Hope's Discovery (THE MATCHMAKER TRILOGY) (3 page)

“Okay. I get it. I won’t let you know.” Hope grinned up at her sister, who only shook her head.

“You’re as bad as Mom.”

“We’re entitled.”

“Wait till you have kids. You will curse her and her giving ways.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

They fell silent again.

“Are you going to stay?” Carissa asked.

“Yeah. I think I need a few more minutes.”

“I’ll see you tonight, then.” Hope nodded without looking up. “Happy birthday,” Carissa added.

Hope tilted her head up toward her sister and smiled.

“Thanks.”

Carissa walked back to her car, leaving her sister to gather her thoughts over the grave of Mandy Kendal.

He watched Carissa’s car drive away. Finally, he thought. He couldn’t take the heat inside the car any longer.

Trevor slipped his business card into his pocket, climbed from the car, and put on his sunglasses. He walked across the grounds, slowly, as though he were searching for a stone.

She looked up at him as he neared and gave him a smile. Not an affectionate one, but that of someone who knew if you were in a cemetery, someone there mattered to you.

He wiped a hand over his brow.

“Hot day.”

“Sure is.” Her voice rang in his ears, penetrating every part of him. He’d studied the face, memorized the eyes, but had never heard the angelic ring of her voice.

A smile slid over his lips. “Visiting? Is this your grandmother?” He nodded to the grave where she stood.

“My birth mother.”

Trevor nodded again. She was specific, he thought.

Hope scanned a look over him, and though her eyes were still shielded by the sunglasses, a knot twisted in his stomach because she was looking right at him. Those eyes he’d studied in the picture and dreamed of at night focused on him.

“Are you searching for someone?”

“Yeah. My aunt is here somewhere.” At least he wasn’t lying. It was his great-great-aunt. Her grave marker read the year 1877, but he didn’t need to give the details. “I always forget where she’s buried.”

Hope nodded. “Good luck finding her.”

She turned to walk back toward her car.

This was the point in his findings, in a case like this, where he would introduce himself and tell her why he’d been sent to find her. He wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t ready to hand her his card and say, “Your birth father is looking for you.” He wasn’t ready to put away the feeling he had when her eyes looked in his direction.

“I’m Trevor,” he called out to her and she stopped. “Trevor Jacobs.”

Hope turned back to him. “It’s nice to meet you.” She smiled warmly and continued back to her car.

“And you are?” He followed, then slowed, realizing he appeared too anxious.

“Are you following me?” She tilted down her sunglasses. The piercing blue eyes he knew so well looked right into him, and his heart slammed in his chest. He could barely breathe.

“I’m just new to the area. You know, trying to meet anyone I can.” He looked around. “Anywhere I can.” He laughed and she pushed up her glasses and studied him.

“Hope Kendal.” She extended her hand to him.

He took it and the shock that zapped between them had them both pulling their hands away.

“Wow,” he whispered as he looked down at his hand then back up to her.

“Shocking,” she joked. “Well, Mr. Jacobs, it was nice to meet you. I hope you find your aunt.”

He couldn’t move.

Hope walked to her car and he watched as she drove away. He looked back at his hand. It still tingled.

“It was a sign, Hope Kendal.” He turned back toward his car with a wide smile. “And I believe in signs.”

He swung open the car door and crawled in behind the wheel.

Hope watched him climb into his car from her rearview mirror. He headed out of the cemetery in the opposite direction. When she was sure he was out of sight, she stopped the car with a jolt and took a deep breath.

She rubbed her hand on her pant leg, trying to ease the tingling in it. She shook her head. She could hear her great-grandmother telling her she would meet a man someday that would take her breath away. They were walking through a meadow, she recalled.

Hope moved her head from side to side, trying to ease the tension in her neck. She was losing her mind. She’d never walked in the meadow with her great-grandmother. She’d only been ten when Katie died and she’d been too frail to walk anywhere.

But it was her voice that Hope heard in her vivid dreams. It was clear.

Hope adjusted behind the wheel, checked her mirrors, and put the car back into drive. She wasn’t going to worry about her sanity. She was fine. Everyone had dreams that meant a lot. She, however, had them often.

Katie Burkhalter had been in her dreams since she’d been a small girl. She understood that. That was remembering someone you loved. As she’d gotten older, Katie was only a memory. There were no more dreams.

When she turned twenty the dreams had returned.

She and Katie walked in meadows, painted pictures of flowers, and even played the piano together. That thought alone had her laugh. She’d taken piano lessons from the time she was eight. Her brother-in-law had had the patience of a saint as he tried to teach her, but she was no good. The daughter of a world-renowned cellist and the sister of one of the most sought-after music teachers in the area, Hope Kendal couldn’t keep rhythm or play to save her soul. She’d started on the piano and moved on to other instruments. It was no use. She was not a musician.

She was an artist.

Hope didn’t hear the world, she saw it in vivid color and texture. What her mother, sister, and brother-in-law could convey in music, she could convey on canvas.

Luck had been on her side. The small store next to her sister’s music school had become available when she’d turned twenty-one. Already established as a mural artist, she opened a small gift shop where she could also sell her paintings and work on them as well. Business wasn’t booming, but it kept her busy, happy, and close to her family.

Now, with her hand still tingling and her grandmother’s voice ringing in her ears, she felt the need to paint. She drove back to her studio.

She would keep the store closed for the rest of the day. After all, it was her birthday. She deserved a day off, but she would paint. She would paint him.

Music filtered through the walls as Hope set up her canvas and selected a pencil to sketch the face of the stranger she’d met. Thomas had a student just beyond the wall that separated Hope’s studio area from the music school. She recognized the muffled song. How many times had he tried to get her to play it? How many times had he not given up? How many times had she tried it? She was seventeen before they all decided her talents lay in another form. Painting was her avenue of expression.

Of course, her perseverance in playing the piano had stemmed from her being enamored with her brother-in-law. She’d been eight when he’d walked into her life. Now he was the father of her two nieces and two nephews and still the light of her life. She knew how blessed she was to have two very stable and wonderful men in her life.

She began to block in the shading and planes of the face etched in her mind. The broad forehead accentuated by the short dark hair, the well-groomed brows that shadowed the deep-set, dark eyes, and the mouth… That mouth that housed a perfect set of white teeth behind perfect lips, which she was sure were soft, yet strong.

Hope lifted the pencil and looked down at the shadows on the white canvas. He stared up at her. She lifted her fingers to the canvas and felt the same shock travel through her fingers as she’d felt when he’d touched her.

Oh My, what was it about this man? Trevor Jacobs, she reminded herself, with his smile and his deep voice that still rang in her ears.

He’d happened upon her in a cemetery of all places. You didn’t meet the man of your dreams in a cemetery.

She put down the pencil. The music from the school next door had stopped and she noticed that the light outside had dimmed. She’d been drawing the face of Trevor Jacobs for hours. She glanced down at her watch and decided she had just enough time to go home, shower, and change before she headed to her sister’s house for dinner.

A smile slid across her lips. It was her birthday. Her twenty-third birthday to be exact, and she still loved blowing out candles and ripping into presents. Now it was even more fun. Her sister’s children begged to help blow the candles, and little Becky, who had just turned six, was very fond of ripping paper off of gifts. It couldn’t get any better than that.

Trevor watched the lights in the small apartment turn on as Hope walked from the door to the back, where he knew her bedroom must be. He hadn’t actually gone through her apartment, but he’d studied her long enough. However, now that he’d spoken to her face-to-face he wasn’t comfortable watching her. Before it had been to ensure that Hope Kendal was in fact the daughter of Mandy Marlow and his client, but now he sat in his car out in the street just because he wanted to be near her.

He tossed his head against the back of his seat. He’d never stopped from identifying himself when the time was right. His job had been to find a missing person. He’d done that. He’d found her buried in a cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.

Once he’d found Mandy Marlow his job was to prove that she did indeed have a child that, by calculation, would be twenty-three years old. If in fact he found that there was a child, he was to contact his client and inform him of the findings. He’d done that. What a phone call that had been.

He’d told Donald Buchanan that he had found Mandy Marlow. The silence on the other end had been disturbing.

“How is she?” Donald had asked.

Trevor had frozen. The man hadn’t known she was dead.

“Sir, she died twenty three years ago,” he said cautiously and heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. There was more silence. “Sir, are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I guess I hoped that… well, it’s not important.”

“You were correct though. She did have a child that matches the age you gave me. In fact, she turned twenty-three today.”

The silence on the other end of the line was different. He didn’t hear deep breaths as he’d heard when he’d told him Mandy was dead. He was sure that if he could see Donald Buchanan, the man would be smiling.

“I knew it,” he said simply. “You said she?”

“Yes, sir. A daughter.” He was reluctant to give him her name. He still had half his fee to collect from the man, and he’d already finished what he’d been asked to do. Simply find Mandy Marlow and see if she had a child. He’d done that.

“Thank you.”

“Just doing my job,” he ensured him.

“I would like to meet with her, but my wife… she can’t know about her.”

“That will be up to you, sir. I can give her your contact information.”

“No. She wouldn’t know about me, would she?”

“Well she knew about Mandy, sir. She was at her grave today.”

“Yes, but if Mandy died when she was so young, then she’s been raised by another family, perhaps a family that has protected her from me all this time.”

Trevor was sure of that.

Donald sighed into the phone.

“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.”

“I’m not sure that’s…”

“Please, Mr. Jacobs.” He let out another sigh. “I’ve spent the past twenty-three years wishing I had found Mandy. I should never have let her disappear as I did. She was like that. She’d just disappear from your life. But I never forgot her.” He was silent for a moment. “Mr. Jacobs, imagine being my age and just now finding you had a child. Wouldn’t you want the best for that child?”

“Of course, sir.”

“And wouldn’t you want to ensure that child was comfortable in her life before you added any possible joy” he paused—“or misery to her life?”

Trevor closed his eyes and battled with himself. He could walk away. Investigating people’s private lives was something of a hobby, a chance to earn extra money, and just a little dangerous sometimes too. It was living out a childhood fantasy. Going back to New York and investigating insurance frauds and claims paid the bills. His apartment was nice enough and so was his office. Things were comfortable.

But what if a woman did to him what Mandy Marlow had done to Donald Buchanan? What if he’d fathered a child and wasn’t even given the knowledge that he was a father? What if his daughter had been given to her ex-lover to raise?

A sharp disgust began to brew in Trevor when he thought about the injustice that Mandy Marlow had done to Donald Buchanan. What if Hope wasn’t happy in her life and Mandy had thrust her into a family that took her, but didn’t love her?

Wouldn’t it be his job to find out and offer Hope an alternative? What if she didn’t like the Kendals at all? What if she’d always wished to be someone else? He could offer her something no one else could—the truth.