Tiffany Lee’s eyes lit up the moment that she saw him.
She might only be four years old, but she was a woman who knew her own heart and her heart belonged to Monty. That was what he told her his name was when she got up the nerve to ask him.
Monty.
His family lived in the house down the block and had only been there a couple of months, but it was long enough for her to make up her mind that when she grew up, she was going to marry him.
“Let’s go, Tiffany, you are making your sisters late for school,” her mother scolded.
She was deliberately dawdling, hanging back until Monty could catch up to her. He went to her school, as did his sisters.
“I’m trying to button my sweater, Mama,” she said, seizing the first excuse she could think of. It was a cool spring morning and her sweater was hanging open because she’d put the buttons into the wrong holes and had to start again.
Her mother looked at her impatiently. She had rules about being late. Mama had rules about everything. She said you couldn’t grow up properly without rules to guide you.
“You do not need to button your sweater, it is not cold,” Mei-Li Lee told her youngest born. “Just hold it against you. Now come!”
“I can help you button that,” the boy who had caught her young heart offered, coming up to her. “It won’t take long,” he promised.
She stood their, perfectly still, watching as his fingers pushed each button on her sweater through a hole. She felt like a princess and he was her prince.
And someday, she thought again, he would be her husband.
* * *
“Take your time, dear,” Theresa Manetti told the dignified looking, slightly flustered Asian-American woman sitting in the chair beside her desk. “I have all afternoon.”
That wasn’t entirely true. At the moment Theresa had approximately half an hour to spare, but she didn’t want the other woman to feel pressured or rushed.
They were sitting in her back office. The owner of a thriving catering company that had enjoyed more than a dozen years of success, Theresa had practically every minute of her time accounted for. But the award-winning chef trusted her people to capably carry on without her supervision for however long it took her friend, Mrs. Mei-Li Lee, to get around to asking what Theresa already knew in her heart the woman wanted to ask.
Having been involved in the side endeavor that she and her two lifelong best friends, Maizie Sommers and Cecilia Parnell, had been pursuing with passion and zest for a number of years, Theresa knew it was extremely difficult for some people to ask for help with such a delicate matter.
This was obviously the case for Mei-Li, whom she already knew was by nature a very private person.
Although Theresa was proud of her catering business, just as Maizie was proud of the real estate firm she had built from scratch and Cecilia was proud of her expanding house cleaning service, she felt that matchmaking was her true calling.
None of them took a penny for bringing about the matches they arranged, but it was no secret that they all felt richly rewarded by their successful ventures just the same. All three believed that there was something indescribably magical about bringing about these matches between soul mates who might have had no way of finding one another without a little outside “help.”
“Maybe I’m being selfish,” Mei-Li said, twisting the handkerchief she held in her hands until it began to look as if it was a little white corkscrew.
“You?” Theresa gently scoffed. “I know you, Mei-Li. You do not have a selfish bone in your entire body.”
“But all of my other girls are married,” the petite woman went on, referring to her four older daughters. “Two of them have children and Jennifer is expecting her first. Four out of five should be enough for any mother, shouldn’t it?” she asked, raising her dark eyes to look at Theresa.
They might have different cultural backgrounds, but Theresa understood exactly where the other woman was coming from.
“You’re not being selfish, Mei-Li. You’re just being a mother. Mothers want to see all their children happily married. They want all of their children to have someone to love who loves them back. It’s only natural, dear,” Theresa assured her.
Mei-Li sighed, no doubt grateful for her friend’s reassurance. “Tiffany would be so annoyed with me if she knew I was doing this,” she confided.
Theresa reached across the desk, covering her friend’s hand with her own. “Tiffany will never know,” she promised with a knowing smile.
Mei-Li looked as if she was at a loss as to how her part in this undertaking could remain a secret. “But then how—”
“Trust me, the other ladies and I have been at this for a while now.” Her warm smile widened. “Arrangements are made so that everything that ‘happens’ appears to be strictly by chance—and by luck,” she added with an amused wink. “My own two children would have been horrified if they knew their mother had brought into their lives the individuals they ended up marrying.
“I’m sure you’ll agree that if Tiffany doesn’t know that you have any part in this, her natural inclination to resist won’t get in the way and half the battle will be won right from the beginning.”
Mei-Li sighed again. “I suppose you’re right.”
Theresa merely continued smiling, refraining from saying that of course she was right. When it came to matters of the heart, that was a given. All was fair in love and war—especially in love. Maizie had taught her that.
“Now, in order for us to get this little venture under way,” Theresa said to the other woman, “I’m going to need more information from you about your lovely youngest daughter.”
Mei-Li slowly relaxed. “Anything,” she willingly agreed.
“Good,” Theresa replied, pulling out an old-fashioned pad and pen to take notes. Some things, she felt, could not be improved on. “If everything goes well—and they always have up until now—my guess is that we should have Tiffany engaged, if not married, by Christmas.”
There was no way to describe the look on Mei-Li’s face other than pure, unadulterated joy.
As for Theresa, she couldn’t wait to collect the information she needed to get this newest mission of the heart under way and to call her friends with the good news. Tonight she, Maizie and Cilia were going to be playing cards—and making arrangements to take the necessary steps that would bring love into Tiffany Lee’s life.
