Wish Upon a Matchmaker

Granted she was as exhausted now as she had been back then, but then the exhaustion had come from trying to keep her footing on the treadmill she was running on—the treadmill that threatened, at any moment, to pull her under. Now she was exhausted from trying to do ten things at once. The difference being was that these were ten things she loved doing.

Back then she’d been a company drone, an anonymous, tiny cog in a huge machine, expected to perform and make no waves. These days she was her own person. And, in many ways, her own boss as well. She took suggestions, not orders. Which made a world of difference to her everyday existence.

And all because of a skill, a talent she’d never even thought twice about.

Danni cooked like a dream and baked like a celestial being.

It all started innocently enough. She began by cooking for friends, then for friends of friends. Friends of friends who insisted on paying her for her time and skill. Before Danni knew it, she had branched out to catering full-time. There was no room left to squeeze in her day job.

The happiest day of her life was the day Danni handed in her resignation to Roosevelt Life Insurance’s actuarial department. Her second-happiest day was the day she paid off the last of her late father’s medical bills. Her last student loan payment followed a year later.

She was finally solvent and didn’t owe anyone anything!

By then Danni realized that she was doing far more baking than cooking. A few heady connections later and she found herself being courted to star in a brand-new cooking show.

Initially, Danni had some serious doubts about going in that direction and she hesitated about making the commitment, which also meant relocating cross-country. After all, weren’t there more than enough cooking shows already all over the airwaves? Their life expectancy was projected to be somewhere a little longer than that of a common fruit fly—but not by all that much.

By then Danni had become too successful catering parties for an established clientele to want to set herself up for failure again.

She had no gimmick, she protested to the agent who had approached her with the idea of cooking before a live audience. She had nothing to set her apart from all the other chefs on TV.

“I think you’re selling yourself short, Danielle,” the agent, a thin, diminutive man named Baxter Warren told her with more than a little conviction. “A lot of people—the right people,” he emphasized dramatically, “think you make desserts to die for.”

As the words came out of his mouth, the agent paused for a moment, looking as if he had just had a world-altering epiphany. And then his thin lips split into a wide smile.

“That’s what we’ll call the show. Danielle’s Desserts to Die For.”

“Most people call me Danni,” she’d told him.

“Danni’s Desserts to Die For,” he amended, then nodded his head. “Even better.” Baxter gave her a penetrating, almost mesmerizing look. It was easy to see that he was exceedingly pleased with himself. “You can’t say no.”

She didn’t.

Danni had packed up her pots—Baxter told her she could buy a complete designer set of new ones once she landed in Southern California, but she’d insisted on bringing the ones that she’d been using. The ones her father had given her before she’d even hit her teens. They had belonged to her grandmother and to Danni the pots were the very embodiment of family history. They represented who and what she was.

She’d also brought along a box full of recipes. Recipes that she habitually—and unconsciously—augmented each time she prepared them.

With her prized possessions safely packed away, Danni had flown from Atlanta to begin a new life in the land of endless summers and endless beaches: Southern California. The cable station where her half-hour program was scheduled to be filmed was located in Burbank. Baxter had encouraged her to find either an apartment or a house in the area.

But the pace in Burbank was too frantic for her and she longed for something a little more sedate and laid-back, as well as a town that was a little less populated. What she was looking for was something to remind her of the Atlanta suburb that she’d left behind.

She was searching for a little bit of home in a completely unfamiliar environment.

She found what she was looking for in Bedford, with the help of a Realtor one of the cameramen working on her new show had recommended.

Maizie Sommers.

Moreover, Maizie, with her low key approach, her soft voice and especially her kind smile, reminded her a great deal of the mother she’d lost years ago.

What Danni appreciated most of all was that her association with Maizie was not terminated when escrow closed. When the woman urged her to call if she ever had a problem or needed anything—or just to talk, Danni believed her.

As a matter of fact, they’d talked several times since Danni had sent out her change-of-address postcards to the people back in Atlanta and Danni had even dropped by the woman’s office a couple of times, always bearing some sort of new dessert she was currently trying out.

For her part, Maizie never put her off or told her she’d come at a bad time. On the contrary, she’d greeted her like a long-lost, beloved family member—like a daughter.

“You do realize that just the pleasure of your company would be more than enough,” Maizie told her when she’d dropped by a week ago. “You really don’t need to bribe me—although, I must say, you really outdid yourself this time with these little glazed Bundt cakes.” Maizie had sat at her desk, examining the mini cake in her hand from all angles. It appeared perfect from all sides. “Have you thought about either writing a cookbook or marketing these? You’ll make a fortune,” Maizie prophesized.

Danni had modestly demurred, but the idea about writing a cookbook remained in the recesses of her brain. Maybe someday.

Each time she reflected on the changes that had come into her life in such a short amount of time, it always astounded her. She could hardly believe that at long last, there was enough money in both her savings and her checking account for her to be a little—hell, a lot extravagant if she wanted to be, instead of always having to count pennies, constantly be vigilant and deny herself even the smallest of indulgences.

Danni almost gave in to the cliché to pinch herself. Life was that perfect. For the first time in her life, she was living in her own house, a house she’d paid for, not a house she was merely renting and that belonged to someone else.

The rush she felt when she put the key into the lock of her own front door for the very first time was one she couldn’t even begin to describe. It was unequal to anything else she’d ever felt.

But Danni wasn’t so enamored with the idea of ownership that she was blind to the house’s flaws. She wasn’t. She was very aware that the house came with warts. Quite a few warts.

The two-story building, built somewhere around the early 1970s, was in need of a new roof, new windows that kept the air out, not invited it in, and the three bathrooms were all but literally begging to be remodeled. The kitchen, which to her had always been the heart of the house, needed a complete makeover as well. To anyone else, these might have been a deal breaker, but Danni had fallen in love with the layout and had bought the house for an exceptionally good price. So she’d signed on the dotted line, promising herself that if and when her show’s option was picked up and renewed, and if it subsequently took off, she would give the house a much-needed facelift.

That day had come.

Her last visit to Maizie had been to tell the helpful Realtor that she was finally at a place where she could afford all those renovations they had talked about.

“What I need now,” she’d said over an enticing small pyramid of a dozen glazed wine cupcakes, “is for you to recommend a reliable general contractor who can do it all. I really don’t want to have to deal with a half a dozen or more men, all at odds with one another.”

There’d been a slight problem with her request. The man Maizie had been sending people to for the last eight years had recently relocated to Nevada to be closer to his daughter and her family. Consequently, Maizie had told her she’d be on the look-out for someone reliable and that she would get back to her as quickly as she could.

Danni had no doubts that the woman would find someone.

And Maizie had.

When she came home yesterday, bone weary after a marathon taping session, the first thing she’d seen was the red light on her answering machine blinking rhythmically as if it was flirting with her. Danni had stopped only long enough to drop her purse and step out of her shoes before listening to the message.

She waited less than that to call Maizie back. Five minutes after that, she was on the phone, dialing the number that Maizie had given her.

Danni wanted to call while her lucky streak was still riding high. There was a part of her—a diminishing but still-present part—that expected she would wake from this wonderful dream, her alarm clock shattering the stillness and calling her to work at the insurance company back in Atlanta.

Before that happened, she wanted to take full advantage of this magic-carpet ride she found herself on.

The man who Maizie had recommended sounded nice on the phone. He had a deep, rich baritone voice that was made for long walks on the beach beneath velvety, dark, star-lit skies.

He looked even better, Danni thought as she brought her vehicle to a squealing stop in her driveway and all but leaped out of her car. He was on time, she noted ruefully. And she was not.

“Sorry,” Danni declared, approaching the man who looked as if the stereotypical description of “tall, dark and handsome” had been coined exclusively for him. She put her hand out. “Traffic from Burbank was a bear,” she apologized.

His fingers closed around her hand, his eyes never leaving hers.

Stone had been all set to leave.