Dinnertime at Carissa’s was noisy, and messy, and always the one thing Hope looked forward to being a part of.
Thomas left the table and returned a moment later with a bottle of champagne. “I have something special for tonight. In honor of the birthday girl.”
Hope smiled wide. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”
“Can I have some?” Becky asked.
“You can have a little taste,” Thomas promised, though Hope knew he wouldn’t have his own. He didn’t drink. She’d never seen him drink. She’d been told that he drank plenty once. It had been enough to nearly kill him.
Thomas opened the bottle and sniffed it.
“I don’t think you’ll like it, Becky.”
“Oh, it’s an adult thing,” she said with her face already scrunched up. Hope’s heart went out to her. She’d been that girl not so long ago. With Carissa being seventeen years older than she was, she’d shared the table with adults her entire life and wanted to always be just like them.
Hope wrapped her arm around her niece’s shoulders.
“Well, if you’d rather not have the bubbly stuff, then I think you should have a bigger piece of cake.”
“Really, Auntie Hope? I can have a bigger piece of cake?”
“That is, if there is cake.” She looked around at the others at the table.
Sophia crossed her arms over her chest and shot her chin up. “Have I ever missed baking you a birthday cake?”
“Not once.” Hope reached across the table and placed her hand on her mother’s.
Sophia Kendal, what an amazing woman. What woman took on the responsibility of another person’s child and loved her like Sophia had loved her?
Hope sat back and sipped her champagne, listening to the chaos, and thinking. She’d battled with the thought for years. Had Mandy had a change of heart and given her to David because she actually loved her? Or was she hoping to punish him by dumping a baby on him and then dying? They’d all told her what he was willing to sacrifice to keep her, and she wasn’t even his blood. He could have lost Sophia altogether, but he wanted to give Hope a home and he wanted her with her sister. Not a day had gone by in her life that she hadn’t thanked God that David had decided to keep her and that Sophia had fallen in love with her.
Sophia carried the cake from the kitchen and set it in front of Hope. Precisely placed on the cake were twenty-three candles.
Becky snuggled in next to her aunt. “I counted them and put them on the cake.”
“I think you put too many.”
“Nope. Mama said to put two whole boxes on and then take one off.”
“Well now that is one smart mama.” Hope touched her head to her niece’s as she watched Thomas light the candles on her cake.
This family, her real family, was all the family she would ever need.
CHAPTER TWO
He’d paced the floor of his hotel room all night. Can you spend more time there getting to know about them? I would like to know who they are and what they are like before I approach her. Donald Buchanan’s words had rung in his ears.
Now standing outside of the Kendal/Samuel School of Music, he heard them again and verified to himself that he was standing there at Donald Buchanan’s request. He’d watched Thomas Samuel, co-owner of the school and brother-in-law to Hope, unlock the door an hour earlier. The first set of students had walked in. He’d counted eight of them. They walked back out forty-five minutes later. Not one had an instrument; they carried only notebooks.
Trevor left the comforts of his rental car and walked across the street to the school. He stopped briefly outside Hope’s shop. It was still dark. According to the sign on the door, it would be open in the next hour. He gazed into the window past the collectibles neatly arranged on the shelves. The artwork covering the walls commanded his attention, specifically a picture of a hummingbird, which he was sure his mother had a small print of in her office.
“Well, Ms. Kendal, you certainly are talented,” he muttered to himself.
He knew he’d be entering the store within that next hour. He wondered if Hope would open it or if she had employees. He’d never seen anyone else close up the store, but he wondered. Again, he felt the tingle in his palm and he rubbed it against the leg of his pants. Was he ready to see her again?
The bell above the door rang as Trevor entered the school. The room was welcoming. A coffeepot sat full, freshly brewed, and magazines lay out. A waiting room for the parents of students, he assumed.
“Hello. How can I help you?” Thomas appeared from the back.
“Hi. Well.” He gave some thought as to what he was doing there. Every time he’d faced someone for information it was like a game. This time it felt dirty. “I’m looking for information on your school. I have a niece looking for music lessons and I told my sister I’d see what was available.” Not a lie, though his sister lived in New York and would probably be able to find a closer school.
“Wonderful. I’m Thomas Samuel,” he said, shaking Trevor’s hand. “My wife and I own the school. Let me show you around.”
Trevor followed Thomas back down a hallway.
“This is our piano room. I teach the piano lessons. Across the hall, we have two more rooms where we teach all instruments. My wife is a cellist and so is her mother.” He waited for Trevor’s nod acknowledging the “news” before moving on. “This is our theory study room. Before any lessons start, we have a week study course on theory. Then as the student advances, we hold advanced theory classes. My last class just finished.”
That would be why none of the students had instruments when they’d entered and left the school.
“Back here we hold bigger classes,” he said as Trevor walked through the door of the biggest room so far. “We have quite a few homeschooled students. They have their own band and their own orchestra as well. This is where we practice with them.”
“Does the store next door mind all the noise?”
Thomas laughed. “No. Hope grew up around the students and was one herself once. She’s my sister-in-law,” he added with congenial love in his eyes. “She was my very first student, but her talents lie in art, not in music.”
“She doesn’t play?”
“Oh, she can, but let’s just say she’s a better artist.” Thomas laughed again as he walked back through the school. “What does your niece play?”
Trevor followed him to the waiting room, racking his brain. “I think the piano. I’m just doing some footwork for her. They live in New York now.” He left it at that and knew Thomas would assume they’d be moving to Kansas City.
“Let me get you a pamphlet on the school and you can send it to her. When are they moving to the area?”
“I don’t know the time frame,” he said as he cleared his throat, knowing it was never. “But I know if I can give her some information, that’ll help Sarah settle into a new place.”
“Your niece is Sarah?” Thomas’s eyes widened, and a smile pushed at his cheeks.
Trevor nodded.
“I had a sister named Sarah.” Thomas’s voice softened. “Well, I look forward to meeting your family. I’m sorry, I don’t think I got your name.”
“Trevor. Trevor Jacobs.” As they shook hands again, he heard the distant slam of a door.
Thomas smiled. “Sounds like Hope is at work. She’ll have the store open early today. That was the sound of my arms are too full and I’ve kicked shut the door.”
It was obvious the man knew her well.
Trevor would have known she was close even without Thomas’s confirmation. She was within a few feet of him and his entire body had begun to tingle. “Mr. Samuel, thank you for the tour and the information.”
“My pleasure, have a nice day.”
She was making her second trip to the car. Why did she think it was so important to have fresh coffee and flowers displayed for her guests? Guests, she laughed to herself. Most stores called them customers. Hope thought of those who took the time to enter her shop a
s guests.
She tucked the fresh flowers into the crook of her arm, balanced the brown paper bag of plastic cups and individual sugar packets in the other arm. With her fingers tangled around her keys, she hit the button on her key fob and set the alarm. She turned back toward the shop when the door to the school opened up.
From the corner of her eye she saw a man, but it was the feeling that flooded her that made her think of the man that had encompassed her every thought for the past day. As she reached the door, the hand that came in front of her reaching for the handle wasn’t hers. She looked up and froze.
Words stuck in her throat and the mere thank-you that should have flowed out was strangling her.
“Let me get that for you.” His voice rang in her ears as he pushed open the door to the store and she stumbled through it. He reached quickly and grabbed the bag from her arms. His fingers brushed hers, and again there was that electricity that she’d felt the day before.
He was laughing. Words wouldn’t come to her mind, but she could seriously wonder if something had smeared across her face.
“I guess we have something electric between us, don’t we?” He was joking with her.
All Hope could do was nod. Trevor. His name came to her and she took a breath. “Trevor, right?”
“Yes, and you were Hope?”
She nodded and then forced herself to close her mouth. He was there. Fate had stepped in and brought him to her. In her dreams her great-grandma Katie had said a man would come and take her breath away. The words repeated in her head. He was standing before her, in her shop, and her breath had been taken away. Now, she thought, he was a guest. She needed to offer him something. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Maybe after you tell me where would you like me to put this?” he asked, hefting the bag held in his hands.
“Oh. Sorry. Follow me.”
She started toward the back of the store. The room wasn’t big, but it was big enough for her to paint her creations and make a pot of coffee.
“So this is where you work? I was admiring your paintings from the window this morning.”
“Yeah,” was all she could manage.
“You’re very talented.”
“Thank you.”
“I was most taken by the hummingbird near the front. Did you paint that?”
“Yes.” She began busying herself with unpacking the bags and putting the flowers in a vase. “It was my first painting we made prints of. I sold a few copies.”
“And one of them hangs in my mother’s office.”
“Really?” Her head came up and met his eyes, and once again her breath was sucked from her lungs. “Were you visiting the music school?”
“Getting information for my niece.”
“I highly recommend it.”
“I’ll bet.” He laughed. “Your brother-in-law said you were his first student.”
Trevor’s laugh fluttered in her chest, and she laughed too at the thought then went back to arranging the flowers. “Well if you can call me that. Trust me, I’m a better artist.”
“So I see.” His voice had changed and she turned to see why.
He was staring at the drawing she’d made of him after she’d returned to the store. There was no doubt he recognized it.
The pounding her heart had been doing since she’d seen the stranger in the cemetery was nothing compared to the pounding she felt at that moment.
“I’m so sorry.” She wanted to take the canvas and slice right through it, but her feet were planted to the ground.
“Sorry?” His eyes shifted to hers and she gasped. “I’m flattered.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. This is amazing.” He studied it again. “Why did you draw my face?”
“It was just, kinda… stuck in my mind.” She knew she sounded childish, but it was the truth. She bit down on her lip to keep it from trembling.
“Wow.” He was smiling. “Are you going to finish painting it?”
“I don’t know, I…”
“I’ll buy it from you. My mother would flip if I sent this to her for her birthday.”
Cautiously she moved toward him. Her body began to tingle as she neared him. What was it about the man that made her body tense, her words freeze, and her heart pump so rapidly?
“I’ve never drawn a face like that from memory. Do you really think it looks like you?” She turned her head to see him staring dumbfounded back at her. “I guess it does.”
“How much?”
“I’m sure we could work something out. I’ve never actually commissioned a portrait before. I usually save those for people I love.” The words had flown from her lips before she could retract them. “I didn’t mean I was in love with you. I only meant…”
“I know,” he reassured her. “For your family.”
“Yes.”
“I’d be honored if you’d finish it for me. I’m a bit stunned to see myself staring at me.” He was at least smiling and she took it as a good sign.
“You don’t think it’s stalkerish?” There was a feeling brewing in her she wasn’t sure she liked. She’d looked at birds and plants and successfully painted them. But having painted a man’s face, one who didn’t know she was creating his likeness, felt a bit sly.
Trevor stood back from the painting and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’ll be honest with you. Since I met you yesterday I haven’t been able to get you off my mind.” He shifted his eyes to the painting. “And I guess I’ve been on your mind.”
“Guilty.” She felt the heat rise in her cheeks.
“And my walking into your store this morning was a sign I guess.”
“An enormous one.”
“So maybe I should let you get to know your subject better. Have dinner with me.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide. “Dinner?”
“You do eat, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” She let out a nervous laugh. “I most certainly do. Okay, I’ll go to dinner with you,” she said, tucking her shaking hands into the pockets of her jeans.
“I’ll pick you up here. When do you close?”
“I’ll lock the door at six thirty.”
“Great, I’ll come back then.” He moved toward her. “I’m glad I stopped in to see your brother-in-law.”
“Me too.” He was so close the scent of his cologne washed over her. She could move in, kiss him, and melt into a pool of goo in the floor, but she resisted. Love, or lust, at first sight wasn’t realistic and Hope was much too practical for that.
Trevor smiled at her and walked back through the store.
“Hey,” she called out to him. “I don’t pick up men in the cemetery, by the way. I just thought I’d let you know.”
“I don’t usually go looking for women there either. Unless they’re my aunt.” He winked and left her alone with just his scent in the air and his sketched face staring back at her.
Trevor pulled away from the curb and beat his hand against the steering wheel. He’d just asked her out on a date. He certainly was taking his assignment to heart this time. Get to know her better, he reminded himself of Donald Buchanan’s instructions.
“Guess that’s what I’m doing,” he said to himself as he headed back toward his hotel room to compile the information he’d gathered. A knot of guilt twisted in him. Donald Buchanan was asking him to stalk her. He’d never really thought of his investigating that way, but now that he’d been affected by Hope’s charm, he wasn’t feeling very good about it at all.
As he walked through the lobby the woman at the front desk called to him. “This came for you today, sir.”
He stepped up to the counter and she handed him a thick manila envelope. He waited until he was in the elevator before opening it. As the door closed and he felt the lift of the cage, he unfastened the flap and looked inside the envelope.
He was glad he was alone.
Tucked inside were six thousand dollars, in cash, and a note.
; Mr. Jacobs:
As per our earlier conversation, please accept this as a good faith offering that I will indeed pay you any price for finding my daughter and getting to know her before I meet her. As you can see this amount is equal to what I’ve already paid you, and I assure you, I will double this when I have met Hope. I would like you to use this money to cover your extended expenses in Kansas City and shower my daughter with gifts. Though I am not ready to disclose myself to her, someday she will know these gifts have come from me. For the time being, please use the money to see that she is happy. Sincerely, Donald Buchanan.
Trevor forced himself to take a deep breath and then when he felt lightheaded he realized he’d been holding it. The woman of his dreams had become his assignment. He’d already started the process of getting to know her better when he hadn’t revealed himself to her at the cemetery. Then he’d asked her to dinner, because Donald Buchanan had told him to get to know her. Now he was to buy her lavish things.
He slid the key into his door and entered. His life seemed almost perfect. What more could he want? He had a date with the perfect woman, and her biological father was happy to foot the bill. It was as if your prom date’s father handed over the keys to his new car. That had never happened, but he assumed this would be how it felt. But then again he wasn’t sure an openly offered courtesy would leave a bad taste in your mouth like the offer Donald Buchanan was making did.
“You’ve been busy today,” Hope called from the back when she heard the bells chime over the door at noon. It was no surprise that Thomas appeared in her back room seconds later. It was their routine that he would come by on his lunch break.
“Yeah, lots of new talent today.”
“Is that what you call it?” She laughed and he followed suit as he leaned against the doorjamb and watched her work.
She lifted her eyes over the canvas and he gave her a smile that she’d become accustomed to. He was proud of her and just a bit overprotective, which had him checking in on her several times during the day.
Hope's Discovery (THE MATCHMAKER TRILOGY) Page 3