The Matchmaker's Sister

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Paint cans. What was Nathaniel Shepard doing in this empty warehouse on Thames Street?

  The answer confronted her a moment later when she stepped inside the cavernous room and was instantly assaulted by the smell of fresh paint, the sight of more concentrated purple than anyone should have to see before lunch and the sound of the Bee Gees at the height of “Stayin’ Alive.” Nate was painting. Halfway up a tall ladder, he was trimming out a windowsill, intent on angling the brush against the wood, singing in a zesty falsetto along with the sound track and completely unaware of her presence.

  Which seemed a good thing, considering she was aware enough for both of them.

  He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his lean muscular back draped in a sinewy taper from his broad shoulders to the waistband of his well-worn jeans. The denim was faded and stretched taut across his narrow hips as he leaned into the windowsill. His biceps flexed with the movement of the brush and a slight sheen of exertion glistened on his skin, casting him, against the purple backdrop, in a fluid bronze.

  Who knew a man his age would look so good without a shirt?

  Who could have guessed she’d be struck speechless—and slightly breathless—by the simple pleasure of looking at him? Solid, fit, strong and…well, beautifully sexy. She wanted to deny it and wished she could find some other interpretation for this tightening in her body, some logical explanation for the clutch in her stomach. But no matter what she eventually chose to call it, she knew in that moment of awareness exactly what it was. And it went deeper than mere appreciation of a nicely put-together male form. It was more elemental than that. And dangerously, dazzlingly attractive.

  Miranda pulled her thoughts up short. She had come here on business. It didn’t matter if he was the finest specimen of man ever produced in nature. She wasn’t interested. Not in the least. She was here for one reason. He needed help. He’d asked for help. Her help. The phone message, taken down in Ainsley’s loopy handwriting, had said Nate wanted to talk about landscaping, that he needed help with shrubs. But that must have been a miscommunication between caller and message taker—Ainsley never paid much attention to detail—because it seemed perfectly obvious to Miranda that Nate required some serious assistance in interior decorating, that he desperately needed help with tints and shades. She couldn’t imagine where he was going with this pulsating color theme and she certainly couldn’t think of what he might be planning to put with it. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know. But she would do what she could to help him find some way of bringing it all together. Starting with toning down that brilliant, eye-popping purple he was so zealously applying to the walls.

  She spent another few idle seconds admiring the view of his bare back before she gathered her wits about her and approached the ladder, self-consciously smoothing the lay of her pale green linen slacks, tugging a little at the hem of her matching linen blazer. “Nate?” she said his name tentatively, then realized he’d never hear her over the music. Pitching her voice to carry over the speakers—which went instantly mute with a lull between sound tracks—just as she screeched, “Hello, Nate!”

  He very nearly fell off the ladder.

  As he twisted around, paint dripping from his brush, his foot slipped from the rung and he only managed to catch himself by splaying his hand flat against the wall.

  The freshly painted purple wall.

  “Miranda?” he said, clearly astonished to see her. “What are you doing here?”

  She frowned. “We have an appointment.”

  He frowned, too. “We do?”

  “At eleven.” Reaching into her purse, she extracted the business card. As if that proved anything. The music came back on and she pitched her voice above it. “You called the house and left a message. With my sister. Ainsley?”

  None of that information seemed to ring a bell, because the frown still furrowed his forehead. “I called you,” he repeated loudly, obviously trying to remember if, when and why, “and made an appointment?”

  “Well, someone called. I just assumed it was you because…” Because that’s what Ainsley had written on the card. If that little snip of a matchmaker had manufactured this message out of thin air… “You didn’t call?”

  He pulled his hand off the wall, swiped it once across his jeans and climbed down the ladder. “Let me turn down the music,” he said and headed for the CD player, snatching up his shirt from where it had been draped over the only chair in the large room—a paint-spattered metal folding chair.

  “There’s paint…” Miranda began the protest too late. He already had the shirt in his hand, was already transferring the paint on his hand to the white fabric. Striding away from her, he stooped down in front of the boom box, giving her a different but equally appealing view of his bronzed bare back, and twirled the knob on the CD player, sending the Bee Gees fading into the background.

  But in the ensuing quiet, the rhythms of “More Than A Woman” continued vibrating through Miranda in a fine tension so intimate it bloomed in a seductive heat beneath her skin.

  “There,” he said, his smile coming around to greet her all over again, even before he rose to his feet and walked back to where she stood, paralyzed by an awareness so intense she couldn’t seem to get past it. “Now, maybe, we can get to the bottom of this.”

  Her first and immediate impulse was to run for the door as if her tail were on fire. But she couldn’t get enough breath sucked into her lungs to speak, much less make a run for it. Besides, she didn’t run away from her feelings, she wasn’t a coward and this was business. Strictly business.

  “Hi,” he said, pleasure and charm, curiosity and delight all tangled up and blended together in his voice, on his face.

  Her heart dropped at his feet like a rock. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t strictly business.

  “Hi,” she answered so softly it might have been a prayer. This was embarrassing, she thought, and dropped her gaze from his intriguing brown eyes. It fell first on his bare chest, which seemed much too close for comfort, then dropped to the white shirt still clutched in his hand. “You’re getting paint on your shirt.”

  Glancing down, he seemed surprised to see the shirt in his hand, and then, belatedly, seemed to recall why he’d picked it up. He pulled it on in careless haste, transferring purple blotches of paint in random handprints on the sleeves, on the front panels, the shirttails. Leaving the shirt unbuttoned, he raised a slightly sheepish gaze to hers. “Any chance you have a bottle of club soda in your pocket?”

  She smiled. She couldn’t help herself. “I’m afraid you’re going to need something a little more radical than club soda.”

  He frowned at the purple splotches. “Turpentine?”

  “Scissors,” she said. “But, on the bright side, you’ve just created a great paint rag.”

  “Good deal. Now all I need is a great painter.”

  She eyed his hand, the purple paint streaks blending into the crevices in his large palm, fading into tan at the edges. “And maybe some Borax soap to use when you wash your hands.”

  He looked down, turning his hands from front to back. “Borax, huh? Guess this is one of those occupational hazards.”

  “You’re a painter?”

  He laughed. A deep masculine laugh. A laugh that made a woman feel safe, protected…valued. A laugh that soothed doubts and led her to believe he was a man worthy of her trust, a man she wanted to get to know better. “I’d make that claim,” he said, glancing ruefully at the purple wall behind him, “but there seems to be a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t think it’s your skill that’s in question here.”

  “It’s the color, isn’t it?”

  “When you put some other colors with it, the purple might not seem so…vivid. What sort of look are you going for with this?”

  “Fresh,” he said promptly. “Snaff. Pukka.”

  “Oh.” Maybe she’d misheard him. “Well, fresh is good.”

  “No,
fresh is young. At least, I think that’s what it means. This color was Cate’s choice. My daughter. She’s thirteen and speaks a foreign language. Something between Sanskrit and sarcasm. I call it Teenglish.”

  “I remember that phase.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. When my younger brother and sister—they’re twins—were eleven or twelve or maybe even thirteen, they drove me crazy talking in some language they completely made up. Just to annoy me, I think. They, of course, thought it was wildly funny.”

  “What did your parents do about it? Because I’m lost for ideas.”

  “My parents?” She sobered some, remembering the responsibility she’d carried, the often overwhelming confusion of being the one left in charge. “They left on another trip, I imagine. They travel a lot for the Danville Foundation. I can’t remember them ever being home more than two or three weeks straight.”

  “Who took care of you and your brothers and sister?”

  “I did. Oh, we always had caretakers—a series of nannies, a succession of live-in help—but mainly I made sure the other three were okay.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at her, his eyes compassionate, seeing deeper than her words, making her feel he understood what she’d never said aloud. Not even to herself. “My wife died,” he said. “A year ago. Cancer. She was sick for a long time.”

  And there it was. A simple statement of fact that somehow linked his experience to hers. A bond. A life-isn’t-fair foundation for whatever came after. Miranda didn’t plan on anything coming after. Not with this man, who was funny and nice and attractive…and the father of four children. She didn’t want to share this basic understanding with him that sometimes life coughed up an impossible choice, made something that was totally unacceptable the thing you had to accept. The absence of her parents was not at all the same as the death of his wife, and yet, somehow she knew he felt their experience was the same. Unacceptable. Unfair. But the thing they had accepted, just the same.

  His smile was sudden, leaving the moment intact between them, but shifting the mood like sunlight. “You know, I’m thinking the one thing that’s missing in this room—besides a professional painter or two, of course—is an interior designer. Or a miracle worker.”

  “That could be why I’m here.”

  His eyebrow quirked upward. “You can work miracles?”

  “That depends.”

  “On…?”

  “On what you’re planning to do with this space.”

  “A coffeehouse,” he answered readily. “Music, cozy nooks, good coffee. Teas. Cocoa. Maybe a few bakery items. But that’s pretty much the extent of my creative process.”

  Nodding, she scanned the rectangle of room, imagining deep, overstuffed couches, chairs and has-socks, pillows, lighted glass blocks forming a coffeeservice island in place of the utilitarian workstation now occupying the center of the room like a putty-colored plywood lump. “A coffeehouse is a great idea. I like it.”

  “You do?”

  She smiled at his surprise. “Yes. Seems like a great niche market to me.”

  “Well then,” he said, a slow grin tucking in at the corners of his mouth, “I guess you’d better get started with those miracles you came here to work.”

  “I came here because I was under the mistaken idea that we had an appointment.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The mysterious appointment.”

  She was going to kill Ainsley if this turned out to be one of those ridiculous introduction of possibilties she was always talking about. “Not so mysterious, really,” she replied. “I think my sister has some tall explaining to do.”

  He rubbed his chin, leaving flakes of purple paint behind. “I’m inclined to think the explanation is more likely to come from my house. What did the message say?”

  “That you were looking for a landscape designer. That you could use some help with shrubs. That I should meet you here at eleven o’clock. Today.”

  “Shrubs, huh?” He considered the matter. “I’m inclined to absolve your sister from blame, Miranda. I have a feeling this has something to do with my mother. She’s preparing to flee the state for a warm winter in Florida and has been lining up all sorts of household projects she wants me to supervise while she’s gone. She may have even said something to me about getting a landscape designer. Is that what you do?”

  “Yes. Mostly for properties involved with the Danville Foundation, but I take private clients, too.”

  “And the miracles?”

  “I dabble a little in interior design,” she admitted. “I did most of the interiors at the new Children’s Research Center.”

  “I don’t care who made this appointment,” he said. “You’re heaven-sent. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  “But your mother would have told you if she’d made an appointment for you.”

  “Oh, she’ll swear she told me. That’s the sort of thing my mother does.”

  “Like kicking you in the instep to make you dance?”

  “Yes, exactly like that.” His friendly good humor wrapped around her, made her warm. “But she didn’t tell me. Knowing I was going to see you isn’t something I could forget.”

  Miranda, who was almost never uncertain about anything, tripped over her own doubts to fall into his smile. She should not be here. Shouldn’t have kept this appointment. She’d been suspicious the minute she’d seen his name in Ainsley’s pretty cursive. And yet, here she was, already in over her head in a situation she’d never meant to allow herself to get into.

  “So…” Miranda fought for perspective as she pulled a notebook from her bag, scavenged a pencil from the depths of her Kate Spade. She needed to concentrate on maintaining a businesslike manner, and to stop getting distracted by the flecks of gold in his eyes, the tiny chip in his right front tooth, and the fact that she’d almost danced with him. “We should talk about what kind of landscape design your mother wants.”

  “I don’t have the foggiest idea and, just so we understand each other, I’m not wasting any miracles you can do on the lawn at home. I want this coffeehouse open by Halloween. Can you help? Will you?”

  No was the correct answer. She knew that. But the words that came out of her mouth, straight from her suddenly foolish heart, were, “Yes. Yes, of course I will.”

  Chapter Five

  “Don’t move,” Nate said.

  He lifted his hands with the half-formed intention of guiding her to the only seat in the house, but remembered in time that he had paint on his hands. And if he touched her, he’d get paint on her and she’d have to go home and change clothes. And she probably wouldn’t come back. And the metal folding chair wasn’t anything a woman like Miranda would want to sit on, anyway. So he modified his plan, holding his hands, palms out, in a stay gesture as he backed toward the door. “I’ll be right back. Ten minutes tops. You can change the CD if you want. Or you can switch it to the radio. Or you can turn it off. You can do anything you want. Just…wait for me. Please.” Then, with one last lingering, entreating smile—really, she was quite breathtakingly pretty as she stood looking at him, her forehead furrowed, hesitation written into the slight angling of her body—he reached the door, turned reluctantly around and hurried through it.

  Nine and a half minutes later, he was back with a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and a book of verse. Okay, so it was just deli sandwiches, two pop-top cans of soda and a clean shirt. No paint stains. Only a slight tear in the underarm seam where he’d ripped out the price tag. But he didn’t think she’d notice that as long as he kept his arm down. He hadn’t been in this state of anxious excitement since…he couldn’t remember since when. Maybe since the day he’d proposed to Angie. No, not even then, as he’d been certain—or reasonably so—that she wanted to marry him as much as he wanted to marry her.

  Not that he wanted to marry Miranda. Wasn’t even thinking about marriage. Well, he was thinking about it, since he’d had to stop and clarify in his own mind t
hat he was not thinking about it. But this had nothing to do with that. This was about anticipation, possibilities. This was knowing an attractive woman was waiting for him, that there was a veritable fireworks display of sparks whenever they occupied the same space. This was mystery, magic, the prospect of something he wasn’t sure he felt comfortable giving a name.

  But it had been some time since he’d felt anything this close to exciting and he resolved to enjoy the hopeful suspense for as long as it lasted. Maybe she hated plastic-wrapped turkey and Swiss on wheat. Maybe she loved 7-Up. Maybe she hated that he’d left her so abruptly. Maybe she’d love that he’d left to scrub his hands and buy a clean shirt from the boat supply across the street. Maybe she was still waiting for him. Maybe she wasn’t.

  She was.

  His heart beat faster as he stepped into the room and saw her. “You waited,” he said.

  She spun around—she’d been at the wall opposite the one he’d been painting—holding out a pencil as if he’d just caught her writing graffiti on the bathroom wall. “Oh, you startled me,” she said, her surprise giving way to a slow, reticent pleasure, her eyes turning azure with a subtle smile. “You changed your shirt.”

  He was ridiculously pleased that she’d noticed, a little smug that he’d known something so small would please her. “The other one had a stain on it,” he said. “I couldn’t wear it through lunch.”

  “Lunch?”

  “You know…no shoes, no shirt, no service?”

  “Oh.” She glanced at her watch. “I didn’t realize it was almost noon. You probably have a luncheon engagement. I can come back another time and talk to you about this.” Her hand fluttered toward the wall behind her. “I was only sketching out a couple of ideas. You can paint right over them.”

  “Why would I do that?” He walked toward her, the sack of sandwiches and soda in the crook of his arm. She took a backward step, bumped the wall, came away from it, dusting the back of her slacks. She’d taken off her jacket, had folded it so it rested on top of her purse on the floor, not touching anything except the purse. She glanced at it now and he could see she was wishing she’d kept it on. Why she wished that, he wasn’t entirely sure, because she looked very nice in just the slacks and silky, sleeveless top. And she had to be cooler. But he sensed she was nervous, that he made her nervous. Which was not at all the effect he wanted to have. “I was hoping you’d stay and have lunch with me,” he said, casually putting the sack down on the plywood workstation. “If you don’t like deli sandwiches, I could order a pizza or something.”