Daddy's Little Matchmakers. Kathleen Y'Barbo

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СКАЧАТЬ Main Street. As she watched him go, Amy wondered what it must be like to live in a noisy house. To have to end a call because children were laughing.

       Amy sighed. Somewhere out there the Lord had a place for her. And perhaps there would be a family, as well. Whatever, wherever, she knew she would find that perfect fit. Until then, nothing in her life could be anything less than temporary.

       Once again, Eric Wilson turned to wave, and this time she returned the gesture without hesitation. Silently she added a prayer that he, too, would find whatever it was he needed.

       Eric Wilson slipped in the back door of the clinic and reached for the lone file awaiting his attention in his in-box then went into his office and closed the door. Unlike his in-box, his mailbox was stuffed full of envelopes, all bills needing to be paid. Eric sighed and settled behind the desk he’d inherited with the building.

       Since arriving in Vine Beach and acquiring Dr. Simmons’s dwindling practice, he’d found it painfully obvious why the old vet had chosen to retire. There simply weren’t enough clients to keep a full-time veterinarian in business.

       Of course, he’d known the size of the practice and had ample time to change his mind once he saw the sorry state of the ledger sheet, but coming to Vine Beach meant giving up some things. Financial solvency and his prize sailboat would just have to be sacrificed in the short term so his girls would be settled and happy in the long term.

       It was a fair trade, though he would miss that sailboat dearly.

       Perhaps he should call now and get it over with. He could always upload a photo of the craft tonight from his laptop. Surely he had a decent one saved somewhere. Besides, it would not be any easier to put the boat up for sale on Monday. Likely he would find too many good reasons to keep it instead.

       Eric reached for the phone then decided the classifieds girl was probably not back at her desk. Amy, that was her name. And she was pretty. Eyes as blue as the sky and blond hair that fell in heavy curls over her shoulders. This much he’d allowed himself to notice. Anything more just felt wrong. As if he was somehow being unfaithful to his wife’s memory.

       And yet his friends all told him to get on with his life. Just this morning his mother had gently reminded him it had been more than three years since Christy’s long battle with cancer had been lost. And then there were the seemingly nonstop questions from the girls regarding his single state and when they might expect him to fall in love again.

       The trouble with all the good advice was that none of it felt as if it applied to him. As for the girls and their questions, what did they know of love? It wasn’t as if he could just shut off his feelings at will. In truth, Eric wasn’t completely sure how he felt about any of it.

       Worse, the more days that passed the fewer memories he could recollect about life before cancer changed everything. Not everything, he corrected. The girls were still the same. Slightly more subdued when he tried to talk to them about Christy, but all in all just as lovely and lively as they had been before.

       Their resiliency humbled him, as did their repeated promises to him that God would bring him another wife. Not a girlfriend, they always insisted, for he told them he would never date, but a wife. A wife to make him happy again.

       A tear threatened and he blinked it away. That his girls were concerned with his happiness spoke volumes, though he couldn’t yet agree with their idea of a solution. Perhaps his mother and the others were right. Maybe he just needed to get over it and move on.

       But how? It sounded so easy in theory, but in reality, Eric knew he was well and truly stuck. Hadn’t his old friend Riley said the same thing just yesterday on the phone? Pride hadn’t allowed Eric to answer, or maybe it was the fact that once again Riley was trying to convince him to join the widowers’ small group that met on Saturday mornings.

       He didn’t need a small group to remind him he was a widower. And he surely didn’t need to hang around a basketball court with a bunch of other guys talking about death and dying.

       Eric ran his hand through his hair and leaned back to close his eyes. A moment later, he opened them again, his gaze landing on the stack of bills. Yet another problem he had not solved.

       What he could do, however, was see to the lone client who was waiting for him in exam room one. With a sigh, he forced his mind to focus on the details of the file on his desk then went to see to the ailing terrier. At least a broken bone was something he could fix, unlike the troubles that seemed to pile on like stones on a very tall and completely impassable wall.

      Chapter Two

      Amy returned to her desk with the veterinarian on her mind. Absently, she swiped at the faint brown stain on her blouse, now slightly damp after a scrubbing in the ladies’ room sink, as she looked out the window across Main Street to the clinic. Settling into her chair, she spied the message light blinking and reached for the phone.

       “How much is an ad?” the cutest little voice asked. A pause and then came whispering that Amy couldn’t quite decipher. “There’s no one there, Grammy.” Finally the girl gave a phone number. Twice.

       Smiling, Amy wrote down the number then placed the return call. An older woman answered with a firm, “Hello?”

       “Yes,” Amy said, “I received a call about placing an ad.” She paused. “But I believe it was from a child so…”

       “Oh, yes,” the woman said. “Of course. Just a moment and I’ll put Hailey on.”

       “All right,” Amy said as she wondered what was going on.

       “Hello” came the voice from the answering machine message. “I, that is, we would like to place an ad. How much will that cost?”

       “It depends.” Amy clicked over to the proper screen on her computer. “What sort of ad would you like to place?”

       A moment of silence followed, and then the shared whispers of several other voices came across the line. Apparently this would be a group effort.

       “Hello?” Amy said. “Is anyone there?”

       “Yes, ma’am” came the shaky response.

       “All right, then.” Amy placed her fingers on the keyboard. “First I need your full name and address so I can set up the account.” When the girl complied, Amy said, “All right, then, Hailey Wilson, go ahead and tell me what you’d like the ad to say.”

       “We would like to place an ad for our daddy, Dr. Wilson.” Someone with a similar girlish voice shouted a correction. “No, I mean for someone,” the child amended.

       Another voice, also quite young, added, “For someone for our daddy.”

      Dr. Wilson. Amy grinned. Eric Wilson’s girls were setting him up? Interesting. She checked the caller ID. The number came up as belonging to Susan Wilson, likely the woman who answered the phone.

       A squeal from the other end of the line drew Amy’s attention back to the situation at hand. “Before I can process your request, you’ll need to put your daddy on,” Amy said.

       “Well, I can’t exactly do that.” A pause, this time without any background noise beyond a barking dog. “My daddy is unable to come to the phone. He just went back to work. But he’s the best daddy in the СКАЧАТЬ