A Perfectly Imperfect Match (Matchmaking Mamas) (16 page)

Humor danced along the curve of her mouth as she thought she knew what was coming. “No, what?”

“Another test run,” he told her, as solemnly as a preacher speaking at a Sunday sermon.

“A test run,” she echoed, laughter threatening to burst free. “Is that what you call it?”

“Actually,” he said, slowly closing the distance between them, “if you must know, I call it very, very exciting.”

There went her pulse again, she thought, trying to outrace the speed of sound. “Well, if you put it that way, I guess you can have another crack at it.”

Jared framed her face with his hands, his eyes already caressing her. “Don’t mind if I do,” he whispered, his voice low and husky, as he brought his mouth down to hers.

This time, it felt as if heaven and earth exploded at the very same time, creating a brave new world just large enough to accommodate the two of them.

And this time, the kiss lasted a little longer, lit a fire that burned a little brighter as well as a good deal hotter.

And just when it seemed as if they were the only two people left in the world, the sound of a ringing phone once again harshly intruded into paradise, shattering their perfect moment.

Elizabeth pulled back first, startled this time. Jared leaned his forehead against hers. He sighed and she almost laughed at the definite feeling of déjà vu.

Her sigh echoed his. That kiss had taken her to the brink of forever, and now it was gone.

So near and yet, so far.

“I’m beginning to think that the forces of nature are against us,” she confessed.

His sentiments exactly, now that she had put them into words. “Yeah. Me too,” Jared agreed.

Chapter Twelve

T
his time, however, the phone that was ringing so very intrusively belonged to Elizabeth. There was no mistaking the sound. The call was coming in on her landline.

By the time Elizabeth crossed the room and managed to reach her telephone, the answering machine had picked up. She was about to shrug and let the caller leave a message if they were so inclined.

However, when she heard the deep baritone voice and the measured cadence asking, “Are you there, Elizabeth?” she made a grab for the receiver, aborting any further message from being recorded.

She’d know that voice anywhere.

“Dad?”

“Elizabeth, then you
are
home.” The relief in his voice was audible.

“Yes, I— Oh God, are you at the restaurant?” she asked, suddenly remembering that today was Thursday and unless she was working, she and her father had a standing date for dinner on Thursdays at her favorite restaurant, The Manor on the Hill.

“As a matter of fact, I am. The waiters are beginning to drift by my table, looking at me with pitying glances,” her father told her, only partially kidding.

“Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry. Something came up at the last minute,” she told him evasively, avoiding looking in Jared’s direction. “And I didn’t realize what time it was....”

“Or what day, apparently,” her father surmised. “So, this ‘something,’ does he have a name?” he asked her good-naturedly.

The question caught her completely off guard. “How did you know? I mean—”

Stumped, Elizabeth had no idea where to go from here. She wasn’t the kind who played word games with people, especially not with her father. She never had been. She had always been completely honest with the people in her life. It was one of the reasons that her father not only trusted her implicitly but also treated her as if she were an adult long before she had chronologically reached that plateau.

Trapped, Elizabeth sighed. She had no choice but to come clean. If nothing else, lies required far too complicated measures to keep them up.

“How
did
you know?” she asked.

“Elementary, my dear Elizabeth.” He chuckled knowingly. “If it was a job that was keeping you away from our standing Thursday night date, you would have already called me earlier in the week, all excited about it.”

He had been extremely supportive of her chosen vocation, despite the fact that he felt that being a musician all but guaranteed lifelong poverty for all but the fortunate few. He was supportive because he knew that playing the violin made her incredibly happy and, above all, he wanted her to be happy. Luckily, he knew he was in a position to help her out financially if it ever came to that. So far, it hadn’t. She was managing rather well and he was very proud of her. Just as he knew that Annie would have been, were she still alive.

Her curiosity aroused, she deliberately turned her back to Jared and lowered her voice before asking her father, “And I wouldn’t have been excited if I’d met someone?”

“You, my darling daughter, are very, very cautious when it comes to letting people in.” In that, he had to admit, she took after him. It had taken him six months to admit to himself that he was head over heels in love with Annie. And after she’d died, he’d shut himself off from that avenue completely.

“Really?” she countered defensively. “Someone told me just the other week that I was the friendliest person they knew.”

“And I’m sure he or she thought they were right. Because they were dealing with your public persona. But the Elizabeth who exists within is exceptionally careful when it comes to her personal life. And that is probably my fault,” he admitted with a heavy heart.

He’d kept her much too close much too long, enjoying her company. His daughter had been far more mature than her age warranted and there were times when he actually forgot that she was still a child. He always talked to her as if she was already an adult and she’d responded to that, but maybe he shouldn’t have gone that route with her. Maybe he should have forced her to interact more with people her own age. Maybe she would have been more open that way, more receptive to forging a relationship.

“Your fault?” she repeated, then teased, “Not possible, Dad. You don’t have a fault in your entire body.”

He smiled to himself, signaling for a waiter to come over and give him a check for the chardonnay he’d been sipping as he’d waited for Elizabeth to arrive.

“You’re right, I forgot,” he acknowledged with a soft, appreciative laugh. “So, next Thursday—provided you’re free, of course.”

“Next Thursday,” she agreed, deliberately not commenting on whether or not she was going to be free. She knew her father assigned a far deeper meaning to that word than she did. “And to make this up to you, it’ll be my treat.”

“I won’t argue with that, but you have nothing to make up for,” he informed her. “It’s not as if we were on the trapeze, with you being my catcher and suddenly disappearing on me. Remember, Elizabeth, this is the time to really enjoy yourself,” he reminded her. “When you’re young.”

She knew it would do her no good to argue the point, or to insist that his assumption in this case was baseless. He wasn’t about to be convinced. Her protests would just have the reverse effect.

And besides, she didn’t want to keep Jared waiting much longer.

“I love you, Dad,” she said, ending the call the way she usually did.

“And I you,” her father replied.

Hanging up, John gave it to the count of five to make certain the connection was terminated and then he hit a series of numbers, making another call. There were things he wanted to ask Maizie Sommers—not to mention give her his colossal thanks.

* * *

“That was my dad,” Elizabeth told Jared, putting the receiver back into its cradle.

“I had my suspicions,” Jared deadpanned. And then, his mouth quirking into a smile, he added, “Hearing you say ‘Dad’ when you picked up the phone kind of gave it away.” He paused for a second, debating asking the next question, then decided that honesty was the best policy. “You stood him up?”

“Not intentionally,” she protested, then decided to face up to her failing. “But yes, I guess I did.”

“How long have you been doing it?” he wanted to know. Then, in case she misunderstood, Jared clarified his question by adding, “Having dinner with your dad on Thursdays?”

Her smile was wrapped in fond memories. “Ever since college. I didn’t go away even though I was supposed to—I was accepted by a college back East—and to keep abreast of my life, he started this little tradition where he would take me out to dinner, and we’d talk about what was going on in each of our lives,” she volunteered. “I have to admit that I looked forward to it just as much as he did,” she told him. “Maybe even more. It gave me a sense of being connected.”

And that, Jared gathered, was very important to her. He could relate to that. “Is he angry?” he asked.

She shook her head. “My dad doesn’t get angry— No, I take that back,” she amended. “I did see my father get angry just once. When my mother died, he got angry at God.”

Jared released a low, appreciative whistle. “Boy, your father doesn’t fool around, does he? Goes right for the big target, no small-time stuff for him,” he said wryly.

“Other than that one time, my dad has always been the gentlest, kindest man I know. I never had a time when I felt he was cramping my style, or being critical of any of my choices. He’s always been there for me, always been nothing but supportive—of my brothers as well as me,” she added in case she’d made it sound as if her father played favorites.

He nodded. “I know what you mean. I kind of feel the same way about my father. About both my parents,” he amended. “While a lot of my friends in school had parents who split up, mine seemed to have something very special going on. Something rare,” he underscored. “So rare that the average relationship just wouldn’t measure up. I always felt that if I couldn’t have that, I didn’t want anything.”

It was, he reminded himself, one of the reasons he’d never even thought about settling down himself. Because he had this shining example of happiness before him and knew that he didn’t want to settle for anything less.

At the same time, he knew how much less there could be out there. He’d heard his friends’ horror stories, been there for some while their parents were in the throes of divorces that seemed as if they were forged in hell. That was something he knew he would have wanted to avoid at all cost.

He felt that if he couldn’t have a relationship that was as perfect as the union that his parents had, then he didn’t want anything at all.

Besides, this was the twenty-first century. Not getting married, not having a family, those choices were acceptable now. No one looked at you as if there were something wrong with you. Remaining single for the rest of your life was just as normal as being married. It was all about choices.

Or, conversely, it was about
not
making choices. About abstaining from making any life-altering decisions—ever.

But now he was beginning to think that maybe what his parents had wasn’t so incredibly unique and unattainable after all. Maybe it just took having someone unique come into his life. Making him think...

Making him wonder what if...?

“I think my father felt that way about my mother,” Elizabeth was saying. “That she was one in a million. After she died, he had a very hard time coming to grips with everything, but then he finally rallied. Because of us—his kids,” she explained.

She could remember it as if it were all just yesterday, instead of more than two decades ago. “My maternal grandmother offered to take us in, saying that men had a hard time raising children on their own and that since my dad was a doctor, he wouldn’t be around much anyway. She’d spare him the guilt that neglect generated by taking us with her back to Georgia and raising us.” A fond smile curved her lips as she relived that period.

“That was when he came out of the tailspin he was in. I was only five, but I remember the look on his face when he realized my grandmother was telling him he could just walk away from us. He had this very strange look in his eyes and right then and there, he boxed up all the pain that was tearing him apart and pushed it into some faraway compartment in his mind. And just like that—” she snapped her fingers “—he was himself again. He was my dad.

“He told my grandmother in a very quiet voice that he was our father and that we belonged with him. He said nothing in the world was going to change that. My grandmother flew back to Georgia the very next morning. Alone.”

As she paused, her revelation taking a momentary toll on her, Elizabeth realized that somehow she’d wound up monopolizing the conversation.

“How did we wind up talking about that?” she asked, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

“We were trading notes on parents,” he reminded her, then steered the conversation into neutral waters. “I guess it’s safe to say that we’re both pretty lucky. Some of my friends had parents they had to make an appointment with just to see them when they were growing up.” He saw Elizabeth looking at him skeptically and he relented somewhat. “Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating,” he admitted. “But not by much.”

He was even luckier to have both parents still alive, she couldn’t help thinking. “I can see why giving them this surprise celebration is so important to you,” she told him.

The anniversary celebration made him remember the length he had to go to in order to ensure that his parents would be there to receive their well-earned congratulations from family and friends.

“I’m just hoping my mother likes it enough to forgive me for lying to her.”

He really looked concerned, she realized. That put him, quite possibly, in a class by himself. Not many men worried about the effects of a lie they’d told.

She decided to change his stand on that. “That wasn’t a lie.”

“Oh? Then what would you have called it?”

That was easy enough to answer. “A desperate measure undertaken for your mom’s own good. You didn’t want to have to resort to spoiling the surprise for her,” she said, “so you really had no choice in the matter. You had to tell her
something
to keep her and your father in town for the party, and promising to introduce her to someone she believes is important in your life did the trick.”

His parents taking off instead of turning up at their own surprise party had greater repercussions than just that. “Not to mention that Megan would read me the riot act if she found out I told them about the party to keep them in town. She’d probably go into premature labor right there just to get back at me.”