boys,” she commented. Her smile was genuine. And wide.

Maizie nodded in approval. “Yes, they are. He’s doing a wonderful job, raising them by himself, I hear. Of course, Sheila comes by to help out when she can, but there is no real substitute for a mother’s love, is there?”

The question was directed toward Tracy, but it was her own daughter, as well as Theresa’s and Cecilia’s, who chorused in a singsong voice, “No, Mother, there really isn’t.”

Maizie only laughed softly. She had a really good feeling about this. There was a definite smile in Tracy’s eyes when she looked at the children. That was very telling in her book.

Another match would soon be in the offing, she thought with satisfaction.

It would be only a matter of time.