Make Me a Match

by Diana Holquist

  By the time they arrived back at the house, black smoke filled the hallway. “Ames? Maya?”

  “In here,” Maya called happily. “We’re making your favorite, Dad!”

  Finn and Cecelia joined Maya and Amy in the kitchen. “Hunk of burnt—” He poked at the black mass in the roasting pot. “Tire?”

  Maya swatted him. “It’s pot roast, Daddy. Just like Mommy used to make.” She poked at it nervously.

  “Except for the burnt part,” Amy added. “We didn’t have three hours to let the damn thing sit in there, so I figured I’d turn it up to 450 and speed things up a bit. I don’t know what happened.”

  Cecelia noticed that Maya’s eyes were filling with tears. “Hey, I have an idea.” She motioned to Finn and Amy. “Why don’t you two go and finish taking off that old chimney mantel like you were going to do yesterday, and I’ll teach Maya how to save a pot roast. Give us an hour.”

  “Really? You can save it?”

  Cecelia shooed Finn and Amy out of the kitchen. “Baby, I’m a doctor. I can save anything. It’s my job.”

  An hour later, the kitchen was filled with the heady aroma of pot roast stew. Cecelia added a touch more pepper, then announced, “Perfect. Call in the troops and we’ll eat.”

  Maya dipped her own spoon into the broth and emerged with a piece of carrot. She tasted it cautiously, ground in a little more pepper, and said, “Now it’s perfect!”

  A peculiar tenderness tugged at Cecelia’s stomach. Pride.

  “Daddy! Amy! Dinner!” Maya sang as she danced happily out of the room.

  Cecelia smiled. Maya didn’t have to know that the stew had very little to do with the original pot roast, most of which she dumped into the trash. They had made stone soup just like in the fairy tale—and it was good. Cecelia wiped her hands on her apron. She felt like her life was turning into a fairy tale—complete with a handsome prince.

  Then, all at once, a peculiar, buzzing sensation filled her head. She shook it off and went into the dining room to check on the table, which they had elaborately set with a mishmash of mixed up dishes they had found in the basement two days ago.

  She couldn’t shake the odd noise in her head. It was like a crowd of murmuring voices, none of them distinct.

  She went into the living room, where she found Finn half in and half out of the fireplace. Maya and Amy stood around him, Amy shouting encouragement and Maya shouting that it was dinnertime and he better come out now or else!

  “I’ve almost got it. Hold on,” he replied from somewhere inside the depths of the chimney.

  The buzzing in her head grew louder. As Cecelia neared the fireplace, the sound became deafening. Was it in her head, or was Finn doing something in that chimney to make that noise?

  “C’mon, dinnertime!” She addressed Finn’s feet. The rest of him was lost in the darkness of the fireplace, which was an enormous, cavernous space the size of three ordinary fireplaces.

  “Minute. One. Almost got it—”

  “What’s he doing in there?” she asked Amy.

  “We couldn’t budge the mantel so he was wondering whether the chimney was even salvageable or not. He’s trying to open the flue.” Amy looked at Cecelia and blanched. “Weird. Do you—?”

  “I know, I hear it too,” Cecelia said.

  “Hear what?” Maya asked. “All I hear is my stomach growling.”

  Amy had gone alabaster white.

  “What do you hear?” Cecelia demanded.

  “What do you hear?” Amy’s voice was so low, Cecelia had to strain to make it out. “’Cause I just looked at you and his Name—”

  “Finn!” Cecelia cried. She fell to the ground, grabbed Finn’s legs, and yanked. “Get out!”

  She dragged Finn out of the chimney, his arms flailing. His head clunked solidly against the slate floor just as a single loud crack rang out from somewhere deep inside the wall followed by an ominous rumble.

  The chimney was coming down and it was taking the wall and a hunk of the ceiling with it.

  Finn rolled away from the descending rubble like a soldier, an instant ahead of the avalanche that pursued him. He knocked Maya down as he rolled her away from the cascade, both of them barely escaping the crashing mass of drywall, brick, and stone. Cecelia and Amy somehow flew too. In less than two seconds, the entire internal structure of the chimney and the wall and a huge gaping hunk of ceiling had come down in a five-foot heap.

  Dust rose around the destruction zone, billowing out in dense clouds. Light came through the ceiling from the floor above.

  They looked at each other in wonder, coughing out the dust and debris that were still settling.

  After a few stunned moments of silence, Maya said, “Geez. All I did was burn a roast.”

  “Guess that’s one way to get the mantel down,” Amy said. Then she looked at Cecelia. She froze. Then she smiled. Then she leaped at her sister. “Hot damn, you did it!” She took Cecelia into her arms and danced her around in circles.

  “I did it?” Cecelia knew all at once what Amy meant and she felt as if every cell in her body had been flushed of a poison she hadn’t known was there. “You mean? Really? Are you sure?” Cecelia struggled out of Amy’s grasp.

  “I looked at you right before it fell, and his Name was gone. Just gone. Not even the whisper I’d been hearing. And now, it’s back. It’s clear. It’s a hundred percent.”

  Cecelia collapsed onto the floor, looking like a heap of rubble herself. She hadn’t realized that she’d been carrying the weight of Finn’s prophecy since the day Amy had shown up in Baltimore.

  “Why are you all so grinny?” Maya demanded, looking from happy grown-up to happy grown-up in confusion.

  Finn knelt down in front of Cecelia. “Because Cecelia saved my life.” He looked into her eyes, his own eyes wide with understanding. “No more prophecy.”

  She nodded, unable to speak. No more prophecy.

  “What’s a prop a see?” Maya demanded.

  Finn pulled Cecelia to her feet. “The chimney was a twenty-foot, precariously balanced pile of stones. It was ready to collapse at the slightest touch. It was meant to come down. It was waiting for the perfect time. That’s prophecy.”

  Maya looked around her at the ecstatic adults, then at the pile of smoking rubble. “Okay. Whatever. You’re all weird and the house is wrecked and I’m starved.”

  “See,” Amy said proudly, picking up a souvenir stone from the pile. “Everything was meant to be. Every little thing.”

  Chapter 39

  Um, Cel?” Finn tapped her on the shoulder. “Did you hire a gypsy?”

  Cecelia turned from Maya. “Nope. It’s just me and my crazy family and batty friends. That’s plenty of entertainment for me. Why?”

  “Well, I just wondered who those men were at the buffet wearing only G-strings.”

  Cecelia craned her neck.

  “Made you look!” Finn cried.

  “Damn. I was hoping for some action.”

  “Please, not in front of the children,” Finn scolded.

  “Or me,” Maya said.

  Cecelia looked around her party—her engagement party—in wonder. They were in her grandmother’s house, now hers and Amy’s house, soon to be Finn and Maya’s house too. She was amazed that they had managed to get it ready in time for the party, but with Amy and Finn working around the clock, they had succeeded.

  Maya wandered off to the buffet, leaving Finn and Cecelia alone for the first time that evening.

  Finn pushed back her hair, which was loose and hung past her shoulders. “I love your ring. It’s incredibly sexy.”

  Cecelia looked down at her bare feet. On her pinky toe, was a tiny, delicate diamond. “I love it too.”

  “I’m really glad that Jack came with Sharon.”

  Cecelia glanced over at her former fiancé. He had gained about twenty pounds and he looked extremely happy. “Me too. They brought a great gift.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. A three-fo
ot-high statue of Shiva.”

  Finn smiled. “Well, I’m going to smash it. We’re done with Shiva in this family. It’s time to move on to another god.” He pulled Cecelia close and she thought, I never, ever want to leave this man.

  Then she thought, I never, ever have to.

  “All right. All right. Enough lovey-dovey, you two.” Amy came up behind them, forced herself between them, and put her arms around both their shoulders. “I always knew that you two were perfect for each other!”

  “You’re drunk,” Cecelia said.

  “Of course I’m drunk. It’s no good to be sober when the strippers come.”

  “Amy! You didn’t!” Cecelia felt her face flush.

  “I thought the strippers were at the bachelorette,” Finn said.

  “Oh, right. That’ll be next week then. Do you think you can wait that long?”

  Cecelia looked Finn up and down. “I suppose I can make do.”

  About the Author

  I love to write. That’s pretty much all I do. Ask my family about the undone laundry, the unbought groceries, and the fact that I rarely find time to get dressed in the morning. Actually, if you train your family right, they won’t notice any of these things. “Popcorn for dinner again, Mom! Cool,” say my filthy children. God bless them, they don’t know what panty hose are.

  Oh, my poor husband.

  What else do you want to know about me? I love kids. I love cats. I love chocolate. (Not necessarily in that order.) I live in upstate New York in paradise, except for all the snow.

  I love to hear from readers. So log onto my website at www.dianaholquist.com and let me know what’s on your mind!

  More sizzling romance from Diana Holquist!

  Diana Holquist!

  Please turn this page for a preview of

  Sexiest Man Alive

  Available in Fall 2007.

  Chapter 1

  Hi! I’m Jasmine Burns!”

  The naked man stared up at Jasmine blankly.

  Great. She sounded like a cruise ship director on crack. She cleared her throat and adjusted her black teddy. “It’s great to meet you!”

  Ugh. This was definitely not working.

  Jasmine’s eyes reflected back at her in the mirror on the far (okay, not-so-far) wall of her tiny Upper West Side studio. This only looks crazy, she silently assured her reflection.

  She looked down at the tiny naked Ken doll perched on her couch.

  Okay, it was crazy. Call-the-cops nuts, even.

  She paced. Seven steps. Pivot. Seven steps. Pivot. Exercise #12, page 127 in her Goodbye Shy! workbook had made sense in theory: practice job interviews with a doll to focus on until the panic is gone. For best results, rehearse the interview with both parties naked to achieve optimal vulnerability. Jasmine just couldn’t get completely naked; she settled on a black lace teddy for herself. Ken wasn’t so shy. He went all the way without complaint.

  The mind controls the body. Let the panic wash over, then continue. Repeated exposure to the object of fear will dull the emotion.

  So why was her terror growing? Her interview was three days, seven hours and twenty-seven minutes away and she was getting more panicked by the second.

  She flopped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling of her shoe-box shaped apartment. The heel end was crammed with her elaborate double iron bed, centered between the door to the hallway and the door to her tiny bathroom. The toe end was dominated by a lead-glass window that stretched four feet across and from the ceiling to within two feet of the floor.

  Despite her exhaustion, she forced herself off the bed and back to the “living room”—a flea-market, white-boned couch, one white over-stuffed chair, and a white coffee table rescued from a curb-side trash pile all arranged neatly at the foot of her bed.

  This job was the chance of a lifetime. After all, the tailoring business she ran out of her apartment was an accident, not part of her plan. A hem here, a tuck there and within weeks she was in demand. She became known as a miracle worker who could make a cigarette hole in silk pajamas disappear, take in a suit better than anyone west of Hong Kong. It wasn’t a bad way to make a living. She rarely had to leave her apartment.

  But now that her graduation (M.A. in costume design from N.Y.U.) was five months past, her ex-classmates were out hitting the pavement, interning and networking, sometimes in theaters, sometimes even getting paid (she let the wonderful possibility of one day being in their shoes spread through her).

  And she was playing with dolls. Naked dolls.

  Maybe that was the problem. Naked Ken was too much. After all, if Ken were impersonating a famous costume designer, shouldn’t he have amazing clothes?

  She carried Ken to the white-washed plywood door balanced on two white wooden saw horses next to her window. Her 1949 Singer nine-stitch sewing machine gleamed in welcome. She ran her hand down it, her steel and chrome kitty. She settled at the table next to it and began to sketch.

  What would Arturo Mastriani, New York’s top costume designer, wear to interview her, Jasmine Burns, his next brilliant new assistant?

  Jasmine jolted awake. She was on the couch, Ken in his beautiful new clothes at her side, a tiny, perfectly behaved date.

  Someone was ringing the downstairs buzzer.

  Her eyes jumped to the clock: 2:00 AM. Probably Susie, her best client, with a ripped seam.

  Jasmine pushed the intercom button. “Susie?”

  “Jas? Let me up—quick.”

  Jasmine fell away from the intercom in shock.

  Amy, Jasmine’s sister. In New York. In the middle of the night. Last time Amy showed up unannounced, Jasmine had to hide her from a guy named Rufus for two weeks.

  Definitely not good.

  Jasmine pushed the buzzer to let her sister up, then raced for the couch, tripping over the white shag throw rug. She shoved Ken between the pillows. Kicked The Shyness Handbook under the couch. Scooped Living with Social Anxiety and Ten Steps to Being Bold into the crick of her elbow, then fumbled them as she lunged for Phobias and the Modern Woman. She re-gathered the books frantically, then crammed them into one of a dozen identical 40-gallon fabric bins stacked along the wall. She was forcing the top closed when she remembered what she was wearing: the black teddy.

  Oh, hell. How was she going to explain this?

  The doorbell rang.

  Jasmine could smell Amy’s clove and cinnamon through the thin plank door separating them. Jasmine ransacked her apartment for her white terry bathrobe (24 ply, Egyptian cotton). “One sec!” She grabbed her glasses off the bedside table and slammed them on her face. There, that felt a little better.

  Amy pounded on the door. “Jas? You got a man in there?”

  Yeah, but it’s not like he has a penis. How could she lose her bathrobe in a closet-sized apartment?

  Amy pounded on the door. “Jas! Your place is the size of a rowboat. You can reach the door from the damn pot.”

  Could she? Well, it was close. Ah-ha. Her bathrobe was neatly folded on top of a bin of last season’s cotton flannels. She pulled it on over her teddy, flipped the three deadbolts, slid free the safety chain, and stood back as Amy burst into the room.

  “Jasmine. Shit.” Amy went straight to the window, threw open the curtains, and peered out. “We have to talk.”

  Jasmine followed her sister to the window and peered down five stories to the deserted sidewalk.

  “I need cash,” Amy said.

  Well, might as well get right to the point. “Let me put some coffee on.”

  Amy pulled a two-liter, almost-empty vodka bottle out of a bulging pocket of her sheepskin coat.

  “Okay. Not coffee then,” Jasmine said. Amy was a social drinker, not a drunk. Jasmine’s blood ran cold. Something was wrong. Amy, after all, wasn’t a normal person.

  Amy was a psychic.

  But not just any psychic. She had one gift (besides crashing into Jasmine’s life at the most inopportune moments). She could look at a person and hear a voice that
spoke the name of the person’s One True Love—her soul mate, her true companion, her One and Only. If you believed in such a thing. And Jasmine did. Jasmine believed completely. Not just in Amy’s power, but in destiny. It made sense to her that in a world where she fit so poorly, there had to be at least one man, somewhere, who was meant for her.

  But there were problems with Amy’s Names. If your One True Love was named John Smith, well, too bad for you, you had to figure out which John Smith was the right one. And if the right John Smith turned out to be a married pig farmer in Iowa with seven children and you were an up-and-coming New York City costume designer, well, then, you had some tough choices to make. Amy’s names rarely served up the lover a person expected. After all, who was this fate, this voice, this power? An angel? A devil? A long-dead kibbtzing old ghost, too mean-spirited even in death to mind her own business?

  Well, whoever or whatever it was, it had stopped talking Friday, September 13—two years and a month ago—just days before Amy and Jasmine were reunited after a childhood apart—the ugly result of their parents’ True Love-induced divorce (no, they were not each other’s One True Love). Since then, Amy had been doing everything she could to get the voice to return. She ladled soup for the homeless in the moldy basements of churches (well, once, anyway, it irritated her sinuses). She consulted other psychics (who she then accused of conning her). She wore elaborate, ever-changing combinations of crystals. Now, Jasmine noted, she had turned to vodka. It seemed an unlikely fix.

  Amy’s eyes were closed and she rocked slightly. The bottle was empty.

  Jasmine gently removed the bottle from her sister’s grasp. “Is this about the voice?”

  Amy’s eyes sprung open and she flung herself onto the couch in a dramatic display of exhaustion. Everything about Amy was dramatic. She craved attention as much as Jasmine avoided it. “Would you get in the real world, please? I told you—it’s about cash. Money. The green stuff.” Amy frowned, lifted her ample hips and felt under her.

  Jasmine froze.

  Out came Famous-Costume-Designer-Ken, in his black wool, Hugo Boss-style suit.

  Jasmine feigned surprise.