Diamond in the Ruff (Matchmaking Mamas Book 13) Read online

  “Hold that pose, I might need you,” she told Jonathan.

  Wiping her hands, she went to the front door. Her furry shadow came with her. She didn’t bother wasting time by telling him to stay. Having him there beside her generated an aura of safety that had been missing from her life for a while now. Mentally, she crossed her fingers and hoped it wasn’t anyone in response to the flyer.

  Instead of looking through the peephole, which she found usually distorted the person on the other side of the door, she called out, “Who is it and what are you doing here?”

  “Dr. Chris Whitman and I’ve come to apologize.”

  Lily’s heart ramped up its pace. She fumbled with the lock as she flipped it.

  “You already apologized. Don’t you remember?” she asked as she opened the door for him. “When you called to tell me you weren’t coming, you apologized over the phone.”

  He remembered, but it hadn’t seemed nearly adequate enough to him. And besides, after what he’d just been through, he didn’t want to immediately go home to his empty house. He wanted to see a friendly face, talk to a friendly person—and relax in her company. The very fact that he did was a surprise to him since toward the end, he felt nothing but relief to get out of his relationship with Irene.

  But then, Lily wasn’t Irene. “Then I’ve come to apologize again,” he amended. “And I’m still Dr. Chris Whitman,” he added cheerfully, referring to her initial inquiry through the door.

  “You didn’t have to apologize the first time,” she told him. “I mean, it was nice that you thought you had to, but I understand. You had a crisis to handle. By the way, how is she doing?”

  He nodded, as if to preface what he was about to say with a visual confirmation. “She’s actually doing better than I expected. It looks like she’s going to pull through.”

  It had been touch and go for a while there. It wasn’t as if this was the first operation he’d ever performed but it was by far the most demanding and he had done extensive volunteer work at several animal shelters. The five-year-old Irish setter had required a great deal of delicate work.

  “That’s wonderful news,” Lily said, genuinely pleased. She had to raise her voice because Jonathan had decided to become vocal. The animal obviously felt that he was being ignored by the two people in the room, most especially by the man he had taken such a shine to. “But what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be back at the hospital with her?”

  Christopher crouched down to scratch the puppy behind his ears. Jonathan fell over on the floor, clearly in ecstasy.

  “Under normal circumstances,” Christopher agreed, “I might have stayed the night, but Lara’s there. She volunteered to take over this shift. And my number’s on speed dial if anything comes up.”

  That was rather an odd way to put it, Lily thought. Out loud she repeated, “Lara?” Another woman? Just how many women were part of this man’s life?

  “Yes.” He realized that he probably hadn’t properly introduced Lily to everyone by name the one time she’d been at his animal hospital. “She’s one of the animal techs. You met her the other day when you brought Jonny in to see me.”

  Lily came to a skidding halt mentally. She put up her hand to stop the flow of his words for a minute. She needed to get her head—not to mention facts—straight.

  “You have one of your animal techs watching over Rhonda?” Lily asked incredulously, trying her best to unscramble what Christopher was telling her.

  “Yes. Why? What’s wrong?” he asked, mystified by the very strange expression that Lily had on her face right now. “It’s not like this is her first time.”

  Well, the only way she was going to clear this up was by asking some very basic questions, Lily decided. “What relation is Rhonda to you? I know it’s none of my business, but I’m getting a very strong feeling that we’re not on the same page here—”

  He’d drink to that, Christopher thought.

  “Hold it,” he ordered out loud. “Back up.” He really wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. Or had he? “What did you just ask me?”

  He was angry because she was prying, Lily thought. She didn’t want to jeopardize her relationship with Christopher. She needed him to help her with the puppy. She just wasn’t good at these sorts of things, despite her best intentions.

  “Sorry, I stepped over the line, I guess,” she told him. “I was just trying to get things straight, but if you don’t want to tell me about Lara, or Rhonda, that’s your right and I—”

  This misunderstanding was getting way out of hand, Christopher realized. The only way to stop this rolling snowflake from becoming a giant, insurmountable snowball to end all snowballs was just to blurt out the truth to Lily, which he did—as fast as possible.

  “Rhonda’s my neighbor’s Irish setter,” he explained in as few words as he could. “Josh called me in a panic just as I was driving to your place, said someone driving erratically had hit Rhonda and then just kept on going. She was alive, but had lost a lot of blood. I couldn’t turn him down.”

  Rhonda was a dog? The thought presented itself to her in huge capital letters. The rush of relief that ushered those words in was almost overwhelming. She did her best to refrain from analyzing it. She wasn’t equipped for that right now.

  “Of course you couldn’t.” She said the words so fiercely, at first he thought that Lily was putting him on.

  But one look into her eyes and he knew she was being completely serious.

  And completely lovable while she was at it, he couldn’t help thinking.

  Christopher only realized much later that his real undoing began at that very minute.

  Just as hers did for her.

  For Lily, it was realizing that the man who was helping her discover the right way to train Jonathan wasn’t just someone who was kind when it was convenient for him to be that way, or because he was trying to score points with a woman he’d just met and appeared to be moderately attracted to. The turning point for her, the moment she discovered that she had absolutely no say when it came to being able to properly shield her heart from being breeched, was in finding out that Christopher was selfless across the board, especially when it came to animals who needed him.

  Her heart went up for sale and was simultaneously taken off the market by that same man in that very small instant of time.

  Instantly distracted, Christopher stopped talking and took a deep breath. His question was fairly rhetorical because he had a hunch that he knew the answer to it. “What is that fantastic smell?”

  It was very hard to keep her face from splitting in half; her smile was that wide and it just continued to widen. It had swiftly reached her eyes when she suggested, “Why don’t you come into the kitchen and see for yourself?”

  Turning on her heel, she led the way into her small kitchen. She didn’t realize at the time that there was a bounce to her step.

  But Christopher did.

  In keeping with the kitchen’s compact size, there was an island in the middle, but a small one, just large enough to accommodate two of the three trays she’d placed in the oven earlier. She had taken the two trays out while the third one was still baking.

  The closer he came, the stronger the aroma seemed to be. His appetite was firmly aroused and Christopher immediately transformed into a kid walking into his favorite candy shop. “Are those the same pastries you made the other day?”

  “Some are, some aren’t. I like to mix it up,” she confessed.

  The pastries on the trays were still warm and were most definitely emitting a siren song as he stared at them.

  “Are these all for work?” he asked, circling the trays on the island slowly.

  “No, they’re for me,” she corrected. “Not to eat,” she explained quickly. “Baking relaxes me. I usually give them away after I finish.” Gesturin
g toward the trays, she asked, “Would you like to sample one?”

  She got as far as gesturing before he took her up on the offer he’d assumed she’d been about to make.

  Chapter Nine

  “You are, without a doubt, an amazingly gifted young woman.”

  Christopher uttered the unabashed praise the minute he had finished savoring his very first bite of the pastry he had randomly chosen off the nearest tray. The pastry was filled with cream whipped into fluffy peaks and laced with just enough Amaretto to leave a very pleasant impression. It was practically light enough to levitate off the tray.

  “I bake,” she said, shrugging carelessly. Lily was warmed by his praise, but she didn’t want to make it seem as if she was letting his compliment go to her head.

  “No,” Christopher corrected her. “My late mother, God bless her, ‘baked.’ Her desserts, when she made them, always tasted of love, but they were predictable, and while good, they weren’t ‘special.’ Yours are definitely special. You don’t just ‘bake,’ you create. There’s a big difference.”

  Christopher paused as he indulged himself a little more, managing to eat almost three quarters of the small pastry before he went on.

  “You know, I’m usually one of those people who eat to live, not live to eat. Nobody could ever accuse me of being a foodie or whatever those people who love to regale other people with their so-called ‘food adventures’ like to call themselves. But if I had access to something like this whenever I felt like indulging in a religious experience, I’d definitely change my affiliation—not to mention that I’d probably become grossly overweight. Speaking of which,” Christopher went on, switching subjects as he eyed her, “why aren’t you fat?” he asked.

  “I already told you, I don’t eat what I make.” Then, before he could say that he had a hard time believing that, she admitted, “Oh, I sample a little here, a dab there, to make sure I’m not going to make someone throw up, but I’ve just never felt the inclination to polish off a tray of pastries.”

  Christopher’s expression told her that he was having a hard time reconciling that with his own reaction to the end product of her culinary efforts.

  “If I were you,” he told her, “I’d have a serious talk with myself, because your stubborn half is keeping you from having nothing short of a love affair with your taste buds.” He licked the last of the whipped cream from his fingertips, discovering he craved more. “How did you come up with these?” he asked, waving his hand at the less-than-full tray of pastries that was closest to him on the counter.

  Her method was no big secret, either. It was based on a practical approach.

  “It’s a very simple process, really. I just gather together a bunch of ingredients and see where they’ll take me,” she told him.

  As if to back up her explanation, Lily indicated the containers, bottles and boxes that had been pressed into service and were now all huddled together on the far side of the counter.

  He thought that was rather a strange way to phrase it. But creative people had a very different thought process.

  “That means what?” he asked her, curious about her process. “You stare at them until they suddenly speak to you?”

  “Not in so many words, but yes, maybe. Why?”

  He shook his head, still marveling at her stripped-down approach to creating something so heavenly. With very little effort, he could have easily consumed half a dozen pastries until he exploded.

  “Just trying to familiarize myself with your creative process,” he answered, then added, “I’ve never been in the presence of a magician before.”

  “And you aren’t now. It’s not magic, it’s baking. And that, by the way,” she said, indicating the pastry he’d just had, “was one of my low-fat pastries.”

  He stared at her, undecided if she was telling him the truth or putting him on. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not when it comes to calories,” she answered with solemnity.

  “Low-fat?” he asked again, looking at the rest of the pastries.

  “Low-fat,” she confirmed. “Told you you couldn’t tell the difference.”

  Christopher shook his head, clearly impressed. “Now that’s really inspired baking,” he told her with just a hint of wonder.

  If he wanted to flatter her, who was she to fight it? Lily thought.

  “Okay, I’ll go with that.” She carefully moved around Jonathan, who appeared to be hanging on his hero’s every word. “Now, can I fix you some dinner to go with your ‘magical’ dessert?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m good,” he told her. When she raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to explain, he said, “I grabbed a burger on the way over here. I didn’t want to put you out.”

  “Did you eat the burger you grabbed?” she asked. “Because I can still make you something a little more edible than a fast-food hamburger.”

  He liked the way she crinkled her nose in what appeared to be unconscious disdain of the entire fast-food industry. “I’m sure you can, but the burger filled the hole in my stomach for the time being. Besides, that rain check I mentioned earlier was supposed to be for dinner, too. Dinner out,” he emphasized.

  “You don’t have to wait to be seated if we have dinner in,” she pointed out gently. Lily viewed all cooking as an outlet for her and she thoroughly enjoyed doing it. She wanted to convince him that this definitely wasn’t “putting her out.”

  “Don’t you like being waited on?” he asked Lily.

  “Not particularly,” she admitted. Then, not wanting to sound like some sort of a weirdo, she told him, “Although I’m not overly fond of washing dishes.”

  “Do you?” he asked in surprise. “Wash dishes,” he elaborated when he didn’t get a response.

  “Yes.” Why was he asking? She thought she’d just said as much.

  He glanced over toward the appliance next to her stove. “Is your dishwasher broken?”

  She automatically glanced at it because he had, even though she didn’t need to in order to answer his question. “I don’t know, I’ve never used it. There’s just me and it doesn’t seem right to run all that water just for a few plates.”

  There was a solution to that. “Then wait until you have enough dishes to fill up the dishwasher,” he suggested.

  “That seems even less right.” Lily suppressed a shiver as she envisioned stacking dirty plates on top of one another.

  “Leaving a bunch of dirty dishes lying around until there’s enough for a full load sounds awful. Either way is offensive,” she said with feeling. “It’s a lot easier if I just wash as I go. My mom taught me that,” she told him out of the blue. “This was her house—our house, as she liked to put it even though I never paid a dime toward its purchase. My mom handled everything,” she recalled fondly. “Held down two, sometimes three jobs, just to pay the bills.

  “If there was anything extra, she proudly put it toward my college fund. By the time I was set to go to college, there was a lot of money in that little slush fund of hers. Enough to set me on the road to any college I wanted.”

  Caught up in her reminiscing, Christopher asked, “So where did you go?”

  He watched as her smile faded. Sorrow all but radiated from her. “I didn’t. That was the year my mother got sick. Really sick. At first, the doctors she went to see all told her it was in her head, that she was just imagining it. And then one doctor decided to run a series of more complex tests on her—which was when Mom found out that she wasn’t imagining it. She had brain cancer.” She said the diagnosis so quietly, Christopher wouldn’t have heard her if he wasn’t standing so close to her.

  “By the time they found it, it had metastasized to such a degree that it was too hard to cut out and get it all. They went in, did what they could, and then Mom said, ‘No more.’ She told them that she wanted to die at
home, in one piece. And she did,” Lily concluded proudly, her voice wavering slightly as she fought back the tears that always insisted on coming whenever she talked about her mother at any length.

  “I used the money she had set aside for my college fund to pay off her medical bills.” Lily shrugged helplessly, as if paying off the bills had somehow ultimately helped her cope with her loss. “It seemed only right to me.”

  Lily stopped talking for a second to wipe away the tears that insisted on seeping out from the corners of her eyes.

  “Sorry, I get pretty emotional if I talk about my mother for more than two minutes.” She attempted to smile and was only partially successful. “I didn’t mean to get all dark and somber on you.”

  “That’s okay,” he assured her. “I know what it feels like to lose a mother who’s sacrificed everything for you.” She looked up at him. “You’d trade every last dime you had just to spend one more day with her. But you can’t, so you do the next best thing. You prove to the world that she was right about you. That you can do something that counts, to make some sort of a difference. And I have no doubt that somewhere, tucked just out of sight, my mom and yours are watching over us and are pretty satisfied with the people they single-handedly raised,” he told her with a comforting smile.

  She took in a deep breath, doing her best to get her emotions under control. His words were tremendously comforting to her.

  “You think?” she asked.

  “I know,” he countered. Looking at her, he saw the telltale trail forged by a stray teardrop. “You missed one.”

  With that, he lifted her chin with the tip of his finger, tilting it slightly. Using just his thumb, Christopher very gently wiped the stray tear away from the corner of her eye.

  Their eyes met for one very long moment and her breath felt as if it had become solid in her throat as she held it.

  Waiting.

  Hoping.

  Trying not to.

  And then everything else, her surroundings, the kitchen, the pastries, even the overenergized puppy that was responsible for bringing them together in the first place, it just faded into the background like so much inconsequential scenery.