Adding Up To Family. Marie Ferrarella

Extract

       About the Publisher

       Prologue

      “Please, Celia, you’re a mother. You must know what I’m talking about,” Bonnie Reynolds implored, obviously attempting to appeal to her longtime friend’s maternal instincts. “For the first twelve years of that girl’s life, I felt as if I could barely keep up with her. Even her homework assignments were so far beyond my own understanding, I had a headache every time I tried to check it.”

      Despite the situation that had brought her to Celia, there was pride echoing in Bonnie’s voice as she added, “Rebecca whizzed through her studies like it was child’s play—at a time when she was little more than a child herself.”

      Celia Parnell smiled understandingly at the distraught woman sitting opposite her in her Bedford, California, office.

      When Bonnie had come in, looking as if she was at her wit’s end, Celia had closed the door to her small inner office to ensure privacy. Speaking calmly, she had poured them both a cup of vanilla chai tea. She’d urged the trim brunette to take a seat and tell her exactly what was troubling her.

      And just like that, the words poured out of Bonnie like a dam whose retaining wall had suddenly cracked in half.

      Listening, Celia nodded. It was a story she was more than a little familiar with.

      “Rebecca had a wonderful job, Celia. An absolutely wonderful job—for three years. And then one day she decided to just up and leave it. Just like that.” Bonnie snapped her fingers. “Don’t get me wrong. When you first offered Rebecca a job with your company, I was grateful. I thought that this—this wrinkle was something she needed to work out and then she’d be back to herself again. In the interim, she was still earning money. But, Celia, that girl is wasting her potential. You know she is,” Bonnie cried, sitting so close to the edge of her chair, she looked as if she was in danger of falling off it if she so much as took in a big breath.

      “Breathe, Bonnie,” Celia counseled.

      “I am breathing—and very nearly hyperventilating,” the other woman cried, very close to tears now. “Celia, Rebecca graduated from MIT at eighteen. Eighteen!” she stressed.

      “I remember,” Celia replied calmly.

      But Bonnie only grew more agitated. “And she did it on a full scholarship, because her father, that rat, ran out on us, leaving me with nothing but debts and no way to pay for anything without working two jobs! That meant hardly ever seeing Rebecca, and yet she turned out like a gem.”

      “I know,” Celia said, doing her best to continue to sound calm.

      She had a feeling that she knew where this was going, but she allowed the other woman to say her piece, hoping that Bonnie would find a way to calm herself down and not be so hopeless about her daughter’s current situation. Because if there was anything she’d learned these last few years, it was that no situation was hopeless.

      “When she first got that job at the engineering firm—practically the best aerospace firm in the country—I was in seventh heaven. But after three years, the bottom suddenly dropped out for her. Without any warning, Rebecca decided that she was ‘burned out.’ Burned out,” Bonnie repeated, shaking her head. “What does that even mean?”

      “That she worked so hard, exceeding all expectations for so long, that she wound up exhausting herself,” Celia told her friend. “She just needs to recharge her batteries.”

      “She’s been recharging now for three years,” Bonnie lamented. “My brilliant daughter has been cleaning houses for three years,” the woman cried, looking at Celia for her understanding.

      “I know, Bonnie. I’m the one who writes her paychecks,” she replied with a smile.

      As if worried that she might have insulted her, Bonnie quickly apologized. “Look, Celia, I meant no disrespect—”

      “None taken,” she replied serenely.

      Bonnie let out a shaky breath, then continued. “But I am afraid—no, terrified—that Rebecca is just going to go on cleaning houses forever. That she’s never going to be my Rebecca again.”

      “There is a possibility that she’s happier this way,” Celia suggested.

      Bonnie looked stunned at the mere suggestion that this could be the case. “No, she’s not. I know she’s not. And right now, she’s so busy cleaning other people’s houses that she’s not doing anything to put her own life back together again. She lives in a silly little apartment, for heaven’s sake.”

      “How’s that again?” Celia asked, slightly confused. She interacted with the young woman under discussion all the time, and from where she stood, Rebecca seemed rather content.

      “She’s not dating,” Bonnie complained, verbally underlining the word. “She’s cleaning other people’s houses and not saving up to buy her own house.”

      Hiding her amusement, Celia said, “I thought she liked living in an apartment.”

      Bonnie let out a long sigh. “That’s okay for now—but what about later? She’s not thinking about later,” she complained, clearly irritated with the situation. “Am I making any sense to you?”

      “Actually, I think you are. You’re not upset that Becky’s not working herself into a frazzle in the engineering world. What you’re actually upset about is that she’s not looking for a husband.”

      Bonnie pressed her lips together. Hearing it said out loud, she had to admit that it sounded rather old-fashioned, as well as self-centered. But it was still the truth and there was no point in denying it.

      After releasing another long, frustrated breath, she confessed, “I want grandchildren, Celia. Is that such a horrible thing?”

      Celia laughed. “No, not at all, Bonnie. Been there, done that. I understand perfectly what you’re going through.”

      The subject was touching on something that she and her two best friends, Maizie and Theresa, had begun doing almost eight years ago. It had started as a spur-of-the-moment undertaking to find a husband for Maizie’s daughter, without the young woman suspecting what they were up to. But the venture had turned out to be so successful, all three of them began doing it as a hobby on the side.

      The women still maintained their own businesses, but they all agreed that it was matchmaking that afforded them the most satisfaction.

      Leaning forward, Celia beamed at the woman. “Bonnie, I think that I just might have a solution for you.”

      “Oh please, tell me,” her friend all but begged. “After waiting three years for this to resolve itself, I’m ready to listen to anything and even make a deal with the devil.”

      “Luckily,” Celia told her with a smile, “it won’t have to go that far.”

       Chapter One

      “Mrs. Parnell? This is Steve Holder,” the deep male voice on the other end of the phone said.

      Celia recognized the name. Steve was one of her sporadic clients, making use of her services whenever he suddenly found himself without a housekeeper. Although she didn’t remember all her clients, she remembered the ones who were special, and Steve Holder’s case was. A widower, he was struggling to raise a preteen daughter on his own.

      And Celia had just been thinking of him.

      “Steve,” she said with pleasure. “How is everything?”