Love by Design

When Dakota turned on her cell phone, her voice mail icon, email and text message notifications all dinged, buzzed and chirped respectively. Three were from Norma Jean Anderson.

“Now I know you can’t possibly be so busy that you can’t return my phone calls,” Norma Jean said in one message. “It’s obvious that you’re avoiding m—”

Delete. Dakota felt no shame.

“Dakota Carson, I know your grandmother didn’t raise you to—”

Delete. Again.

“Girl, if you don’t call me, I’m coming to see you.”

She pondered that one, then pressed delete.

Norma Jean and her husband, Heathcliffe, lived a few doors down from her grandparents’ house in Chicago. Since the age of thirteen, Dakota considered Norma Jean the neighborhood mom. The woman knew everyone’s name, brought homemade meals when people were sick and wouldn’t hesitate to give a neighbor whatever she had. Norma Jean had become her rock when she desperately needed someone in her corner, and for that Dakota owed her a lifetime of gratitude. Norma Jean Anderson was an amazing humanitarian. But a horrible matchmaker.

Dakota loved Norma Jean, affectionately called Ms. Jeannie, to death, and would do anything for her, but the woman was driving her insane. She was more focused on Dakota’s love life than Dakota was, and had been for years. Personal relationships did not work out for Dakota. An occasional date was one thing, but she wasn’t getting serious—with anyone. She learned the hard way long ago that men came and went, but work was constant. She had governed her life by that simple observation, and she wasn’t about to change now.

* * *

Logan and his cousin, Adrian Anderson, sat in his aunt’s kitchen eating the most delicious cinnamon roll he had ever tasted. He took a sip of coffee. “Aunt Jeannie,” he said slowly. “I appreciate everything you do for me, but I’m not going out with your bowling mate’s sister’s niece—no matter how many times you ask. Adrian already warned me about her, and as much as I love you, I’m not taking the bait.”

Indignant, Norma Jean let out a frustrated breath and pinned her son, Adrian, with a withering look. “This is all your fault.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Adrian replied between bites of his breakfast. “You are the one who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. I told you two weeks ago that Logan wasn’t interested in being set up. Apparently, you turned down your hearing aid.”

“I don’t wear a hearing aid,” she snapped.

“Well, then you played deaf, because you didn’t listen. He’s been back in town three days, Mom. Let him get acclimated first before you whip out the little black book—or your love-broker encyclopedia.”

“Watch it,” she replied. Getting up from the table, she started clearing away the dishes. She tried to grab Logan’s, but he batted her hand away. “Well, this is a pickle. It’s already been arranged.”

Logan regarded her with determined purpose. “Then unarrange it. Aunt Jeannie, I haven’t even unpacked all my boxes yet, so I definitely don’t have time to date. There’s no way I’m wasting two hours of my evening trying to make small talk with a woman I’ve never met, and that I’m not remotely attracted to.”

“How do you—” Norma Jean stopped and cut her eyes over to Adrian. “You showed him her picture?”

A wide grin shot across his face. “Yep.”

“Adrian,” she chided. “Logan deserves happiness, too. Milán is an incredible woman, and an even better daughter-in-law. She’ll make a wonderful mother, too. That is, whenever you get around to—”

“We’re not having this conversation again,” Adrian interrupted.

“We wouldn’t have to if you’d made good on the promise of giving me grandbabies.”

“Mom, it’s been two years, not ten. Cut us some slack. We’re practicing as much as we can.”

Logan burst out laughing, and patted his cousin on the back.

Norma Jean rolled her eyes. “Do I look amused?”

“Aunt Jeannie, it may not seem like it, but I’m perfectly capable of finding my own dates.”

“You don’t say? Is that why you’re still single?”

“I haven’t found the right girl yet,” he countered.

“Hmph. Seems to me you had the possibility of the right girl, but you let her go.”

His expression darkened. Like he needed a reminder of his ruined relationship with Dakota, or the tense circumstances surrounding why he had left in the first place. Finishing the last of his meal, Logan stood up and put his plate in the dishwasher. “As much as I love these family get-togethers, and reminiscing about subjects I’d prefer not to talk about, I really have to get going. I’m leaving for Jamaica tomorrow.”