“I’m her aunt.” She slanted an exasperated look at the little girl that was nonetheless laced with love. “Her long-suffering aunt. I swear, Ginny, if you weren’t named after me …” Ginny’s aunt let her voice trail off, then flashed another apologetic smile at Maizie as she took a firm hold of Ginny’s hand, her intent clear. She was taking the little girl out of the office. “I’m sorry about all this—”
“No, please, wait,” Maizie coaxed in her best maternal, nurturing voice. “You look a little frazzled. Let me get you a nice cup of tea.” She glanced down at Ginny. “And I think I might have some lemonade for you if you like.”
“Yes, please,” Ginny said with restrained enthusiasm.
“No, really, we’ve been enough trouble already,” Virginia protested.
“Nonsense. You’re no trouble at all and I must say my curiosity has been piqued,” Maizie admitted as she went to the small island against the wall that housed an all-in-one unit, combining a small refrigerator, a stove with microwave features and a sink on one side. With a minimum of movements, she made a hot Chai tea for Virginia and poured a glass of lemonade for the small whirling dervish who’d been named after her.
“Now then, Ginny,” Maizie began, addressing Ginny as she handed her the glass of lemonade, “you said something about your daddy needing a wife.”
Hearing that, Virginia’s eyes widened in stunned amazement. “Ginny, you didn’t—why would you do that?” the woman demanded of her niece.
“Because she finds them,” Ginny told her aunt, nodding at Maizie. “Greg said so,” she said with the conviction of the very young.
“This lady runs a real estate agency,” Virginia pointed out, her nerves beginning to fray no doubt.
“Perhaps I should explain,” Maizie interjected, coming to Ginny’s rescue. “My friends and I dabble in matchmaking on the side—there’s no charge,” she said quickly in case the other woman thought this was some sort of a scam, “just the satisfaction of bringing together two people who were meant for each other but who might never—without the proper intervention—come together,” she said. Her eyes shifted to Ginny. “Like your friend Greg’s father and Tracy Ryan. My friends and I supply the ‘intervention,’ so to speak,” she told Virginia.
“Is that why you begged me to bring you here, to the ice cream parlor?” she asked her niece.
“They have very good ice cream,” Ginny piped up innocently.
“See what I’m up against?” Virginia asked Maizie wearily.
Maizie did her best to appear sympathetic. In her line of work, she’d had a great deal of practice. “Are you her father’s sister?” she asked.
Virginia nodded. “His name is Stone Scarborough. I’m his younger sister. I moved in with him to help out after Eva—Ginny’s mother—died. That was a year and a half ago. I’m still helping,” she added.
And you want to move on with your life, Maizie surmised from the other woman’s choice of words and her tone.
Maizie sat back in her chair, her mouth curving in a smile of anticipation. She could sense the thrill of a challenge taking hold. Nothing she loved more than being challenged.
“So, tell me about your brother,” she coaxed Virginia.
“I don’t know where to start,” Virginia said with a sigh.
“At the beginning is always a good place,” Maizie encouraged.
“I guess it is.” Taking a deep breath, the other woman began to talk, with frequent interjections coming from Ginny.
Maizie listened attentively to both.
And a plan began to form.
Chapter One
Stone Scarborough stared at his younger sister, trying to make sense out of what she had, rather breathlessly, just told him.
Whatever it was, Virginia seemed very animated about it and he’d managed to glean that it had something to do with the business card she had just pressed into his hand. But her narrative came out so disjointed he found himself feeling the way he had back in the days when he’d walk into the middle of a movie with his late wife—Eva never managed to be on time for anything no matter how hard she tried—and he was forced to try to make heads or tails out of what he was subsequently watching.
In addition to Virginia’s overwhelming flow of words, his daughter, Ginny, seemed to have caught the fever and was fairly bouncing up and down right in front of him. It was as if both were experiencing a massive sugar attack.
In an attempt to sort out the verbiage, Stone held his hand up to get Virginia to stop talking for a moment, regroup and begin at the beginning.
“Run this by me one more time,” Stone urged his sister. “From the top,” he added.
His sister Virginia shook her head, her light blond ponytail swishing from side to side. “You know, for a brilliant man, you can be so slow sometimes.”
“Must be in comparison to the company I keep,” he said drolly. If he practiced for a year, he’d never be able to talk as fast as his sister—or his daughter. “Humor me,” he instructed, looking down at the card in his hand. “Why am I calling this woman?”
Taking a breath, Virginia recited the facts. “The number belongs to Maizie Sommers. She’s a Realtor who owns her own company. She said she needs the name of a good general contractor to recommend to her clients.”
He had never believed in coincidences or good fortune without there being strings of some sort, no matter how invisible, attached.
Consequently, Stone regarded the card in his hand with more than a smattering of suspicion. “And she just walked up to you and said, ‘Hmm, you look like you probably know a good general contractor,’ as she handed her card to you?”
“No.”
Virginia closed her eyes, doing her best to get herself under control. She knew she’d gotten too excited, but the picture that Maizie Sommers had painted for her earlier today had filled her with hope. It had been a very long time since she’d seen her brother with more than an obligatory smile on his lips.
And, like her niece, she really didn’t care for the woman he was currently seeing. Try as she might, she couldn’t get herself to warm up to Elizabeth Wells—and she definitely didn’t see the woman as being Ginny’s stepmother. For one thing, the woman was not the patient sort.
“Okay, from the top,” Virginia announced. “And this time,” she told her brother, “try to pay attention, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stone replied, executing a mock salute and doing his best to be patient.
Stone had just been on the receiving end of disappointing news. The owners of a house he was scheduled to begin work on had just changed their minds and canceled the project on him. That didn’t exactly put him in the best of moods.
He didn’t have time to waste like this. There were cages he needed to rattle in order to replace the work he’d lost. But Virginia had gotten right in his face and insisted that he listen to her.
“Well?” Stone prodded.
Virginia took a deep breath. She decided that she would stay as close to the truth as possible without coming right out and telling her brother that he was being set up—not to take a fall, but to fall in love. If he even suspected that, he would never agree to any of this. And he needed to agree because, at the very least, he would wind up earning some money doing what he did best these days—working with his hands.
Five years ago, he’d been an aerospace engineer. But that industry was all but dead in Southern California, so he