Once Upon a Matchmaker. Marie Ferrarella
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just being punchy, Tracy. It’s been a long day and you put in more than your share of hours. Maybe you should just go home.
But she couldn’t just go home, not after telling Muldare that she was coming over. He’d think he was dealing with a dizzy blonde. As a natural blonde, she had fought against the image all of her life.
“I’ll be there in less than half an hour,” she repeated and then hung up.
Tired or not, her mouth curved in just a hint of a smile as she walked out the door.
Chapter Four
The residential development where Tracy lived was one of the oldest ones in Bedford. It was also one of the smaller developments.
Maizie Sommers, the real estate agent who had sold her the house she lived in, had happily given her all sorts of positive statistics about the area. According to the woman, Bedford Ranch had seven hundred and fifty homes within it. The agent had called that “cozy.”
Oddly enough, though the word normally suggested fireplaces and warm comforters to her, Tracy decided that the word did seem to fit the community. She was also happy to learn that this particular development didn’t come with myriad rules and regulations that covered everything from the number of hours that residents could keep their garage doors opened to when and if they could park their cars in the street or had to leave them strictly in their driveway.
But the thing that Tracy liked best about the relaxed atmosphere within the development was that she was free to paint the outside of her simple, two-story home any color she wanted without having to submit the request first in triplicate to some nebulous association for their approval.
Obviously, Muldare found this sort of freedom as appealing as she did. Otherwise, the newer, more rigidly structured developments would have certainly lured him away. They had the bigger, more modern houses.
Most likely equally appealing—at least to her prospective client—was the fact that there was an elementary school on the southern perimeter of the development. Los Naranjos was the name some clever pencil pusher had given it.
She wondered if his sons went there. It certainly made drop-offs and pickups easy for whoever looked after the boys while he was at work.
Maizie had gently touted that feature to her, as well, saying, “When you have kids, you’ll find that this is an excellent school for them to attend. All the schools in Bedford are ranked in the top 5 percent scholastically,” the woman had told her proudly.
Little had the woman known that for her there was never going to be a “when.” Much as she adored her mother who had raised her by herself—she’d never known her father—Tracy truly believed that kids needed a full set of parents, not just one. After that humiliating experience with Simon, she was not about to get married ever again, which sort of closed the door for her when it came to having kids.
Tracy pulled up to the curb before his house. Muldare lived closer to her than she’d thought he would. Only one vehicle was in the driveway—his, she assumed—but she didn’t feel as if she could take the spot beside it in case someone dropped by while she was still here.
After getting out of her vintage white sedan, Tracy came up the walk to the front door. Her ex-husband had been into status symbols, big time. The fact that they couldn’t afford to buy things like super-expensive cars and a cabin cruiser made no difference to him. Debt was just an annoying detail that he left for her to handle while he drove around in a vehicle that could have easily been a down payment on a house in the more affluent part of the city. He’d accused her of being a stick-in-the-mud when she’d tried to show him the discrepancy between their salaries and the lifestyle he was living.
Tracy rang the doorbell and heard the beginning notes of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony. A classical music lover? Or had that just come with the house and he hadn’t gotten around to changing it?
She waited until the strains faded away, then pressed the doorbell again, a little longer this time. He had to be home, right? At least, that was what he’d said when he’d called to cancel their appointment. Maybe he was one of those people who didn’t like to stand up for himself and this was his way of backing away from the problem.
If so, he’d probably seen an ad for her law firm and was intimidated by what representation would wind up costing in dollars and cents.
She hadn’t told him that if she was going to take the case, it would be pro bono. But she also wanted to judge the merits of the case for herself before she committed to it. If she told him about pro bono up front, he’d be eager for her to take the case and if she didn’t believe in his innocence, or didn’t think there was at least a slim chance in hell of winning, she wouldn’t take it on.
About to ring and listen to the Beethoven piece a third time, she was spared the encore when the front door suddenly opened. Her prospective client was on the other side.
“I was beginning to think that maybe I had the wrong address,” she said by way of an ice breaker. “Hi, I’m Tracy Ryan,” she said, extending her hand out to his.
Caught off guard—today was not going to go down as one of his better days—he said the first thing that popped into his head. “I’m Micah Muldare—but then, you already know that.”
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