Match Me if You Can (9 page)

She put down her fork. “Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s efficient.”

“Not as efficient as having Powers handle her own introductions. You’re paying her a fortune to do exactly that.”

“I’d rather have you.”

Her pulse kicked. “Why?”

He gave her the melty smile he must have been practicing since the cradle, one that made her feel as though she was the only woman in the world. “Because you’re easier to bully. Do we have a deal or not?”

“You don’t want a matchmaker. You want a lackey.”

“Semantics. My hours are erratic, and my schedule changes without warning. It’ll be your job to cope with all that. You’ll soothe ruffled feathers when I need to cancel at the last minute. You’ll keep my dates company when I’m going to be late, entertain them if I have to take a call. If things are going well, you’ll disappear. If not, you’ll make the woman disappear. I told you before. I work hard at my job. I don’t want to have to work hard at this, too.”

“Basically, you expect me to find your bride, court her, and hand her over at the altar. Or do I have to come on the honeymoon, too?”

“Definitely not.” He gave her a lazy smile. “I can take care of that all by myself.”

Something sizzled in the air between them, something that felt heady and seductive, at least in her sex-starved imagination. She took a sip of water and absorbed the dismaying realization that she was attracted to him, even though she wanted to hit him in the head with that beer bottle. Well, so what? He was a natural charmer, and she was only human. This wouldn’t be a problem unless she let it be.

She took her time thinking it over. Although she hated the idea of being at his beck and call, this arrangement would give her more control, as well as potentially doubling her money. Power Matches only signed contracts with men, but Perfect for You signed both men and women, so she might be able to pick up some great female clients out of Heath’s rejects. Melanie, for example, could be a match for Shirley Miller’s godson, Jerry. He was nice looking, moderately successful, and they had children about the same age. Just because Jerry wasn’t currently a client didn’t mean Annabelle couldn’t land him as one.

“Portia Powers will never agree to this,” she said.

“She won’t have a choice.”

Just like I don’t,
Annabelle thought. But that wasn’t entirely true. She had a choice, all right. Unfortunately, making it would be self-defeating. “You should cancel your contract with her and let me take care of everything.”

“She has access to women you don’t,” he replied. “Odds are, she’ll find the one I end up choosing.”

“Tonight being a sterling example of her good judgment?”

“Tonight being a sterling example of yours?”

He had her there. She toyed with a mushroom. “You understand, don’t you, that it’s in my best interest to sabotage her candidates. As much as I need the money, I need to build the reputation of Perfect for You even more.”

“I stand warned, Mata Hari.”

“You’re not taking me seriously.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You told me to see Melanie again.”

“Only because my blood glucose was out of whack. Now that I’ve eaten it’s clear to me that she’s way too decent for you.”

“Give it a rest, Annabelle.” He offered up his snake’s smile. “You’re one of those people who was cursed with personal integrity. And I’m one of those people who’s smart enough to take advantage of it.”

There wasn’t much she could say to that, so she returned her attention to the scallops.

I
t had been a long time since Heath had enjoyed watching a woman eat, but Annabelle knew how to appreciate a good meal. A blissful expression came over her face as she slipped another mushroom into her mouth. The tip of her tongue picked up a dab of leftover sauce at the bow of her lip. His eyes drifted along her throat to her collarbone and down to those small, guinea-fowl breasts…

“What?” Her fork hung in midair, and tiny frown lines creased her forehead.

He quickly rearranged his expression. “I was wondering about your next candidate. Do you really have one lined up?”

She smiled and propped an elbow on the table. “Yes. And she’s special. Sharp, attractive, fun to be with.”

“At the risk of incurring your wrath, there are thousands of women who meet that description. I’m looking for someone extraordinary.”

Her honey-colored eyes announced an amber alert. “Extraordinary women tend to fall in love with men who put them first. Which pretty much rules out a guy who excuses himself in the middle of a conversation to take a phone call like you did tonight.”

“It was an emergency.”

“With you, I suspect they all are. No offense.”

He ran his thumb around the rim of his mug. “I don’t usually feel the need to defend myself, but I’m going to make an exception now, and you can apologize when I’m done.”

“We’ll see.”

“A player I recruited a couple of years ago wrapped his Maserati around a telephone pole tonight. That was his mother on the phone. He’s not even my client—he signed with another agent—but I got to know his folks a little. Nice people. He’s in intensive care…” He nudged his plate back from the edge of the table with his thumb. “She called to let me know they don’t expect him to last until morning.” He gazed at her. “You tell me which was most important. Making small talk or comforting that mother?”

She stared at him. Then she laughed. “You just made that up.”

He was seldom taken by surprise, but Annabelle Granger had done it. He gave her his iciest glare. “Interesting that you find someone’s tragedy so amusing.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners, golden flecks dancing in the irises. “You
totally
made it up.”

He tried to stare her down—he was superb at stare-downs—but she looked so pleased with herself that he lost it and laughed.

She regarded him smugly. “I have two brothers who are also overachieving workaholics, so I’m intimately acquainted with the tricks performed by men of your ilk.”

“I have an ilk?”

“A definite ilk.”

“It finally becomes clear…” He propped his elbow on the table, rubbed the corner of his mouth, and studied her over the back of his hand. “Poor, pathetic Annabelle. All the inappropriate put-downs you’ve subjected me to, the snide comments …A simple case of transfer. The result of growing up overshadowed by those magnificent brothers. Was it very painful to feel so neglected? Do the scars still ache when it rains?”

She snorted, a surprisingly loud sound coming from such a small woman. “I prayed to be neglected. Ballet, piano, horseback riding. Fencing, for Pete’s sake. Who makes their kid take fencing lessons? Girl Scouts, orchestra, tutors if I slipped below a B, monetary incentives to join every club with a special bonus if I ran for office. And yet somehow I survived, although the torture continues.”

She’d just described his dream childhood. Fragments of memory swept over him. His father’s drunken voice…
Pull your head out of that goddamned book and go buy me some cigarettes.
Cockroaches scrambling under the refrigerator, leaky pipes dripping rusty water on the linoleum. The scent of Lysol—a good memory—when one of the old man’s girlfriends tried to clean up the place, and then the inevitable bang of that warped metal door when she’d storm out.

Annabelle chased her remaining scallop to the edge of the plate and looked up at him. “I really think you’ll like Rachel.”

“I like Gwen.”

“That’s because she refused you. The two of you had no chemistry.”

“You’re so wrong. There was definite chemistry.”

“I don’t get why you need a wife right now. You have Bodie, you have assistants, and you can hire a housekeeper to handle all those impromptu dinner parties. As for having kids…It’s hard to raise them with a cell phone super glued to your ear.”

It was long past time to put Tinker Bell in her place. He settled back in his chair and let his eyes drift to her breasts. “You left out sex.”

She took a few seconds too long to respond. “You can hire that, too.”

“Honey,” he drawled, “I’ve never had to pay for sex in my life.”

She flushed, and he thought he finally had her where he wanted her, only to watch that small nose shoot into the air. “Which merely points out how desperate some women can be.”

“Speaking personally?”

“Raoul’s opinion. My lover. He’s very insightful.”

He grinned, and right then it occurred to him that he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much with a woman in a very long time. If Annabelle Granger were a few inches taller, a hell of a lot more sophisticated, better organized, less bossy, and more inclined to worship at his feet, she’d have made a perfect wife.

S
omeone took the seat next to Heath in the first-class cabin, but he was too preoccupied with the spreadsheet he’d pulled up on his laptop to pay attention. It wasn’t until the flight attendant called for electronic devices to be shut off that he grew conscious of a dark, subtle perfume. He lifted his head and found himself looking into a set of intelligent blue eyes. “Portia?”

“Good morning, Heath.” She leaned against the headrest. “How in the world do you cope with these early morning flights?”

“You get used to it.”

“I’ll pretend to believe you.”

She was wearing some kind of a silky lilac wrap dress, slim and sleeveless, with a purple cardigan knotted around her shoulders and a silver chain at her neck studded with three bezel-set diamonds. She was a beautiful woman, cultured and accomplished, and he liked doing business with her, but he didn’t find her sexy. She was too carefully put together, too aggressive. Pretty much a female version of himself. “What takes you to Tampa?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Not the weather, that’s for sure. It’s going to be ninety-three degrees there today.”

“Is it?” Heath paid no attention to any weather that didn’t affect the outcome of a game.

She gave him a smile designed to charm. It might have worked if he didn’t own a similar smile that he used for exactly the same purpose. “After your phone call last night, I decided we needed to evaluate where we are and see what adjustments we should make. I promise I won’t talk your head off the entire flight. Nothing is more annoying than being trapped on a plane with someone who won’t shut up.”

If he had to be cooped up on a plane with one of his matchmakers, he would have preferred Tinker Bell. He could have bullied her into leaving him alone. Portia’s appearance this morning had nothing to do with a sudden urge to visit Tampa. He’d explained the new arrangement to her over the phone last night then hung up while she was still in shock. Obviously, she’d recovered.

She contented herself with general chitchat until they were in the air, but once the breakfast service started she began working her way to the point. “Melanie really enjoyed meeting you. More than enjoyed. I do believe she has a bit of a crush on you.”

“I hope not. Nice person, but I didn’t feel any real connection with her.”

“You were only together for twenty minutes.” She gave him the identical sympathetic smile he used when a client was being difficult. “I understand exactly where you’re coming from, but the time limit you’ve set is a bit of a problem. I’ve been in this business long enough to recognize when two people need to give themselves a second chance, and I think you and Melanie qualify.”

“Sorry, but it’s not going to happen.”

Her forehead remained smooth, her expression composed. “This won’t work, you know.” She toyed with the yogurt carton on her fruit plate. “I never put down the competition, especially when it’s a tiny operation like Marriages by Myrna. It smacks too much of bullying. But—”

“Perfect for You.”

“What?”

“She calls it Perfect for You, not Marriages by Myrna.” He couldn’t imagine why he felt the need to clarify this, but somehow it seemed necessary.

“A wise decision,” Portia replied, with only a whiff of condescension. “But let me just say this. I resent the way people think a trip to Kinko’s to get business cards printed up is all it takes to be a matchmaker. But then, as a sports agent, you know exactly what I mean.”

She’d scored a field goal with that one. Annabelle had no depth of experience, only enthusiasm.

Portia pushed aside her tray, although she’d only nibbled at the corner of a honeydew cube. “Is there something we’re not providing that makes you feel the need to expose my candidates to an outsider? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the tiniest bit threatened, especially since I offered to sit in on these initial interviews myself.”

“Don’t worry about it. Annabelle lacks the killer instinct. She liked Melanie better than she liked her own candidate. She tried to talk me into seeing her again.”

That caught her by surprise. “Really? Well …Ms.Granger is an odd little duck, isn’t she?”

It must have been the engine noise because, for a moment, he thought she said “odd little fuck,” and he was hit with a vision of Annabelle naked. The notion took him aback. Annabelle amused him, but she didn’t turn him on. Not really. Maybe he’d thought about her sexually a couple of times, and he’d made a couple of smarmy references to fluster her. But nothing serious. Just messing around.

The plane hit an air pocket, and he pulled his mind from the bedroom back to business. “I don’t expect you to be comfortable with this, but as I said last night, the process will go smoother if Annabelle’s there for all the introductions.”

The fire in her eyes told him exactly what she was thinking, but she was too much of a pro to lose her cool. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

“She’s a tadpole, Portia, not a shark. The women relax with her, and I can get a clearer picture of who they are in a shorter period of time.”

“I see. Well, I’ve been doing this for a lot more years than she has. I’m sure I could expedite these interviews better than—”

“Portia, you couldn’t be nonthreatening if you tried, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. I told you from the beginning that I intended to make this easy on myself. It turns out that Annabelle’s the key, and nobody’s more surprised about that than I am.”

She retrenched, but she wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t entirely blame her. If somebody poached on his territory, he’d have come out swinging, too. “All right, Heath,” she said. “If this is what you need, then I’ll make sure it works.”

“Exactly what I want to hear.”

The flight attendant took their trays, and he pulled out his copy of the
Sports Lawyers Journal
. But the article on tort liability and fan violence didn’t hold his attention. Despite his best efforts to keep it simple, his hunt for a wife was growing more complicated by the day.

I
like her,” Heath said to Annabelle on the following Monday evening as Rachel left Sienna’s. “She’s fun. I had a good time.”

“Me, too,” Annabelle said, even though that was hardly the point. But the introduction had gone better than she’d dared hope, with lots of laughter and lively conversation. The three of them had shared their food prejudices (Heath wouldn’t touch an organ meat, Rachel hated olives, and Annabelle couldn’t stomach anchovies). They told embarrassing stories from their high school years and debated the merits of the Coen brothers’ movies. (Thumbs-up from Heath, thumbs-down from Rachel and Annabelle.) Heath didn’t seem to mind that Rachel wasn’t a knockout on the order of Gwen Phelps. She had both the polish and the brains he was looking for, and there were no cell phone interruptions. Annabelle allowed the twenty minutes to expand to forty.

“Good work, Tinker Bell.” He drew out his BlackBerry and typed a memo to himself. “I’ll call her tomorrow and ask her out.”

“Really? That’s great.” She felt a little queasy.

He looked up from the BlackBerry. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“You have a funny expression.”

She pulled herself back together. She was a professional now, and she could handle this. “I’m just imagining the newspaper interviews I’ll give after Perfect for You hits the Fortune Five Hundred.”

“Nothing’s more inspiring than a girl with a dream.” He returned the BlackBerry to his pocket and withdrew his well-stuffed money clip. She frowned. He frowned back. “Now what?”

“Don’t you have a nice, discreet credit card tucked away somewhere?”

“In my business, it’s all about the flash.” He flashed a hundred-dollar bill and tossed it on the table.

“I’m only mentioning it because, as I think I told you, image consultation is part of my business.” She hesitated, knowing she had to tread carefully. “For some women…women of a certain upbringing…obvious displays ofwealth can be a little off-putting.”

“Believe me, they’re not off-putting to twenty-one-year-old kids who’ve grown up with food stamps.”

“I see your point, but—”

“Got it. Money clip for business, credit card for courtship.” He slipped the object under discussion back into his pocket.

She’d basically accused him of vulgarity, but instead of being offended, he seemed to have filed the information away as dispassionately as if she’d given him tomorrow’s weather report. She considered his flawless table manners, the way he dressed, his knowledge of food and wine. Clearly these things had all been part of his curriculum, right along with torts and constitutional law. Exactly who was Heath Champion, and why was she beginning to like him so much?

She pleated her cocktail napkin. “So…about your real name…?”

“I already told you. Campione.”

“I did some research. Your middle initial is
D
.”

“Which stands for none of your damned business.”

“Something bad then.”

“Horrifying,” he said dryly. “Look, Annabelle, I grew up in a trailer park. Not a nice mobile home park—that would have been paradise. These heaps weren’t good enough for scrap. The neighbors were addicts, thieves, people who’d gotten lost in the system. My bedroom looked out over a junkyard. I lost my mother in a car accident when I was four. My old man was a decent guy when he wasn’t drunk, but that wasn’t very often. I earned everything I have, and I’m proud of that. I don’t hide where I came from. That dented metal sign on my office wall, the one that says
BEAU VISTA
, used to hang on a post not far from our door. I keep it as a reminder of how far I’ve come. But beyond that, my business is mine, and yours is doing what I tell you. Got it?”

“Jeez, all I did was ask your middle name.”

“Don’t ask again.”

“Desdemona?”

But he refused to entertain her, and she ended up staring at his back as he headed for the kitchen to pay his respects to Mama.

I
want you in the clubs every night,” Portia announced to her staff the next morning. Ramon, Sienna’s bartender, had awakened her at midnight with the disturbing news about Annabelle Granger’s success with her latest match, and she hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep. She couldn’t get past the feeling that another important client was slipping away from her. “Pass out your business cards,” she told Kiki and Briana, along with Diana, the girl she’d hired to replace SuSu. “Pick up phone numbers. You know the routine.”

“We’ve done that,” Briana said.

“But apparently not well enough or Heath Champion wouldn’t have made plans with Granger’s prospect last night instead of ours. And what about Hendricks and Mccall? We haven’t shown them anybody new in two weeks? What about the rest of our clients? Kiki, I want you to spend the rest of the week staking out the modeling agencies. I’ll hit the charity luncheons and the Oak Street boutiques. Briana and Diana, work the hair salons and the big department stores. All of you—clubs at night. By this time next week, we’re going to be screening a fresh batch of candidates.”

“A lot of good it’ll do with Heath,” Briana muttered. “He doesn’t like anybody.”

They didn’t get it, Portia thought as she returned to her office and flipped through her calendar. They didn’t understand how hard you had to work to stay on top. She gazed down at Friday’s calendar entry. In a short, terse phone conversation, Bodie Gray had set up their date for this weekend. She’d done her best not to think about it since. Just the possibility that someone might see them together gave her nightmares. But at least he didn’t seem to have told Heath about her spying episode.

A helicopter flew overhead. She rubbed her temples and considered setting up a spa day. She needed something to lift her spirits, something to make her feel like her old self again. But as she turned toward her computer, a traitorous voice whispered there weren’t enough massages, ayurvedic facials, or hot stone pedicures in the world to fix whatever wanted to stop working inside her.

A
nnabelle couldn’t afford to pin all her hopes on Rachel’s date with Heath, so she spent the rest of the week hanging out at two of Chicago’s top universities. At the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, she alternated between haunting the hallways of the Graduate School of Business and lingering by the steps of the Harris School of Public Policy. She also made her way to Lincoln Park, where she spent most of her time with the music majors at the De Paul Concert Hall. At both schools, she kept her eyes open for comely graduate students and beautiful faculty members. When she found them, she approached them directly, explained who she was and what she was looking for. Some were married or engaged, one was a lesbian, but the world loves a matchmaker, and most of the women were interested in helping her. By the end of the week, she had two great candidates ready to go if she needed them, as well as half a dozen women who weren’t right for Heath, but who were interested in signing on as clients themselves. Since they couldn’t afford the kinds of fees she wanted to charge, she established an academic discount.

Heath was out of town for the week, and he didn’t call. Not that she expected him to. Still, for someone who spent all his time on the phone, she would have thought he could have spared a few minutes to check in with her. Instead of stewing about it, she slipped on her sneakers, jogged to Dunkin’ Donuts, and distracted herself with an apple Danish.

H
eath spent the first four days of the week traveling between Dallas, Atlanta, and St. Louis, but even as he met with clients and player personnel directors, he found himself thinking ahead to his Friday afternoon powwow at Stars headquarters. When it came to the Stars, he tried to do as much business as possible with Ron McDermitt, the team’s top-notch general manager, but once again Phoebe Calebow had insisted on seeing him instead. Not a good sign.