“His name is Nathaniel,” one of the little twins said.
“Our mom calls him Nate,” the other added. “She died.”
“I am so sorry.” Ainsley knew this part of the story, but it was suddenly very real to her, reflected as it was in the eyes of these children. “That’s an awful thing to have happened. I’m sure you must miss her very much.”
The little girls nodded, ready for sympathetic understanding wherever they found it, warming up to Ainsley because she’d offered it. The older two were less accepting, more reticent. “Our dad needs to start dating,” the boy said abruptly. “He has too much time on his hands.”
Ainsley could hardly sit still, but she kept her composure even as her thoughts went racing off, spinning out a fantasy way ahead of reality. These were Nate Shepard’s children. Nate of the near dance with Miranda. Nate of the nothing happened dance. Nate of the instant-attraction dance. Nate of the dance that had sparked the something Miranda wouldn’t admit to.
Sometimes, Ainsley thought, the universe worked in the most mysterious and wondrous ways.
She flipped a page in her notebook, clicked the nib on her pen into position, smiled at the children. “Why did you decide to consult Mrs. Braddock?”
Cate, the apparent spokesperson, spoke up firmly. “We think he, like, needs someone to talk to, someone who’ll, like, spend a lot of time with him, someone who’ll take his mind off us. Off Mom, I mean.”
“Does he want to meet someone?”
“Yes.” All four agreed, nodding in unison. “He does. He just doesn’t know how.”
Ainsley didn’t look over at Ilsa, although she wanted to. “So you believe your dad needs a little help…meeting someone.”
“That’s what we were discussing when you came in.” Ilsa angled her chair, so that only Ainsley faced the sofa fully, signaling that she’d be happy for her apprentice to handle this one. “They have some very specific ideas about the kind of woman they’d like their father to meet. I told them you might have some thoughts on the best way to go about this.”
Nate. Miranda. Ainsley penned their names side by side onto her legal pad. Perfect. It had meant to be written all over it.
“So,” Ainsley asked, leaning forward, “do the four of you have someone specific in mind for your dad?”
“Someone fun,” the identicals said together, one voice blending into the other. “Someone like our mom,” one of them went on to clarify.
Ainsley continued to gaze solemnly at each of the children in turn, letting her gaze linger the longest on Cate’s blue-green eyes, acknowledging her as the ringleader of this “let’s get Dad a date” effort.
“We don’t necessarily want you to find someone he’ll want to marry,” Cate said firmly. “More like someone to occupy, like, a whole lot of his time. So it’ll, you know, like, take his mind off Mom.”
Ainsley nodded, trying to fathom the real motive behind this scheme…although she could certainly sympathize. She’d love someone to occupy, like, a whole lot of Miranda’s time, too. So it’d, like, take her mind off the wedding. But she didn’t say that. What she said was, “No one, of course, can take your mom’s place.”
Cate nodded. Will nodded. The little ones swung their feet, their attention spans already strained. “But he needs somebody to, uh, help him think about, you know, other stuff,” Will said. “And…maybe she could look kind of good.”
“Someone who looks…” Ainsley paused to consider. “Someone pretty who can help him think about other stuff.” She smiled at Will, beginning to get the gist of this. “You think it would be great if your dad could meet someone pretty who could distract him from whatever’s on his mind.”
The boy’s chin dropped in abrupt agreement with the description and he almost—almost—smiled back. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “That’d be good.”
“Pretty,” piped up one of the little ones, latching on to a description she knew. “She has to be pretty.”
“Pretty. Distracting.” Ainsley made a note on her pad. Will. Cate. Kali. Kori. She wrote down their names, then looked at them again with an efficient smile. “Anything else?”
“If she didn’t forget things, that could be good.” Will’s voice squeaked on the last word and he slumped farther down on the sofa cushion.
“Dad’s not great with details,” Cate explained. “He’s kind of forgetful.”
“He’s old,” Kali/Kori said.
“He’s forty,” confirmed Kori/Kali.
Cate shushed them with a look. “He’s forty-four,” she informed Ilsa and Ainsley in a tone she probably believed conveyed her abject boredom with adults in general and her father in particular. “Ancient, in other words, but our grandmother, like, thinks he’s handsome. Of course, she’s his mother and she has to say things like that. Our mother liked him, too, but then she was married to him for, like, forever. But he’s not, like, ugly or anything like that.”
“Your father’s a very attractive man,” Ainsley said. “I’ve seen him.”
“You have?” They all looked surprised, as if their father stayed behind closed doors and was never seen by anyone but them. “So you know,” Cate said, “that he’s kind of a—crash dummy.”
Crash dummy? Ainsley wasn’t entirely certain what that meant, but she was certain it didn’t describe Nate Shepard. Miranda hadn’t seemed to think so. But then, Miranda probably didn’t know what crash dummy meant, either. On the other hand, these were teenagers who judged everyone, especially parents, by their conformity, seeing nothing of interest unless it pertained to themselves.
“So—” Ainsley tapped her pen against her notepad “—you would like us to make a match for your dad. Someone fun, someone distracting, someone who won’t mind that he’s a little—” she searched for a better word than crash dummy “—old-fashioned.”
Cate nodded, slowly, obviously not quite hearing the one term she wanted. Ainsley thought about it. “You want your dad to meet someone who can, potentially, occupy a great deal of his time.”
“Someone pretty!” One of the identicals again.
“And fun!” said the other.
“Pretty. Fun,” Ainsley repeated, smiling to assure the little ones she had their requirements down pat. “So what we need is a woman who is pretty, who’s fun, who has a good sense of humor and who can spend a lot of time with your dad…but not necessarily want to marry him. At least not right away.”
There it was. The shimmer of a smile that started first in Cate’s gorgeous eyes and then wrapped down to her lips. Lips painted a garish, incongruous purple-black. “That’s right,” she confirmed. “Can you find someone like that?”
“It doesn’t work quite that way,” Ilsa began, but Ainsley impulsively cut her off.
“But sometimes it can,” she said, signaling Ilsa with a lift of her eyebrow, letting her know she had an idea of how to handle this rather delicate situation. “I do need to ask—does your dad know you’re here? In our office?”
“No.”
“No!”
“Noooo.”
“No, nuh-uh.”
They were definitely in unison on that one.
Will cleared his throat self-consciously. “Our grandmother knows, though. She said it was okay.”
Ilsa shot a look at Ainsley, clearly suspicious. “Why didn’t she come with you?”
“She’s keeping Daddy busy,” Kori—or Kali—confided.
“It’s a hard job,” Kali—or Kori—added with a big sigh.
“We don’t want him to know about this,” Will said.
Cate sat forward. “We asked Maggie—she’s Grandmother’s friend—how people like my dad could meet women and she said people like my dad needed all the help they could get. Maggie said you could, like, help. That’s why we’re here.”
Four doggy ears bobbed in agreement. “We want Dad to get help,” one of the little girls said.
Probably Maggie had neglected or seen no need to tell these children that IF Enterprises charged a re
spectful fee for services rendered. But Ainsley wasn’t opposed to a little pro bono work. Especially not since the match she had in mind involved her sister. And this would be a perfect match. Ainsley knew it in her heart. Had known it from the second she spied Miranda and Nate together on the dance floor. Of course, she ought to do a little research first—that’s the way Ilsa had achieved such a high level of success…by doing meticulous research. But Ainsley knew studying Nate’s background, his tastes in books, movies, music, politics, cuisine would only prove her right. And, really, this was something of an emergency. Her wedding was barely three months away. Miranda needed a distraction now. Nate, apparently, was also in need of a distraction sooner rather than later. Waiting could snatch opportunity out of grasp.
Sometimes a matchmaker simply had no choice but to trust her intuition and seize the moment.
Ainsley was, however, fairly certain Ilsa would have one or two legitimate objections, so she rushed on to seal the deal. “You came to the right place,” she assured Nate’s children. “You just leave this all to me.”
Cate stood abruptly and the others popped up as if they were spring-loaded. “Thank you,” Cate said. “We’ll call you tomorrow to see if you’ve found someone.” Her speech was suddenly formal, grownup, as she ushered her siblings to the door. “Please don’t call the house. Dad has a bad habit of answering the phone.”
“I’ll wait for your call.” Four children, Ainsley thought. Two sets of twins equals four. Miranda would never know what hit her.
“Thank you for coming.” Ilsa moved forward to see them out. “Should I call someone to come and pick you up? I’d be happy to ask my chauffeur to drive you home.”
“No, thank you,” Cate answered politely. “Maggie’s waiting downstairs for us. Dad thinks we’re at the mall. Unless you tell him, he won’t ever know we’ve been here to see you.”
“We won’t tell him,” Ainsley assured them brightly, already formulating the explanation she knew Ilsa was going to demand once the door closed behind the Shepard clan. “At IF Enterprises, we’re nothing if not discreet.”
Chapter Four
Painting wasn’t actually much fun, Nate decided, assessing the long length of scuzzy white wall still awaiting its new coat of purple. The color already hurt his eyes and he didn’t know how he’d let Cate talk him into it. “Get this color, Dad,” she’d said, grabbing a sample strip out of the rack in the paint department of Home Depot. “Everybody likes purple. It’s snaff, it’s pukka, it’s fresh.”
He didn’t understand half the lingo she used these days, but somewhere along the way he’d deciphered fresh as slang for young—what he and Angie would have called hip—and it was that single phrase that had sold him. Opening a coffeehouse along the harbor was something he’d thought of as a great next career. He’d spent years in the military, following rules, interpreting rules, making sure rules were followed by those under his command. It had been a fulfilling career, a good life, but he wanted something simpler now. Something without set-in-stone rules, something he’d have to learn by doing, something that gave him the flexible hours he needed in order to spend time with his kids. Finding this building for sale had seemed like a good omen. He’d imagined working on it with his children, having them help him plan the way it would be set up, deciding the best arrangement for the coffee bar and the stage for the bands, filling the space with laughter and easy conversation even before the doors opened to the public.
He’d imagined that the coffeehouse would be fresh, that it would appeal to all age groups, from old to young. But it was becoming apparent the young people he’d most hoped it would appeal to—his own children—weren’t very interested. Oh, who was he kidding? They couldn’t be less thrilled with the whole concept. Even the little ones, who were usually enthusiastic about all new ideas, good or bad, got wild-eyed with alarm whenever the coffeehouse was mentioned. He figured Cate and Will had told them some horrific story to inspire such panic—and he would get to the bottom of that sooner or later. But the end result was the same—he was here, alone in the big rectangle of old warehouse, painting by himself what he’d envisioned the five of them doing together.
He could have hired a professional crew at the start and had the whole place painted inside of a week. Two coats, trim work, everything. But no. He’d spent that week doing a song-and-dance routine for his kids, extolling the glories of a paint-brush, rhapsodizing over the good clean smells of fresh paint. He’d been sure he could change their attitude simply by describing the enormous pride of accomplishment that would be theirs, the tremendous thrill they’d feel in having mastered a new skill, the ton of fun they’d have in transforming a tired old place into a shiny new one, the pure satisfaction they’d share in having done it all together.
They’d led him on.
He realized that now. Cate had asked questions, volunteered to help him choose the paint. Will had done research on the Web, checking Consumer Reports for tests on paint durability and something he called pig depth, which Nate could only guess had something to do with pigment. The Kays—as he sometimes called Kali and Kori for short—had listened to him with rapt attention, their duplicate doggy ears bobbling with approval, their eyes bright with excitement right up until the moment he’d mentioned the need to wear old clothes.
Sure enough, when the paint was purchased, the family project ready to begin, his children had—oops!—made other plans.
I told you, Dad, like a month ago, I was going to spend this week with Meghan at the Cape. Her mom said it was okay. You said it was okay. I have to go….
Gee, Dad, I didn’t know you meant this week. I’ve got that basketball camp. Otherwise…
Please, please, please, puh-leeese, Daddy, don’t make us paint! We want to help Maggie pack. Please, Daddy….
He should have been rummaging through the Yellow Pages the minute that first excuse hit the airwaves, but no. Pop psychologist that he was, he’d remained cheerful and positive through their domino desertion. He’d smiled as he reminded them they were going to miss out on a great experience, as well as the aforementioned ton of fun. He hadn’t lost his cool even once as they tried to shift the blame and make him feel guilty for scheduling a family project when they had other plans. No, sir, through it all, he had calmly practiced the fine art of reverse psychology. It had, after all, always seemed to work well for Angie.
Not so well, apparently, for him.
Even his own mother had advised him to hire a professional painter. Of course, she was full of her own plans, in a hurry to leave for Florida next week and had little inclination for listening to his complaints. “It’s summer, Nathaniel,” she’d told him in a voice short in tone and patience. “And they’re children. They’re not interested in your little painting project.”
His little painting project. That was all the coffeehouse was to them. Not the family-bonding experience he’d planned. Not a direct route to the “Father-Knows-Best” role he’d hoped to play. Somewhere Angie was smiling at his delusions of forming a tight one-for-all, all-for-one unit with his children in one inventive stroke. She’d told him it wouldn’t be easy.
Not that he’d expected instant success—well, okay, so maybe he had—but he was lonely for the family life that Angie had wrangled with a firm, consistent aplomb and a fierce, loving, good humor. He knew the kids were lonely for that, too. And he’d thought, hoped, the coffeehouse would provide a way to get some of that family life back.
Instead he was finding out that, like so much of life without Angie, wrangling a family was a great deal harder than it looked.
Ditto for painting.
Even with the door propped open and the windows cracked a few inches to catch the breeze off the harbor, the thick smell of paint hovered like incense in the room and very little air stirred anywhere in the warehouse. He’d long since discarded his shirt, and if not for the rhythmic, sing-along beat of the Bee Gees—the best part of working alone was that there was no one to make fun of his music se
lections—he’d probably have hung up his paint-brush, locked the door and gone home. But since no one was home, either, the Kays having gone shopping with his mother and Maggie, he thought he might as well keep going and add a few more inches of purple to the wall before he quit.
It was evident now that the ton of fun wasn’t going to materialize, but there was something to be said for being halfway up a ladder, with a quarter of purple wall behind him, three-quarters of the day still ahead and a CD pocket full of the music he’d loved as a teen. It was, after all, the little things in life that mattered.
And when he got tired of fresh paint and groovy music, he’d just pick up the phone and call in the professionals.
MIRANDA PAUSED to get her bearings, even though she knew Thames Street like the back of her own hand. She even glanced, again, at the address she’d written down on a business card before leaving her office. As if double-checking her destination would give weight to her hesitation two doors away.
She was meeting a prospective client. That was all. Nothing personal. Nothing out of the ordinary. She met with prospective clients all the time, people who wanted a landscape design to complement their home, businessmen and-women who wanted a landscape design to complement their office building. She talked with people who wanted to change the look of an existing garden or put a garden where only lawn had been before. She often contracted to provide professional maintenance for existing landscaping. She consulted on major projects for the Danville Foundation and supervised the maintenance of any and all landscaping on the Foundation grounds. In other words, she was no stranger to meeting potential customers on their own turf.
So there was no excuse for this anxious excitement percolating in the pit of her stomach like the follow-up to a sloe gin fizz. This was business. Strictly business. Tucking the address back into her bag, she drew in a deep breath, smoothed her lipstick with a press of her lips and walked toward the building at the end of the block. The one with big paint cans propping open the double front doors.
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