Matchmakers Box Set: Matchmakers, Encore, Finding Hope (46 page)

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.

Dear God, what was it about the 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. Damn! 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.

He’d have to accept Donald’s offer, and of course, the fees that went along with that, and get to know Hope Kendal a little better before he could decide which path he should take in helping her.

“It shouldn’t be a problem to get to know her better.”

“Thank you for all that you’re doing.” Donald took a deep breath. “Mr. Jacobs, if I may ask, what is the first name of my daughter?”

Trevor contemplated what he was asking and realized that Donald hadn’t asked for too much information. He too was keeping to the contract of what he’d asked Trevor to do. “Her name is Hope.”

“Hope.” Donald sighed. “Thank you.”

The line went dead.

Trevor watched as the lights began to turn off in the apartment in the reverse order from how she’d turned them on. He also realized he’d stayed parked outside her apartment longer than he’d meant to. Donald Buchanan had asked him to find out about her family, he reminded himself. He ensured himself that was what he was doing. He’d follow her and see where she went. Maybe she’d lead him to her family.

He was just doing his job.

Then he saw her on her front stoop. She wore a short white dress. Her hair fell down her back in lazy curls. She locked the door to her apartment and hurried toward her car.

The thudding of his heart was a surprise. The sweating of his palms and the drying of his mouth combined into a clash of discomfort. He watched her now without the interest of a private investigator, but that of a protector. But whom was he protecting her from? He’d just moved into a very strange role of stalker, though the feelings inside of him were much different.

He needed to meet her again, and this time, get to know her—and stop following her like a voyeur. He drove away in the opposite direction, disgusted with himself for having sat on her street. He needed to justify himself again with a long hot shower and an ice-cold beer before he decided how he was going to approach Hope Kendal.

Hope climbed into her car as quickly as she could and locked the door. The tingling in her hand had returned when she’d locked the door to her apartment. She looked around. She could feel him.

She blew out a ragged breath as she started the car and turned onto the street. He was just in her mind, that was all. By tomorrow, she would have forgotten all about him.

She pulled up in front of the house where her great-grandmother and mother had grown up. Now her sister and her family lived in the house that almost a century earlier had been a boardinghouse.

Hope’s nieces ran through the yard as she climbed out of her car.

“Auntie Hope!” Becky jumped into her arms. “You’re going to let me help you open the book Mommy bought you, aren’t you?”

“Becky!” Julie’s eyes were wide as she stared in disbelief at her little sister. At eight she’d learned the fine art of keeping a secret. “Mom is going to kill you for telling her.”

“I’m sure your mother won’t kill her. But I won’t tell her I know.” Hope set Becky on the ground.

“Tell me you know what?”

Hope looked up to see her sister standing in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest.

“That Becky told Auntie Hope what her present was,” Julie told her mother, her voice filled with disgust.

Hope watched as a smile slid across her sister’s lips and a laugh then escaped her throat.

Julie stomped her feet up the front steps to the house.

“Why are you laughing? Isn’t she in trouble?”

Hope cocked an eyebrow at her sister. “I’m not getting a book, am I?”

Carissa stepped back so Hope and Becky could enter the house. “I knew someone would spill the beans. I guess you’ll all be surprised, won’t you?”

“Mom, that’s not fair!” Becky protested.

“Well, I guess I knew you couldn’t keep a secret,” Carissa said as she patted her daughter on the bottom and sent her off laughing. “Mom, Dad, and Thomas are in the kitchen.” She laced her arm with Hope’s.

“You’ll be glad to know I was working too hard to remember to buy treats.”

“Glad to hear it. But you were working on your birthday?”

“Painting.”

“Ah, you got inspired today?”

Hope stopped.

“I met a man today,” she said and noticed that Carissa’s eyes widened. “Right after you left, he walked by searching for his aunt’s grave.”

“Was he cute?”

Hope laughed. “Oh my God! He was amazing.”

“You were painting him?”

“His face won’t leave my mind. He shook my hand and there was such a shock that passed through us, I can still feel it.” She clasped her hands together.

“And if I know you, you think that was a sign?” Carissa was studying her and Hope smiled at her sister.

“It was nice, that’s all.” She took her sister’s arm again and they headed to the kitchen.