LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To

      Andrew Gallagher,

      who mentioned

      his daughter’s name

      to me

      and inspired a story.

       Prologue

      “Are you the lady who finds mommies?”

      The high-pitched, rather intelligent little voice cut a hole in Maizie Sommers’s mental haze. For the last half hour, the successful Realtor had been busy putting together an ad for her newest local real estate listing so that it could be entered on her website. Finding just the right words to place the proper emphasis on the twenty-year-old ranch house’s best features had been nothing short of a challenge. The term fixer-upper carried such a negative connotation.

      Absorbed in the task, Maizie had only vaguely heard the front door to her office opening and closing. It had registered as just so much background noise. Part of her thought she’d only imagined it.

      Especially when she’d glanced in the direction of the door and hadn’t seen anyone come in.

      But there obviously was a reason for that. The person who had come in was only approximately half the size of an adult.

      Maizie stopped working and after looking around, she half rose in her seat and looked over the edge of her desk. Ten small fingertips were firmly pressed against it. The little girl pushed herself up as far as she could go, standing on the very tiptoes of her black patent-leather shoes.

      Maizie put down her pen and smiled at the child, judging her to be around four, or possibly a small five. Slight and a strawberry-blonde, her newest visitor had exceptionally intelligent-looking blue eyes. She was going to be a knockout in a dozen years, Maizie judged.

      “Hello.”

      The girl, who more than anything resembled a perfect little doll, tossed her head—sending her curls bouncing—and paused only a moment to politely return the greeting, “Hello,” before she got back down to business.

      No doubt, she was a woman on a mission.

      “Are you the lady who finds mommies?” the pint-size strawberry-blonde asked again. “My friend Greg said you found one for his dad and that she’s really nice and now they’re all very happy.”

      Maizie never forgot a name, especially not a child’s name. The little girl was talking about Greg and Gary Muldare. After Sheila, Micah Muldare’s aunt, had come to see her, lamenting the young widower’s state, she and her two dearest friends had strategized and gotten the boys’ father, Micah, together with a bright, up-and-coming dynamo of a lawyer, Tracy Ryan, who solved Micah’s legal problems and along the way wound up becoming Mrs. Micah Muldare.

      Word was getting around faster and faster, Maizie mused with a smile. She’d had walk-in clients before—both for her professional services and for her unofficial ones, but none of her clients had ever come in the economy size.

      “What happened to your mommy, dear?” Maizie asked the girl kindly.

      And just what was the child doing here by herself? Had the little girl run away in order to come see her? Her own daughter had been precocious, but even she hadn’t been this independent at such a young age.

      There was just the slightest hint of sorrow in her voice as the girl said, “Mommy died before I could remember her, but Daddy remembers, and it makes him sad when he does. I want Daddy to be happy like Greg’s daddy is.” Her voice took on conviction as she said, “My daddy needs one. He needs a mommy,” she clarified in case that had gotten lost in the shuffle of words. “Can you find him one? And make her pretty, because my daddy said he wants one as pretty as me. That’s why he’s with Elizabeth now,” she confided. “She’s pretty, but she’s not a mommy, just a lady.” Lowering her voice as she raised herself up as far as she could on her toes so that only Maizie could hear, she said in what amounted to a stage whisper, “I don’t think she likes kids.”

      Before Maizie could recover or comment on either the little girl’s request, or her summation of her father’s current relationship, the door to her widely sought-after real estate agency opened a second time in the space of less than five minutes.

      It wasn’t that Maizie was unaccustomed to a lot of foot traffic, thanks to both her reputation and the popular shopping center location of her agency, she was more than used to a constant flow of humanity. However, the two people who worked for her were currently out showing properties, and she had no appointments on her calendar for at least an hour. She’d been promising herself a quick lunch now for the last ninety minutes—the second she finished writing the ad.

      But something far more interesting had come up and her neglected stomach was pushed into second place.

      Humor curved the corners of Maizie’s mouth. She’d never had a walk-in who wasn’t able to see over her desk before.

      But just as Maizie had gotten her newest would-be client to tell her story, an utterly frazzled-looking woman suddenly burst into her real estate office. The second she did, the woman made a beeline for the tiny visitor who was standing on the other side of Maizie’s desk.

      “Virginia Ann Scarborough, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” the blonde demanded as she fell to her knees and smothered the little girl in a huge hug that utterly reeked of relief as well as panic.

      “No,” the little girl replied in a small, somewhat contrite voice. Her pained expression told Maizie that the girl was merely enduring the hug. Apparently, unlike the distraught woman who’d found her, she hadn’t been at all afraid.

      “I was trying to find a mommy for Daddy,” the child explained, as if that would clear everything up and exonerate her as well.

      “You know you’re not supposed to run off like that, Ginny,” the woman chided.

      Making a swift survey of the little girl, the woman appeared satisfied that the only thing worse for wear were her own nerves. She rose to her feet and only then turned her attention to the other person in the room.

      “I’m very sorry about this,” she apologized to Maizie. “I hope my niece didn’t break anything.”

      “I

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