Wish Upon a Matchmaker

“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.

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.

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To

Andrew Gallagher, who mentioned his daughter’s name to me and inspired a story.

“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.