Marie Ferrarella - Coming Home For Christmas

Specifically, covert matchmaking. The unassuming objects of their selfless efforts were never aware of what hit them when love came barreling into their lives.

The matchmaking tasks were usually undertaken at the behest of either one unwitting participant’s relative or the other, most often a parent. And the ladies happily took it from there.

As it turned out, they were enabled in their altruistic endeavors because of the companies they had formed during the second half of their lives. After each woman had raised her child—or, in Theresa’s case, children—and found herself squarely faced with widowhood, all three friends had met the resulting emptiness in their lives the same way. They turned their attention to whatever skills they had and transformed those into what eventually amounted to lucrative livelihoods. Maizie went into real estate, Theresa undertook catering and Cecilia, always the very last word in organization and neatness, began her own housecleaning service.

Each of these three businesses, now quite nicely successful, brought into their collective lives an ever-changing and growing pool of people.

It was within this pool that the three friends found their likely candidates: unattached people who were in need of soul mates in order to reach their own full potential and thrive.

Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia thought of their matchmaking as a calling.

Even as they conducted business as usual, all three women were on the lookout for their next matchmaking success stories.

And none was as proactive as Maizie, whose cache of candidates was always changing.

Maizie had an eye not just for excellent property buys, which in turn were responsible for bringing money into her company, but also for loneliness, no matter how well disguised that loneliness might be within the person who crossed her path.

Such was the case, she felt, with her latest client. The tall, good-looking young man walked into her office on a Wednesday morning, wearing a somber expression and an expensive gray suit. He had green eyes and very precisely cut thick, dark brown hair, and his incredible straight-arrow posture made his broad shoulders appear even broader than they were.

“Maizie Sommers?” Keith asked as he approached her desk.

He’d gotten her name from the same neighbor who had notified him of his mother’s sudden passing. He felt one real estate firm was as good as another, but perhaps a smaller one was a little hungrier than a corporation so the agent could be persuaded to sell the house faster. At least, that was his reasoning when he’d found her on the internet and then came here immediately after that.

Maizie looked up into his eyes and gave the young man her best maternal smile. It usually went a long way in disarming her prospective clients and getting them to trust her.

She didn’t do it for any devious or self-serving purpose. What she was trying to convey to her clients was that it wasn’t a matter of her versus them but a matter of them and her. She thought of herself and her clients as a team, and she intended to be on her clients’ side.

Sales were not final until the clients were happy with the home they were buying. She took any misgivings they might entertain very seriously. Their ultimate satisfaction was always her bottom line.

And if, along the way, said client also turned out to be an unattached person who would be decidedly happier as part of a twosome—Maizie was a very firm believer in love—well, so much the better.

That part of what she and her friends did—the matchmaking—was undertaken without any thought—or collection—of financial rewards. Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia all unequivocally believed that the soul needed nurturing as well as the body. And in the case of their matchmaking efforts, with each success—and thus far, they had only successes—they felt even more fulfilled than they did when the actual jobs they did collect fees for were successfully executed.

Thus, until she knew otherwise, Maizie viewed the young man who walked into her office this morning as quite possibly a candidate on two fronts.

The smile on her lips came from deep within.

“Yes, I am, young man,” she told him warmly. “What can I do for you?” she asked, rising ever so slightly from the seat behind her desk to shake his hand.

The woman reminded him of his mother.

It wasn’t so much that this Maizie Sommers he had come to see actually resembled his mother visually, but there was an enthusiasm—as well as a kindness—that seemed somehow to radiate from this woman. Such was often the case with his mother.

At least, his mother the way she had been those years when he was growing up. The years before Amy had died. The three of them had been a happy unit then, bolstering one another. And no matter what, he and Amy had always been secure in the knowledge that although there was no father in the picture for a good deal of the time, all was well in their lives because their mother was with them. They were convinced Dorothy O’Connell could handle anything. Nothing would ever hurt them as long as she was around.

It turned out to be a lie.

Keith realized that he had lapsed into silence when he should be saying something . Attempting to recover ground, Keith cleared his throat and took a stab at apologizing, something he hardly ever did.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” he said, deliberately averting his eyes from her. “For a minute, you reminded me of someone.”

Maizie’s bright blue eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled at him. “A pleasant memory, I hope.”

“Yes, well, it was. Once,” he allowed, stumbling ever so slightly over the words coming out as he continued looking away.

“I see,” she responded, hoping he’d continue. Her prospective client appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable, though. One of the things she prided herself on the most, an ability she had honed both as a mother and as a successful independent businesswoman, was putting someone at ease.

Glossing over the young man’s last words, Maizie purposely went on to the reason she assumed that he had come to her in the first place. In her judgment, he appeared to be the type who was more comfortable sticking to the business at hand than touching upon anything even remotely personal.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering if he was married or, at the very least, spoken for. The young man was clearly the kind who fell into the “drop-dead gorgeous” category, as Cecilia’s daughter liked to say. If he wasn’t married, well then, she just might have met her newest challenge.

“Are you here looking to buy a house, Mr....” She let her voice trail off, giving him the opportunity to state exactly why he was here as well as introduce himself.

“Oh, sorry.” Keith upbraided himself. He really wasn’t on his game today. Going straight from the airport to the house and then staying there overnight had done that to him. He would have been better off booking a hotel room.

He was going to have to see to that as soon as he finished up with this woman.

“Keith O’Connell,” he told her, shaking her hand belatedly. Given their proximity and difference in height—Maizie was petite while he was six-foot-two—he didn’t have to lean over her desk because she was standing up. “And I’m looking to sell, not buy, actually.”

“Sell,” she repeated slowly, as if she was pausing to taste the word. “You own a home here in Bedford?” she asked.

“In a manner of speaking.”

He couldn’t think of himself as being the actual owner. That had been his mother, who had worked long and hard, stitching together disjointed hours so she could be home for Amy and him when they were younger and needed her, but still provide for them. It was his mother’s sweat and dedication that had managed to pay for the house. He had just lived there—until he didn’t. And now it was his by default.