The Man for Maggie

Allison laughed. “She is, in a way.”

And yet you’d give almost anything to be her, Maggie thought. Interesting.

The timer buzzed. “All right, then. Let’s take this off.” She gently washed the mask off Allison’s face and patted her skin dry. “What do you think?”

Allison ran both hands along the sides of her face. “Amazing. I don’t know how you do this with just the stuff in your kitchen.”

“Chemical-based products dry your skin and then you need more chemicals to make it moist again. Natural ingredients are all about pampering yourself.”

“When you first told me about this idea of yours, I didn’t think it would work. Now I can’t wait for your spa to open. Will you let me be the first customer?”

Maggie walked her neighbor to the front door. “Sure. Any chance you might tell your friends about it, too?”

Allison smiled one of her rare smiles. “You know, I’m tempted to keep you all to myself.”

Maggie laughed. “Then you’d better plan to give me a lot of business!”

Allison gave her an unexpected hug. “I’m glad you moved into your aunt’s house, Maggie. Miss Meadowcroft was a nice neighbor, but I think I’m really going to like having you here.”

Maggie hugged her back. “What a sweet thing to say. Thank you.”

“I’d better get home. John will be wondering what’s happened to me and the kids are probably driving him crazy.”

“Tell him I said hello.” Maggie gently closed the door, then bolted up the stairs to find those yearbooks.

NICK CRACKED OPEN a beer and tossed a frozen dinner into the microwave. After punching a few numbers on the keypad, he leaned against the counter and took a swig from the bottle.

Images of Maggie Meadowcroft and the sound of her silky-smooth voice kept drifting through his mind. She was one intriguing woman. Damned attractive—for all the obvious reasons, of course—and he’d swear she didn’t have a pretentious bone in her body. In spite of the pearls.

He tried to picture his mother and sister at a place that served up skin-care products made of yogurt and mayonnaise.

Nope. Couldn’t do it.

Nothing but the best for the Durrance women, and everyone knew the best came with a hefty price tag and a designer label. Maggie, on the other hand, wanted to sink her inheritance into converting an old house into a day spa.

What had she called it? Inner Beauty?

Actually he kind of liked the sound of that. It suggested that she intended to work with what a person already had instead of trying to make them into something they weren’t. Admirable intentions but not much of a business plan. Especially not for this town, where people like his mother and sister were the rule rather than the exception.

The microwave pinged just as he finished his beer. He grabbed another from the fridge, fished around in the cutlery drawer for a fork and opened the microwave. Using a dish towel as a pot holder, he slid his dinner out and dumped it on the counter before the heat completely pierced the towel.

He shoved the newspaper and three days’ worth of mail to the side, pulled the cellophane cover off his dinner and inhaled. Man, he really needed to learn how to cook.

Maggie seemed pretty handy in the kitchen.

But thinking about Maggie was not good. Especially since it looked as though she was about to become a client.

He jabbed the remote, thinking the news or even a sitcom rerun would be preferable to thinking about one very sassy little makeover specialist. Five minutes and twenty channels later, he was still thinking about her. He’d also finished his dinner and was halfway through his second beer. Maybe he should take a look at the mail.

Phone bill.

Credit card application.

Something addressed to “Occupant.” He tossed that one straight into the trash.

An ivory vellum envelope. His mother’s trademark stationery, addressed in his sister’s handwriting. He stared at it, trying to figure out what Leslie might have sent him.

An invitation to someone’s birthday? No. His grandmother’s birthday was in the fall. So was Leslie’s. His mother had just had hers and if there’d been a celebration, he hadn’t been invited. He’d sent flowers, though, and a week later had received a stilted thank-you note—in an envelope exactly like this one.

So what could this be? He picked up the envelope, turned it over and studied the flap.

What the hell? Go for it.

It was an invitation to his sister’s wedding. He sure couldn’t have predicted that.

The inner envelope was addressed to “Nick and Escort.” Great. They expected him to subject someone to a Durrance family function. On the bright side, they didn’t want him to be in the wedding party. And if he worked at it, maybe he could come up with an excuse not to go at all.

He read the card. Leslie was to marry Gerald Bedford III. The third in a succession of stuffed shirts. Nick had only seen them together twice and that was all it had taken to know this was not a match made in heaven. It was, however, the blending of two prominent Collingwood Station families. The wedding would be some shindig and it was taking place three weeks from Saturday. For a moment he speculated on the need to hold a wedding on such short notice. Surely his sister wasn’t having a shotgun wedding.

Nah.

Leslie was too cautious and too smart to let anything like that happen.

He slid the invitation under a magnet on the fridge door and snagged another beer while he was there. That’s when he noticed the light flashing on the answering machine.

Three messages.

One from a subcontractor.

One from Leslie, sweetly asking if he’d received the invitation, saying how much she looked forward to having him there on her special day and apologizing for the short notice but it was the only time she and Gerald could clear their calendars and the only time the country club was available and blah, blah, blah.

Poor Leslie. She was too much like their mother for her own good, except she didn’t nag as much. Maybe if he’d been around more after their father died, she wouldn’t have been so influenced by the family matriarch.

The third message was from the matriarch herself, asking him to inform her, at his earliest convenience, as to the name of his date so she could finalize the seating plan and place cards.

Jeez, Mother. Would you like that in triplicate?

He punched the Delete button.

He stared a minute at the unopened beer in his hand and decided to put it back in the fridge. He’d promised Maggie he’d be there first thing in the morning and he wanted to have a clear head.

He unfolded the newspaper and flipped it open. What he needed was a distraction. A good story about an armed robbery. He turned the page. Murder and mayhem. Another page. The daily horoscope. He rolled his eyes but couldn’t resist scanning the list until he came to Capricorn.

Your life will take a surprising turn today. Whether it’s business or personal, roll with the punches and you’ll reap the rewards. And if you go the extra mile, there could even be a happily-ever-after in your future.

Roll with the punches? Reap the rewards? Who writes this stuff? Come to think of it, though, there had been a few surprises.

Maggie Meadowcroft.