The Littlest Matchmaker. Dorien Kelly
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Public Enemy Number One. That day wasn’t three years ago, when, by all rights, she should have started viewing him as a life-wrecker. No, she’d forgiven him the nearly unforgivable long before he’d been able to forgive himself. Instead, she’d started treating him like the village felon a few weeks ago, when he’d made the critical mistake of asking her whether she was feeling okay. Go figure.
He couldn’t believe that he was the only person in East Davenport who’d noticed that beneath her smiles and quick humor, Lisa had begun to change. He was perfectly willing to admit he wasn’t all that perceptive when it came to the nuances of emotion, so he just didn’t get why Courtney and the others couldn’t catch the difference. Maybe, though, there was some unwritten rule of platonic semifriendship he’d missed. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to acknowledge the lost expression he caught Lisa wearing every now and then. Or maybe he was supposed to buy into that public image she worked so hard to keep in place.
The problem was, he had no intention of following those rules anymore. Something had changed in him, too. Time was that he could look at Lisa and see only the business owner and friend—if she’d ever really been a friend. Their relationship had always been a tough one to categorize.
Now he saw the woman. He saw the sleek, red-brown hair that she kept tied up and wondered what it would feel like to free it. He saw her body’s slender curves and wondered how they’d fit against him. And most of all, he wondered if her skin would taste sugary sweet from all her time spent baking. Not that these thoughts were wrong…. He was just flat-out crazy to think anything might come of it.
Kevin took one last look at the boxes and deemed his job done. He considered just a quick stop at Shortbread Cottage for a coffee for the road, but rejected it. Friday, maybe. He’d try out that old proverb and see if absence would make her heart grow fonder, or at least more tolerant. Assuming she noted his absence. Pushing aside thoughts of Lisa, he jammed his utility knife back into its slot in his apron, then winced at the poke he felt through the thick leather.
“Smart move,” he said to himself.
He’d forgotten to sheathe the blade. A quick check after locking it down confirmed that the apron had done its job, and he hadn’t managed to stab himself.
Kevin shook his head at his own idiocy. If he didn’t get his act together and focus on work, Lisa Kincaid just might be the death of him. And damned if that irony didn’t cut more deeply than his utility knife ever could.
Chapter Two
“You’re going to need your party manners,” Lisa said to Jamie as they pulled up to her parents’ house that evening. “Grammie and Grampy have company.”
Two strange cars were parked out front on the street. The first was an aged vehicle plastered with the standard assortment of indie rock band stickers and high school cheerleading and volleyball decals—a definite babysitter ride. The other was a sleek sports car, no doubt owned by someone Lisa’s parents had duped into being the date candidate du jour.
She pulled past the sports car, which Jamie was excitedly viewing from the elevated perch of his safety seat.
“Pretty,” he decreed in a reverent tone.
“Don’t get too attached,” she said under her breath as she parked her six-year-old and not so very pretty—but paid for—vehicle in the driveway.
Lisa got out of the car and went to the back passenger door to help Jamie out of the constraints of his seat. She glanced up at the house and saw her mother flit by one of the library windows, where she must have been waiting for their arrival. This was definitely a setup; her mother had been wearing a dress. Lisa surveyed her own garb of faded jeans and white short-sleeved top. There would be some severe style clash going down at this meal.
She and Jamie had barely reached the front door when it swung open. Next to her mom stood a perky-looking teenager.
“You’re a little late, dear,” Lisa’s mother said to her before focusing on Jamie. “Jamie, this is Amber. You two are going to have a pizza party in the jungle room.”
Mom had this all figured out, down to letting Jamie eat in the glass-walled conservatory, his favorite room out of the many in her parents’ home. She could scratch using Jamie as an excuse to bolt.
“Whose sports car?” she asked her mom after Jamie and Amber had left for their pizza safari.
“We’re in the living room,” her mother replied.
“And?”
Her mother smoothed her hands down her already unnaturally wrinkle-free pale blue linen dress. “And what? Come to the living room and meet the car’s owner.”
Lisa still balked. “Mom, after last time, you promised you’d never do this again.”
“I don’t believe I did, and you know I’m very careful with my words.”
Which was an understatement. A thirty-year career as a corporate attorney, from which she’d recently retired, had made her mother a tactical genius. In fact, Amanda Peters, aka Mom, stood among Lisa’s pantheon of heroes. She’d managed to work full-time, deal with the fact that Lisa’s dad, a physician, worked just as many hours, keep her house so that it looked as though it had sprung fully-formed from a glossy magazine, and still be there for all of Lisa’s activities as she’d been growing up. But none of this meant that Lisa had to go willingly onto the merger block.
“Do I have the pizza in the conservatory option, too?” she asked.
Her mother gave an impatient shake of her head. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. It won’t kill you to socialize a little.”
“What do you think I do at work all day?”
“That’s not the same thing at all. Now come along.”
Because she loved her mom, if not her mom’s meddling, Lisa pinned on her smile and steeled herself for yet another awkward dinner.
Her dad and the latest victim were standing at the back windows overlooking her mother’s gardens. Lisa held in a laugh as she heard her dad telling the victim that he’d like to put in a putting green. That would happen only if her mom could make it of low-growing thyme, with a lavender border.
“Hey, Dad,” she said as she joined them, and then gave her father a hug.
“Lisa, this is Jeff McAdams,” her dad said. “He just joined the practice’s Bettendorf office.”
Which would make it very, very hard for Dr. Jeff to turn down dinner with his new boss. She felt sorry for the guy, especially since between his looks and his career, he was far from the sort to need a setup for a first date. They shook hands and she felt no zing at all, which came as a relief after her encounter with Kevin Decker this morning. She far preferred the feel-nothing mode.
“Iced tea?” Lisa’s mom asked her.
“That would be nice.” Long Island style—chock-full of liquor—would have been even more helpful.
“So, Lisa, Jeff has just moved here from Ann Arbor,” her mother said as she poured tea into a tall, ice-filled glass, then settled a lemon wedge on its rim. “Jeff, Lisa attended the University of Michigan.”
They had only reached the credentials stage of Mom’s merger negotiations, but it was time to shut down this show.
“I dropped out,” Lisa neatly inserted. “No degree and no desire for one. I run a bakery and coffeehouse down in the village. And I have a son, Jamie. He’s four. Want to come meet him? He’s having pizza down the hallway.”
Because Dr. Jeff was the polite sort, even if a little confused by her out-of-the-blue offer, he agreed. Lisa took her tea from her mom and met her exasperated expression with an “outmaneuvered you this time” grin.
“We’ll be right back,” she said to both parents.
She led Dr. Jeff down the hallway and just outside