Matchmakers Box Set: Matchmakers, Encore, Finding Hope (21 page)

Taking the key from around her neck, she unlocked the door she’d unlocked so many times before and then walked inside. There she stood in the empty house. Her house. The house that was, and would be again, her home. Warmth washed over her like a blanket.

She moved through slowly, taking in each room as though she’d never seen it. She already had ideas of things to do in each room—new curtains in one, a coat of paint in another. Her mind was filling, and she was smiling again. She wished she had a paper and a pen to jot down her thoughts.

She spent the entire day in the empty house, reacquainting herself with everything she’d fallen in love with in the first place.

“You look like you’re right at home.” David’s voice startled her, and she turned with a jerk to see him standing in the living room.

He wore the same clothes he’d had on at the party. His tie was missing, his shirt was untucked, and his hair bore tracks where his fingers had run through it over and over. He carried a white box and a picture frame.

“I forgot to give these to you earlier. I thought it would look good up here.” He opened the box and set a little glass cello on the mantel. “The cello is from a gift shop in Hawaii. The card is in the box. When the man found out I knew you, he wanted you to have it.”

He set the picture frame next to the glass cello and stepped back.

“I hope you don’t mind I brought this back with me from Seattle.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She pursed her lips as she batted away the tears.

Sophia studied the items and then turned to him. “How did you get in here?” Her words were angry, and her heart ached.

He held up the key.

“Oh, no. No, they did not.”

“Yes, they did.
This
is our wedding present.” But that wasn’t what Katie had told her.

“Well then, I guess we should discuss it.” She walked a step closer to him with her arms crossed over her chest. “Oh, wait. You already have a new house.”

“Not one your daughter wants to live in.”

Sophia clenched her jaw. “My daughter?”

“You asked Carissa to be your daughter. Remember? Right before you were going to ask me to be your husband.”

“Well, I don’t see that happening anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Oh, David, you…” She turned from him, but he caught her arm and pulled her to him tight. “Let go.”

“No. Not till you tell me your answer.”

“My answer?”

“Yes. Will you marry me?” His touch was soft and gentle when he lifted his hand to her cheek and back into her hair.

“Do you really expect me to marry you now?” She trembled on the verge of a complete breakdown.

“Yes.”

“David, let me go.”

“You said you loved me. You said you trusted me, and that you’d stand behind any decisions I made.”

“That was before you left in the back of an ambulance with a pregnant woman that you’d sworn was out of your life. Oh, and after you told them that it was your baby and her last name is Kendal. What did I miss, David? I wasn’t in Rome that long.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Go to hell.” She pushed up her arms, broke free of him, and bolted for the stairs.

“Do you want to hear my story,” he called, “or are you going to run again?”

His words stopped her, but she didn’t face him. She couldn’t face him.

He walked toward her.

“There’s more to lose than just me now, Sophie. I have baggage, and I’m proud of it.” When she didn’t turn to face him, he came around her, his eyes blazing. “Carissa needs you. You offered her what she has always wanted. Are you going to walk out on her?”

She wondered if he’d rehearsed his words to cut her as they did.

“She has a mother.” Sophia spit out the words.

“No, Sophie.” His voice dropped. “We lost her.”

His face was somber, but tired. Dark circles around his eyes made it evident that he hadn’t slept.

“David, I’m sorry.”

“It was what she wanted.” He held out his hand to offer her a seat on the stairs, and she sat. She had promised Mary Alice she would listen to him. He took her hand and twisted the ring on her finger between his fingers. “You didn’t take this off.”

“I was waiting to see you. I wanted to throw it in your face.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” He raised her fingers to his lips and gently held them there. “May I explain?”

Numbly, she nodded.

His words washed over her.
Changed her name…affair…weak heart…knew she was going to die
.

She covered her mouth with her free hand. She would have thought she’d run out of tears by now, but they continued to fall. David brushed them away.

“They kept her alive long enough for the baby to be born, and then she was gone. Her heart gave out, just as she told me it would. She never even got to see Hope.” He choked on his own words.

“Hope?”

“Carissa named her. She thought it was what the baby deserved. Hope.”

“That’s…beautiful,” she choked through her tears.

He cupped her face with his hands and looked into her eyes. “As of yesterday at five twenty-three, I am the father of a beautiful five-pound, three-ounce baby girl.”

Sophia stood and turned from him. Her heart ached, and her stomach churned.

“I wanted to tell you, Sophie.” His voice was ragged. “After Carissa and I discussed it, I wanted to tell you, but you were gone.” David stood and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I did this for Carissa. She asked me to. She couldn’t bear to have her sister shipped off to someone she didn’t know.” He took her tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Sophie, I did this for you too. For us.”

“What? How is this for us?”

“I wanted Hope to be yours. A baby of your own.”

Her heart hammered in her chest. He couldn’t actually have thought she’d just accept something like that.

“You knew about the baby before I left, didn’t you?” she asked, remembering him talking about babies landing on doorsteps.

He swallowed hard. “Yes.”

The room seemed to dissolve and swirl around her as the truth of what he’d done sank in.

Well, wasn’t that what she’d prayed for? Didn’t she want to marry David and have a baby dropped on the doorstep? And hadn’t she even wanted that doorstep to be the one on Cherry Street?

David hunched his shoulders. “I’d understand if you wanted to leave me and never speak to me again. I had to do what I did in a short amount of time. But either way, I have a baby to take care of now, and to tell you the truth, I’m scared to death.” He released a slow breath. “I’m prepared to let you go if I have to, but, Sophie, I don’t want to.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a picture. He handed it to her.

She gazed at the newborn and wiped frantically at her tears, which flowed freely.

“I’ll let you be alone for a little while. I’ve just given you a lot to think about. We’ll stay at the new house. Call me.”

David turned to leave the house. He kept walking until she called out his name.

“Is she healthy?”

“Yes. She’s in intensive care right now. She’s pretty little. She’ll be there for a few weeks because she was early, and they need her to be a little bigger. They also need to make sure everything is okay before they send her home. Mandy’s body gave out before she was born, and that caused some trauma. But she’s fine.” His eyes beamed with love when he spoke of her. “Mandy really was clean and sober for the last few years, and that Hope is doing so well proves it.”

She didn’t want to know anything about the woman who’d come between her and David and destroyed their relationship once—maybe twice. But the compassion in his eyes made her ask.

“What changed her?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in her life she had a change of heart about things. She knew she couldn’t do right by her new baby, but she knew her baby deserved to have a good home.” He stepped closer. “She said you’d be a good mother.”

Sophia stared down at the picture of the baby. Every emotion she’d ever known twisted inside of her. She was angry with David, mourning for a woman she’d grown to hate, and elated that he wanted to share the gift of a child with her. How could everything she’d ever wanted come with such a price?

“David, this is a lot to think about.”

“I know it is.” He moved even closer, but he didn’t touch her. “Listen, take your time. If you’ve accepted the house from your grandmother, that means you’re staying.” He looked at her for validation, and when she nodded, he looked relieved. “I’ve done what I’ve done, and there’s no going back. And I don’t want to. Carissa is in love with Hope, and so am I.”

He gathered her hands in his. “I want to share this with you, Sophie. I want this to be
our
gift.” He kissed her fingers and released her. “If I can only have your friendship, I’d settle for that. Right now, I sure could use a friend.”

Sophia nodded, but remained silent for a few moments and tried to process it all. She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath of courage. She was a warrior. She was a survivor.

She opened her eyes to see David’s weary ones looking back at her. He was offering her everything she’d ever wanted. How could she not take it and move on? After all, her trip home was supposed to be about her moving on to the next part in her life. Two weeks ago, though, she never would have imagined it would have included a house, a husband, and two daughters.

She took a deep breath.

“Can I meet her? Can I meet Hope?”

His eyes opened wider, and his lips curled into a soft smile.

“Of course. Carissa is with her now. She can’t get enough of her.” He angled his head. “Are you sure?”

Her stomach flipped, and she nodded. “I think I should see my daughter. My daughters.”

“Do you mean that?”

Sophia nodded. “I wouldn’t want sisters separated any more than I want to be separated from you.”

“One more time, Sophie. Will you marry me?”

“Yes, I will marry you.”

“And we’ll raise a family, right here in
our
house?”

She nodded, rose on her toes, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Just like we’d always planned to do.” She pressed a gentle kiss to his lips and let it linger. He pulled her tighter and she deepened the kiss, letting the mistakes of the past dissolve around them and the joy of new things to come envelop them.

“You do know those crazy, old women conned Carissa into helping them,” he said, resting his forehead against hers.

“Matchmaking again?” She kissed him again. “Well, we don’t want to let them down.”

BOOK TWO

ENCORE

CHAPTER ONE

Her young student pulled the bow across the strings of the violin, and the sound was pure evil. Carissa Kendal winced, then quickly smiled. She’d get it in time. Eventually, they all got it if they stuck around.

The dropout rate of students was the one dark cloud over her next venture, the Kendal School of Music. It had been her dream to teach music in her own school, and she was about to dive into it. She’d hoped her mother would want to be by her side more, but Sophia still had Hope to raise. Carissa had accepted that, but to have her mother call up an old friend to help her wasn’t settling.

Did Sophia not think she’d look him up? That she wouldn’t find out who he was?

At the moment, he was nobody. Every musical endeavor he’d pursued in the eight years since the renowned tenor Pablo DiAngelo’s ensemble broke up had failed spectacularly.

Why was Sophia soft on him? Her mother’s name carried far more influence than that of the failed pianist, and it would have given Carissa’s music school all the prestige it needed.

The student pulled another evil note and snapped Carissa from her thoughts.

“I’m never going to get this,” the young girl complained with her nose wrinkled.

“You will. If you want to, you’ll get it.” She smiled encouragingly, remembering when she’d been that young girl. “You need to remember to practice the material I give you.” Carissa raised her eyebrows with the subtle demand.

“Okay. I promise I’ll be better next time.”

And if you practice, that will always be the case.”

As her student gathered her instrument, Carissa marked off her lesson sheet and handed it to her.

They left the study of the old boardinghouse, where Carissa lived with her grandmother, and stood by the door as her student’s mother walked toward them. Carissa gave the girl a squeeze on her shoulder.

“She’s doing wonderfully. A little extra practice each day will help,” she said. “Don’t forget your peppermint on your way out the door.”

The young girl fished in the bowl for the right piece of candy as Carissa opened the front door. The violinist’s mother handed Carissa a check for the lesson.

“Thank you, Carissa. She enjoys her lessons very much.”

“I’m pleased to hear that. We’ll see you both next week.”

As the woman and her daughter descended the front steps, a man paid a cab on the street in front of the old house. He stood with his suitcase in his hand and looked her way.

He was tall and too thin for her taste, but he looked almost regal in the way he carried himself. He removed his sunglasses and stroked the wisps of dirty blond hair from his eyes. She almost didn’t recognize the man from the pictures she’d seen on the Internet.

He looked like a blond Jimmy Stewart, and her stomach did a little flip.

“Hello,” he called as he neared the house. She smiled despite her misgivings. He even walked like Jimmy Stewart.

Like most of Pablo’s ensemble, he’d always walked behind the man with the million-dollar smile, never next to or in front of him, not like her mother who had been paraded on Pablo’s arm. It was no wonder she hadn’t recognized him.

She extended her hand to him, and as his fingers enclosed hers, she gulped in air. He was strikingly handsome. She hadn’t expected that.

To have played for Pablo, as Sophia had, Thomas had to be tremendously talented. Yet would the curse that hung over his career affect her music school?