Christmastime Courtship

Stop...in the name of love

What kind of motorcycle cop gives a speeding ticket around Christmas? One as by the book as Colin Kirby. But when he stops pediatric oncology nurse Miranda Steele, little does he know that she’s about to zoom straight into his heart. Or that the Matchmaking Mamas have the unlucky-in-love pair straight in their sights...

After a childhood tragedy, bright-as-sunshine Miranda’s used to making the best of any situation. So she knows the handsome policeman represents an opportunity: he needs to visit her sick kids at the hospital. But Miranda quickly realizes the closed-off Colin is in need of her help just as much as any of those she volunteers for. And she’s determined to work her way into his heart this holiday season.

Colin turned sharply on his heel and glared at this woman who wouldn’t take a hint.

“Lady—”

“Miranda,” she prompted.

“Miranda,” Colin echoed between gritted teeth. “You are a royal pain, you know that?”

Miranda always tried to glean something positive out of every situation, no matter how bleak it might appear. “Does that mean you’ll look for her?” she asked him hopefully.

He blew out an angry breath. “That means you’re a royal pain,” he repeated.

With nothing to lose, Miranda went out on a limb. “Please? I can give you a description of Lily’s mother.” And then she thought of something even better. “And if you come with me, I can get you a picture of her that’ll be useful.”

He had a feeling that the woman just wasn’t going to give up unless he agreed to help her. Although it irritated him beyond description, there was a very small part of him that did admire her tenacity.

* * *

Matchmaking Mamas:

Playing Cupid. Arranging dates.

What are mothers for?

Dear Reader,

You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head that you just can’t get rid of? Well, in my case that doesn’t just happen with songs. Sometimes it’s a phrase, but more often, it’s a title. Case in point, years ago my first Romantic Suspense was entitled Holding Out for a Hero. That song was part of the score for a movie my kids loved enough that I took them to it several times. It was a cute movie, but I couldn’t get that song out of my head for weeks. I carried that title around for a number of years until I came up with a story that warranted it.

I had the same thing happen a number of years after that with a title that popped into my head and refused to “unpop.” The title this time was Good Deeds and Miranda. This time, sadly, my choice for a title was vetoed, but that doesn’t change the fact that this book was born to tell that title’s story.

Miranda Steele is a perpetual do-gooder. The die was cast when Miranda’s sister, Emily, died of leukemia at the age of five. Miranda loved her and saw herself as her sister’s protector. She refocused all her energy to helping others, be they children, adults or animals. She has so many outlets for her good deeds that she doesn’t have any time for herself—until loner Colin Kirby crosses her path. The police officer has witnessed too much death for his young age, and the only way he’s found to survive is to withdraw into himself. When their paths cross (by arrangement, thanks to the Matchmaking Mamas), Miranda sees a broken soul who needs comfort and a way to get back among the living. Colin sees an attractive whirling dervish who just won’t leave him alone—until he doesn’t want to be left alone.

As always, thank you for taking the time to read my book, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All the best,

Marie

Christmastime Courtship

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and seventy-five books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To

Melany,

The Best Daughter-in-Law

Anyone Could Ask For.

Welcome To The Family.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“Is it true?”

Theresa Manetti looked up from the menu she was putting the final touches on to see who had just walked into her inner office. Most clients who wanted to avail themselves of her catering services either called or were brought in by one of her staff and announced.

As it turned out, this time Theresa found herself looking up at Jeannine Steele, an old friend she hadn’t seen in at least six months. Not since she’d catered Jeannine’s husband’s funeral reception.

“Well, that’s a new kind of greeting,” Theresa commented, amused. “Most people usually say hello. Is what true?” she asked, nodding toward the chair on the other side of her desk, indicating that her friend should sit down.

Looking uncomfortable and nervous, Jeannine lowered herself onto the chair, perching on its edge. “There’s a rumor going around that in addition to your catering business, you’re running some sort of a dating service on the side.”

Theresa had known Jeannine since her own two children had been in elementary school with Jeannine’s daughter, and in all that time, she couldn’t recall the stately woman appearing anything but completely in control.

Always.

But not this time.

“Well, that’s not exactly an accurate description,” Theresa replied. “It’s not really a ‘dating service,’ so much as a matchmaking service.”

Confusion furrowed Jeannie’s otherwise smooth, alabaster brow. “There’s a difference?”

From her vantage point, Theresa could see the other woman twisting her long, slender fingers together. Theresa was experienced enough to know where this was heading, and did what she could to set her friend at ease.

“A big difference,” she answered, pushing back her chair and rising to her feet. “Would you like something to drink, Jeannine?” she asked kindly. “I have everything from tea to soft drinks to something a little more ‘bracing’ if you’d rather have that.”

Jeannine drew in a deep breath before answering. “I’ll take tea,” she replied. “Strong tea.”

Theresa smiled as she went to the counter against the back wall, where she had a pot of hot water steaming. She had a preference for tea herself.

“So, it’s been a while, Jeannine,” she said in her customary easygoing manner. “How are you?”

“Concerned, frankly,” the other woman admitted.

Recrossing the room, Theresa held out the cup of tea. “You’re worried about Miranda, aren’t you?”

Her friend nearly dropped the cup Theresa had handed her. Some hot liquid sloshed over the side. “How did you know?” she asked, surprised.

“To begin with, you asked me about my so-called ‘sideline,’” Theresa answered, employing a whimsical term for the labor that had become near and dear not just to her heart, but to Maizie’s and Celia’s hearts, as well.

Theresa and the two women she had been best friends with since the third grade had weathered all of life’s highs and lows together. The highs included marriage, children and the successful businesses all three had started in the second half of their lives and were currently running.

The lows included all three becoming widows. But she, Maizie and Celia had learned to push on past the pain. After all, they each had children to provide for. They were determined to lead productive, fulfilling lives. And above all else, they were always, always there for one another.

Their matchmaking had begun slowly, by finding matches for their own children. That was to be the end of it, but matching up the right two people brought such satisfaction with it, they’d decided to try their hand at it again.

And again.

With each successful match, their secondary vocation just seemed to take wings. They loved the businesses they had begun and nurtured individually, but there was something exceedingly fulfilling about bringing together two people who otherwise might never have found one another.

Two people who clearly belonged together.

It looked as if the adventure was about to begin again, Theresa thought.

“Tell me about Miranda,” she coaxed, taking her seat once more. “How is she? Is she still as wonderfully generous and bighearted as ever?”

Jeannine thought of her only daughter—her only living child—whose career path had been chosen at the age of ten. “Yes—and that’s the problem. She’s so busy giving of herself, working at the children’s hospital, the women’s shelter and the city’s animal shelter, that she doesn’t have any time to focus on herself. Don’t get me wrong, Theresa. I’m prouder of Miranda than I can possibly say, but, well, I’m really afraid that if she keeps going like this, she’s eventually going to wind up alone.” Jeannine sighed. “I know that sounds like I’m being small-minded and meddling, but—”

Theresa cut her short. “Trust me, I know the feeling,” she assured her. “We’re mothers, Jeannine. It comes with the territory.” With her business going full steam ahead the way it was these days, she could use a little diversion. “Tell me, do you have any idea what Miranda’s dating life is like?”

“I have a very clear idea,” Jeannine replied. “It’s nonexistent these days.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed sadly. “The problem is that no man can compete with her full-time job, as well as all her volunteer work. Besides, what man wants to come in fourth?”

“Definitely not the kind of man we would want for your daughter,” Theresa said with conviction.

Jeannine looked confused. “What are you saying?”

Theresa smiled as she began making plans. “I’m saying we need to change Miranda’s focus a little.”

“So you do think there’s hope?” A glimmer of optimism entered the other woman’s hazel eyes.

Theresa leaned over and patted her friend’s hand. “Jeannine,” she said confidently, “there is always hope.”

Chapter One

“Ladies, we have work to do,” Theresa announced the moment she entered Maizie Sommer’s house.

She strode into Maizie’s family room with the vigor of a woman half her age. Matchmaking projects always got her adrenaline going, creating a level of enthusiasm within her even greater than her usual line of work did—and it went without saying that she dearly loved her catering business.

“We certainly do,” Cecilia Parnell agreed.

Already seated at the card table—their usual gathering place whenever they were discussing their newest undertaking in the matchmaking arena—Celia turned to look at her. “This one is going to be a real challenge for us.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Theresa protested, gracefully slipping into the chair that was set up between Celia and Maizie. “I don’t think it’ll be that hard finding someone suitable.”

Taken aback, Celia looked quizzically at her old friend, who hadn’t called ahead with any details about the person she felt should be their latest project. “Wait, how would you know?”

“How would I know?” Theresa repeated incredulously. “Because I’ve known Miranda Steele ever since she was a little girl. She has this incredibly huge heart and she’s always trying to help everyone. Fix everyone,” Theresa emphasized, which was why she had come to think of the young woman as “the fixer” in recent years.

“Miranda?” Celia echoed, decidedly more confused than she’d initially been. “Maizie and I were talking about Colin when you walked in.”

It was Theresa’s turn to be confused. “Who’s Colin?” she asked, looking from Maizie to Celia.

“Police Officer Colin Kirby,” Celia clarified, adding, “our latest matchmaking project. His aunt Lily is a friend of mine and she came to talk to me on the outside chance that maybe I—actually we—could find someone for him.”

Without pausing, Celia launched into a brief version of the police officer’s backstory. “Lily took him in when her sister, Vanessa, a single mother, died in a car accident. Colin was fourteen at the time. She said that he’s a decent, hardworking young man who just shut down when he lost his mother. He enlisted in the Marines straight out of high school. When his tour of duty overseas ended, he was honorably discharged and immediately joined the police force in Los Angeles.”

Maizie appeared a little dubious. “Los Angeles is a little out of our usual territory,” she commented. “But I guess—”

“Oh no.” Celia quickly cut in. “He’s not in Los Angeles anymore, he’s in Bedford now. Lily talked him into moving back down here. Her health isn’t what it used to be and he’s her only living relative, so he made the move for her, which, in my book, shows you what sort of a person he is.

“The problem is,” Celia continued, “Lily says he’s really closed off, especially after what he saw during his tour overseas and as a police officer in one of the roughest areas in Los Angeles. To put it in Lily’s own words,” she concluded, “Colin needs someone to ‘fix him.’”

Smiling, Maizie shifted her gaze from Celia to Theresa. It was obvious that, in her estimation, they needed to look no further in either case. “You just said you have someone who likes to ‘fix’ people.”

But Celia was more skeptical than her friend. She needed more to work with. “Fix how?”

Theresa gave them Miranda’s background in a nutshell. “According to her mother, Miranda’s a pediatric nurse at Bedford Children’s Hospital who volunteers at a women’s shelter in her free time. She also volunteers at the city’s animal shelter and occasionally takes in strays until they can be placed in a permanent home.”

Maizie’s smile widened. “Ladies, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but this sounds to me like a match made in heaven. I’m assuming you both have a few more pertinent details that we can work with—like what these two look like and how old they are, for openers,” said the woman whose decision to find her daughter a suitable match had initially gotten what turned out to be their “side business” rolling eight years ago.

“Miranda’s thirty,” Theresa told them, producing a photograph on her smartphone that Jeannie had sent her, and holding it up for the others to see.

“Colin’s thirty-three,” Celia said. “And I’ll ask Lily to send me a picture.”

So saying, she texted a message to the woman. In less than a minute, her cell phone buzzed, announcing that her request had been received and answered.

“Here we go,” Celia declared. “Oh my,” she murmured as she looked at the image that had materialized on her smartphone. Colin’s aunt had sent her a photo of her nephew in his police uniform.

Maizie took Celia’s hand and turned the phone around so she could look at it.

“Definitely ‘oh my,’” she agreed wholeheartedly. Pushing the deck of cards aside, she gave up all pretense that they were going to engage in a game of poker this evening, even a single hand. Her gaze took in her two lifelong friends. “Ladies, let’s get down to work. These two selfless servants of society need us. And from what I’ve heard, they also need each other,” the successful Realtor added knowingly. “We’ll require more information to bring about the perfect subtle ‘meet’ to get this particular ball rolling.”

Filled with anticipation, the three old friends got busy.

* * *

Every year, the holiday season seemed to begin earlier and earlier, Miranda Steele thought.

Not that she was complaining. Christmas had always been her very favorite time of year. While others grumbled that the stores were putting up Christmas decorations way too soon, motivated by a desire to increase their already obscene profits, Miranda saw it as a way to stretch the spirit of Christmas a little further, thereby making the true meaning of the season last a little longer.

But sometimes, like now, the pace became a little too hectic even for her. She had just put in a ten-hour day at the hospital, coming in way before her shift actually began in order to help decorate the oncology ward, where she worked. She felt particularly driven because she knew that for some of the children there it would be their last Christmas.

As harsh and sad as that thought was to deal with, she chose to focus on the bright side: bringing the best possible Christmas she could to the children and their families.

At times, she felt like a lone cheerleader, tirelessly attempting to drum up enthusiasm and support from the other nurses, doctors and orderlies on the floor until she had everyone finally pitching in, even if they weren’t all cheerful about it.

She didn’t care if the rest of the staff was cheerful or not, as long as they helped out. And as was her habit, she worked harder than anyone to make sure that things were ultimately “just right.”

If she were a normal person, about now she would be on her way home, having earned some serious bubble bath time.

But soaking in a hot tub was not on this afternoon’s agenda. She didn’t have time for a bubble bath, as much as she longed for one. She had to get Lily’s birthday party ready.

Lily Hayden was eight today. The little girl was one of the many children currently living with their moms at the Bedford Women’s Home, a shelter where Miranda volunteered four days a week after work.

The other two or three days she spent at the city’s no-kill animal shelter, where she worked with dogs and cats—and the occasional rabbit—that were rescued from a possible bleak demise on the street. Miranda had an affinity for all things homeless, be they four-footed or two-footed. In her opinion there never seemed to be enough hours in the day for her to help all these deserving creatures.

She had been working in all three areas for years now and felt she had barely been able to scratch the surface.

Agitated, Miranda looked at the clock on her dashboard. The minutes were flying by.

She was running the risk of being late.

“And if you don’t get there with this cake, Lily is going to think you’ve forgotten all about her, just like her mom did,” Miranda muttered to herself.

Lily’s mother had left the little girl at the shelter when she’d gone to look for work. That was two days ago. No one had heard from the woman since. Miranda was beginning to worry that Gina Hayden, overwhelmed with her circumstances, had bailed out, using the excuse that the little girl was better off at the shelter, without her.

Stepping on the gas, Miranda made a sharp right turn at the next corner, reaching out to hold the cake box on the passenger seat in place.

Focused on getting to the homeless shelter on time, Miranda wasn’t aware of the dancing red and blue lights behind her until she heard the siren, high-pitched, demanding and shrill, slicing through the air. The sound drew her attention to the lights, simultaneously making her stomach drop with a jarring thud.

Oh damn, why today of all days? Miranda silently demanded as, resigned to her fate, she pulled her car over to the right. Even as she did so, something inside her wanted to push her foot down on the accelerator and just take off.

But considering that her newfound nemesis was riding a motorcycle and her car was a fifteen-year-old asthmatic vehicle way past its glory days, a clean getaway was simply not in the cards.

So she pulled over and waited for her inevitable ticket, fervently hoping the whole process was not going to take too long. She was already behind schedule. Miranda didn’t want to disappoint Lily, who had already been disappointed far too often in her short life.

* * *

This wasn’t his usual route. For some unknown reason, the desk sergeant had decided that today, he and Kaminski were going to trade routes.

Sergeant Bailey had made the switch, saying something about “mixing things up and keeping them fresh”—whatever that was supposed to mean, Colin thought, grumbling under his breath.

As far as he was concerned, one route was as good as another. At least here in Bedford the only thing people shot at him were dirty looks, instead of bullets from the muzzles of illegally gotten handguns. He had to admit that patrolling the streets of Bedford was a far cry from patrolling the barrio in Los Angeles, or driving on the roads in Afghanistan. In those situations, a man had to develop eyes in the back of his head to stay alive.

Here in Bedford, those same eyes were in danger of shutting, but from boredom, not a fatal shot.

He supposed, after everything he had been through in the last ten years, a little boredom was welcome—at least for a while.

But he didn’t exactly like the idea of hiding on the far side of the underpass, waiting to issue a ticket to some unsuspecting Bedford resident.

Yet those were the rules of the game here, and for now, he wasn’t about to rock the boat.

First and foremost, he was here because of Aunt Lily. Because he owed her big-time. She had taken him in when no one else would, and to his discredit, he had repaid her by shutting her out and being surly. It wasn’t her fault he had behaved that way; the blame was his.

In his defense—if he could call it that—he hadn’t wanted to risk forming another attachment, only to have to endure the pain that came if and when he lost her. Lost her the way he’d lost everyone else in his life that ever mattered. His mother. Some of the men in his platoon. And Owens, his last partner in LA.

Colin’s method of preventing that sort of pain was to cut himself off from everyone. That way, the pain had no chance of ever taking root, no chance of slicing him off at the knees.

At least that was what he told himself.

Still, he reasoned, playing his own devil’s advocate, if there wasn’t some part of him that cared, that was still capable of forming some sort of an attachment, however minor, would he have uprooted himself the way he had in order to be here because Aunt Lily had asked him to?