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      To

      Dr Stephen Johnson,

      for being

      an excellent doctor all these years

      and for giving me

      a good idea

       Prologue

      “Well, I’m happy to report that all your lab tests came back totally normal,” Dr. John Stephens said with a smile, closing Maizie Sommers’s folder. He turned the stool he was sitting on so he was facing her directly. “If all my patients were as healthy as you and those two best friends of yours, I’d be forced to retire.”

      “Don’t you dare,” Maizie warned the man that she had known for the better part of thirty-five years, first as her family doctor, and then as a friend. “Doctors like you are hard to find in this day and age.”

      “You mean old?” He chuckled.

      “No, I mean caring. And you’re not old, John,” she insisted, admiring his thick mane of silver hair and that endearing twinkle in his eyes. “As a matter of fact, there are times that you are quite possibly the youngest man I know.”

      The doctor could only shake his head and laugh. Maizie had a gift for always saying the right thing at the right time. And he appreciated it, recognizing it for what it was: kindness.

      “Then you definitely should get out more, Maizie,” he urged. “That’s my prescription for you—you need to broaden your base.”

      “My base is just fine, thank you,” she assured him with a confident smile. “And you’ll be happy to know that it most definitely is broad.”

      Seeing that she had managed to keep her trim figure over all these years, he could only interpret her comment one way. “Then your business is going well?” he asked. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he was running ahead of schedule and could allow himself a couple of moments to catch up.

      After her husband had died, needing to provide for herself and her young daughter, he knew that Maizie had gone into the real estate business. She had done quite well for herself over the years and now owned her own company.

      “Mercifully, yes. People still want to own their own homes, and I’m right there, eager to help them make their dreams come true.” She never liked to focus on herself for more than a minute or so. She was far more interested in the people she was dealing with. Her doctor was included in this wide circle. “How are your children?” she asked in the same pleasant, unassuming tone. And as she asked, she studied his face, waiting for a response.

      He moved her file from one side of his desk to another for no reason except that he seemed to need to do something with his hands. “They’re healthy.”

      Maizie leaned in a little. “That’s not quite what I asked, John.”

      He laughed, shaking his head. The woman was incredible. But then, he’d thought that on more than one occasion. “Sometimes I think you wasted your talent, going into real estate. You would have made one hell of a prosecutor.”

      “I don’t like going after people. I like making them happy. And I love matching up houses and people, bringing them together. There is also my other interest,” she reminded him with a subtle smile.

      “Ah, yes, matchmaking.” He recalled her telling him about that the last time she’d been in for her yearly checkup. “Are you still into that?”

      “Yes,” she said simply, wondering if he was going to ask her something a little less general, something that would address the nature of what had become her full-time hobby of sorts. “And so are Theresa and Cecilia,” she told him, mentioning the women who had been her best friends since the third grade.

      All three of them were businesswomen, all three of them were widows and all three of them reveled in matchmaking strictly for its own sake. Bringing two people together who seemed destined for each other was all the payment they really required.

      “How’s that going, anyway?”

      The question sounded just a tad too innocently phrased. She studied him with interest. Had he finally admitted to himself that he was lonely? That he needed someone in his

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