had in at least a couple of years. Maybe more.”
Cecilia sighed. “I know how that is,” the woman murmured.
The truth was all three of them did. Friends since the third grade, they had cheered one another on through courtships, marriages and children. And grieved as, one by one, they found themselves sharing yet something else: widowhood.
Eternally optimistic, they believed firmly in romance, which had first caused them to dabble in their daughters’ lives, then in Theresa’s son’s situation. Hooked on the challenge, they were eager to branch out, to help friends and clients who sought to have their children or their siblings find satisfying, lasting relationships. They sought no repayment for their efforts. They did it for the sheer joy of bringing two people together.
Making no response to Cecilia’s comment, Theresa produced a candid photograph of her catering client’s sister, taken by someone at the party.
With a laugh, Cecilia dug into her oversize purse and pulled out the latest thriller by Brandon Slade, a book he’d given her the last time her crew had cleaned his house. She placed it front cover side down on the table.
“I’ll see your photograph and raise you a dust jacket,” Cecilia declared, pushing the book to the middle of the table, next to Isabelle Sinclair’s picture.
Maizie looked from Brandon to Isabelle and nodded thoughtfully. “Looks to me as if these two young people would make a truly wonderful couple,” she agreed, then raised her eyes to look at her friends. “But how do we bring them together?”
That, they all knew, temporarily stumped, was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
Drama was Anastasia Del Vecchio’s life. In the spotlight since she’d been three years old, the venerable actress could be forgiven if at times she indulged her inner child and fell back on being a drama queen, something that had been deemed “adorable” by the movie reviewers when she was three, four and five, but seen as a tad grating on the nerves when she hit her teens and twenties.
Ever the trouper, she’d reinvented herself a handful of times since then and was now considered one of the acting world’s last true icons.
For the most part, the actress refrained from giving in to this whim. Although, by no stretch of the imagination could the terms “shy” or “retiring” ever be applied to Anastasia Del Vecchio, not even when she slept. At this point in her career, everything about the legendary star was considered to be larger than life. She made a point of greeting both life and people with enthusiastic gusto.
If something couldn’t be done in a big way, she saw no reason for it being done at all. Her energetic approach was the hallmark of her life, her five marriages and her numerous affairs. That aspect of her personality would never change. So it was no surprise that when an unexpected fall from the stage where she was rehearsing her latest play necessitated her being rushed off to the hospital, Anastasia was quite vocal about her pain. And she fiercely fought off the suggestion that any sort of drugs be introduced to alleviate her suffering. “I can use this,” she declared, batting away the paramedic’s hand as he hovered over her with a syringe containing a measured dose of morphine. There were genuine tears of pain in her eyes as she gritted her teeth together. “I can remember this when I have to portray a woman in the throes of dire physical agony.”
Anastasia had witnessed too many falls from grace to be complacent about taking any drugs. Drugs would wrestle the control she treasured so highly away from her.
As it turned out, these words were the last the renowned actress said in the ambulance before the pain succeeded in knocking her unconscious.
At the time of his mother’s accident, Brandon Slade had been in the midst of wrestling with a completely unfamiliar foe. Writer’s block. Like any writer faced with this demon, he had welcomed any distraction. So when the phone had rung, he’d snatched it up and found himself summoned to the theater by a very shaken and distraught director, Tyler Channing. He’d been in his car less than three minutes later and managed to arrive just in time to climb into the back of the ambulance with his mother as the doors were shut.
The paramedic slanted a nervous look at him as he administered the injection to the now unconscious actress. “She always like this?” the man asked.
A fond smile curved Brandon’s mouth as he held his mother’s hand. “Always.”
Brandon Slade, a media darling in his own right, was Anastasia’s only child, the product of his mother’s second marriage. Head over heels in love, she’d married a passionate Australian actor whose ardor, sadly, was not restricted to the woman he’d exchanged vows with.
Unable to overlook the mounting number of women her husband slept with, Anastasia, with a secretly aching heart, had sent him packing eighteen months into their marriage—and eight months into her one and only pregnancy. The rather pedestrian actor, one Kevin Slade, had made one more appearance to take a look at his son through the nursery window and then disappeared from both their lives.
Brandon was raised by a succession of nannies, some good, some not-so-good. But he never felt the lack of his mother’s love even as she wove in and out of his life like a darning needle, taking work close to home when she could, leaving him behind with a nanny and under the watchful eye of her own mother when she couldn’t.
Despite this chaotic upbringing, Brandon never felt neglected, never acted out, never felt desperate for attention. For a child born into the acting community, he was a rarity. He grew up centered and well-adjusted. He bore no resentment toward his mother for her less-than-orthodox behavior. She was Anastasia Del Vecchio, and that was just the way she was, a hurricane blowing in and out of his life.
For his part, Brandon enjoyed his life and enjoyed his mother whenever he could. And when he sought to make his own way in the world, there was no one who was more supportive of his efforts—and his chosen field—than his mother. He loved her dearly for it.
Just how much was brought home to him when his own wife had walked out on him—coincidentally before he’d sold his first successful thriller and landed on the New York Times bestseller list. She’d told him just as she’d packed up and left that he, and the life he wanted, bored her. He’d been heartbroken and struggling to put the pieces of his life back together, not for his own sake, but for Victoria’s. His daughter had been a little more than a month old at the time, and he hadn’t known the first thing about taking care of a baby. When she’d heard what had happened, Anastasia had deliberately restructured her life, accepting a lesser part in a cable series that was being filmed in Los Angeles just so that she could be there to help with Victoria.
Unlike some parents when they made sacrifices—and in complete departure from her public persona— Anastasia never made any mention of the inconvenience this restructuring necessitated. She also never told him that she’d passed up a part that landed the woman who took her place an Academy Award. Her best friend, a hairstylist named Olga Newton, had let that little gem drop five years after the fact, which was the only way Brandon ever found out.
Now it was his turn to help her, Brandon thought, still holding his unconscious mother’s hand.
As it turned out, the fall resulted in a cracked left hip. When she finally woke up eleven hours later, it was all over but the healing. The horrified actress was less than pleased to discover that she’d
