Match Me if You Can (17 page)

“Adults only.”

He smiled. “Excellent.”

“Except for Pippi and Danny. They’re too young to leave behind.”

“Shit.”

She frowned at him. “What’s wrong with you? They’re adorable children.”

“One of them’s adorable. I’d sign him right now if I could.”

“The road trips might be a challenge, since he’s still nursing. And Pippi’s just as cute as Danny. That little girl is precious.”

“She’ll be in prison before she makes it to first grade.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just rambling.” He headed out the door only to poke his head back in. “Good taste in panties, Tinker Bell.” Then he was gone.

She sank down on the side of the bed. The man didn’t miss anything. What else about her might he notice that she didn’t want him to see? With a sense of foreboding, she traded in her new slacks for biscuit-colored shorts but left the flirty bronze top on. After running her fingers through her hair, she headed for the porch. Heath was already there. He’d also changed into shorts, along with a light gray T-shirt that curled like pipe smoke around the contours of his chest. A blade of light angling through the screen caught one cheekbone, etching its tough, uncompromising contour. “Are you going to sabotage me this weekend?” he asked quietly.

He had grounds for being suspicious, so she shouldn’t have been offended, but she was. “Is that what you think of me?”

“Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

“
Your
page.”

“All I’m asking is that you don’t undermine me. I’ll take care of everything else.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” she said, sarcastic as all hell.

“What’s your beef, anyway? You’ve been marginally bitchy all afternoon.”

She was pleased that he’d noticed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“And not just this afternoon. You’re taking potshots at me whenever you see the opportunity. Is it personal or symbolic of your feelings toward men in general? It’s not my fault your last boyfriend decided to play for the same team you’re on.”

Okay. Now she was mad. “Who told you that?”

“I didn’t know it was a secret.”

“It’s not exactly.” Molly wouldn’t have said anything, but Kevin still had trouble accepting what Rob had done, which made him the likely culprit. She shoved one of the chairs back under the table. She wouldn’t talk about Rob to Heath. “I’m sorry if I’ve been testy,” she said, still sounding testy, “but I have a hard time understanding people who make work the center of their lives to the exclusion of personal relationships.”

“Which is exactly why you brought me here. To fix that.”

He had her there.

“Shall we?” He gestured toward the porch door.

“Why not?” She tossed her hair and marched past him. “Time to get Operation Suck Up off and running.”

“Now, that’s the kind of can-do attitude I like to hear.”

T
he fire popped and sparks shot into the sky. Only the platter of chocolate brownies Molly had baked for them in the B&B’s kitchen that afternoon remained on the picnic table. A young couple took care of the everyday operation of the campground, but Molly and Kevin always pitched in when they were here. The meal had been delicious: grilled steaks, baked potatoes with plenty of toppings, sweet onions perfectly charred at the edges, and a salad laced with juicy slices of ripe pear. Kevin and Molly had left their children with the couple who ran the campground, nobody had to drive home, and the wine and beer flowed. Heath was in his element, friendly and charming with the women, perfectly at home with the men. He was a chameleon, Annabelle thought, subtly adjusting his behavior to suit his audience. Tonight, everyone except Phoebe was enjoying his company, and even she hadn’t done much worse than shoot him a few poisonous glares.

As the music from the boom box began to crank up, Annabelle wandered out onto the deserted dock, but just as she’d begun to enjoy the solitude, she heard the purposeful tap of a pair of sandals coming her way and turned to see Molly approaching. With the exception of the more generous bust-line that nursing Danny had given her, she looked like the same studious girl Annabelle had first met more than a decade ago in a comparative lit class. Tonight she’d pulled her straight brown hair back from her face with a barrette, and a tiny pair of silver sea turtles bobbed at her earlobes. She wore purple capris with a matching top and a necklace made out of elbow macaroni.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” she demanded.

“Sorry. Things got totally crazy.” Maybe she could distract her. “Remember I told you I have a client who’s a hypochondriac? I set him up with a woman who’s—”

“Never mind that. What’s going on with you and Heath?”

Annabelle pulled a little wide-eyed innocence out of her rusty bag of college acting skills. “What do you mean? Business.”

“Don’t give me that. We’ve been friends too long.”

She switched to a furrowed brow. “He’s my most important client. You know how much this means to me.”

Molly wasn’t buying it. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. Like he was a slot machine with triple sevens tattooed on his forehead. If you fall in love with him, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”

Annabelle nearly choked. She’d known Molly would be suspicious, but she hadn’t expected an outright confrontation. “Are you nuts? Setting aside the fact that he treats me like a flunky, I’d never fall for a workaholic after what I’ve had to go through with my family.” Falling in lust, however, was an entirely different matter.

“He has a calculator for a heart,” Molly said.

“I thought you liked him.”

“I love him. He handled Kevin’s negotiations brilliantly, and, believe me, my sister can be a real cheapo. Heath’s smart, I’ve never met anybody who works so hard, he’ll do anything for his clients, and he’s as ethical as any agent’s ever going to get. But he’s the worst candidate for a love match I’ve ever met.”

“You think I don’t know that? This weekend is business. He’s rejected everybody Powers and I set him up with. There’s something we’re both missing, and I can’t figure out what that is during those stingy slivers of time he gives me.” She was speaking the truth. This was exactly where she needed to concentrate her attention this weekend, looking into his psyche instead of noticing how good he smelled or how gorgeous his stupid green eyes were.

Molly still looked worried. “I’d like to believe you, but I’ve got a weird feeling that—”

What kind of feeling she had was lost as more footsteps sounded on the dock. They turned to see Krystal Greer and Charmaine Pruitt joining them. Krystal looked like a younger Diana Ross. Tonight, she’d tied her long, curly hair up with a red ribbon that matched her bandanna top. She was tiny, but she carried herself like a queen, and entering her forties hadn’t altered either her model’s cheekbones or her take-no-prisoners attitude.

Despite their diametrical personalities, she and Charmaine had been best friends for years. Charmaine, conservatively dressed in a cranberry cotton twin set and twill walking shorts, was curvy, sweet, and serious. A former librarian and current church organist, she centered her life around her husband and two little boys. The first time Annabelle had met Charmaine’s husband, Darnell, she’d been struck speechless by what seemed the mismatch of the century. Although Annabelle knew Darnell had once played for the Stars, she hadn’t paid much attention to football in those days, and she’d imagined someone as conservative as Charmaine. Instead, Darnell had a diamond-embedded gold front tooth, a seemingly endless collection of dark glasses, and a penchant for bling-bling that rivaled a hip-hop headliner. Appearances, however, were deceiving. Over half their book club selections were based on his recommendations.

“I can’t get over the way the sky looks up here.” Charmaine wrapped her arms around herself and gazed at the stars. “Living in the city, you forget.”

“You’re going to have a bigger surprise this weekend than a sky full of pretty stars,” Krystal said smugly.

“Either spill your big secret or keep quiet about it,” Charmaine retorted. She turned to Annabelle and Molly. “Krystal keeps dropping hints about some big surprise she has planned. Do either of you know what it is?”

Annabelle and Molly shook their heads.

Krystal slipped her thumbs in the front pockets of her shorts and stuck out a set of still perky breasts. “I’ll just say this…Our Miss Charmaine might need a little therapy after I’m done with her. As for the rest of you…Just be prepared.”

“For what?” Janine approached with Sharon McDermitt and Phoebe, who’d pulled on a pink zippered hoodie with matching sweatpants and held a glass of chardonnay. Janine, with her prematurely gray pixie, artisan’s jewelry, and ankle-length block-print sundress, was coming off a bad year: the death of her mother, breast cancer, and a bad bout of writer’s block. The friendship of the book club meant everything to her. When she’d been sick, Annabelle and Charmaine had brought her meals and run errands, Phoebe had arranged for regular massages and called her daily, Krystal tended her garden, and Molly nagged her into starting to write again. Sharon McDermitt, the best listener in the group, had been her confidante. Next to Molly, Sharon was Phoebe’s best friend, and she headed the Stars’ charity foundation.

“Apparently Krystal has a secret,” Molly said, “which, as usual, she’ll reveal when she’s good and ready.”

While the rest of them speculated over what Krystal’s secret might be, Annabelle tried to figure out the best way to broach a perilous subject. Although she’d been lucky so far, she couldn’t count on her luck lasting forever, and when there was a lull in the conversation, she plunged in. “I might need a little help this weekend.”

She knew by their expectant expressions that they wanted her to explain why she’d shown up with Heath, but she wasn’t volunteering any more than she already had. She toyed with the yellow band of her Swatch daisy watch. “All of you know how much Perfect for You means to me. If I don’t make a success of this, it’ll basically prove my mother’s right about everything. And I really don’t want to be an accountant.”

“Kate puts too much pressure on you,” Sharon said, not for the first time.

Annabelle shot her a grateful smile. “Thanks to Molly, I had an interview with Heath. But the thing is, I needed to engage in a small act of subterfuge to get his name on my contract.”

“What kind of subterfuge?” Janine asked.

She took a deep breath and told them how she’d fixed him up with Gwen.

Molly gasped. “He’s going to
kill
you. I mean it, Annabelle. When he finds out you deceived him—
and he will find out
—he’ll go ballistic.”

“He boxed me into a corner.” Annabelle hunched her shoulders and rubbed her arm. “I admit it was a crappy thing to do, but I only had twenty-four hours to come up with a knockout candidate, or I was going to lose him.”

“That is not a man to mess with,” Sharon said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I’ve heard from Ron.”

Annabelle gnawed her bottom lip. “I know I have to tell him the truth. I just need to find the right moment.”

Krystal cocked her hip. “Girl, there is no right moment to die.”

Charmaine clucked her tongue. “You are going straight to the top on my prayer list.”

Only Phoebe looked pleased, and her amber eyes glowed like a cat’s. “I love this. Not the fact that you’ll end up in a shallow grave—I’m really sorry about that, and I’ll make sure he’s prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But I love knowing that a mere slip of a female put one over on the great Python.”

Molly glared at her sister. “This is the exact reason why Christine Jeffreys won’t let her daughter have a sleepover with the twins. You frighten people.” And then, to Annabelle, “What do you want us to do?”

“Just don’t mention Gwen’s name around him, that’s all. I can’t see any reason the guys would mention her, so I’ll have to hope for the best with them. Unless any of you can find a way to clue them in without actually telling them what I did.”

“I vote we tell them the truth,” Phoebe said. “They’ll laugh at him behind his back for months.”

“You don’t get a vote,” Krystal said. “Not on anything that involves the Python.”

“That is
so
unfair.” Phoebe sniffed.

Charmaine patted her arm. “You’re a little irrational on the subject.”

The sound of male laughter drifted toward them from the beach. “We’d better get back,” Molly said. “We’ve got all day tomorrow to talk about Annabelle’s problems, including why she brought Heath in the first place.”

Sharon looked worried. “I think that’s fairly obvious. Annabelle, really, what were you thinking?”

“It’s business!” she exclaimed.

“Monkey business,” Krystal muttered.

“Heath needed to get away for a while, and I need a chance to figure out why the matches aren’t working. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

Charmaine exchanged a loaded glance with Phoebe, ready to say more, but Molly came to Annabelle’s rescue. “We’d better get back before they start running plays.”

All of them turned toward the end of the dock.

And came to a dead stop.

Phoebe was the first to break the long silence. In her soft, husky voice, she said what all of them were thinking. “Welcome to the Garden of the Gods, ladies.”

Sharon spoke quietly over the lapping water. “When you’re standing right next to them, you don’t get the full impact.”

Krystal’s voice had a dreamy edge. “We’re getting it now.”

The men stood by the campfire…all six of them…one more gorgeous than the other. Phoebe licked her bottom lip and pointed to the oldest, a big blond giant with a hand cocked at his hip. On a never-to-be-forgotten day in the Midwest Sports Dome, Dan Calebow had saved her life with a perfectly thrown spiral. “I pick him,” she said softly. “Forever and ever.”

Molly slipped her arm through her sister’s and said, just as softly. “I’ll take the golden boy right next to him. Forever and ever.” Kevin Tucker, tan and fit, had hazel eyes and a star-kissed talent that had earned him two Super Bowl rings, but he still told people the night he’d mistaken Molly for a burglar was the luckiest night of his life.