The Matchmaker's Sister

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  When she realized Miranda had caught them in the act, her face slid into that you-can’t-prove-anything expression teenagers could do so effortlessly and so well. “There used to be lilacs in the garden,” Cate said, waving her hand widely and vaguely toward the house, directing Miranda’s attention away from the little girls. “Over there, somewhere.”

  “I was just thinking some lilacs might be nice here.” Miranda used the Pentel to point out several dry, dead bramble bushes that flanked three sides of the concrete bench. “What do you think?”

  Cate lifted her thin shoulder in a shrug, obviously not wanting to appear too cooperative. “My mother liked lilacs.”

  “We might consider planting lilacs there, also.” Miranda indicated a raised bed, originally built, she guessed, to incorporate the flow of the terrace steps down into the garden. “That way they’d be visible from the other side of the terrace, as well.”

  Again the shrug. “Anywhere, I guess.”

  Miranda sketched a couple of uneven circles around her drawing of the stone bench, penciled “lilac bush” inside, sketched in the raised bed, marking it with a question mark. She might prefer tiered beds there instead of the one, and made a note of that possibility also. “Thank you, Cate.” She offered a smile, not too big, not too eager. “It helps me to know what was here before, what flowers you remember.”

  Cate sucked in her lower lip, her body angling away, like a bird ready to fly at any untoward movement. “There were roses, too,” she offered tentatively.

  “Roses!” Kali—or Kori—said and began bouncing like a floppy-eared bunny. “Pink roses!”

  “Can—we—have—pink—roses?” Now both girls were bouncing, the words coming in a duplicate staccato. They were dressed alike, their doggy ears flapped up and down in sync, the soles of their sneakers sent out neon-pink sparks with every jump. Even the way the toes of their shoes turned ever so slightly inward as they hopped up and down was identical. Miranda had no experience with that kind of twinship, but she couldn’t help thinking that if she were Nate, she’d be strongly encouraging the girls to develop their own identity. Now, before they began to identify themselves as one-half of a whole. It would be relatively easy, too, at this age to convince them to choose a signature color or to wear their hair in different styles. Even something as simple as Kali choosing to wear plaid ribbons in her hair and Kori opting to wear polka dots would do it. Miranda could think of a dozen simple ways to solve this which-twin-is-which dilemma.

  But then, no one had asked her to solve it. And no one was likely to. And if she were asked, she’d say no. Likewise, the fact that Cate was concealing fear and longing behind the facade of her attention-grabbing appearance was none of Miranda’s business. Cate Shepard was not Miranda’s problem. These bouncing, bobbling, identical children, Nate’s children, were not her responsibility, either. No matter how much she might dislike having to address them as a unit instead of as two separate individuals.

  “If you like pink roses,” she said to them now, “then we’ll have pink roses.”

  Their exuberant squeals cartwheeled harmlessly into the blue autumn sky, but their bouncing escalated dramatically, setting them on a collision course with each other. Elbows thumped, knees knocked, feet tangled, and one of them—impossible to know which—stumbled off the path and into the bramble of dry, dead bushes. The other twin, off balance, grappled with gravity and fell in the opposite direction…skidding on her hands and knees across a bed of gravel. Miranda knew immediately it was double trouble, even before their identical banshee wails pierced the cool afternoon air.

  Cate was down the steps in an instant, but Miranda was faster, grabbing up one child around the waist, lifting her away from the gravel pit, assessing the best way to get the other one out of the brambles without causing further injury. She sank onto the concrete bench, holding one child in each arm, settling them at cross angles on her lap, comforting them before she even realized what she was doing. She kept up a soothing stream of words, letting the girls cry, offering security and comfort with a caring embrace.

  On the walkway, Cate hovered, watching, not coming too close, offering no assistance while Kali and Kori burrowed ever tighter into Miranda’s arms, continuing to sob as if their injuries were truly calamitous. At one point, Miranda looked up to see Cate observing her carefully, almost as if judging the way she was handling the situation. Their eyes met and, somehow, Miranda felt she’d passed a test, given the teenager an acceptable answer.

  Which was silly. She’d done only what any adult would have done under the circumstances. Okay, so maybe she’d been a little quick to offer aid and sympathy, stepped in to help before she thought. But her response was rooted in her own childhood, in her own experiences of watching out for her little brother and sister. It was grounded in a deeply held belief that when a child scraped her knee or fell into a briar patch, someone should be there to comfort her. It was a natural response, she thought, a desire to feel helpful rather than helpless, a talisman against the fear that somehow she bore some responsibility for the pain, regardless of how it had happened or whose it was.

  “Do you have Band-Aids?” she asked Cate. “Maybe some antiseptic cream?”

  “In the house.” Cate cocked her head to one side, sending the blueberry-colored tip of her ponytail fanning across her pale cheek. “They’re getting blood on you.”

  Miranda looked down to see blood beading along the scratches on Kali’s arm, a thin dribble of blood trickling down Kali’s leg. Or vice versa. Shifting, she tapped the twin with the scraped elbow on the chin. “Who are you?” she asked. “Kali or Kori?”

  “Kali.”

  The question—one these two probably heard several times a day—was mundane enough to distract them momentarily, and their crying subsided into pitiful snuffling. They turned equally pitiful, tear-streaked faces up to hers. “I got b-blood on your shirt,” Kali said with a long-drawn-out sniffle. “I’m-m-m…” Her lower lip began to quiver. “B-b-bleeding.”

  Kori’s lower lip followed suit. “M-m-me, t-too.”

  Distraction was obviously called for, and Miranda came up with an oldie but goodie. “I think, Kali and Kori,” she said slowly, addressing each one in turn, “this qualifies as a two-Popsicle emergency. We’d better go in the house, so we can start the treatment right away.”

  Their brown eyes—so very much like their father’s—brightened and Kori latched on to the defining word. “T-two P-Popsicles?”

  Miranda nodded. “Two each.”

  Tears dried like magic. Cate stepped up and took Kali from Miranda, shifting the child onto her hip as if she’d done it a million times before. Miranda gathered Kori against her and stood up from the bench. “If you’ll get the Band-Aids, Cate,” she said, “Kali and Kori can show me where the Popsicles are stashed.”

  Cate smiled. A shy, tentative smile. A thank-you smile. A relieved smile. Then she turned toward the house, a thin teenager carrying just one of her sisters up the terrace steps. “Everything’s going to be okay now,” she said to Kali. Or maybe she was talking to herself. “Everything’s going to work out just fine.”

  Which, when Miranda thought about it, seemed a rather odd thing for a teenager with fluorescent hair to say.

  NATE’S HAPPY WHISTLE died in his throat as he turned the corner and saw the big fire truck, red lights flashing, parked in front of his house. A whole gamut of horrible possibilities raced through his mind in the interminable seconds it took for him to pull up to the curb and get out of his SUV. Something could have happened to his mother, to Maggie, to one of the kids. A heart attack. An accident. A disaster. Hurrying, his heart pounding with panic, he rounded the bulk of the fire truck and saw them all, safe and sound, on the front lawn. His mother. Maggie. All four of the kids. Two firefighters in full regalia. And Miranda.

  Miranda?

  His heart changed rhythm, panic turned into bone-melting relief, and beneath his very genuine concern for his family, he recognized a slow, swe
et pleasure at the sight of her. She looked beautiful, her blond hair clasped loosely in a wide, zebra-striped clip. Her clothing seemed different, somehow, the hem of her shirt falling low on her thighs. Just seeing her from the back interfered with his breathing, made him acutely aware of her even in the midst of what was obviously a crisis. She, however, appeared to be an oasis of calm in the middle of a very excited storm. The kids—even Will—were clustered around her, and all three girls were talking fast and furiously, with his mother and Maggie interjecting questions and comments from right behind them. No one noticed his approach because they were all staring at the house, listening to one of the firefighters explain that it would be some time before anyone could go inside.

  “What happened?” Nate stopped beside Will and was instantly bombarded by the Kays. They flung themselves at him, shrieking with excitement and overstimulation, trying to leap up and into his arms. “Daddy! Daddy!” they squealed, grabbing for his hand, his arm, a toehold on security. “Guess what? Guess what! There was a fire! A fire!”

  “But we ’scaped!”

  “Thank God, you’re here.” His mother frowned at him as if he’d known what awaited him and had purposefully dawdled all the way home to avoid it. “There’s been a fire.”

  “I wasn’t even here,” Will said, quickly excusing himself from any inherent blame. “I just got back from Cody’s house.”

  “Nobody was hurt,” Cate interjected, her eyes cloudy with images of what might have happened.

  “That’s the important thing,” Maggie reminded them all.

  Miranda’s gaze met his, skimmed away.

  “What happened?” Nate asked again, expecting a succinct answer from the firefighters.

  But the little girls pounced on the question and buried the hope of a quick, no-nonsense answer.

  “It was a two-Popsicle ’mergency, Daddy.”

  “Look, Daddy, I hurt my knee.”

  “My arm got all scratch-ed up.”

  “We saved the Band-Aids, Daddy.” One of the Kays held up the Curad box proudly.

  “We had Popsicles.”

  “Two of ’em. Each.”

  “A grape one and a strawberry one.”

  Sure enough, Nate could see the evidence in traces of Popsicle purple and red around their mouths.

  “Then Miranda showed us what to do with marshmallows.”

  “Kali burned hers up.”

  “I did not.”

  “Did, too.”

  “Did not.”

  Nate separated the twins and nipped the budding argument—brought on, no doubt, by more excitement than they normally created over the course of a single day—by laying a hand on top of each head and signaling with slight pressure that he wanted them to be quiet for two seconds. “Let’s let the firemen talk,” he said. “It’s their turn.”

  The firefighters, once allowed to speak uninterrupted, were quick and to the point. There’d been a fire. Caused, apparently, by burning marshmallows. In the family room. Damaged—a set of drapes, a small section of carpet and a lot of paint. Demolished—a candle and a bag of marshmallows. Verdict—they were lucky it wasn’t worse.

  “It will be several hours before the smoke clears out,” the fireman concluded. “If I were you, I’d find somewhere else to stay tonight. At least send the kids off until tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Walt Disney World!” One of the Kays shouted, immediately thinking of a good place to be sent.

  “Yea! Walt Disney World,” seconded the other.

  “We are not,” Nate said firmly, still not clear on who exactly had been roasting marshmallows and how exactly that had caused the drapes to catch fire, “going to Walt Disney World. We’ll go to a hotel.”

  “I’ll stay with Cody,” Will promptly stated.

  “I’ll go to Meghan’s house,” Cate quickly added.

  “Don’t worry about Maggie and me,” Charleigh announced. “We’ll stay with the Parhams. That will be more convenient for us and them, anyway, since we’re all flying down together in their private jet. You just manage the children. Maggie and I will take care of ourselves.”

  The crisis was only now beginning to take the stiffening out of his knees and already his family seemed eager to scatter to the four winds. What had happened to the ties that bind? If Angie had been here, the children wouldn’t have been so quick to abandon ship. They would have wanted to stay close, would have found security in the idea of being together. Of course, if Angie were here, no one would have been burning marshmallows in the family room.

  “I’ll take them to Danfair with me.” Miranda’s voice was calm, cool and collected, her smile softening the take-charge tone with warm invitation. “It’s not Walt Disney World, but it’s close. And it’s a lot better than a hotel.” Her blue eyes turned to Nate. “You can stay here and finish with the fire department. Take all the time you need. We’ll see you for dinner, then?”

  She made it a question, but he suspected she already knew the answer. There, in that moment of eye contact, they shared an unspoken understanding, a sharing that went deeper than, perhaps, either of them had meant it to go. But there it was. Unspoken understanding. An agreement of purpose. She’d whisk his children off and occupy them elsewhere while he dealt with the practicalities. She’d give them all a chance to level off from the frantic highs of the adrenaline rush, give him the opportunity to see for himself that no true harm had been done, time to deal with the choking fear of what might have happened and to avoid the temptation to over-react that often followed.

  And even with that subtext circulating between them in those few seconds of eye contact, he had the most amazing thought that somehow she’d had something to do with the flaming marshmallows. He couldn’t imagine how she had come to play such a role in his house, with his children, but looking at her now, seeing the faintest glint of guilt in her eyes, this thought became an elusive suspicion. Whatever had actually happened, he suddenly felt certain there had been some adult involvement in this childish prank gone awry. And, if by some as yet unknown fluke, that adult involvement had come from Miranda…well, then, there was more mischief in her than he would ever have suspected.

  “Thank you, Miranda,” he said, giving away not even a hint of his suspicion. “Danfair, it is.” He instructed his children to stifle any and all protests with the look.

  And when all of his children, from oldest to youngest, rolled their eyes and gave a collective sigh, making fun of his attempt as they always did, he felt that all was right with his world.

  Chapter Seven

  “Now you’ve done it.”

  Nate’s voice came out of the darkness behind her, sending a thrill as sleek as silk on skin whispering down her spine. She turned to face him, finding support in the railing that ran along the terrace wall behind her. The night air held a nip of autumn, and she rubbed her hand across her sweater sleeves, the cashmere a soft warmth beneath her fingers. She wasn’t chilled, though, and it certainly wasn’t the crisp September night that brought a flush to her cheeks. Oh, no, it was the man walking out through the open French doors to join her who was to blame for that.

  Blushing. She was blushing. And she was almost thirty. Way past any good explanation for such an age-of-innocence reaction. She couldn’t even use the element of surprise as an excuse. She’d known he would seek her out at some point this evening and, as it was now nearly ten-thirty and the evening almost over, she couldn’t claim she hadn’t been expecting him. She’d even come outside to wait for him, choosing that as preferable to conversing with him under Ainsley’s overeager supervision. For the past ten minutes—all right, so really for the entire evening—she had anticipated what he might want to say to her, what she might want to answer, if he might try to kiss her again, if she might let him. But now that he was here, all of those answers, any strategies she’d planned to cope with this attraction, everything, except the delicious anticipation of what could happen, floated up and away from her thoughts like a helium balloon. “
Done what?” she asked in a voice she tried to make so deliberately casual it came out almost as a whisper.

  “You’ve upped the ante,” he replied in a voice as natural as the way he came to her side and stopped beside her, not too close but close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body, to inhale the faint scent of his aftershave. “In one evening, you’ve managed to wipe out the appeal of a trip to Walt Disney World in favor of remodeling the Shepard home à la Danfair.”

  “Your children did seem to like the house.”

  “Children?” he scoffed. “I was talking about me. What red-blooded American male wouldn’t want a pool table in the study, a tournament table-tennis set in the living room and an inline-skating rink in the ballroom? The only thing I’d change would be to make the indoor croquet field into a miniature golf course.”

  “Matt and Andy have wanted to do that for years, but there’s just too much potential for real damage with miniature golf. So croquet it stays.”

  “Well, I suppose even the planners at Walt Disney World had to make a few concessions.”

  She smiled, stared at the rectangles of golden light, which spilled from the library and ebbed into the shadows where she and Nate stood, and thought about how her home had evolved into an oddity over the years of her childhood. She and her siblings had often been alone, with plenty of adults about, but no one really in charge and no one to tell them they couldn’t put a croquet field in the foyer or that they shouldn’t skate on the hardwood floor of the huge old ballroom. They’d played basketball in there, too, until the antique mirror had accidentally cracked on a layup. Even then, there had been no repercussions except for the guilt at breaking something not easily—or ever—replaced.

  Perhaps Charles and Linney had felt guilty about being absent so often and that was why they’d allowed their children to turn the house into a playground. But, personally, Miranda thought her parents had never really noticed the changes. They paid so little attention to mundane details, anyway, always focusing on the big picture, on the problems of a world outside the walls of home. It was easy to believe they simply stepped over the croquet mallets and walked around the Ping-Pong table without registering their presence. Matt, on the other hand, had always claimed that their mindful inattention was Charles and Linney’s gift to their children. It offered them the freedom to choose. An unquestioned right to make what they wanted of their own lives. Most of the time, Miranda was happy not knowing whether her theory or Matt’s lay closer to the truth.