Hope's Discovery (THE MATCHMAKER TRILOGY) Read Online Free Page B

bottle of champagne. “I have something special for tonight. In honor of the birthday girl.”
    Hope smiled wide. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”
    “Can I have some?” Becky asked.
    “You can have a little taste,” Thomas promised, though Hope knew he wouldn’t have his own. He didn’t drink. She’d never seen him drink. She’d been told that he drank plenty once. It had been enough to nearly kill him.
    Thomas opened the bottle and sniffed it.
    “I don’t think you’ll like it, Becky.”
    “Oh, it’s an adult thing,” she said with her face already scrunched up. Hope’s heart went out to her. She’d been that girl not so long ago. With Carissa being seventeen years older than she was, she’d shared the table with adults her entire life and wanted to always be just like them.
    Hope wrapped her arm around her niece’s shoulders.
    “Well, if you’d rather not have the bubbly stuff, then I think you should have a bigger piece of cake.”
    “Really, Auntie Hope? I can have a bigger piece of cake?”
    “That is, if there is cake.” She looked around at the others at the table.
    Sophia crossed her arms over her chest and shot her chin up. “Have I ever missed baking you a birthday cake?”
    “Not once.” Hope reached across the table and placed her hand on her mother’s.
    Sophia Kendal, what an amazing woman. What woman took on the responsibility of another person’s child and loved her like Sophia had loved her?
    Hope sat back and sipped her champagne, listening to the chaos, and thinking. She’d battled with the thought for years. Had Mandy had a change of heart and given her to David because she actually loved her? Or was she hoping to punish him by dumping a baby on him and then dying? They’d all told her what he was willing to sacrifice to keep her, and she wasn’t even his blood. He could have lost Sophia altogether, but he wanted to give Hope a home and he wanted her with her sister. Not a day had gone by in her life that she hadn’t thanked God that David had decided to keep her and that Sophia had fallen in love with her.
    Sophia carried the cake from the kitchen and set it in front of Hope. Precisely placed on the cake were twenty-three candles.
    Becky snuggled in next to her aunt. “I counted them and put them on the cake.”
    “I think you put too many.”
    “Nope. Mama said to put two whole boxes on and then take one off.”
    “Well now that is one smart mama.” Hope touched her head to her niece’s as she watched Thomas light the candles on her cake.
    This family, her real family, was all the family she would ever need.

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    H e’d paced the floor of his hotel room all night. Can you spend more time there getting to know about them? I would like to know who they are and what they are like before I approach her. Donald Buchanan’s words had rung in his ears.
    Now standing outside of the Kendal/Samuel School of Music, he heard them again and verified to himself that he was standing there at Donald Buchanan’s request. He’d watched Thomas Samuel, co-owner of the school and brother-in-law to Hope, unlock the door an hour earlier. The first set of students had walked in. He’d counted eight of them. They walked back out forty-five minutes later. Not one had an instrument; they carried only notebooks.
    Trevor left the comforts of his rental car and walked across the street to the school. He stopped briefly outside Hope’s shop. It was still dark. According to the sign on the door, it would be open in the next hour. He gazed into the window past the collectibles neatly arranged on the shelves. The artwork covering the walls commanded his attention, specifically a picture of a hummingbird, which he was sure his mother had a small print of in her office.
    “Well, Ms. Kendal, you certainly are talented,” he muttered to himself.
    He knew he’d be entering the store within that next hour. He wondered if Hope would open it or if she had