An Engagement For Two. Marie Ferrarella
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if she’d guessed correctly.
“No, no wife. No time,” Jeff added, then told her, “You know I’d never get married without inviting you, Mrs. Man—Theresa,” he corrected before she could. “You’re like a second mother to me.” He sighed. “Which brings me to my first mother.”
“Your mother’s ill?” Theresa asked, recalling how supportive the woman had been of her son when he’d first opened his restaurant, Dinner for Two. “What’s wrong, Jeff?”
“That’s why I need the name of a good doctor—preferably one with a really good bedside manner about him—or her,” he added quickly. “Actually, I think my mother would prefer a her,” he told Theresa. “As for me, I’d just prefer a good doctor.”
“When was the last time your mother saw a doctor?” Theresa asked, curious.
He really didn’t have to stop to think. He knew. His mother avoided doctors as if they carried the plague in their pocket. “When she gave birth to my sister. Tina’s twenty-nine now,” he added.
That was really hard to believe. “You’re kidding,” Theresa said.
“No, I’m not,” he said honestly. “My mother doesn’t trust doctors. A doctor misdiagnosed my father’s condition until it was too late to save him.” It had happened twenty-five years ago. At the age of ten, he’d suddenly been the man of the family. “He died.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Theresa said with genuine sympathy. “But that doesn’t mean all doctors are like that.”
He blew out a breath, feeling very weary all of a sudden. “I know that, but my mother, well, it’s hard to win an argument with her. However, she’s getting weaker and I just might be able to bully her into it—if I can find a competent, sympathetic doctor to take my mother to.”
“Which is where I come in,” Theresa concluded.
Jeff nodded. “Could you put me in contact with your friend’s daughter? Or have your friend’s daughter recommend someone to you? I don’t care how it’s done,” he told her, feeling just a little desperate, as if he was fighting the clock.
He had no idea just how serious his mother’s condition was, but she’d been in pain recently. A lot of pain. “I just need it done. I’ll take my mother to see this doctor on your say-so. My mom’s only sixty-five, Theresa, and she has a lot of life left—as long as I can get her to see reason and get treatment for whatever it is that’s making her feel so weak and ill.”
Theresa smiled at him. She found his concern for his mother touching.
“You’re a good son, Jeff,” she told him affectionately.
Jeff shrugged away the compliment. He appreciated what Theresa was saying, but he really needed the name of that doctor. “She’s a good mother. I’d like her to live long enough to see her grandkids.”
Theresa’s ears perked up. “So there is something I should know about?”
Jeff laughed softly. “My sister, Tina, has got two kids and my brother’s wife is two months away from giving birth to their first baby.”
Since he’d opened the door, Theresa saw no reason not to slip in and satisfy her curiosity. “What about you, Jeff? Would you like to have children?”
It wasn’t something he thought about often. “First I’d have to find a wife who would be willing to put up with my crazy hours—”
Theresa’s antennae went up a little higher. “But if you did?” she pressed.
“Then yes, I guess I’d like to have kids,” he allowed. “But right now, I just want to find someone who can get my mom well.”
Theresa nodded. “I’m on it,” she told the young man she thought of as a son. “Consider it already taken care of, Jeff,” she added with a smile.
He paused to kiss her cheek before leaving. “You’re the best,” he told her.
“At what I do, yes,” Theresa replied softly. She doubted that her former protégé heard as he hurried from her office.
* * *
“You’ll never guess who came to see me today,” Maizie Sommers told her two best friends as they all gathered around the card table in her family room for their weekly game of poker.
“Considering all the traffic that your office sees, my guess would be just about anybody,” Cilia Parnell quipped.
“Try harder,” Maizie coaxed, displaying her customary patience. “Who’s the one person you’d never think would come to see me? I’ll give you a hint—it’s about our matchmaking hobby,” she told her friends, her eyes shifting from Theresa to Cilia and then back again as she waited for one of them to make a guess.
“Well, that narrows it down to half the immediate world,” Cilia quipped. And then she took a closer look at her friend. “You look like the cat that ate the proverbial canary. I suggest you tell us or we’ll be sitting here guessing all evening—and getting it wrong.”
“Besides, I have to ask you something—and I have news,” Theresa announced excitedly, “so get on with it, Maizie. You know I hate it when you just leave off the ending like that.”
Maizie shook her head, surrendering. “Oh, all right. You two do take the fun out of this, you know that, don’t you?” she said, feigning disappointment.
“The person’s name?” Cilia prodded her friend, waiting.
She thought she’d at least get them to play along once or twice. However, since they didn’t, Maizie told them, “Nikki.”
Theresa looked slightly confused. “Your daughter, Nikki?”
“I’ve only got one daughter,” Maizie pointed out, thinking it was needless to add her name in like that. “Yes. Nikki.”
“She came to you about matchmaking?” Cilia asked, astonished.
“Yes,” Maizie replied patiently.
It didn’t make any sense to Theresa. “Well, your granddaughters are too young, so Nikki didn’t come about them—” And then something else occurred to her. “How does she know that you’re into matchmaking?”
To the best of Theresa’s knowledge, none of their children knew anything about this side venture she and her two best friends were engaged in, despite the fact that they’d secretly arranged all four of their children’s marriages.
“Apparently, Jewel told her,” Maizie said, shifting her gaze toward Cilia.
Very little ruffled Cilia, but this clearly astonished her.
“My Jewel?” Cilia asked incredulously. This was the first she’d heard even a hint of this. Certainly Jewel had never said anything to her.
Maizie nodded. “Your Jewel,” she confirmed. “But the really astonishing thing about this is that Nikki wants me to ‘work my magic,’ as she put it, to arrange a match for her friend Mikki. The two of them were roommates all through college and then they graduated medical school together—”
“Wait, so this Mikki you’re talking about, she’s a doctor?” Theresa asked, wanting to be absolutely sure she was getting the story straight before she allowed her imagination to run off with her.
“That’s what usually happens when you graduate medical school,” Maizie replied, her voice somewhat strained.
A doctor.
That was all Theresa needed to hear. She clapped her hands together in a sudden, uncharacteristically overwhelming burst of joy.
“Perfect!”
Maizie glared at her friend oddly, wondering what had come over her. “I think so, too. But why did you just say that?”