Once Upon a Matchmaker

“I’m not.” Although God knew that would have come in handy in her line of work. “I was there.”

There were other women to choose from, but his thoughts immediately gravitated to the woman who had smiled at his sons. “That was you?” he asked without any preamble.

Tracy wasn’t sure how, but she knew exactly what he was asking. They’d made eye contact over his sons’ heads. It had been brief, but enough to have left her with a lasting impression.

“That was me,” she confirmed. Now that she knew who he was, she relaxed just a notch. “I hope it’s nothing serious with your little boy,” she told him, this time with all sincerity.

“Greg has a tendency to run really high fevers,” he told her. There was more to it than that, but he saw no point to going into detail. She didn’t need to know that in order to properly represent him.

“I don’t like taking chances,” he added. “Otherwise, I’d bring both of them with me.”

Tracy nodded to herself. She liked that. Liked the fact that Muldare put his sons first, ahead of what had sounded like it could easily escalate into a very serious problem for him.

After a nonexistent debate with herself that took all of half a second, she made up her mind.

“Listen, I was going to go home right after seeing you, so why don’t you give me your address and I’ll just swing by your place before I call it a night?” she proposed. “I have to admit, I am rather intrigued,” she told him. “You’re the first person who’s ever come to me because he was being accused of treason.”

He was glad that someone was intrigued. As far as he was concerned, he was just oppressed by the very weight of the whole ordeal.

He debated her offer for exactly fifteen seconds and decided that he had absolutely nothing to lose. But he didn’t like the idea of putting the woman out. “You’re sure you don’t mind?” he asked her.

“Why should I mind?” she asked. “If I minded, I wouldn’t have suggested stopping by in the first place.”

Her bubble bath became a distant memory—but it was for a good cause. Picking up a pen and tearing off a two-day-old page from her desk calendar, she got ready to write.

“Okay, where do you live?”

Greg was coughing in the background. Distracted, Micah answered, “In Bedford.”

“Bedford’s gotten to be a big city,” she quipped. “Mind narrowing that down a bit?”

“Sorry.”

Right now, he felt as if everything was coming at him at once. The accusation, Greg’s fever, his aunt getting stuck in traffic—he’d always hated the idea of traffic ever since his parents had been killed in that car accident. He knew it was unreasonable of him, but he couldn’t harness his response, couldn’t do away with it. Belatedly, he recited his street address.

Rather than make some inane comment—or say nothing at all—he heard the woman say “Huh” in what seemed like preoccupied wonderment.

“Something wrong?” he asked her uncertainly, although for the life of him, he couldn’t begin to imagine the reason for a positive answer. It wasn’t as if he lived in a haunted house or anything of that kind. Why had she made that noise?

Tracy stared at the address she’d just jotted down. It seemed rather incredible to her, but she actually lived in his development.

What were the odds of that happening?

But she didn’t want to disclose that little tidbit to her prospective client because then she’d be leaving herself open to all sorts of things she might not be too happy about down the road. Besides, once out of the office and off the clock, she was a very private person who valued her privacy.

She wanted that to continue.

So all she said in response to his question was, “No, I’m just surprised—I’m fairly familiar with the area.” Glancing at her watch, Tracy did a quick calculation. “I can be there within the half hour—if it’s all right with you and—your wife?” she ended her statement with a question since she wasn’t entirely familiar with his situation. He’d been at the restaurant with only his sons and his aunt, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married. After all, Kate’s husband hadn’t been there with Kate yesterday at the restaurant. There were all sorts of reasons why this Micah could have been there without his wife.

Wife. The word still hurt after all this time. Rather than say he was no longer married, or that his wife had died, he told the attorney, “It’s just me and the boys. And Aunt Sheila,” he added.

“That would be the striking brunette who was at your table,” Tracy surmised.

Micah laughed to himself. Hearing herself described that way would certainly be good for Aunt Sheila’s ego, he thought.

“I’ll be sure to tell her that when I see her. It’s bound to brighten her day,” he told the woman on the other end of the line.

Tracy caught herself listening to his soft chuckle. It was a nice sound. Hearing it seemed to generate a feeling of well-being within her.

You’re just being punchy, Tracy. It’s been a long day and you put in more than your share of hours. Maybe you should just go home.

But she couldn’t just go home, not after telling Muldare that she was coming over. He’d think he was dealing with a dizzy blonde. As a natural blonde, she had fought against the image all of her life.

“I’ll be there in less than half an hour,” she repeated and then hung up.

Tired or not, her mouth curved in just a hint of a smile as she walked out the door.

Chapter Four

The residential development where Tracy lived was one of the oldest ones in Bedford. It was also one of the smaller developments.

Maizie Sommers, the real estate agent who had sold her the house she lived in, had happily given her all sorts of positive statistics about the area. According to the woman, Bedford Ranch had seven hundred and fifty homes within it. The agent had called that “cozy.”

Oddly enough, though the word normally suggested fireplaces and warm comforters to her, Tracy decided that the word did seem to fit the community. She was also happy to learn that this particular development didn’t come with myriad rules and regulations that covered everything from the number of hours that residents could keep their garage doors opened to when and if they could park their cars in the street or had to leave them strictly in their driveway.

But the thing that Tracy liked best about the relaxed atmosphere within the development was that she was free to paint the outside of her simple, two-story home any color she wanted without having to submit the request first in triplicate to some nebulous association for their approval.

Obviously, Muldare found this sort of freedom as appealing as she did. Otherwise, the newer, more rigidly structured developments would have certainly lured him away. They had the bigger, more modern houses.

Most likely equally appealing—at least to her prospective client—was the fact that there was an elementary school on the southern perimeter of the development. Los Naranjos was the name some clever pencil pusher had given it.

She wondered if his sons went there. It certainly made drop-offs and pickups easy for whoever looked after the boys while he was at work.

Maizie had gently touted that feature to her, as well, saying, “When you have kids, you’ll find that this is an excellent school for them to attend. All the schools in Bedford are ranked in the top 5 percent scholastically,” the woman had told her proudly.

Little had the woman known that for her there was never going to be a “when.” Much as she adored her mother who had raised her by herself—she’d never known her father—Tracy truly believed that kids needed a full set of parents, not just one. After that humiliating experience with Simon, she was not about to get married ever again, which sort of closed the door for her when it came to having kids.

Tracy pulled up to the curb before his house. Muldare lived closer to her than she’d thought he would. Only one vehicle was in the driveway—his, she assumed—but she didn’t feel as if she could take the spot beside it in case someone dropped by while she was still here.

After getting out of her vintage white sedan, Tracy came up the walk to the front door. Her ex-husband had been into status symbols, big time. The fact that they couldn’t afford to buy things like super-expensive cars and a cabin cruiser made no difference to him. Debt was just an annoying detail that he left for her to handle while he drove around in a vehicle that could have easily been a down payment on a house in the more affluent part of the city. He’d accused her of being a stick-in-the-mud when she’d tried to show him the discrepancy between their salaries and the lifestyle he was living.

Tracy rang the doorbell and heard the beginning notes of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony. A classical music lover? Or had that just come with the house and he hadn’t gotten around to changing it?

She waited until the strains faded away, then pressed the doorbell again, a little longer this time. He had to be home, right? At least, that was what he’d said when he’d called to cancel their appointment. Maybe he was one of those people who didn’t like to stand up for himself and this was his way of backing away from the problem.

If so, he’d probably seen an ad for her law firm and was intimidated by what representation would wind up costing in dollars and cents.

She hadn’t told him that if she was going to take the case, it would be pro bono. But she also wanted to judge the merits of the case for herself before she committed to it. If she told him about pro bono up front, he’d be eager for her to take the case and if she didn’t believe in his innocence, or didn’t think there was at least a slim chance in hell of winning, she wouldn’t take it on.