Match Me If You Can

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  He didn’t bite. “The top of page fourteen …That model comes with some kind of pump. You’ve got the corner turned down, so you must be interested.”

  She was fairly sure she hadn’t turned any pages down, but who knew?

  “And how about this one with the suction cup? The question is, exactly what would you stick it to? A word of caution, sweetheart. You suction something like that to your bedroom window or, hell, the dashboard of your car—it’s going to attract the wrong kind of attention.”

  She smiled.

  “Just tell me one thing, Annabelle, and then I have to go.” His voice dropped to a low, intimate note that made her shiver. “Why would a woman be so interested in an artificial one when the real thing works a hell of a lot better?”

  As she searched for just the right comeback, he hung up. She took a few deep breaths, but they didn’t begin to steady her. No matter how much she tried to inoculate herself, he got to her every time, which was the biggest reason of all why she couldn’t afford these conversations.

  The doorbell rang. Thank God, Dean was early. She jumped up from the desk and pressed her hands to her cheeks to cool herself off. Plastering a smile on her face, she opened the front door.

  Heath stood on the other side.

  “Happy birthday.” He slipped his cell into his pocket, tossed her catalog down, and brushed her lips with a soft, quick kiss, which she could barely keep from returning.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You look beautiful. More than beautiful. Unfortunately, your present won’t get here until tomorrow, but I don’t want you to think I forgot.”

  “What present? Never mind.” She made herself block the doorway instead of opening her arms. “Dean’s picking me up in ten minutes. I can’t talk to you now.”

  He moved her out of the way so he could get inside. “I’m afraid Dean’s indisposed. I’m taking his place. I like your dress.”

  “What are you talking about? I spoke to him three hours ago, and he was fine.”

  “Those stomach viruses come on fast.”

  “Bull. What have you done with him?”

  “It wasn’t me. It was Kevin. I don’t know why he had to insist on watching game film with him tonight. Don’t quote me, but your pal Kevin can be a real prick when he wants to.” He nuzzled her neck, right behind her chandelier earring. “Damn, you smell good.”

  It took her a few beats too long to push herself away. “Does Molly know about this?”

  “Not exactly. Unfortunately, Molly’s gone over to the dark side along with her sister. Those two women are way too protective of you. It’s me they should be worrying about. I don’t know why they haven’t figured out you can take care of yourself.”

  She liked knowing he understood that about her, but she still wouldn’t give in to his smarmy agent’s charm. “I don’t want to go to my birthday party with you. As far as my family knows, you’re still my client, so it would look a little odd. Besides, I want to go with Dean. Someone who’ll impress them.”

  “And you think I won’t?”

  She took in his dark gray suit, probably Armani, his designer necktie, and tonight’s watch, an incredible white gold Patek Philippe. Her family would roll on their backs and beg him to scratch their stomachs.

  He knew he’d boxed her in. She saw it in his crafty smile. “Oh, all right,” she said grouchily. “But I’m warning you now, my brothers are the most clueless, obnoxious, opinionated men you’ll ever meet.” She threw up her hands. “Why am I wasting my breath? You’re going to love them.”

  And they loved him right back. Their shocked expressions when she walked into the Mayfair Club’s walnut-paneled private dining room with Heath at her side fulfilled all her fantasies. First they checked to make sure he wasn’t wearing high heels, then they mentally priced out his wardrobe. Even before introductions were exchanged, he was one of them, a certified member of the high-achievers’ club.

  “Mom and Dad, this is Heath Champion, and I know what you’re thinking. It sounded phony to me, too. But he was born Campione, and you’ve got to admit the name Champion is good for marketing.”

  “Very good for marketing,” Kate said approvingly. Her favorite bracelet, an engraved gold cuff, clinked against Nana’s old charm bracelet. At the same time, she shot Annabelle an inquisitive glance, which Annabelle pretended not to see, since she still hadn’t figured out how to explain why the man they knew as her most important client had shown up as her date.

  Tonight Kate was clad in one of her St. John knit suits, the champagne color perfectly matching her ash blond hair, which she’d worn in a jaw-length Gena Rowlands pageboy for as long as Annabelle could remember. Her dad sported his favorite navy blazer, a white shirt, and a gray necktie the same color as what remained of his curly hair. Once it had been auburn like hers. An American flag pin graced his lapel, and as she hugged him, she drew in his familiar daddy scent: Brut shaving cream, dry-cleaning fluid, and well-scrubbed surgeon’s skin.

  Heath started pumping hands. “Kate, Chet, it’s a pleasure.”

  Although Annabelle had met her parents earlier for breakfast, her brothers had only flown in a few hours ago, and she exchanged hugs with them. Doug and Adam had inherited their blond, blue-eyed good looks from Kate, although not her tendency to carry a few extra pounds at the waist. They were looking especially handsome tonight, hard-bodied and successful.

  “Doug, you’re the accountant, right?” Respect shone in Heath’s eyes. “I heard you made VP at Reynolds and Peate. Very impressive. And, Adam…The top heart surgeon in St. Louis. It’s an honor.”

  Her brothers were honored right back, and the men did a friendly little shoulder slapping. “Read about you in the paper…”

  “You’ve built quite a reputation…”

  “…amazing client roster you have.”

  Her sister-in-law used perfume like bug repellant, so Annabelle hugged her last. Overly tanned, aggressively made-up, and undernourished, Candace wore a short black strapless dress to showcase her toned arms and trim calves. Her diamond studs were nearly as big as Sean Palmer’s, but Annabelle still thought she looked like a horse.

  Heath gave Candace his double whammy—sexy smile and patented dead-eyed sincerity. “Wow, Doug, how’d an ugly guy like you manage to land such a beauty?”

  Doug, who knew exactly how good-looking he was, laughed. Candace gave a coquettish toss of her mahogany brown hair extensions. “The question is…How did a girl like Annabelle manage to talk a man like you into joining our silly little family party?”

  Annabelle smiled sweetly. “I promised he could tie me up afterward and spank me.”

  Heath enjoyed that, but her mother huffed. “Annabelle, not everyone here is familiar with your sense of humor.”

  Annabelle turned her attention to the stranger in the room, Adam’s latest conquest. Like the others, including his ex-wife, this one was well tailored and attractive with square features, a blunt-cut dark brown bob, and a total lack of charm. Just the sight of those thin, unsmiling lips announced that her brother had chosen still another emotionally robotic female.

  “This is Dr. Lucille Menger.” He slipped a protective arm around her shoulders. “Our very talented new pathologist.”

  Good job choice, Lucy. Not much need to worry about bedside manner.

  Heath gave her a megawatt smile. “You and I seem to be the only outsiders tonight, so we’d better stick together. For all we know, these people could be serial killers.”

  Her parents and brothers chuckled, but Lucille looked mystified. Finally her mental fog cleared. “Oh, that’s a joke.”

  Annabelle shot a quick look at Kate, but beyond the flicker of an eyebrow, her mother wasn’t giving anything away. Annabelle’s irritation grew. Her brother had a track record for choosing these humorless brainiacs, but did anybody stage an intervention for Dr. Adam? No, they did not. Only for Annabelle.

  Heath looked boyishly repentant. “A bad joke, I’m afraid.”
>
  Lucille seemed relieved to know it wasn’t her.

  Kate always booked the Mayfair Club’s second-floor private dining room for the Granger family’s Chicago gatherings. Decorated like an English manor house with polished brass and chintz, the room offered a cozy seating area near a mullioned bay window that looked down on Delaware Place, and they settled there for cocktails and birthday presents. Doug and Candace presented her with a gift certificate for a makeover at a local salon. No mystery who’d come up with that idea. Adam gave her a new DVD player along with a collection of workout videos, thank you very much. When she unwrapped her parents’ gift, she found an expensive navy suit she wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing, but couldn’t return because Kate had ordered it from her favorite working woman’s boutique in St. Louis, and the manager would squeal.

  “Every woman needs a power suit as she gets older,” her mother said.

  The corner of Heath’s mouth twitched. “I have a gift for Annabelle, too. Unfortunately, it won’t be ready until Monday.”

  Candace pressed him for details, but he refused to say more. Kate could no longer hold back her curiosity about why he was here. “We never mind when Annabelle shows up without a date, even though she says it makes her feel like a fifth wheel. Asher client, you certainly had no obligation to be her escort, but…Well, I must say we’re all glad you agreed to join us…?”

  She ended her sentence with an implied question mark. Annabelle hoped Heath would somehow put an end to her mother’s assumption that this was a mercy date for him, but he was more intent on playing the charm card. “It’s my pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to meeting all of you. Annabelle’s told me the most amazing stories about your banking career, Kate. You were a real trailblazer for women.”

  Kate melted all over him. “I don’t know about that, but I will say things were a lot more difficult for women back then than they are now. I keep telling Annabelle that she doesn’t know how lucky she is. These days, the only obstacles standing in the way of a woman’s success are ones of her own making.”

  Zing.

  “You’ve obviously taught her well,” Heath said smoothly. “It’s amazing what she’s been able to create in such a short time. You must be enormously proud of her.”

  Kate looked hard at Heath to see if he was kidding. Candace snickered. Annabelle didn’t exactly hate her sister-in-law, but she wouldn’t be the first person standing in line if Candace turned up needing a kidney.

  Kate reached across the arm of her chair to pat Annabelle’s knee. “Tactfully put, Heath. My daughter has always been a free spirit. And you look lovely tonight, sweetheart, although it’s too bad they didn’t have that dress in black.”

  Annabelle sighed. Heath smiled, then turned his attention to Candace, who’d maneuvered a position on the leather sofa between him and Doug. “I understand that you and Doug have a gifted little boy.”

  Gifted? The most Annabelle had said about Jamison was that he’d learned to get everybody’s attention by peeing on the living room rug. But the Granger clan ate it up.

  Kate beamed. “He reminds me so much of Doug and Adam at that age.”

  Tiny penises?

  “We’re having him tested,” Doug said. “We don’t want him to be bored in school.”

  “He loves his nature enrichment class.” A strand from Candace’s hair extensions was sticking to her lip gloss, but she didn’t seem to notice. “We’re teaching him to recycle.”

  “It’s amazing how well coordinated he is for a three-year-old,” Adam said. “He’s going to be quite an athlete.”

  Kate puffed up with maternal pride. “Doug and Adam were swimmers.”

  Annabelle had been a swimmer, too.

  “Annabelle swam, too.” Kate hooked a sickle of blond hair behind her ear. “Unfortunately, she didn’t take to it like her brothers.”

  Translation: Annabelle had never won any medals. “I just had fun,” she muttered, but no one was paying attention because her father had decided to enter the conversation.

  “I’m cutting down my old seven iron for Jamison. It’s never too early to get them interested in the game.”

  Candace launched into a description of Jamison’s academic prowess, and Mr. Charm made all the right responses. Kate regarded her sons fondly. “Both Doug and Adam were reading by the time they were four. Not just words, but entire paragraphs. I’m afraid it took Annabelle a little longer. Not that she was slow—not at all—but she had a hard time sitting still.”

  She still did.

  “A little attention deficit disorder isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Annabelle said, feeling the need to interject. “At least it gives you a broad range of interests.”

  Everybody stared at her, even Heath. It figured. In less than half an hour, he’d deserted the loser’s lunch table and taken up permanent residence with the cool kids.

  The agony continued as the appetizers arrived and they resettled around the table, which was set with white linen, pink roses, and silver candlesticks. “So, Spud, when are you coming to St. Louis to see the new cardiac wing?” Adam took the seat next to her, his date on his opposite side. “Funniest damn thing, Lucille. The last time Annabelle visited, somebody left a cleaning bucket in the hall. Annabelle was talking as usual, so she didn’t see it. Splat!”

  They all laughed as though they hadn’t heard the story at least a dozen times.

  “Remember that party we had before our senior year in college?” Doug snorted. “We mixed everybody’s leftover drinks together and dared Spud to down the whole damn thing. God, I never thought she’d stop puking.”

  “Yeah, those are some great memories, all right.” Annabelle drained her wineglass.

  Fortunately, they were more interested in grilling Heath than in torturing her. Doug wanted to know if he’d considered opening an office in L.A. Adam asked if he’d taken on any partners. Her father inquired into his golf game. All of them agreed that hard work, clear-cut goals, and a smooth backswing were the secrets to success. By the time they dug into their entrées, she could see that Heath had fallen as much in love with her family as her family had with him.

  Kate, however, still hadn’t satisfied her curiosity about why he’d shown up as her escort. “Tell us how your hunt for a wife is coming along. I understand you’re working with two matchmakers.”

  Annabelle decided to get it over with. “One matchmaker. I fired him.”

  Her brothers laughed, but Kate regarded her severely over her dinner roll. “Annabelle, you have the most bizarre sense of humor.”

  “I’m not joking,” she said. “Heath was impossible to work with.”

  An embarrassed silence fell over the table. Heath shrugged and set down his fork. “I couldn’t seem to stay on task, and Annabelle doesn’t put up with a lot of nonsense when it comes to business.”

  Her family gaped, all except Candace, who’d finished her third chardonnay and decided it was time to launch her very favorite topic of conversation. “You’ll never hear it from any of them, Heath, but the Granger family is old, old St. Louis, if you know what I mean.”

  Heath’s fingers curled around the stem of his wineglass. “I’m not sure I do.”

  As much as Annabelle appreciated the change of topic, she wished Candace could have chosen something else. Kate wasn’t happy, either, but since Candace had decided to misbehave instead of Annabelle, she merely asked Lucille to pass the salt.

  “Salt leads to high blood pressure,” Lucille felt duty bound to point out.

  “Fascinating.” Kate reached past her for the shaker.

  “The Grangers are one of St. Louis’s original brewery families,” Candace said. “They practically settled the town.”

  Annabelle stifled a yawn.

  Heath, however, abandoned his prime rib to give Candace his full attention. “You don’t say?”

  Candace, a natural-born snob, was more than happy to elaborate. “My father-in-law waited until he graduated from college to announce th
at he intended to go into medicine instead of beer. His family was forced to sell out to Anheuser-Busch. Apparently, it was quite the news story.”

  “I can imagine.” Heath gazed across the table at Annabelle. “You never mentioned any of this.”

  “None of them do,” Candace said in a conspiratorial whisper. “They’re ashamed of being born with money.”

  “Not ashamed,” her father said firmly. “But Kate and I have always believed in the value of hard work. We had no intention of raising children with nothing better to do than count the money in their trust funds.”

  Since none of them could touch the money in their trust funds until they were about 130, Annabelle had never understood why it was such a big hairy deal.

  “We’ve watched too many young people get ruined that way,” Kate said.

  Candace had another tidbit to disclose. “Apparently quite a dustup occurred when Chet brought Kate home. The Grangers saw it as marrying down.”

  Far from taking offense, Kate looked smug. “Chet’s mother was a horrible snob. She couldn’t help it, poor thing. She was a product of that insular St. Louis socialite culture, which was exactly why I tried so hard—and so futilely, I might add—to talk Annabelle out of being a debutante. My family might have been working class—God knows my mother was—but—”

  “Don’t you dare say one bad word about Nana.” Annabelle stabbed a green bean.

  “—but I knew how to read an etiquette book as well as anyone,” Kate went on smoothly, “and it didn’t take me long to fit right in with the high and mighty Grangers.”

  Chet regarded Kate with pride. “By the time my own mother died, she cared more about Kate than she did about me.”

  Heath hadn’t taken his eyes off Annabelle. “You were a debutante?”

  Her spine stiffened, and her chin came up. “I loved the gowns, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. You got a problem with that?”

  Heath started to laugh, and he kept at it so long that Kate had to dig a tissue from her purse and hand it over so he could wipe his eyes. Frankly, Annabelle didn’t see what was so gosh darned funny.