Match Me if You Can (18 page)

“I’ll take that righteous brother with the soulful eyes and smile that melts my heart.” Krystal pointed toward Webster Greer, the second largest of the men standing by the flames. “As mad as he makes me, I’d marry him again tomorrow.”

Charmaine gazed toward the largest and most menacing of the gods. Darnell Pruitt had left his silk shirt unbuttoned to the waist, revealing a brawny chest and a trio of gold chains. As the firelight turned his skin to polished ebony, he looked like an ancient African king. She pressed her fingertips to the base of her throat. “I still don’t quite understand it. He should terrify me.”

“Instead, it’s the other way around.” Janine’s smile held a trace of longing. “Somebody lend me one of them. Just for the night.”

“Not mine,” Sharon said. The fact that Ron McDermitt was the smallest man around the fire and a self-proclaimed geek didn’t dim his sexual megawattage one bit, not when the right pair of sunglasses turned him into a ringer for Tom Cruise.

One by one, the women’s gazes fell on Heath. Lithe, square-jawed, his crisp brown hair dusted with gold from the fire, he stood in the exact center of this elite group of warriors, both one of them and somehow set apart. He was younger, and his battle-hardened edges had been honed at the negotiating table instead of on the gridiron, but that didn’t make him any less commanding. This was a man to be reckoned with.

“Spooky how he fits right in,” Molly observed.

“It’s the favorite trick of the undead,” Phoebe said tartly. “Shape-shifters transform themselves into whatever people want to see.”

Annabelle suppressed a powerful urge to defend him.

“Harvard brains,
GQ
polish, and country boy charm,” Charmaine said. “That’s why the young guys want to sign with him.”

Phoebe tapped the toe of her sneaker against the dock. “There’s only one good use for a man like Heath Champion.”

“Here we go again,” Molly muttered.

Phoebe’s lip curled. “Target practice.”

“Stop it!” Annabelle rounded on her.

They all stared. Annabelle unclenched her hands and tried to retrench. “What I mean is…I mean…If a man said something like that about a woman, people would throw him in jail. So, I don’t…you know…think maybe a woman should say it about a man.”

Phoebe seemed fascinated by Annabelle’s rebuke. “The Python has a champion.”

“I’m just saying,” Annabelle murmured.

“She has a point.” Krystal began walking toward the beach. “It’s hard to raise male children with good self-esteem. That kind of thing doesn’t help.”

“You’re right.” Phoebe slipped her arm around Annabelle’s waist. “I’m the mother of a son, and I should know better. I’m just…a little uneasy. I’ve had so much more experience with Heath than you.”

Her concern was genuine, and Annabelle couldn’t stay upset. “You really don’t have to worry.”

“It’s hard not to. I feel guilty.”

“About what?”

Phoebe’s steps slowed just enough so they fell behind the others. She patted Annabelle the same way she patted her children when she was worried. “I’m trying to figure out a tactful way to say this, but I can’t. You know, don’t you, that he’s manipulating you to get to me?”

“You can’t blame him for trying,” Annabelle said quietly. “He’s a good agent. Everybody says so. Maybe it’s time to let bygones be bygones.” She regretted her words the moment she spoke them. She knew nothing about the inner workings of the NFL, and she shouldn’t presume to tell Phoebe how to run her empire.

But Phoebe merely sighed and dropped her hand from Annabelle’s waist. “There are no good agents. But at least some of them don’t go out of their way to stab you in the back.”

Heath had scented danger, and he came striding toward her. “Ron had his eye on the last brownie, Annabelle, but I snagged it first. I’ve seen how cranky you get if you go too long without chocolate.”

She was more of a caramel person, but she wouldn’t contradict him in front of his archenemy, and she took the brownie he extended. “Phoebe, do you want to split this?”

“I’ll save my calories for another glass of wine.” Without even glancing at Heath, she walked away to join the others.

“So how’s your plan working so far?” Annabelle said, studying Phoebe’s back.

“She’ll come around.”

“Not anytime soon.”

“Attitude, Annabelle. It’s all about attitude.”

“So you’ve mentioned.” She handed him the brownie. “You can work this off easier than me.”

He took a bite. From the beach, she heard Janine say she needed to finish the book before tomorrow. As everybody told her good night, Webster slipped another CD in the boom box, and a Marc Anthony song came on. Ron and Sharon began to salsa in the sand. Kevin grabbed Molly, and they joined in, executing the steps more gracefully than the McDermitts. Phoebe and Dan looked into each other’s eyes, laughed, and began to dance, too.

Heath’s fingers tightened around Annabelle’s elbow. “Let’s take a walk.”

“No. They’re suspicious enough as it is. And Phoebe knows exactly what you’re up to.”

“Does she now?” He tossed the rest of the brownie in the trash. “If you don’t want to walk, let’s dance.”

“Okay, but dance with the other women, too, so nobody gets suspicious.”

“Of what?”

“Molly thinks…Oh, never mind. Just spread your dubious charm around, okay?”

“Will you relax?” He grabbed her hand and led her back to the others.

It didn’t take long for her to kick off her sandals and get into the spirit of the evening. After all the classes Kate had forced her to take, Annabelle was a good dancer. Either Heath had taken a few classes himself or he was a natural because he stayed right with her. When it came to mastering the social graces, he didn’t seem to have missed a trick. The song came to an end, and Annabelle waited for the next one. With the water lapping the shore, a crackling fire, a star-spangled sky, and a frighteningly tempting man at her side, this was a romantic cliché of a night. She couldn’t handle a ballad—that would be too cruel. To her relief, the music stayed upbeat.

She danced with Darnell and Kevin, Heath with their wives. After a while, the couples drifted back together, and they stayed that way for the rest of the evening. Eventually, Kevin and Molly disappeared to check on their kids. Phoebe and Dan wandered away, hand in hand, for a stroll along the beach. The rest of them kept dancing, shedding their sweatshirts, mopping their brows, refreshing themselves with a cold beer or a glass of wine while the music urged them on. Annabelle’s hair whipped her cheeks. Heath pulled a Travolta move that made them both laugh. They drank more wine, came together, slipped apart. Their hips touched, their legs rubbed, the blood surged through her veins. Krystal ground her bottom against her husband like a freak-dancing teenager. Darnell took his wife by the hips, gazed into her eyes, and Charmaine no longer looked prim at all.

Sparks shot into the sky. Outkast launched into “Hey Yah!” Annabelle’s breasts brushed Heath’s chest. She gazed up into a pair of half-lidded deep green eyes and thought about how being drunk could give a woman the perfect excuse to do something she normally wouldn’t. The next morning, she could always say, “God, I was so hammered. Remind me never to drink again.”

It would be like having a free pass.

S
omewhere between Marc Anthony and James Brown, Heath started forgetting that Annabelle was his matchmaker. As they headed back to the cottage, he blamed the night, the music, too many beers, and that wild auburn rumpus dancing around her head. He blamed the impish amber sparks in her eyes as she’d dared him to keep up with her. He blamed the feisty curve of her mouth as her small bare feet kicked up the sand. But most of all, he blamed his training regimen for marital fidelity, which he now realized had been way too strict or he’d be able to remember this was Annabelle, his matchmaker, his—sort of—buddy.

She fell silent as they approached the darkened cottage. Granted, tonight wasn’t the first time his thoughts toward her had turned in a sexual direction, but that had been a normal male reaction to an intriguing female. Annabelle as a potential bed partner had no place in his life, and he needed to get a grip.

He held the cottage door open for her. All evening, her laughter had chimed like bells in his head, and, as she brushed his shoulder, an unwelcome surge of blood shot straight to his loins. He smelled wood smoke, along with a light, floral shampoo, and fought the urge to bury his face in her hair. His cell sat on the end table, where he’d left it before the cookout so he wouldn’t be tempted to use it. Normally, he’d have checked for messages first thing, but he didn’t feel like it tonight. Annabelle, however, was busy as a bee. She slipped past him to turn on a lamp, knocking the shade askew in the process. She opened a window, fanned herself, picked up the purse she’d left on the couch, set it back down. When she finally gazed at him, he saw the damp spot on her top where she’d spilled her third glass of wine. Bastard that he was, he’d refilled it right away.

“I’d better get to bed.” She nibbled on her bottom lip.

He couldn’t look away from those small, straight teeth sinking into that rosy flesh. “Not yet,” he heard himself say. “I’m too wired. I want somebody to talk to.”
Somebody to touch
.

Being Annabelle, she read his mind, and she confronted the situation head-on. “How sober are you?”

“Almost.”

“Good. Because I’m not.”

His eyes settled on that moist blossom of a mouth. Her lips parted like flower petals. He tried to come up with a smarmy comment that was sure to offend her, which would snap them both out of this, but he couldn’t think of a thing. “And if I weren’t almost sober?” he said.

“You are. Almost.” Those melted caramel eyes didn’t leave his face. “You’re a very self-disciplined person. I respect that about you.”

“Because one of us needs to be self-disciplined, right?”

Her hands twisted at her waist. She looked adorable—rumpled clothes, sandy ankles, that hullabaloo of shiny hair. “Exactly.”

“Or maybe not.” To hell with it. They were both adults. They knew what they were doing, and he took a step toward her.

She threw up her hands. “I’m drunk. Really, really drunk.”

“Got it.” He moved closer.

“I’m
totally
wasted.” She took a quick, awkward step backward. “Hammered
out of
my mind.”

“Okay.” He stopped where he was and waited.

The toe of her sandal eased forward. “I am
not
responsible!”

“I’m readin’ you loud and clear.”

“Any man would look good to me right now.” Another step toward him. “If Dan walked in, Darnell, Ron—
any
man!—I’d think about jumping him.” The bridge of her nose crinkled with indignation. “Even Kevin! My best friend’s husband, can you imagine? That’s exactly how drunk I am. I mean…” A gulp of air. “
You!
Can you believe it? I’m so wasted, I couldn’t tell one man from another.”

“You’ll take whatever you can get, right?”
Oh, this was too easy
. He closed the remaining distance between them.

The muscles in her throat worked as she swallowed. “I have to be honest.”

“You’d even take me.”

Her narrow shoulders rose, then fell. “Unfortunately, you’re the only man in the room. If somebody else was here, I’d—”

“I know. Jump him.” He ran the tip of his finger over the curve of her cheek. She leaned into his hand. He rubbed his thumb over her chin. “Could you be quiet now so I can kiss you?”

She blinked, thick lashes sweeping her pixie’s eyes. “Really?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Because, if you do, I’ll kiss you back, so you need to remember that I’m—”

“Drunk. I’ll remember.” He slipped his hands into the hair he’d been aching to touch for weeks. “You’re not responsible for your actions.”

She gazed up at him. “Just so you understand.”

“I understand,” he said softly. And then he kissed her.

She arched against him, her body pliant, her lips hot and Annabelle-spicy. Her hair curled around his fingers, ribbons of silk. He freed one hand and found her breast. Through her clothes, the nipple pebbled under his palm. She wound her arms around his neck, pressed her hips to his. Their tongues played an erotic game. He was hard, mindless. He needed more, and he reached under her top to feel her skin.

A muffled little whimper penetrated his fog. She shuddered, and the heels of her hands pressed against his chest.

He drew back. “Annabelle?”

She gazed up at him through watery eyes and sniffed, the corners of her soft, rosy mouth drooping. “If only I were drunk,” she whispered.

A
nnabelle heard Heath’s sigh. That kiss…She’d known he’d be a wonderful kisser: domineering in the best possible way, master and commander, lord of the realm, leader of the pack. No need to worry about this one slipping into high heels when she wasn’t paying attention. But none of that justified her foolishness. “I—I guess I have more self-discipline than I thought,” she said, her voice unsteady.

“So gosh darned thrilled you figured that out now.”

“I can’t throw everything away for a couple of minutes of heavy breathing.”

“A couple of minutes?” he exclaimed indignantly. “If you think I’m not good for longer than—”

“Don’t.” Pain shot through her. All she wanted to do now was climb into bed and pull the covers over her head. She hadn’t cared about her business, her life, her self-respect. All she’d cared about was giving in to the moment.

“Let’s go, Tinker Bell.” He snagged her arm and steered her toward the kitchen. “We’re taking a walk to cool down.”

“I don’t want to walk,” she cried.

“Fine. Let’s go back to what we were doing.”

Even as she pulled away, she knew he was right. If she intended to get her footing back, this couldn’t wait till morning. She had to do it now. “All right.”

He grabbed the flashlight hanging by the refrigerator, and she followed him outside. They set off down a path soft with pine needles. Neither of them said a word, not even when the path opened into a small, moonlit cove where limestone boulders edged the water. Heath turned off the flashlight and set it on the lone picnic table. He stuffed his hands in the rear pockets of his shorts and walked toward the water. “I know you want to make a big deal out of this, but don’t.”

“Out of what? I’ve already forgotten.” She kept her distance, wandering toward the water but stopping a good ten feet from him. The air smelled warm and marshy, and the lights from the town of Wind Lake twinkled off to her left.

“We were dancing,” he said. “We got turned on. So what?”

She dug her fingernails into her palms. “As far as I’m concerned, it never happened.”

“It happened all right.” He turned toward her, and the tough note in his voice told her the Python had uncoiled. “I know the way you think, and that wasn’t some big, unforgivable sin.”

Her composure dissolved. “I’m your matchmaker!”

“Right. A matchmaker. You didn’t have to swear a Hippocratic oath to get your business card.”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“You’re single; I’m single. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we’d seen this through.”

She couldn’t believe she’d heard him right. “It would have been the end of my world.”

“I was afraid of this.”

His mildly exasperated air pushed her over the edge, and she stomped toward him. “I should never have let you come with me this weekend! I knew it was a bad idea from the beginning.”

“It was a great idea, and no harm’s been done. We’re two healthy, unattached, reasonably sane adults. We have fun together, and don’t even try to deny that.”

“Yeah, I’m a great buddy, all right.”

“Believe me, tonight I wasn’t thinking of you as a buddy.”

That threw her totally off stride, but she recovered quickly. “If another woman had been around, this would never have happened.”

“Whatever you’re trying to say, just spit it out.”

“Come on, Heath. I’m not blond, leggy, or stacked. I was the default setting. Even my ex-fiancé never said I was sexy.”

“Your ex-fiancé wears lipstick, so I wouldn’t take that to heart. I promise, Annabelle, you’re very sexy. That hair…”

“Do
not
start in on my hair. I was born with it, okay. It’s like making fun of someone with a birth defect.”

She heard him sigh. “We’re talking about simple physical attraction brought on by some moonlight, a little dancing, and too much liquor,” he said. “Do you agree that’s what this is?”

“I guess.”

“Basic physical attraction.”

“I suppose.”

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but it’s been a long time since I’ve had such a good time.”

“Okay, I’ll admit it was fun. The dancing,” she added hastily.

“Damned right it was. So we got a little carried away. Nothing more than circumstances, right?”

Pride and self-respect dictated that she agree. “Of course.”

“Circumstances …and a little animal instinct.” His huskier pitch began to sound almost seductive. “Nothing to get worked up about. Are you with me?”

He was throwing her off stride, but she nodded.

He moved closer, his gravelly whisper a rasp over her skin. “Perfectly understandable, right?”

“Right.” She was still nodding, almost as if he’d mesmerized her.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

She kept nodding, no longer remembering exactly what the question was.

His eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “Because that’s the only way …you can explain something like this. Pure animal attraction.”

“Uh-huh,” she managed, beginning to feel like a bedazzled, bobble-headed doll.

“Which sets us free”—he touched her chin, the barest brush—“to do exactly what neither of us can stop thinking about, right?” He dropped his head to kiss her.

The night wind hummed; her heart pounded. Just before his lips touched hers, his eyelids flickered, and she glimpsed the faintest hint of cunning loitering in those green irises. That’s when it hit her.

“You snake!” She pushed against his chest.

He stepped back, all wounded innocence. “I don’t deserve that.”

“Ohmygod! You’ve just put me through Sales 101. I bow to the master.”

“You’ve had way too much to drink.”

“The Great Salesman asks just the right questions to get his mark agreeing with everything he says. He makes her nod her stupid head until it feels like it’s coming off her neck. Then he dives in for the kill. You just tried to make a sale!”

“Have you always been this suspicious?”

“This is so
you
.” She stomped toward the path, then spun back because she had so much more to say. “You want something you know is totally outrageous, and then you try to sell it with a combination of leading questions and fake sincerity. I just watched the Python in action, didn’t I?”

He knew she had his number, but he didn’t believe in conceding defeat. “My sincerity’s never fake. I was stating the facts. Two single people, a warm summer night, a hot kiss …We’re only human.”

“One of us, anyway. The other’s a reptile.”

“Harsh, Annabelle. Very harsh.”

She advanced on him again. “Let me ask you a question, one business owner to another.” She planted her fingernail in his chest. “Have you ever had sex with a client? Is that acceptable professional behavior in your book?”

“My clients are men.”

“Stop weaseling. What if I were a world champion figure skater on my way to the Olympics? Let’s say I’m a favorite for the gold medal, and I just signed you as my agent last week. Are you going to have sex with me or not?”

“We only signed last week? That seems a little—”

“Fast-forward, then, to the Olympics,” she said with exaggerated patience. “I’ve won the stupid medal. Only the silver, since I couldn’t land my triple axel, but nobody cares because I’m a charmer, and they still want my face on their breakfast cereal. You and I have a contract. Are you sleeping with me?”

“It’s apples and oranges. In the case you describe, millions of dollars would be at stake.”

She made a rude buzzer noise. “Wrong answer.”

“True answer.”

“Because your megabusiness is so much more important than my silly little matchmaking agency? Well, it might be to you, Mr. Python, but it’s not to me.”

“I understand how important your business is to you.”

“You don’t have a clue.” Pinning the blame on him felt so much better than assuming her rightful share, and she stomped back to the picnic table to grab the flashlight. “You’re just like my brothers. Worse! You can’t stand having anybody say no to you about anything.” She thrust the flashlight toward him. “Well, listen up, Mr. Champion. I am not somebody you can pass the time with while you wait for your spectacular future wife to show up. I won’t be your sexual entertainment.”

“You’re insulting yourself,” he said calmly. “I may not be crazy about all of your business practices, but I have nothing except respect for you as a person.”

“Great. Watch me build on that.”

She turned on her heel and stalked off.

Heath gazed after her as she disappeared into the trees. When he could no longer see her, he picked up a stone, skipped it over the dark water, and smiled. She couldn’t have been more right. He was a snake. And he was ashamed of himself. Okay, maybe not at this exact instant, but by tomorrow for sure. His only excuse was that he liked her so damned much, and he hadn’t done anything just for fun in longer than he could remember.

Still, trying to nail a friend was a rotten thing to do. Even a sexy friend, although she didn’t seem too clear about that, which made the effect of those mischievous eyes and the swirl of that amazing hair all the more enticing. Still, if he was going to blow his training for marital fidelity, he should have done it with one of the women at Waterworks, not with Annabelle, because she was right. How could she sleep with him then introduce him to other women? She couldn’t, they both knew it, and since he never wasted his time supporting an unsupportable position, he couldn’t imagine why he’d done it tonight. Or maybe he could.

Because he wanted his matchmaker naked …and that definitely wasn’t part of his plan.

H
eath slept on the porch that night and awakened the next morning to the sound of the front door closing. He rolled over and squinted at his watch. It was a few minutes before eight, which meant Annabelle was heading off to meet the book club for breakfast. He rose from the mattress he’d dragged out to the porch for the best night’s sleep he’d experienced in weeks, a hell of a lot better than tossing and turning in his empty house.

The men had a round of golf scheduled. As he showered and dressed, he went over the events of the previous night and reminded himself to mind the manners he’d worked so hard to acquire. Annabelle was his friend, and he didn’t screw over friends, figuratively or literally.

He drove to the public course with Kevin but ended up sharing a golf cart with Dan Calebow. Dan kept himself in great shape for a man in his forties. With the exception of a few character lines, he didn’t look all that different from his playing days when his steely eyes and cold-blooded determination on the field had earned him the nickname Ice. Dan and Heath had always gotten along well, but whenever Heath mentioned Phoebe, as he did that morning, Dan always said pretty much the same thing.

“When two hardheaded people get married, they learn to pick their battles.” Dan spoke softly so he didn’t distract Darnell, who was lining up his tee shot. “This one’s all yours, pal.”

Darnell hooked his ball into the left rough, and the discussion returned to golf, but later, as they were riding down the fairway, Heath asked Dan if he missed his head coaching job, which he’d left for the front office.

“Sometimes.” As Dan checked the scorecard, Heath spotted one of those rub-on tattoos on the side of his neck. A baby blue unicorn. Pippi Tucker’s handiwork. “But I have a great consolation prize,” Dan went on. “I get to watch my kids grow up.”

“A lot of coaches have kids.”

“Yeah, and their wives are raising them. Being president of the Stars is a big job, but I can still get the kids off to school in the mornings and be at the dinner table most nights.”

Right now, Heath couldn’t see anything too exciting about either activity, but he took it on faith that someday he might.

He finished the round only three shots behind Kevin, which wasn’t bad, considering his own twelve handicap. They turned in their carts, and then the six of them headed into the clubhouse’s private room for lunch. It was a dingy space with cheap paneling, battered tables, and what Kevin insisted were the best cheese-burgers in the county. After a couple of bites, Heath found himself agreeing.

They were enjoying replaying their round when, out of nowhere, Darnell decided he had to spoil it. “It’s time to talk about our book,” he said. “Did everybody read it like you was supposed to?”

Heath nodded along with the rest of them. Last week Annabelle had left him a message with the title of the novel all the men were supposed to read, the story of a group of mountain climbers. Heath didn’t get to read for pleasure much anymore, and he’d enjoyed having an excuse. When he’d been a kid, the public library had been his refuge, but once he’d hit high school, he’d gotten wrapped up in the demands of working two jobs, playing football, and studying for the straight As that would put the Beau Vista Trailer Park behind him forever. Reading for fun had gone by the wayside, along with a lot of other simple pleasures.

Darnell rested an arm on the table. “Anybody want to start the ball rolling?”

There was a long silence.

“I liked it,” Dan finally said.

“Me, too,” Kevin offered.

Webster held up his hand to order another Coke. “It was pretty interesting.”

They stared at one another.

“Good plot,” Ron said.

An even longer silence fell.

Kevin made some accordion folds in a straw wrapper. Ron messed with the saltshaker. Webster looked around for his Coke. Darnell tried again. “What did you think about the way the men reacted to their first night on the mountain?”

“Pretty interesting.”

“It was okay.”

Darnell took his literature seriously, and storm clouds were gathering in his eyes. He shot Heath a menacing look. “You got anything to say?”

Heath set down his burger. “Combining adventure, irony, and unabashed sentimentality is always tricky to pull off, especially in a novel with such a strong central conceit. We ask ourselves, where is the conflict? Man v. nature, man v. man, man versus himself? A fairly complex exploration of our modern sense of disconnection. Bleak undertones, comic high notes. It worked for me.”