The Littlest Matchmaker Read online

  Maya Alden popped her head back into the room.

  “Ready to move on?” she asked.

  “Definitely.”

  Chapter Five

  Hillside Academy smelled of old money and new cars. Lisa, who had parked her serviceable sedan in a spot next to some mommy’s Jaguar, asked herself again if she was doing the right thing in having Jamie here.

  The answer, as uncomfortable as it might be to her, remained yes. She had actually attended Hillside through seventh grade, at which point she had asked to either attend the public school or join the circus as the last social geek to have escaped Hillside alive. Though her mom was a Hillside alumna, even she had seen that it wasn’t necessarily the right place for Lisa. Right now, though, the preschool, with its absurdly generous student/teacher ratio and state-of-the-art everything, was where Jamie should be.

  “Campus is lovely this time of year, isn’t it?” her mother asked as Jamie zigzagged up the sidewalk in front of them, his Spider-Man backpack bouncing along with his animated gait.

  “It is,” Lisa agreed. The school abutted to a botanical park owned by the city, which made it seem even grander.

  “One day Jamie will be having his senior picture taken under those trees,” her mom said.

  “How about we just think ahead to kindergarten, okay?”

  Lisa didn’t want to argue, but neither did she want her mom to believe that Jamie staying at Hillside for all of school was a done deal.

  “The time goes more quickly than you could imagine.”

  She couldn’t miss the wistfulness in her mom’s tone.

  “I know,” Lisa said. “And I’m glad you have the freedom now to see a little more of Jamie.” But not 24/7.

  As they neared the lovely stucco and fieldstone building that held the preschool, Jamie turned around to face them, dancing a few backward steps. “Hurry!”

  Lisa laughed as her son then spun on his toes and marched to the door. “The king has spoken.”

  “If you’re the Queen Mother, I don’t want to think about what that makes me,” her mother said in a dry voice.

  “Don’t worry. There’s plenty of room for princesses around here,” Lisa replied as they climbed the broad steps to the preschool’s front door. And she meant that in more ways than one.

  As always, a group of mothers who had already dropped off their children stood to one side of the spacious entry area. Lisa gave them a wave, just as she did every time she was here to drop off Jamie. A couple of the moms waved back, then returned to making their plans for yoga followed by a little shopping or whatever it was that moms with free afternoons did. To Lisa, they were quite an exotic species.

  “I’ll take Jamie to the cubby room to put away his backpack,” her mom said.

  “Okay.”

  While her mom and son were off, Lisa did the socially proper thing and joined the chatting moms, even though she definitely felt like a sparrow landed in a flock of hummingbirds.

  “We were just talking about the Thanksgiving pageant,” said a mom Lisa knew only as Carrie’s Mommy.

  “Already?”

  “Of course,” another mom replied. “The kids will be getting their information envelopes today. It takes massive planning just to get the husbands on schedule. How about yours?”

  Husband, she assumed. Lisa raised her ringless left hand. “Single mom.”

  She preferred that simple statement to the uncomfortable silence that usually followed an announcement of widowhood. It seemed in this case, though, the silence was inevitable.

  “What are you going to do about the pageant?” Carrie’s Mommy asked.

  Was this a trick question?

  “Attend?”

  “Oh, you don’t know, do you?” asked another mother.

  Lisa gave the hummingbirds a cheery smile. “It appears not.”

  “The pageant is put on by the fathers and children as a thank-you to the mothers. It’s been that way forever. Maybe you have someone who can step in?”

  Lisa didn’t want to take this personally, but she was. At the preschool parents’ orientation night, she’d realized that she was in the vast minority as a single parent. That hadn’t rattled her a whole lot. She’d always been a tad of a nonconformist, even though that had usually been voluntary.

  “No biggie,” she replied. “I can step in for myself. I play dad just as well as I play mom.”

  “I’m sure you do,” said Carrie’s Mommy.

  Lisa wasn’t crazy about her tone. In fact, it reminded her of her mom’s “why don’t you just move home, dear?” song. If Carrie’s Mommy reached out to pat her hand, she’d be lucky to get her own back.

  She glanced away to see her mom and Jamie returning. Saved!

  “Gotta go,” she said to the hummingbirds. She was sure they’d have a lovely afternoon nectar shopping together.

  After Jamie had been dropped off and she and her mom were on their way back to the bakery, Lisa asked about the whole pageant-as-gift scenario.

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely,” her mom said. “The show is the pinnacle of four-year preschool. More time and planning go into it than into many weddings.”

  Considering that it was scarcely October, definitely more of both than had gone into Lisa’s impulsive nuptuals.

  “Back when you were in preschool, your father was pulled right into the competition among the men. He insisted on making your costume himself. You were one of the Native Americans bearing gifts. As I recall your dress was made from some burlap he found at the garden center. Well sewn, though. The man has done his share of suturing.”

  Now that her mom mentioned it, Lisa semirecalled the scratchy dress.

  “What else do the dads do?” She wasn’t much for sewing and needed a game plan to avoid the task.

  “Oh, everything. They work on the script with the teacher, though I doubt it has changed much since your day. They build the sets and even provide the music. All that the mothers do is show up.”

  Not in my case, Lisa thought. Tradition was grand, but this one could use a twist. Jamie had no father, but for this event, at least, he didn’t need one.

  SATURDAY ARRIVED, and Hillside Academy’s old money scent was replaced in Lisa’s world by that of Shortbread Cottage’s white chocolate/cherry scones. Though the bakery and coffee rush didn’t start at the crack of dawn, as it did on weekdays, the crowds that arrived by nine o’clock made up for the wait.

  As wild as Saturdays were for Lisa, they were placid for Jamie. His day centered on toys and play and chatting up the customers. Her son was undoubtedly Shortbread Cottage’s very best ambassador. And while Lisa scrambled to keep up with her divided duties as mommy and shopkeeper, she was thrilled to see Jamie’s broad smiles, receive his kisses and keep his wild hair and sticky hands in some semblance of order.

  Right now, he sat in the café area with the large, yellow toy dump truck that Kevin had given him for his fourth birthday, making motor sounds. Jamie had immediately fallen in love with the truck. She suspected it wasn’t so much the toy as its giver that had captivated him.

  Lisa was brewing up some fresh Costa Rican medium roast to refill the vacuum pots she kept for her regulars, who liked to hang out and read the paper and talk. The coffee’s scent hung in the air, a rich counterpoint to that of the scones.

  “Can I have one?” Jamie asked, pointing to the fresh baked goods.

  “May I?” Lisa said, trying for a gentle grammar correction.

  “You want one, too, Mommy?”

  He’d sounded so excited that she had to agree. “Sure. Come on around to the kitchen to wash your hands, and then we’ll have our snacks.”

  Jamie pushed his truck under the only empty table.

  “Why don’t we put that back in our part of the house?” asked Lisa. Anytime the toy lingered on the retail floor, she had visions of a customer slip-and-fall.

  “No,” he said. “I’m saving Kevin’s table.”

  Lisa shook her head. “He probably won’t be here t
oday, sweetie. Just bring it on back.”

  She hadn’t seen Kevin since Thursday night. Whether that was a good thing depended on her state of mind at any particular moment. Late last night when she no longer had the press of the day to distract her, she’d buried her head under her pillow as she’d recalled his mouth hot against hers and his hands leaving her hungry for more. Then, she’d wanted him in a very primal way. This morning, under the light of reason and self-preservation, not so much.

  “No. Kevin’ll be here,” Jamie said with absolute certainty. “He’s gotta be. He’s going to sit right here.” Without paying another bit of attention to her request, he rounded the counter and headed back to the kitchen.

  “Jamie’s right,” Suz said from her spot at the register. “No way will Kevin hold off until Monday, since we’re closed tomorrow. But if he does, I win the betting pool.”

  Lisa looked at her regular customers, who were all deep in conversations or the local newspaper.

  “Come on, there’s no pool,” she said. Everyone in the east village knew that Malloy’s was the hotbed of gossip, not placid Shortbread Cottage.

  Suz laughed. “Okay, I was joking. But Kevin will be here…guaranteed. I’ve never seen him stay away from your…scones…for this long.”

  Lisa had to smile at her employee’s suggestive spin on a pastry.

  “Funny, Suz. Jamie and I will be right back out,” she said, then joined her son at the low kitchen sink for a scrub-up.

  They’d just finished singing “Happy Birthday”—the timing trick she’d taught him for truly clean hands—when the bells on the shop’s front door jingled. A moment later, she heard a very familiar low and sexy voice asking Suz for coffee, black, and a scone of the day.

  “It’s Kevin,” Jamie announced. “I want my snack later.”

  “But you need to…” Lisa began saying, but her son had taken off “…dry your hands.”

  Lisa wasn’t feeling quite the same urge to rush out and greet their most recent customer. In fact, she was content to dawdle rather than face the man whose memory had made her hot and sleepless.

  She went to the large metal cabinet that held all of her dry goods. It had been ages since she’d inventoried them. The task was fitting since currently her mouth was drier than a twenty-pound sack of flour. She retrieved her inventory clipboard from her desk and set to work…or at least evasion.

  A little while later, Suz popped into the kitchen.

  “Kevin was wondering if you’re going to be out?”

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” Lisa replied.

  “Chicken?”

  “Prudent.”

  Suz snorted. “Prudent? Crazy, maybe. Kevin Decker’s no risk. Get on out there and talk to him, if your son will let you get a word in edgewise.”

  “Is Jamie being a pest?”

  “If I said yes, would you lose the chicken feathers and get out there?”

  “No, I’d have you bring Jamie back to me.”

  “In that case, I’ll tell the truth. It looks like they’re having a nice guy-to-guy chat.”

  “About what?”

  Suz grinned. “I didn’t know you were paying me to eavesdrop on the customers.”

  “And I was pretty sure you did it for pleasure.”

  “Pleasure. Now there’s a better p-word than prudent…or poultry. You might try it on for size one of these days.”

  Lisa laughed in spite of herself. “Quit abusing the boss and go on back out there.”

  Suz did, but because she was Suz, she also gave a mighty fine chicken imitation on the way out.

  Was she being a coward? Lisa wondered. It felt more like holding on to safety, and she was okay with that. She was about to turn back to her inventory when the phone rang. Lisa ignored it.

  “Shortbread Cottage,” she could hear Suz saying in an abnormally perky tone out front. “May I help you?”

  A moment later, her employee was back in the kitchen. “It’s for you.”

  “Is it a phone solicitor?” Lisa asked as she reached for the handset.

  Suz ducked her head and made a choked sound.

  Okay. Whatever.

  “Hello?”

  “I’d really like a couple of minutes with you.”

  Kevin.

  She walked to the doorway. Her heart thumped harder when he gave her a wave with his free hand…the one not holding his cell phone. Jamie sat opposite him, and Kevin’s coffee mug rested in the back of the yellow dump truck. Adorable. Terribly tempting and adorable. She turned her back on the tableau.

  “Cute trick calling me, Decker,” she said into the phone.

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  “Desperate. Somehow I doubt that.” All the same, she smiled.

  “Okay, so I’m overstating the case, but I couldn’t come up with another adage on such short notice. Blame it on a caffeine deficit. I haven’t been here in a couple of days, you know.”

  “I had noticed,” she admitted.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  She didn’t need to turn around to know that he was smiling, too. She could hear it in his voice, along with a sort of sensual awareness that had been missing from her life for so long.

  “I could set up camp out here and spend the day,” he said. “It would be no great hardship playing with Jamie and eating your food. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that I could outlast you, there in the kitchen.”

  “Ah, but I can get into the rest of the house from here.”

  “Nice bluff. You know you’d never leave Jamie unattended.”

  “I trust you with him,” she said automatically.

  The realization of what she’d just said immediately staggered her. She would trust Kevin, and she didn’t trust just anyone, especially with the most precious person in her life.

  “Thank you,” he replied. “I’m honored. And I’m glad to hear it.”

  They both were silent for a moment. For her part, Lisa was trying to pull back emotions she didn’t want to come out to play. Feeling desire for Kevin was complicated enough.

  “I don’t suppose I could talk you into sitting outside with me for a few minutes?” Kevin asked. “A little something has come up that I need to talk to you about. While we chat, Jamie and his truck could work on re-landscaping the front plantings.”

  “A little bad something or a little good something?”

  He chuckled. “So if it’s bad, you’re going to keep hiding in the kitchen?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know you can’t avoid me forever, right?” said a smooth male voice, not from the phone, but from behind her.

  Lisa turned to face him and hit the off button on the handset. “I don’t want to avoid you. I should, but I don’t.”

  He snapped his phone shut. “That’s almost a compliment, I think.”

  She smiled. “Almost. Now back on the other side of the counter, please.”

  When she stepped into the front room, Lisa gave Suz a stern look for letting Kevin come near the kitchen, but her employee didn’t look in the least contrite. She simply held out her hand for the phone and gave her an “I told you so” grin.

  Lisa followed Jamie and his truck out the front door that Kevin was holding open for them. Today’s breeze was crisp with the cool promise of autumn. It felt heavenly after the warmth of the kitchen, even if already it was trying to persuade the shorter wisps of hair at her forehead and temples to escape the elastic she’d used to anchor her ponytail.

  “You gonna tell her, Kevin?” Jamie asked.

  “I told you I’d handle it, buddy,” Kevin replied. “You go move some dirt.”

  Jamie nodded and tromped off into the well-mulched garden.

  “I hope he doesn’t get down to dirt,” Lisa said.

  Kevin smiled. “Figure of speech…guy talk, you know?”

  She looked dubiously at Jamie, who was using the side of his sneaker-clad foot to bare the earth beneath her cedar mulch. “Four-year-olds are pretty literal.�
��

  “I’ll fix it. Promise.”

  No doubt he would. “So what is it Jamie wants you to tell me?”

  “In a second. First, let’s get what happened the other night on Courtney’s porch out of the way.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s possible,” she said.

  “Me, either. Nor do I really want to. I’ve missed you, Lisa. I’m not the kind of guy who’s good at games. I’m attracted to you and I want to spend more time with you. I think it’s time we just get on to wherever we’re heading, okay?”

  More time together…. It was such a simple request. Lisa wished that her response could be just as simple, but it couldn’t. She glanced over at her son before responding. He was still totally immersed in his play.

  She took Kevin by the hand and led him closer to the street, so that she could both watch Jamie and have a little space. And because she’d learned never to expect the luxury of time, she’d just spit it all out now…everything that had simmered in her mind since that heart-stopper of a kiss.

  “Did Courtney ever tell you how I met James?” she asked, gently working her hand free of Kevin’s. He didn’t seem to want to let go, but after a brief squeeze, did. She stuck her hands into her jeans pockets. Standing on her own was what she did best.

  “Is this question going to have anything at all to do with what I just said to you?” he asked in response.

  “Yes,” she replied, and then added a qualifier of, “eventually.”

  “Eventually? Good enough, I guess. No, Courtney and I never talked about James too much.”

  On the whole, Lisa considered that a blessing.

  “Okay, then, here goes,” she said after looping a now freed lock of hair behind her ear. “We met at a café in Edinburgh while I was in Europe on a summer study program. I was supposed to be in London, but it was August, I was restless, and the Edinburgh Festival was going on.”

  “The Edinburgh Festival?” he asked.

  “Four weeks of plays and music and comedy and art and partying, basically. A girlfriend and I hopped a train, planning to spend the weekend and maybe skip class on Monday, too. Our first stop was a café for a beer. I met James, and that was it. I never went back. I was swept off my feet, crazy in love…all that stuff.”