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Unwrapping the Playboy
Marie Ferrarella
The Playboy’s Gift
Teresa Carpenter
Dear Reader,
If you’ve been around me for any length of time, you might have noticed a pattern forming. I begin a series by setting limits for myself. Three books, four books, five books. All the series I plot have a finite number. Once I’m in the world I created, I can’t say goodbye. MATCHMAKING MAMAS was supposed to be about three lifelong best friends meddling in their daughters’ lives in order to find the perfect match for them. Three friends, three daughters, ta-dum, end of story. Well, not quite.
One of the friends has a son in addition to a daughter … and then, there are those handy relatives, who also need to find true love.
So, you see, I can’t seem to help myself. I’m a compulsive storyteller and there’s nothing I love more than a sequel. I know I should try to find a local branch of storytellers anonymous to join, and I would—if I wasn’t having so much fun. As always, I thank you for reading and with all my heart I wish you someone to love who loves you back.
Love,
Marie Ferrarella
About the Author
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www. marieferrarella.com.
To Charlie,
who had my heart
from the moment he walked into
my second-period English class
when I was fourteen.
Chapter One
“Kullen, you need a woman in your life.”
Kullen Manetti smiled at his widowed mother across the small table at Vesuvius.
Not bad. This had to be a new record. Theresa Manetti had managed to go through the main course before she’d brought up the subject. His lack of a better half was, after all, one of his mother’s top-ten topics whenever they spent more than a few moments in each other’s company.
Since his sister, Kate, had succumbed some six months ago to the charms of one bank manager by the name of Jackson Wainwright, leaving him the last man standing and holding down the “single” fort in their small group of second-generation friends, his unwedded state had become his mother’s number one favorite topic.
But his mother, bless her, had just missed one very obvious point with her comment.
“Mom, I have lots of women in my life,” Kullen reminded her.
Theresa’s blue eyes narrowed just a bit as she stuck to her guns. In the last year, she and her best friends, Maizie and Cecilia, had arranged successful pairings for their three stubbornly single, career-obsessed daughters. Theresa had become far more confident about her abilities and her judgment than she’d been prior to this venture.
Granted, she did run her own business and had for a number of years. But on the home front, she was the quietest and shyest of the threesome, women she’d been friends with ever since they’d met—and bonded—in the third grade.
Maizie, a self-starting real estate broker, had spearheaded what she had initially referred to as Operation: Matchmaking Mamas. Cecilia had been the one who’d backed her wholeheartedly despite veiling her enthusiasm with a bit of sarcasm. But then Cecilia had always been a tad sarcastic.
As for Theresa, her way was to cross her fingers and fervently pray. On occasion, she would say something—completely unobtrusively—about wishing she could see her son and daughter settle down. Both Kate and Kullen were lawyers at what had once been their father’s topflight family law firm. For all intents and purposes, Kate had been married monastically to her work for quite some time, while Kullen, equally as sharp, had somehow managed to be successful while still systematically enjoying the company of every attractive, unattached woman in a fifty-mile radius. He had no qualms about branching to outlying areas once his immediate supply was exhausted. No relationship—if it actually could be called that—went beyond a few weeks. Six weeks was the limit and those, in Kullen’s opinion, were considered to be long term, as well as exceedingly rare.
It hurt Theresa’s heart that her handsome, successful, dynamic son had no desire to find that one special woman who promised to turn his world on its ear and make him want to be—please, God—monogamous.
“A decent woman in your life,” Theresa now qualified firmly.
Beaming, Kullen leaned in closer. “Ah, well, for that I have you,” he told her, brushing a quick kiss on his mother’s temple. “And Kate. And, of course, those delightfully charming, probing friends of yours, Maizie and Cecilia.”
His mother, he knew, got together with the latter two at least once a week to play poker—allegedly. What they did, in actuality, was strategize. Now that Kate, Nikki and Jewel were spoken for, he imagined that the women were pressed for a new project. Well, much as he loved his mother and her friends—women he had thought were his aunts for the first ten years of his life—their next project sure as hell wasn’t going to be him.
Theresa drew up her small frame and sat schoolgirl straight in her chair as she scrutinized her firstborn. Kullen was tall, dark and handsome, just as his father had been. Except that Kullen’s features were finer, chiseled. Almost aristocratic in appearance. That he got from her. His wandering eye, well, that was anyone’s guess.
“Kullen—”
He knew that tone. Knew, too, that it was in his best interest to cut her off as quickly as possible before she built up a full head of steam. He didn’t want to end this pleasant lunch on a sour note. These days, the pace of his life had picked up, especially since one of the senior partners, Ronald Simmons, had retired last month. Consequently, he didn’t get the opportunity to visit with his mother as often as he liked.
All things considered, he really did enjoy his mother’s company. Theresa Manetti was kind, sympathetic and giving and he loved her for it. In true selfless-mother fashion, she put her family before herself.
His father, Kullen thought and not for the first time, had been an exceedingly lucky man. Unfortunately, Anthony Manetti had been far too consumed with his work to notice just how lucky he was. From its very inception, the family law firm, then known as Manetti, Rothchild and Simmons, had been his father’s life, and it wasn’t until he and then Kate had joined the firm that Anthony Manetti had taken real notice of either one of them.
Kate, Kullen knew, had had it particularly hard because, on top of being a perfectionist, their late father had been a chauvinist. Until his dying day, Anthony Manetti believed that anyone of the female gender—outside of a few outstanding women in world politics—was not as mentally equipped as a man in any field. Especially the law. He demanded twice as much from Kate just to put her on equal footing with the other junior lawyers in the firm.
Too bad, Dad. You had the devotion of two good women and you never even knew it, Kullen thought, even as he verbally headed his mother off at the pass.
“Really, Mom, I would think that you and your ladies would be far more interested in tackling your own lives, or if you must, gang up on poor, lonely Cousin Kennon.”
Like his sister and her two friends, his cousin Kennon was one of those exceedingly busy career women—she had her own decorating business—who maintained that they were far