I DO, BUT HERE'S THE CATCH

by Pamela Burford

  "Lucky you," Amanda said. "Grant Sterling, Esquire, is quite the hunk." Raven had introduced Grant to Sunny and Amanda first, so they could approve the choice.

  The four of them had formed the Wedding Ring twelve years earlier, during their senior year of high school. The Ring existed for one purpose only. If any member was unmarried at age thirty, the other three—her best friends in the world—would find her a husband. The rules were simple: while they were dating, the man in question must not be told he was part of a formal matchmaking scheme; and as long as he remained interested, the Ring member had to continue seeing him for at least three months.

  The approach of their thirtieth birthdays this year had found all four friends unmarried. Raven had been the first beneficiary of her friends' husband-hunting zeal, having been introduced to Brent Radley in January. Brent was the sales manager at Grasshopper, the children's magazine Amanda published. Just yesterday Raven and Brent's brother, Hunter, four years her junior, had returned from their honeymoon in England. The road to marital bliss had contained a few speed bumps, but they all agreed it was results that counted.

  The Wedding Ring was a closely guarded secret. The only outsiders who knew about it were Grandma Rossi and now Raven's new husband, Hunter Radley.

  Charli had turned thirty last Wednesday, and her matchmaking buddies had lost no time setting her up with Grant Sterling, whom they'd described as mature, stable, affluent, gentlemanly, attractive—and perfect for Charli, who'd spent her entire adult life taking care of other people. She needed a strong, devoted husband, her friends had insisted—someone to take care of her for a change.

  As much as she'd dreaded the almost inevitable rejection, the seductive thought just wouldn't let go: someone to take care of her. The kind of loving bond all seven of her siblings enjoyed with their spouses. Growing old with a man who adored her, surrounded by their children and grandchildren.

  "What did you think of sushi?" Sunny asked. A strand of long, wavy auburn hair bad worked itself free of her braid. She pushed it behind her ear.

  "I liked it," Charli said. "Well, most of it."

  "What did you think of sex?" Amanda asked.

  Charli whipped her head around, praying none of her students had overheard.

  Raven rolled her eyes. "Amanda…"

  "You know nothing like that happened," Charli whispered. "It was our first date! And anyway, well, you know nothing like that happened."

  She was, after all, Carlotta Rossi, last of a dying breed: the Thirty-Year-Old Virgin.

  "No?" Amanda lifted her teacup. "I thought perhaps you'd asked your legal counsel to show you his, uh, briefs."

  "Excuse me?" Jenny O'Keefe, one of the clarinets, caught Sunny's eye and lifted her coffee cup.

  "Be right back," Sunny grumbled, and padded away in her white Reeboks.

  "So you finally got to try sushi," Raven said. "Then what?"

  Then Grant had wanted to deposit her back at home, Charli recalled. Only his good breeding had made him drag her to that club when her pride would have had her crawling back home at nine-thirty in the evening.

  Thank goodness for good breeding, she thought with another little smile.

  Raven was watching her closely. She squeezed Charli's hand. "You had a good time."

  Charli took a deep breath. She nodded.

  Amanda gave her an impatient little whack on the shoulder. "So where else did he take you?"

  "To this club in the Twenties. Bunny's."

  "Oh, I've been there. With Ben," Amanda said, referring to one of her two ex-husbands, a spendthrift and womanizing party animal.

  "Well, I'd never been to a place like that." Charli had felt so intimidated, at first Bunny's had been packed with people, all of them dressed in the latest hip fashions, acting so cool, totally at ease with the New York club scene.

  "Who was performing?" Raven asked.

  "Phil Rivera."

  Charli's friends responded with wide-eyed "ooh"s.

  Amanda asked, "Is he as hot in person as he is on MTV?"

  "Hotter," Charli said, and they all erupted in girlish giggles. She leaned across the table, prompting Raven and Amanda to do the same. "I'd never been anyplace like that. It wasn't at all what I expected. The club was kind of small, and dark, and, well, it was a private show, by invitation. Grant did Rivera's divorce, and I guess they're on friendly terms now. Anyway, when we arrived, the man at the door, he checked Grant's name off on this list, just like in the movies."

  Sunny returned. "What are you guys giggling about?"

  They brought her up to speed on Charli's date.

  "That is so cool!" Sunny declared.

  "And then—" Charli raised her hands, signaling the pièce de rèsistance "—in the middle of his act, Rivera calls up a friend from the audience, to sing with him. Guess who! Skye Keller!"

  Her friends squealed in delight, drawing stares from the students. Skye Keller was one of the biggest names in pop music.

  "You saw Skye Keller in person?" Raven said. "And Phil Rivera? Wow!"

  "Grant introduced me to Rivera afterward. I shook hands with him and everything."

  "So it was a good date," Raven said.

  "It was—" Charli sighed "—wonderful."

  Her friends exchanged knowing smiles.

  "And Grant?" Sunny asked. "Was he wonderful?"

  Charli's face hurt, she was grinning so widely. Never in her life had she felt this way.

  Sunny laughed. She placed a hand on Charli's shoulder. "I think we have our answer."

  Amanda leaned back in her seat. "Another Wedding Ring success story."

  "Not yet!" Charli objected. "It was one date!"

  "Did he kiss you good-night?" Sunny asked.

  Charli thought she could probably fry an egg on her face, it felt so hot. "Yes," she said, so primly that her pals erupted in another fit of giggles.

  At the club, Grant had plied her with scrumptious desserts, and coffee with amaretto liqueur when she'd declined anything stronger. He'd engaged her in conversation and gone out of his way to make sure she was comfortable, relaxed and entertained. By the time the first song had ended, she'd forgotten her wounded pride and her determination to rush home. They'd stayed at Bunny's for several hours, and Grant had been as sweetly attentive during the ride home as he'd been at the club.

  And yes, he'd kissed her good-night, right there on her doorstep at two in the morning. He'd slid his hand around her neck, under her hair, and held her with such disarming gentleness that tears had pricked her eyes. She'd never been held like that, and certainly never kissed like that, lingeringly, savoringly, as if there were nowhere else he could possibly want to be, nothing else he could possibly want to do at that moment.

  Charli had prepared for bed in a heady daze; it was a wonder she'd managed to brush her teeth and wash that silly makeup off her face. Sleep had been elusive. She'd lain on her rickety little bed, staring into the dark, touching her lips. Remembering the kiss, the tender pressure of his mouth, the taste of him, more intoxicating than sake.

  The evening had been so perfect—Grant had been so perfect—Charli shivered now, thinking about it.

  Amanda yanked her out of her reverie. "When are you going to see him again?"

  "I don't know." Soon, she hoped.

  "Did he mention going out again?"

  "Well, no."

  A fleeting look passed among the other three. Charli's buoyant mood began to deflate. "Does that mean anything?"

  "Probably not," Raven said, with a blasé shrug that didn't fool Charli for an instant.

  The old familiar dejection pulled at her insides. "You're saying he's not going to call."

  "Nobody's saying that." Raven touched Charli's arm. "Usually a man will say something about getting together again, but not always."

  Sunny and Amanda murmured their agreement, but Charli could tell it was an act. She'd known these three since kindergarten.

  "So if he doesn't call you," Amanda said, "you call him
."

  "I couldn't!"

  "Why not?"

  "I just couldn't badger him, if he doesn't want to see me."

  "It's not badgering," Sunny said. "And I don't care what your parents might've told you. Or your grandma. Nowadays women ask men out all the time."

  Charli slumped in her chair. She wasn't the type of modern woman who could call up a man for a date—especially if it was clear he wasn't interested.

  What was that kiss, then—a gesture of mercy for the lonely, love-starved frump?

  "Well, we just have to find Charli another man!" Amanda said. "No stuffy lawyers this time."

  "Grant's not stuffy," Raven said. "He's an appealing guy, really genuine. I wouldn't have suggested him for Charli otherwise."

  Sunny said, "He may seem genuine when he's stretched out on that recliner in your hypnotherapy office, telling you how traumatic it is to get a triple bogey on the eighteenth hole—"

  "Oh, for pity's sake." Raven raked a hand through her chin-length, dark blond hair.

  "—but if Charli says he's stuffy," Sunny continued, "he's stuffy."

  "I never said he was stuffy," Charli murmured into her coffee. "It doesn't matter. I had fun, but—it isn't the end of the world if he doesn't call."

  "We have to give Grant a chance," Raven said, "before we even think of finding someone else."

  "Well, how much of a chance do we give him?" Amanda asked. "I mean, how long is Charli supposed to sit by the phone waiting for this guy to call?"

  The image of her waiting by the phone was so pathetically apt, Charli wanted to cry.

  "I want us to choose someone else now," Sunny said, "just, you know, as a backup."

  "This discussion is premature." Raven skewered the other two with a pointed look.

  "Fine," Sunny said, and squeezed Charli's shoulder. "All I'm going to say is that if this guy doesn't follow up, it's his loss."

  Not if you took into account one minor detail. Charli loved Grant Sterling.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  «^»

  Grant Sterling loved golf.

  He only wished it came easier to him. He watched Sam Kauffman flawlessly tee off, driving the ball two hundred yards onto the green, within putting distance of the sixth hole.

  Grant had started playing golf only five years earlier, after joining Farman, Van Cleave and Holm. Once he'd realized that the fairways were where alliances were cemented and the occasional client wooed, he'd lost no time in learning the sport.

  "Linda will meet us in the dining room at six," Sam said, referring to his wife. "You should've invited a date, made it a foursome."

  "I like having my Sunday nights free," Grant said, as he withdrew his two iron from his golf bag. "Decompress a little before the workweek starts. Have a beer. Watch X-Files. Alone."

  Sam laughed. "That doesn't sound bad. Linda usually picks Sunday nights for a bitch session. I get to hear about everything I did wrong all week."

  "I'll remember that next time you get on my case about settling down."

  "For a savvy guy, you can be a little dense about some things. I thought you wanted to make partner."

  Grant stared off toward the distant flagstick, gauging the wind velocity, planning his shot. Sam had himself recently become a partner in Farman, Van Cleave and Holm. He was six years younger than Grant, but had joined the firm right out of law school.

  This year, Grant thought. It has to happen this year. He refused to turn forty as an associate.

  He'd made himself a promise nearly a quarter of a century ago, while squatting in a doorway overhang in downtown Philadelphia during a bitter March thunderstorm, scooping cold baked beans out of a tiny, single-serving can that he'd swiped from the nearby convenience store. He'd had to punch open the can with the rusty electrician's pocketknife he'd liberated days earlier from his old man's ratty work pants.

  In his more vulnerable moments Grant could still feel the bone-rattling cold of that homeless night, not his first nor his last on the streets. He could still feel the panic that had grabbed his guts every time some other poor wretch made eye contact. He could still feel the raw welts on his back and taste those beans—Campbell's vegetarian style. If anything, his stomach had felt even emptier after he'd polished them off and wiped his fingers on his rain-soaked jeans.

  That night sixteen-year-old Grant Sterling had made a promise to himself. He'd get as far away from his roots as humanly possible. He'd do whatever was necessary to put his brutal past behind him and build a life he could be proud of.

  He'd never managed to expunge those first miserable sixteen years from his psyche—they were a part of him, like the color of his eyes and the lattice that decorated his back—but he'd come far in fulfilling that long-ago promise to himself. Becoming a partner in Farman, Van Cleave and Holm would be the crowning touch, a validation of his life and the sacrifices he'd made.

  "You know the score with this firm," Sam persisted. "You knew it coming in."

  "This has got to be the goddamn stuffiest bunch on Wall Street," Grant complained. "And the most hypocritical. Most of the senior partners are on their second marriage. Frank Van Cleave is paying alimony to two ex-Mrs. Van Cleaves. Two." He positioned the ball on the tee. "Yet he's got the nerve to lecture me about how marriage demonstrates character and stability."

  "Hey, you're no longer in the D.A.'s office, Grant. This is Wall Street, the last stronghold of buttoned-down hypocrisy. The sad truth is, unless you want to retire as a senior associate, you'll have to learn to do things the Farman, Van Cleave way."

  Translation: a tidy marriage to a suitable wife; the outward trappings of a balanced, well-adjusted personal life.

  An unmarried associate, particularly one pushing forty, was viewed practically as an outsider, some sort of rogue elephant stomping all over the hallowed ideals upon which the firm had been founded. Such a rogue would never be fully welcomed into the herd, much less be considered "partner material."

  And yes, Grant had known that going in, but he'd been convinced that once he'd proved himself, once he'd shown what a smart, hardworking attorney he was, that would be the only thing that mattered.

  "I'm not the marrying type," Grant said, as he lined up his shot, concentrating on his overlapping grip, his wide stance, his even breathing.

  "Are you the partner type?"

  Grant sent his friend a baleful look. "I value my independence."

  "So find some woman who doesn't mind you exercising your—" Sam waggled his brows salaciously "—independence."

  "That's not what I meant." It was part of it, though. Grant enjoyed his sexual freedom. He liked dating a variety of women, never being tied down. He'd answered to no one but himself for the past twenty-three years, and he had no intention of relinquishing an iota of that hard-won autonomy.

  He flexed into his backswing, his down-swing, felt his weight shift easily into his follow-through as the club snapped the ball and sent it flying. He watched it arc to the left and drop neatly into one of two twin sand traps in front of the green.

  "Ever think of trying your three wood?" Sam asked.

  Only the last few times you suggested it, Grant thought, irritated by the unsolicited advice, which he knew would probably prove to be on target if he weren't too proud and stubborn to heed it. Like many of their colleagues, Sam had spent his youth diligently perfecting his swing while Grant had been busing tables and scrubbing pots—at this very country club—for minimum wage.

  He and Sam started down the fairway, towing the handcarts holding their golf bags. At thirty-nine, Grant had to admit he'd never be another Jack Nicklaus. Nevertheless, he was confident that with enough practice, he'd at least become a competent player. Compared to other challenges he'd overcome, this was nothing.

  That was something Raven Muldoon, his hypnotherapist, had helped him put in perspective. He'd been on his own since he was a teenager, she'd reminded him, supporting himself at odd jobs once he'd made his way to Long Island, working h
imself into exhaustion while finishing high school. Then it had been a mad scramble for work-study programs, the occasional scholarship and low-interest student loan, so he could earn his B.A. at Queens College and his law degree at New York University. The payoff was a rewarding, if sometimes frustrating, legal career approaching the fifteen-year mark.

  Raven was right. If he could accomplish all that, after his ignoble start in life, he could learn to hit a little dimpled ball into a hole without going several strokes over par.

  Raven had been right about that, but she'd been dead wrong about his taste in women. Charli Rossi wasn't his type. He preferred sophisticated, experienced women. Women who knew the score and wanted the same thing from him that he wanted from them: stimulating companionship and no-strings-attached sex. These women knew maki from sashimi. They knew how to keep up their side of an animated conversation. They knew how to dress.

  Was that dowdy frock the best Charli could come up with? And the cardigan. Good God! With that plain hairstyle and those serviceable pumps, she looked like a librarian from Central Casting. She'd worn a little makeup, but obviously wasn't used to it; she'd rubbed her eyes a couple of times, leaving mascara smears under them. They were her best feature, her eyes, a brown so dark they were nearly black.

  As for the rest of her, well, there wasn't much about her he could call alluring, much less arousing.

  Except when he'd glanced across the table and caught her wriggling out of that awful sweater. Perhaps it was the artlessness of the movement, the fact that she was clearly oblivious to the way the material of her dress stretched over breasts that seemed suddenly much more lush and full than they had a moment before.

  He smiled at the recollection. Sneaky breasts. A pleasant surprise. She'd done a little shimmy while working the sleeves off her arms. Grant had schooled his expression—second nature after all his years as a lawyer—but for one startling heartbeat of time she'd managed to push his buttons. Without even realizing it.

  But that was a few seconds out of a five-hour date. On the whole, Charli Rossi didn't do it for him—although he couldn't deny there was something endearing about her. He'd be lying if he claimed he hadn't enjoyed watching her experience new things. The sushi, for one. She'd surprised him. He'd expected to see her react with distaste, or at best try one or two polite bites and leave the rest. Instead she'd eagerly polished off half of that large platter.