The Marriage Maker

Celeste shivered as that dream-born emotion she was trying to bury struggled to surface. She hurried away from it by hurrying out of the room, past two more rattan couches and over stuffed club chairs, through the massive dining room with its long mission-style table and heavily beamed ceiling.

Letting herself think only of coffee, she swore she could almost smell it as she pushed the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

Celeste blinked in the dazzling overhead light. The room was bright, there was coffee already brewed, and she wasn’t going to keep her insomnia a secret because it seemed another Monroe woman shared it.

“Mama!” Celeste’s twenty-seven-year-old daughter Cleo looked up from the mug she’d been frowning at.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” Celeste crossed the hardwood floor in the direction of the scarred oval table where Cleo was sitting. “You’re looking at that coffee as if it’s your worst enemy.”

Cleo’s full lips raised in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “It is my coffee, after all, Mama, not Jasmine’s.”

Well, her younger daughter was undoubtedly a master in the kitchen, but Celeste knew Cleo was just avoiding the real question. “C’mon, sweetie, this is your mother you’re talking to. You don’t usually have trouble sleeping.”

Cleo’s eyebrows came together in concern. “No, it’s you that usually can’t get any rest. Another nightmare?”

Celeste gestured with her hand as if to brush the subject away. She didn’t want to discuss it. “I’m asking what’s keeping you awake.”

There was a long pause, then Cleo looked balefully back down at her coffee mug. “Bean sprouts. I’m worried about the day care center.”

Celeste let the admission go for a moment and moved to the counter to pour herself some of Cleo’s less-than-stellar coffee. She was proud of her daughter’s success as the director of the day care center and knew that Cleo also took a lot of pride in what she did. The man she leased the building from had told Cleo last week he was going to sell the property as soon as possible. With her lease agreement up for renewal, Cleo had a legitimate worry that her business might not survive.

“You haven’t found another possible site, honey?” Celeste added a dash of milk to her mug then held the hot ceramic against the knuckles of her left hand. Their deep arthritic ache was as unpleasantly familiar as the dream that brought it about.

“Nothing,” Cleo said, shrugging. “And Gene came by again yesterday. He’s putting up a For Sale sign next week.”

Celeste came forward to lay a hand on top of her daughter’s head. “Maybe he won’t find anyone interested in buying.”

“Mmm.”

Celeste’s eyes narrowed. If she had to guess, she would say that Cleo wasn’t thinking about Beansprouts or For Sale signs or anything to do with business. There was a sad, faraway but dreamy look in her daughter’s beautiful violet eyes. “This is about something else. Something besides Bean sprouts.”

Cleo didn’t look up.

Celeste’s heart squeezed, and she used her aching left hand to tilt up her daughter’s chin. “Oh, Cleo,” she said. “This isn’t about him, is it? He’s been gone three months, sweetie. You wouldn’t still be mooning over a man like Ethan Redford?”

A new voice broke in. “Of course Cleo’s not mooning over Ethan, Mama. Cleo is much too sensible, much too practical to be letting a big shot, here-today-gone-tomorrow man like Ethan Redford even give her heart a tickle.”

Celeste chuckled as her younger daughter Jasmine glided into the room. At twenty-three, with her short-cropped black hair and a slender face, she looked too fresh and wide-awake for five-thirty in the morning. “You’re up early.”

“Mmm.” She took one sniff at the coffee carafe, grimaced in mock disgust, then dumped its contents into the sink. “Cleo would be in a better mood if she could learn to make better coffee.”

Since Jasmine’s coffee was universally acclaimed as fabulous—as well as anything else she created in the kitchen—neither Cleo nor Celeste bothered disagreeing with her. As a matter of fact, Cleo only said, “Sit down, Mama,” and then took both their mugs to the sink. She poured out the contents, then set the cups on the counter to wait for her sister’s heaven-blessed brew.

She gave Jasmine a significant look. “Mama had another nightmare.”

Both young women turned toward her. Celeste froze under her daughters’ worried gazes. “No—” But she stopped, because they were pointedly looking at her hands, and she realized she’d been massaging the painful left one with her right. She sighed.

“Please, girls, let’s talk about something else,” she pleaded. Talking about her nightmare might allow that disturbing, unnameable emotion she was keeping under strict control to rise again. “Please.”

Jasmine surrendered first, sliding her gaze toward her more voluptuous sister. “Okay, Mama.” She grinned, that devilish grin of a younger sibling who knows just how to push the older one’s buttons—and revels in it. “Let’s talk about what’s bugging Cleo.”

“Watch it,” Cleo threatened. “I can still hide your Barbie dolls, brat.” She propped her hands on her hips.

Jasmine’s grin widened. “I’ve hidden them from you. At your insistence, I recycle, Cleo. I compost our kitchen scraps. I’d never wear fur. But you’re not going to make me give up my precious fashion dolls. Uh-uh.”

Before Cleo could retort, the kitchen’s back door opened and Frannie, Celeste’s niece, stepped over the thresh old. In a brown, knee-length business suit that matched the brown of her hair and the brown of her eyes, she looked completely prepared for another day in her job as a loan officer at the White horn Savings and Loan.

At five-nine, Frannie towered over her cousins. In a familiar morning ritual, she automatically took the cup of coffee Cleo poured for her. “What are we talking about?” She lived at her parents’ house, located just behind the B and B.

Jasmine started bustling around the kitchen, getting ready for the break fast she’d serve the guests. “Fashion, I’d guess you’d say.”

Frannie touched the brown tortoiseshell clip that held her hair at the back of her neck. She sighed. “I guess that lets me out, then.”

Jasmine shook her head. “Only because you won’t let me make you over, Frannie. If you’d just give yourself a chance, you’d be stunning.”

Frannie flushed. “Let’s talk about something else.”

That mischievous smile twitched at Jasmine’s lips again. Uh-oh, Celeste thought. Prepare yourself, Cleo.

“We could go back to discussing Cleo’s love life,” Jasmine said, taking eggs out of the refrigerator.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Cleo’s face blushed just as pink as Frannie’s.

Jasmine acted as if she hadn’t heard her. “Mama wondered if maybe Cleo was still smitten with that Ethan Redford who was here three months ago.”

Frannie blinked owlishly. “Who?”

“You remember.” Jasmine took the juicer out of a lower cupboard. “He took Cleo out a couple of times, and I admit the looks he gave her could have melted that old wallpaper off the downstairs hallway, but then he just—poof!—left White horn. What do you think? Is Cleo in need of romantic repair?”

“Of course not.” Frannie blinked again and her voice was absolutely certain. “Cleo is much, much too practical to make any kind of romantic mistake.”

“Sensible, too. You missed sensible, Frannie,” Cleo added. Her face had regained its normal color and her voice was without animation.

Something in the nonemotion of Cleo’s voice niggled at Celeste and her mother radar went on the alert. “Cleo, sweetie—”

“Good morning!” The back door had opened again to admit Frannie’s parents, Celeste’s sister Yvette and her husband, Edward Hannon. The smell of a cool spring morning accompanied them as they headed for the countertop and Jasmine’s coffee.

The girls exchanged plea san tries with the new arrivals, and soon they were all savoring their morning ritual. Jasmine continued preparing break fast for the guests, but the rest of them took their places around the large kitchen table. Edward unfolded the newspaper and smiled at the faces circling him. “And a good morning it is. No better way for a man to start the day than with a glimpse of the harem that has kept him happy all these years.”

Celeste joined the others in the groan that in variably accompanied Edward’s usual comment. Someone wished that David, Frannie’s brother, was around to keep his father in check.

Thinking of her nephew, Celeste could only wish David was nearby, too. An FBI agent in Atlanta, Georgia, he hadn’t made it to Montana for a visit in too long. And she needed her loved ones around her. The nightmares were trying to tell her something about the past, and she felt certain she’d need all those she held dear when the day of reckoning came.

Yvette touched Celeste’s arm. “Are you all right?”

“She had another rough night,” Cleo said.

Celeste felt like a specimen in a bottle with five sets of serious eyes regarding her. That desperate, unnamed emotion swirled up inside her like a tornado, and she had to take a deep breath to find the strength to push it back down. “But I’m looking forward to an interesting day,” she said firmly. “Edward, tell us some good news.”