Heartstrings and Diamond Rings

by Jane Graves

  “Well, no reason, really,” Alison said, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. “Except that men don’t usually understand women very well. So finding them the right man—”

  “You’re absolutely right. Most men don’t understand women. But I’m not the kind of man you’re used to dealing with. Trust me when I tell you,” he said with a sly smile, “I know women.”

  If he meant “know” in the biblical sense, she had no doubt hundreds of women would like very much to be known by him. But when it came to a woman’s psyche, she doubted his understanding was much different from the average man’s. In other words, no matter what he professed, he was clueless about women.

  He sat back in his chair. “You think I’m clueless about women, don’t you?”

  When her thought came out of his mouth, Alison blinked with surprise. “I‑I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. I’m also pretty good at reading body language.”

  Oh, hell. Now he was looking at her body, which she’d never been terribly proud of, which made her want to slither out the door and never come back.

  “I guess I’m going to have to prove it to you,” he said.

  Her heart thumped. “Prove it to me?”

  He narrowed his eyes and stared at her thoughtfully for a few moments. “I’d say you’re about…” He tilted his head. “Twenty‑eight, twenty-nine, but no older than thirty one. You’ve been in a couple of pretty serious relationships over the years, but they all ended badly. You want to meet new men, but you’ve gotten so cynical that you believe the worst about them before they even open their mouths. Lately you’ve started to believe it’s actually possible you’re going to spend the rest of your life alone.”

  Alison swallowed hard, feeling as transparent as a plate-glass window. “You just described half the women in the Dallas metroplex.”

  His eyes never leaving hers, he tapped his fingertips together thoughtfully. “You think about men all the time. I wouldn’t say it’s an obsession, but you’re definitely focused. For instance, when you shop for a dress, you don’t buy one based on what you like. You buy one based on what you think your man of the moment will like.”

  She thought about evil three-way mirror at Saks and Randy’s big-butt proclamation. This guy was getting too close for comfort.

  “When I say the word ‘bridesmaid,’” he went on, “you don’t think about a beautiful wedding. You think about the three or four ugly bridesmaid dresses cluttering your closet.”

  Wrong. Two. That was all she had. Just two. And to be fair, the one she wore in Heather’s wedding really wasn’t ugly at all.

  “And since you’re looking all the time,” he said, “it’s hard for you even to have a conversation with a single man without evaluating him as husband material.”

  Alison’s heart jolted. “That’s not true.”

  “Yeah? When you came into this office and saw a man sitting behind this desk, what was your first thought? Did you think, ‘What’s a man doing running a matchmaking service?’ Or did you scope out my left hand for a ring?”

  Alison’s mouth fell open. “I did not—”

  He held up his palm. “Hey, when you’re focused on finding the right guy, everybody’s a candidate. I get that. But now you’ve gotten to the point where you don’t trust your own judgment anymore, so you’re willing to pay somebody else to do your judging for you.”

  “Somebody else, maybe,” she said, feeling as flustered as she ever had in her life. “But I thought that somebody was going to be Rochelle. I still think a woman would be best.”

  “Because you still think a woman knows more about women than a man ever could?”

  “No offense.”

  “None taken. It’s a common misconception.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk, his gaze fixed on hers. “Tell me, Alison. Why is it that you’re not engaged, but you have a subscription to Modern Bride magazine?”

  Alison’s face heated up with embarrassment. “That’s it. This isn’t going to work. A man who’s a matchmaker is just wrong.”

  He smiled at her.

  “No. It really is. Particularly since you haven’t been at this very long. Like, hardly at all. How am I supposed to trust you when you have no track record?”

  He pointed to the mahogany staircase along the far wall that led to the second floor. “See those stairs over there?”

  Alison turned around. “Yeah?”

  “When I was a kid,” he said, “I used to sit on those stairs, listening to my grandmother talk to her clients. Most of the women were a lot like you. They’d been out there trying so hard to make the kind of love connection they’d always dreamed about, but they always came up empty. But my grandmother…” A smile passed over his lips. “She had a knack. An intuition. Almost a sixth sense about who belonged with whom. And no matter how skeptical they were when they walked through the door, six months later, when they were wearing a ring, suddenly they weren’t skeptical anymore. Was she a hundred percent right all the time? No. But she sure increased the odds for a lot of women to find good men.”

  The sincerity he radiated seemed to waft over to Alison and wrap itself around her like a warm blanket. But the very reason she was here—because she didn’t trust herself when it came to making decisions about men—was precisely what kept her from feeling comfortable trusting this one.

  “But that was your grandmother. I don’t mean to be negative, but are you sure you can do this?”

  “My grandmother took tremendous pride in her business. If she didn’t think I was competent to run it, why else would she have willed it to me?”

  Okay. So that was a pretty good point.

  “What kind of guarantee do you have?” she asked him.

  “No guarantee. I offer five quality introductions. If I made my services unlimited, would my clients make an effort to really get to know the people I match them with? Or would they give it a half-hearted effort, always assuming somebody better was just around the corner?”

  “So I could give you fifteen hundred dollars and end up with no one?”

  “That,” he said with a smile of supreme confidence, “is not going to happen.”

  Everything about this man seemed positive and sincere. Even if she wasn’t quite sure he was up to snuff as a matchmaker, she didn’t doubt he believed he was. And because she was a little short on self-confidence herself, she really admired it when she saw it in somebody else.

  “Excuse me,” he said suddenly, reaching into his jeans pocket. “Sorry. I need to take this call.”

  Call? She hadn’t heard a ring. Then she realized he must have had his phone on vibrate.

  He hit the talk button. He turned away a little, as if to make his conversation more private, but she heard him loud and clear.

  “Brandon Scott,” he said, and then a big smile crossed his face. “Hi, Susan!” he said in a cheery voice. “So you and Jeff had lunch together. How did it go?”

  Alison’s eyes may have been on a Victorian print on the wall to her right, but her ears were tuned to every word that came out of Brandon’s mouth.

  “Wow,” Brandon said. “That’s great news! I’m so glad you hit it off.” A pause, and then he laughed. “Now you know that’s not true. I’m not better at this than my grandmother was. I’m just glad I was able to pick up on the work she’d already done with you and go from there.”

  They chatted for a few minutes more, with Brandon admonishing Susan that no matter how much fun she and Jeff were having, next time she needed to watch the clock so she wasn’t an hour late getting back to work.

  Alison felt a shot of envy. She wanted to be the woman on the other end of that phone who’d had such a great first date that she’d forgotten all about the time. Not once in her life had Alison done anything but muddle through a first date and pray there was more to the guy than bad table manners and a driving need to talk endlessly about his divorce.

  Finally Brandon hung up and turned back to Alison. �
�I’m sorry. Now…where were we?”

  Alison was still thinking about that phone conversation. Could he do for her what he’d done for Susan? Introduce her to a man who made time stand still?

  “We were talking about your fee,” she said hesitantly. “It’s a little…high. I mean, compared to Internet dating…”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Think of it this way, Alison. Internet dating is like a ten‑dollar buffet. You pick out several things that look good, put them on your plate, and hope you can stomach at least a few of them. Matchmaking is like eating at the chef’s table at a gourmet restaurant. You put yourself in his hands and trust that you’re in for a five-star experience.”

  She had to admit that analogy really hit home. After all, hadn’t Randy very nearly made her barf?

  “Still, it’s a lot of money,” Alison said. “I’m going to have to think about it.”

  “I understand completely. But I’m also sure you understand that matchmaking is a very personalized service, which means I can take only so many clients at a time. My schedule is booking up fast.”

  “How fast?”

  “I have room for only two more clients this month.”

  “But it’s only the fifth.”

  “Exactly.” He rose from his chair, came around his desk, and held out his hand. “It was nice to meet you, Alison. If you decide you’d like my help, give me a call. We’ll talk more about what you’re looking for in a man. If not this month, then maybe we’ll see each other next month, okay?”

  She rose and shook his hand. “Uh…yeah. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Of course. You have my number. Just let me know when you’d like me to introduce you to your future husband.”

  With that, he sat back down, pulled out a file, and laid it open on his desk, moving ahead with business as usual. Alison walked to the door, each step a little slower than the last. Future husband. She loved the sound of that.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the money. But was it a smart use of her money?

  She admitted to being a little impulsive, but it was usually limited to things like ordering octopus at a sushi bar, or dyeing her hair red. The fact that she’d even considered using a matchmaker was crazy enough. Could she actually spend fifteen hundred dollars to let a man find her a man? This could turn into a bigger disaster than her Florida trip, where she’d ended up as mosquito bait.

  Or she could find the man of her dreams.

  No. That was crazy. This was crazy.

  She started to open the door, only to stop short, her hand on the doorknob. But if not this, then what? Was she just going to wait around, doing nothing, hoping for a man to stop her on the street and tell her he was the one?

  Just take some time to think about it. A day, or an hour, or at least a few minutes…

  Then she had a terrible thought. What if she waited until next month, and Brandon gave away her perfect match to another woman who hadn’t hesitated to seize the opportunity?

  Feeling a surge of conviction, she spun back around. “Brandon?”

  He looked up. “Yes?”

  “If I write you a check today, when can we get started?”

  He pulled out his phone and hit a few buttons, then looked back up at her with those dark, sexy eyes, a smile of satisfaction playing over his lips.

  “How does Thursday look for you?”

  Chapter 3

  The moment Alison left the house, Brandon slipped the check she’d written him into his shirt pocket. He slapped shut the file on his desk, stuffed it randomly into a file drawer, and trotted up the stairs to the second floor. He stepped into the first room on the right, where Tom was leaning across the pool table, his cue in place, taking aim.

  “That was fast,” Tom said. “I’m guessing she told you to forget it. But hey. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” A flick of his cue sent the four ball into a side pocket.

  Brandon pulled Alison’s check from his shirt pocket. “Think again.”

  Tom’s eyes grew wide. He dropped his cue, came around the table, and jerked the check out of Brandon’s hand. He looked at it with disbelief. “No. No way. You did not just convince that woman to give you fifteen hundred dollars to find her a husband.”

  “Did you think I couldn’t do it?”

  “Hell, yes, I thought you couldn’t do it!”

  Brandon plucked the check out of Tom’s hand and stuck it back into his pocket. “I thought you had faith in me all these years.”

  “Of course I have faith in you, as long as it involves a real business. But conning a woman into believing you’re a matchmaker? Who the hell would have ever thought you’d ever be able to do that?”

  “Con?” Brandon said. “There’s no con involved here. I fully intend to deliver the services I promised.”

  “Right. You don’t know crap about matchmaking.”

  “What’s to know? I’ll look through my grandmother’s files. Find a guy who looks decent. Set her up with him. What’s so hard about that? I have five shots at it, for God’s sake. The odds are with me.”

  “Okay,” Tom said, racking up the balls. “So you managed to get fifteen hundred bucks out of one client. That’s a far cry from the thirty thousand you need. Where’s the next client coming from?”

  “I placed an ad on the Dallas After Dark website. When it comes out next week, I’ll have more business than I know what to do with.”

  Tom lifted the rack, and Brandon grabbed a cue to break.

  “Our option to buy the warehouse is good for only six months,” Tom said as Brandon’s break drove the six ball into a corner pocket. “If you don’t get the money by then, I’ll have to bring in another partner. But you’re the guy I want. Are you sure you can pull off this gig?”

  Yes. He was sure. Because there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to make it happen.

  For years, Brandon had crisscrossed the country, making real estate deals and making money. He stayed in no-tell motels, played a little pool in the evenings, had a few drinks, and then got up the next day to guide a crew in renovating his latest project. It had been an incredible high—finding distressed properties in cities across the country, then racing the clock to turn hovels into showplaces and get them sold before his construction loans came due. Once in Vegas he had four projects going at once, and the money piled up until his bank account was so stuffed he couldn’t imagine ever being broke again.

  Then the bottom had fallen out of the real estate market.

  He still remembered that horrible feeling when he had loan payments due and not a dime left to pay them. The projects had gone into foreclosure, leaving him with big losses, bad credit, and nowhere to turn.

  Brandon and Tom had partnered on several projects in the past, so when Tom contacted him about the Houston deal, he sat up and paid attention. The owner was so motivated to sell that he’d have taken just about any offer, but it took a guy with vision to be able to see the possibilities for the old warehouse.

  Brandon was that guy.

  Turning that dilapidated warehouse into loft apartments was going to take some work, but even in a depressed market that area was so hot it practically sizzled. They couldn’t miss. And if the company that owned the adjoining property succeeded in getting the zoning changed from residential to mixed use and put in the urban living center they wanted to, Brandon and Tom’s investment would go through the roof. That part was a long shot, but even without it, they could easily walk away with a substantial profit, and Brandon would be off to the races again.

  The seller had agreed to finance the deal as long as they came up with the down payment cash he was desperate for, so their creditworthiness had never been called into question. The only thing that stood between Brandon and that project was a lousy thirty thousand dollars, his half of the down payment. Three years ago, he’d have never been concerned about a pitiful amount of money like that, but he sure was now.

  Then he’d found out his grandmother had died and he was her sole heir.


  “I’ll have the money,” Brandon said as he dropped the three ball. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Didn’t she leave any cash at all?”

  “About eight thousand. So all I really need is twenty-two.”

  “Are you sure there’s not some loophole in the will that will let you sell this house? Getting the money that way would be a whole lot easier than by playing matchmaker.”

  “Nope. I can live here as long as I want to. But if I move out, the house goes to my grandmother’s church.”

  “I can’t believe she willed her house to a church. That’s so weird.”

  “Not for my grandmother. She practically had a pew with her name on it at the First Baptist Church for the past thirty years.” Brandon aimed carefully, taking out the one and the five in a single shot.

  Tom nodded down at the pool table. “You might want to consider selling this monstrosity. It’s bound to be worth something.”

  “Not without restoration, and that costs a bundle. But I wouldn’t sell it, anyway. This is a nineteenth-century Brunswick Monarch. I’m putting it in storage when I go.”

  “It’s ugly as hell.”

  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And if I ever see you set a beer on it, I’m chopping off your arm at the elbow.”

  “What’s the problem? It’d just blend in with the other rings.”

  “You heard me.”

  Tom was right. This pool table had seen better days, though it must have been amazing when it was new. Built of burled elm, it was inlaid with a mosaic of walnut, rosewood, and ebony in diamond patterns. The legs were four cast-iron lions stretching from beneath the table out to the corners, each one finished in fourteen-carat gold. Built at the end of the nineteenth century, it was still in the house when Brandon’s grandmother and grandfather bought it in the 1950s. By then its condition was already compromised. The felt was scuffed and faded, the wood scratched and stained.

  He remembered the long hours he’d spent playing on this table when he was a teenager. When he’d been forced to live with a grandmother he barely knew, it had been something to escape to when the awkwardness got to be too much. After everything that had happened, he spent the first few months gritting his teeth and smacking balls so hard they sometimes ended up on the floor. But gradually his finesse returned, the soft clack of the balls calming his angry, bitter thoughts and letting him breathe a little.