A Husband For Mari (The Amish Matchmaker 2) by Emma Miller Page A

had no intentions of settlingfor a wife. Maybe he’d picked up too many English ideas about romance when he was out in their world, but he wanted more than a sensible partner who shared his Amish faith and had reached the age of marriage. He wanted someone to love, a woman who would love him. He wanted a smart, sensible woman who would light up his life. He’d been waiting for that lightning strike, but so far that special person had never crossed his path.
    His gaze gravitated to Mari again. At least he didn’t think he’d met the one yet.
    It would be good to find the right woman, to move on from being alone to being the head of a family. He wanted a wife and children. He was ready to settle down, but he was a patient man. When the right girl came along, he’d court her properly, treat her tenderly and offer her his head and his heart for a lifetime.
    Just as that thought went through his head, Mari met his gaze across the table and she smiled. He got the strangest feeling in the pit of his stomach. When he’d returned to Seven Poplars and been baptized, he’d made the decision to return to the Amish way of life, and that meant marrying an Amish woman. Mari had told him she had no intention of returning to her roots. She’d also said it was too late. But James knew firsthand it was never too late for God’s work. Which made him wonder what God had in store for Mari Troyer...and him.

Chapter Four
    T he following day James pushed open the back door of his old farmhouse and was greeted by the acrid stench of something burning, the fretful cries of a newborn and the combined wailing of two small boys. “Mattie!” he shouted. In the kitchen, smoke was rising from the stovetop in clouds, and from the hall came the shrill blast of a smoke alarm.
    James crossed to the gas range and turned off the flame. Using the corner of his coat to protect his hand from the hot metal, he slid the pot over onto a cool burner. “Mattie!” he called. “Everything all right?” The kids continued to cry, but he knew them well enough to know they weren’t hurt. He opened a window to let out the smoke, dodged a yellow tabby cat that was fleeing for her life and scooped up twenty-two-month-old Emanuel, who was in hot pursuit of the cat.
    The smoke alarm continued to squeal.
    With his squirming nephew tucked football-style under one arm, James walked into the living room. Roman, age three, was sitting at the foot of the steps with his eyes shut and his hands over his ears, shrieking. “Roman,” James said. “You’re fine.” Then he called up the stairs. “Mattie? You up there?”
    “ Ya. Just finished feeding the twins!” his sister called from upstairs. Both of the newborns were crying now. “Can you make that smoke alarm stop? I don’t know why it went off! I almost had William to sleep!”
    “That supper on the stove?” he called above the racket.
    “What? Can’t hear you!” Mattie shouted back.
    James deposited Emanuel on the bottom step beside his sniffling brother and grabbed a broom from the corner of the hall to wave it under the smoke detector and clear the smoke. Some men might remove the battery, just to shut the contraption up, but not James. He’d heard too many tragic tales of smoke detectors without batteries; his family meant too much to him.
    “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you for that noise!” His sister, scarf askew and face red, appeared at the top of the landing. A fat little baby, six weeks old and as bald as an onion beneath his tight-fitting baby kapp , was screeching like a guinea hen.
    Like his brothers , James thought. A healthy child with good lungs. The smoke detector finally went silent, and he lowered the broom. “I asked if that was our supper on the stove.”
    “Not the chicken stew? Did I burn it?” She looked down at the screaming baby in her arms, then at James. “Again? I ruined our supper again ?”
    “Not ruined.” James waved her back. “You tend to the twins. I’ll