And numerous.

And made people wish they were anywhere else.

"Brandon couldn't go out with me even if he wanted to," Alison said.

"Why not?" Charlie asked.

"Professional ethics," she said.

"Professional ethics? What's professional ethics got to do with real estate? You live in the wrong neighborhood, or something?"

"Okay, Dad," Alison said on a sigh. "We lied. Brandon used to be a real estate investor. Now he's a matchmaker."

Brandon raised an eyebrow. So we're going there after all?

"Huh?" Charlie said.

"You know. He matches people up. His grandmother died, and he took over her business."

"So that's what that sign is out front? Matchmaking by Rochelle? And now he's the matchmaker?"

"That's right."

He turned to Brandon. "Might want to think about changing the name."

Brandon smiled. "I'm working on it."

"But what's the matchmaking thing got to do with him going out with you?" Charlie asked Alison.

"He can't date his clients," Alison said, trying to shelve the issue once and for all. "I'm his client."

Charlie blinked with surprise. "So he's your matchmaker?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Why didn't you just tell me that?"

"Because I thought you'd think it was weird. First that I hired a matchmaker. And second that you'd think Brandon was weird because he was one. No offense, Dad, but sometimes you're a little judgmental."

"I'm not judgmental. I just tell the truth." He turned to Brandon. "So why do you want to be a matchmaker?"

"I want to continue my grandmother's business."

"Good money in matchmaking?"

"Yeah. Not bad."

"Do you like it?"

"Yeah. I do."

"My daughter's wrong, you know. I've never been one to give a damn what a man did for a living, as long as it was legal and he could support his family."

"Oh, come on, Dad," Alison said. "How about the guy I dated who was an interior decorator? He made eighty grand a year, and arranging furniture isn't illegal."

"That was different. He was gay."

"No, Dad. He was straight. The guy I dated who owned the Harley shop-he was gay."

"I still don't believe that."

Alison just shook her head.

"So does this mean you've been setting up Alison on dates?" Charlie said.

"A few," Brandon said.

"How's that going?"

"I haven't found quite the right match for her yet."

"But he's getting closer," Alison said, even though a guy with lesbian dreams wasn't exactly moving in quite the right direction.

"Good," Charlie said. "It's about time she started dating men who are good enough for her. She wants to get married, you know."

"Yeah, she's mentioned that a time or two."

Brandon gave her a furtive smile, and she decided to just quit being embarrassed by all this or it was going to be a very long day.

A few minutes later, Charlie gave a wrench one last twist. Brandon went into the house to flip the breaker, then try the unit. When it came on again, she heard was the low rumble of the ancient appliance chugging back to life.

Brandon came back outside. "Thanks for the help, Charlie. You saved me a bundle of money."

"No sense paying somebody through the nose to do something I can do for free. If you have any more trouble with it, you just give me a call." He looked back and forth between them. "So what's next on the agenda?"

"I have a list," Alison said. "We'll go over it when everybody gets here."

As Charlie gathered up his tools, Alison looked at Brandon and mouthed I'm so sorry, then gave a little eye roll in her father's direction. He just smiled.

Alison heard a car door slam. She looked to the curb and saw Tony and Heather.

"Oh, good," Brandon said. "Heather. She hates me."

"I wouldn't say she hates you. It's more like she's wary of you. Big difference."

"Gee. That makes me feel way better."

A minute or two later, Bea showed up, and everybody jumped in to get things done. Her father volunteered to paint, so he and Bea started spreading drop cloths in the kitchen. Tony and Brandon moved furniture so they could polish the floors and clean the rugs. Alison and Heather joined forces on the windows, starting with the ones in the kitchen and breakfast room. They hadn't been washed in years, and it was a heavy-duty job to scrub them clean. Once they were finished with those, it was time for Bea and Charlie to start the painting.

Bea pried open the first can of wall paint. "So. Girls. What do you think of the color?"

Alison and Heather glanced over. It was a rich, creamy gold. Perfect for a Victorian kitchen.

"It's just right," Alison said.

"It's going to be beautiful," Heather said.

Charlie crinkled his nose. "It sucks."

Alison sighed. "Dad-"

"It's a re-creation of a popular Victorian color," Bea said. "We had it expertly mixed."

"Waste of money," Charlie said. "What's wrong with beige?"

"Beige?" Bea said, making a face. "What do you think this is? A 1970s tract home?"

"Don't knock 1970s tract homes. At least they don't look like Shanghai whorehouses."

Alison was horrified. Her father had known Bea an entire five minutes, and already he was talking whorehouses? She glanced at Heather. What am I going to do with him?

But Bea seemed unfazed. "Which begs the question, of course-what were you doing in a Shanghai whorehouse to know what color the walls were?"

"You don't know what men do in whorehouses?"

Bea rolled her eyes and poured the paint into a pan. She picked up a roller. Then Charlie did the same, only to stop and watch as Bea swiped her roller down the wall.

"You're not doing it right," Charlie said.

"Yes, I am. I know how to paint."

"You're not getting the right coverage."

Bea slumped with frustration, then turned around. "I suppose you can do better?"

"In my sleep."

"Then why don't you show me?"

"Your problem is that you're not getting enough paint on the roller. Here. Watch and learn." Charlie collected paint on his roller and rolled it on the wall.

Bea frowned. "That's fine, as long as you go back over the places where you've gooped the paint up on the wall."

"There's no gooping," Charlie said as he rolled over one of the goopy places.

Bea turned to Alison. "Is he always this aggravating?"

"Yeah," Alison said. "I'm sorry."

"No apologizing for your old man," Charlie said. "I can apologize for myself."

All three women turned and waited.

"As soon as there's something to apologize for."

Bea just shook her head and kept painting.

Alison and Heather finished up the kitchen windows and moved to the dining room, then the living room, following Tony and Brandon as they moved furniture and rolled rugs so they could come back later and polish the floors. Alison was pleased to see that the two men always seemed to be chatting about something sports related or laughing or otherwise having a good time. When lunchtime rolled around, Alison ordered pizza for the whole crew, cringing when her father ate four pieces of pepperoni.

In the early afternoon, Alison and Heather cleaned the second-story windows, and Alison was happy her father had brought a telescopic pole so she didn't have to use a ladder. By early afternoon they'd finished all the windows, and the sun pouring through the justwashed glass made the rooms positively glow. Once Brandon and Tony were through with the floors, they made some minor repairs on kitchen cabinets and light fixtures and cussed their way through unsticking a sticky bedroom door. Alison and Heather cleaned up the patio area and put the planters that Simpson's Nursery had donated on either side of the old wooden glider, and the whole area looked positively charming.

Later that afternoon, Heather and Alison were inside the house again rolling the rug back out in the living room when Alison heard something out front. Glancing out the window, she saw a man get out of a truck parked at the curb. A very large man. A very large, very intimidating man.

"Oh, my," she said, feeling her own eyes grow wide.

Heather came up beside her and looked out the window, too. "Oh, my God. Who's he?"

"Judging by the name on his truck, he's Brandon's landscaping guy. He's here to give an estimate on trimming the magnolia tree in the backyard."

"Yeah? Well, judging by his face, he just escaped from prison."

"Brandon!" Alison called out.

A few second later, he ducked his head around the doorway. "Yeah?"

"I think your landscaping guy is here."

"Oh. Good."

Brandon went to the door and greeted him, then led him through the house to the backyard.

"That is one scary-looking man," Heather said as soon as they were out of earshot.

"Will you stop?" Alison said. "I'm sure he's very nice."

"Maybe. But if I had a choice between walking down two dark alleys and that guy was at the end of one of them, I'd definitely pick the other."

Marco Perrone gave Brandon a decent price to trim the old magnolia, then offered to cut that in half when he found out Brandon was getting his house ready for a charity event. Brandon thought about his grandmother's note in Marco's file: He's a very sweet man. Remind him to smile a lot.

It looked as if his grandmother was right. Marco seemed like a really good guy. Unfortunately, he still didn't seem to have a handle on the smiling thing.

Marco checked his watch. "I have a few hours before my next job. If you'd like, I can do the work right now."

"Sounds like a deal to me," Brandon said.

Marco went to his truck for a ladder and a chain saw, and a few minutes later, he was sawing off low-hanging branches to raise the canopy of the tree. Then he actually climbed up into the tree to thin out the foliage. Branches dropped one by one, and soon the yard was littered with them.

During a moment when the chain saw was silent, Brandon heard a screen door slap shut. He looked over the fence to the house next door to see Delilah step onto her patio. She wore a pair of gardening gloves, and she had a pair of shears in one hand and a basket in the other. She knelt down by one of the rosebushes that lined the back of her house, feeling gingerly along the stem of one of the roses before clipping it.