LITMIR.BIZ

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might be someone else in the world like that? Someone who, in addition to all the aforementioned attributes, could also make her world stand still.

      That was how, she remembered, her mother had told her that she’d felt the very first time that she’d met her father.

      It was one of Elizabeth’s most cherished memories, sitting beside her mother, flipping through an album of old photographs. She remembered it was raining that day. She had to have been around four or five. Eric had been around two, and Ethan was still in his crib. She and her mother had looked over the album for hours. Her mother had a story about every photograph.

      The next summer, her mother was gone.

      Just like that.

      A victim of an insidious, cruel disease. It had taken her father nearly two years to forgive himself for not being able to save her.

      That was real love, she thought.

      And that was what she was never destined to find for herself. Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She was just going to have to make her peace with that—if she was ever to have any peace at all.

      Besides, she thought, how would she feel if she finally found that one special someone and then lost him, the way her father had lost her mother? Maybe it was for the best to just avoid the pain altogether.

      With a resigned sigh she went to the refrigerator to see what she had that might lend itself to at least partially filling the emptiness she felt in her stomach.

      There wasn’t much to choose from.

      Her father always sent her home with food whenever she visited him. In addition to being a top-notch physician, her father was also a terrific cook who could throw together sumptuous meals out of next to nothing.

      She, however, lacked the cooking gene that thrived so well in his veins. Despite the fact that her brothers both knew how to whip things up, her father had failed to pass that particular trait on to her in any manner, shape or form.

      She burned water when she boiled it.

      Consequently, the only items that resided in her refrigerator after she ran out of the home-cooked meals her father loaded her down with were leftovers from the local take-out restaurants.

      She took a quick survey—not that there was all that much to look over.

      “Leftover Chinese it is,” Elizabeth murmured, pulling out a couple of cartons with red Chinese characters embossed on the sides.

      She brought the cartons over to the small dinette table she had set up in the alcove. Taking the portable phone receiver over with her as well, Elizabeth made herself comfortable. She took a few bites of food—she wasn’t altogether clear on exactly what she was eating at this point since the meals all tended to blend together after a couple of days—and pressed Play.

      The first call, as she’d guessed, was from her father.

      Elizabeth smiled as she listened.

      “Are you there, Elizabeth?” There was a slight pause as he waited for a pickup. “No? Guess you’re busy playing. I know, old joke. But I still like it. Old has its place, you know. Like your old dad.”

      “You’re not old, Dad,” she murmured affectionately. “You’re distinguished.”

      “Hope it was a good evening for you,” her father continued. “Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you in person. Nothing new on this end. One of your brothers is working, the other one isn’t.” A slight chuckle accompanied the statement. “Two out of three isn’t bad, I always say. Sleep well, my virtuoso. I’ll try to catch you tomorrow. If not, see you on Thursday. Love you.” It was the way her father ended every phone call to her, the way he sent her off each time they parted company. Hearing it always made her smile—and feel safe.

      “Love you, too, Dad,” Elizabeth said softly to the machine.

      Just the sound of her father’s deep, authoritative voice somehow managed to make her feel better, she thought as she pressed for the next message.

      Ten seconds into the call, she pressed the button to bypass the message. It was someone asking for a contribution to some college on the East Coast that she had never heard of.

      The third and last message was the kind of message that she listened for, the ones that involved her bread and butter.

      The deep, resonant voice caught her attention immediately. Putting down her fork, she picked up a pen, drew her pad to her and listened for details.

      “I’m not sure if I have the right number, but a Mrs. Manetti suggested I call. She’s catering for me. Well, not me, but my parents, except they don’t know—” She heard the man sigh, as if annoyed with the way that had come out. “Let me start over,” he said.

      “Go right ahead,” Elizabeth murmured, amused. She popped a quick forkful into her mouth, picked up her pen again and waited.

      “I’m hosting this special party and someone suggested that music would be good—”

      “Yes,” Elizabeth said to the phone, heartily agreeing. “Music is always good.”

      And so was getting paid for making it, she thought fondly.

      The man with the deep voice cleared his throat several times, and she waited patiently for the message to continue.

      “I’ll…uh…try to get you later,” he finally said just before terminating the call.

      That’s it? Elizabeth stared accusingly at her answering machine.

      “I can’t believe he just hung up,” she said incredulously. She pressed the button that allowed her to look at the previous call, wanting to find the man’s phone number via the caller ID feature since he hadn’t left it on the garbled, aborted message.

      The word private spread out across the small screen. Using the *69 feature on her phone yielded the same frustrating results. No phone number, no name, no nothing. The man with the sultry voice and the tied tongue obviously valued his privacy.

      Elizabeth blew out an exasperated breath. Nothing she hated more than to think she was going to be offered a job only to have it reneged.

      Or, in this case, dangled before her, and then pulled like some carrot on a string.

      Maybe he’ll call back, she thought, putting the receiver back down. All she could do was hope. She wasn’t at a place in her life where she could just shrug carelessly when it came to the promise of money. She needed every gig she could line up.

      “Maybe tomorrow will be better,” she murmured to herself.

      She erased message number two and three, clearing space on her machine for more messages. If Mr. Sultry Voice didn’t call back, someone else would. Happily, someone always did. After all her monthly bills were taken care of, she’d put the remainder of whatever money she’d earned aside in what amounted to a tiny nest egg. She turned to the latter on those occasions when she found herself needing to bridge the financial gap between engagements.

      Lucky for her that her needs were few and her tastes were the exact opposite of extravagant, she thought, making short work of the leftover Chinese food.

       Chapter Two

      “So, how did it go, Jared? Were you able to reach Elizabeth to make the arrangements?” Theresa Manetti’s melodic voice asked early the next morning when, bleary-eyed and semiconscious, he’d managed to pick up the phone receiver on his second attempt.

      The caterer had caught Jared Winterset completely off guard. He’d been up late, working on an ad campaign that needed some serious last-minute revamping and fueling his flagging energy with bracing black coffee, which could have walked off on its own power at any time. Consequently, he wasn’t firing on all four cylinders this morning when he answered his phone.

      Jared

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