Match Me If You Can

  Just before midnight on Saturday, Portia got the news about Heath’s marriage proposal in a phone call from Baxter Benton, who’d waited tables at the Mayfair Club for a thousand years and had eavesdropped on the Granger family party. Portia had been curled up on the couch in an old beach towel and sweatpants—her jeans no longer fit—with a sea of candy wrappers and crumpled tissues surrounding her like a barbed-wire fence. By the time she hung up, she was on her feet, excited for the first time in weeks. She hadn’t lost her instincts after all. This was why she hadn’t been able to find the perfect woman for that final introduction. The chemistry she’d detected between Heath and Annabelle that day in his office hadn’t been imaginary.

  She stepped over the beach towel she’d dropped and snatched up an unread copy of the Tribune to check the date. Her contract with Heath ran out on Tuesday, three days from now. She set the newspaper aside and began to pace. If she could pull this off, maybe, just maybe, she could leave Power Matches behind without feeling like a failure.

  It was midnight, and she couldn’t do anything until morning. She gazed at the mess that had accumulated around her. Her cleaning lady had quit a couple of weeks ago, and Portia hadn’t replaced her. A film of dust covered everything, the trash cans overflowed, and the rugs needed vacuuming. She hadn’t even gone to work yesterday. What was the point? She had no assistants, just Inez and the IT guy who ran the Power Matches Web site, the one part of the business that interested her the least.

  She touched her face. This morning, she’d gone to her dermatologist. Catastrophic timing, but then so was her life. Still, for the first time in weeks, she felt a sliver of hope.

  Heath got drunk Saturday night, just like his old man used to. All he needed was a woman to smack around, and he’d be a chip right off the old block. Come to think of it, the old man would be proud of him, because a couple of hours ago, Heath had smacked one around real good, not physically maybe, but he’d beat the hell out of her emotionally. And she’d smacked him right back. Got him right where it hurt. As he fell into bed sometime near dawn, he wished he’d told her he loved her, said the words she needed to hear. But he couldn’t give Annabelle anything but the truth. She meant too much to him.

  When he finally woke up, it was Sunday afternoon. He staggered into the shower and shoved his throbbing head under the water. He should be at Soldier Field right now with Sean’s family, but as he climbed out of the shower, he pulled on a robe instead, then made his way to the kitchen and reached for the coffeepot. He hadn’t called a single client to wish him well, and he didn’t even care.

  He pulled a mug from the cupboard and tried to work up some more indignation against Annabelle. She’d derailed him, and he didn’t like it. He had a plan, a damn good one for both of them. Why couldn’t she have trusted him? Why did she need to hear a bunch of meaningless bull? Actions spoke louder than words, and once they were married, he’d have shown her how much he cared in every way he knew how.

  He grabbed some aspirin and drifted downstairs to his pricey, barely furnished media room so he could catch a few games. He wasn’t dressed, hadn’t shaved or eaten, and he didn’t give a damn. As he began surfing the sports channels, he thought of the way her family had attacked him after she’d walked out. Like a school of piranhas.

  “What’s your game, Champion?”

  “Do you love her or not?”

  “Nobody hurts Annabelle and gets away with it.”

  Even Candace had jumped in. “I’m sure you made her cry, and she hates it when she gets all blotchy.”

  Finally, Chet had said it all. “You’d better leave now.”

  For the rest of Sunday afternoon into the night, Heath flicked from one game to the next, not taking in a single play. He’d been ignoring the phone all day, but he didn’t want anybody calling out the cops, so he’d managed to fake his way through a conversation with Bodie where he’d pleaded the flu. Afterward, he went upstairs and grabbed a bag of potato chips. They tasted like dryer lint. Still dressed in his white cotton bathrobe, he settled into the living room’s lone chair with a fresh bottle of scotch.

  His perfect plan lay in shambles around him. In one disastrous night, he’d lost a wife, lover, friend, and they’d all been the same person. The long, lonely shadow of the Beau Vista Trailer Park crept over him.

  Portia spent Sunday holed up in her apartment, a telephone propped to her shoulder, trying to locate Heath. She finally reached his receptionist and promised to treat her to a spa weekend if she could find out where he was. The woman didn’t get back to her until eleven that night. “Sick at home,” she said. “On a game day. Nobody can believe it.”

  Portia needed to say his name. “Has Bodie talked to him?”

  “That’s how we found out he was sick.”

  “So…did Bodie check on him?”

  “No. He’s still on his way back from Texas.”

  As Portia hung up, her heart ached, but she couldn’t give in to it, not now. She didn’t believe for a minute that Heath was sick, and she dialed his number. When his voice mail picked up, she tried again, but he wasn’t answering. Once again, she touched her face. How could she do this?

  How could she not?

  She dashed into her bedroom and rooted through her drawers until she found her largest Hermès scarf. Still, she hesitated. She walked over to the window and gazed out into the darkness.

  To hell with it.

  With Willie Nelson on the stereo, Heath dozed. Sometime around midnight, his doorbell rang. He ignored it. It rang again and again. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he stalked into the hallway, snatched up his running shoes, and hurled them against the door. “Go away!” He stomped back to the empty living room and picked up the tumbler of scotch he’d abandoned earlier. A sharp rapping at the window made him whirl around …and stare into a vision straight from hell.

  “Fuck!”

  His tumbler shattered to the floor, scotch sloshing over his bare calves. “What the—”

  The nightmare face ducked into the shrubbery. “Open the damn door!”

  “Portia?” He stepped over the broken glass but saw only rustling branches outside the window. He couldn’t have conjured up that dark, shrouded face, which was stripped of all human features except for a pair of gaping eyes. He returned to the foyer and threw open the door. The porch was empty.

  He heard a hiss from behind the bushes. “Come over here.”

  “No way. I’ve read Stephen King. You come to me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m not moving.”

  A few seconds ticked by. “All right,” she said, “but turn around.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t move.

  Gradually Portia emerged from the shadows onto the walk. She wore a long black coat with a very expensive scarf pulled forward around her head. She held her hand over her forehead like a visor. “Are you looking?”

  “Of course I’m looking. Do you think I’m nuts?”

  Seconds ticked by, and then she dropped her hand.

  She was blue. Her entire face and what he could see of her neck. Not a faint bluish tint, but bright, bold, Blue Man Group blue. Only the whites of her eyes and her lips had escaped.

  “I know,” she said. “I look like a Smurf.”

  He blinked his eyes. “I was thinking of something else, but you’re right. Does it wash off?”

  “Do you think I’d come out like this if it washed off?”

  “I guess not.”

  “It’s a special cosmetic acid peel. I had it done yesterday morning.” She sounded angry, as if it were his fault. “Obviously I didn’t intend to show my face until it faded.”

  “But here you are. How long does the Smurf thing last?”

  “Another few days, and then it peels off. It was worse yesterday.”

  “Hard to imagine. And you’ve done this to yourself because …?”

  “It removes dead cells and stimulates new—Never mind.” She took in his unshaven jaw, white bathr
obe, bare legs, and Gucci loafers. “I’m not the only one who looks like hell.”

  “Can’t a man take a day off now and then?”

  “A Sunday in the middle of the football season? I don’t think so.” She charged past him into the house where she promptly turned off the overhead foyer light. “We need to have a serious conversation.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Business, Heath. We have business to discuss.”

  Normally, he’d have thrown her out, but he’d lost his appetite for scotch, and he needed to talk to somebody who wasn’t predisposed to take Annabelle’s side. He moved ahead of her into the living room and—because he wasn’t his damned father and knew something about simple courtesy—turned down the dimmer on the room’s only lamp. “There’s broken glass by the fireplace.”

  “I see.” She took in the room’s lack of furnishings but made no comment. “I heard that you proposed to Annabelle Granger last night. But what I don’t know is why the little twit turned you down. Given that she rushed out of the Mayfair Club without you, I’m assuming that’s what happened.”

  His sense of being ill-used erupted. “She’s a nutcase, that’s why. Way more trouble than I need in my life. And don’t call her a twit.”

  “Apologies,” she drawled.

  “It’s not like she had a whole truckload of guys lining up to marry her.”

  “I heard her last fiancé had a gender identity problem, so I think it’s safe to say you were a step up.”

  “Apparently not.”

  Portia didn’t seem to notice her scarf slipping off her head. Beneath it, her hair was a mess, matted on one side, sticking up on the other. Hard to reconcile her lunatic appearance with the fashion plate he remembered. “I tried to tell you she was a loose cannon,” she said. “You should never have done business with her in the first place.” She moved closer, her eyes piercing in their eerie blue craters. “You certainly shouldn’t have fallen in love with her.”

  A knife shot through his belly. “I’m not in love with her! Don’t try to stick a label on this.”

  She eyed the empty scotch bottle. “You could have fooled me.”

  No way was he going to let her do this to him. “What is it with you women? Can’t you leave things alone? The fact is, Annabelle and I get along great. We understand each other, and we have fun together. But that’s not good enough for her. She’s so frickin’ insecure.” He began pacing the room, nursing his sense of being ill-used and searching for an example that would prove his point. “She’s got this thing about her hair.”

  Portia finally remembered her own and touched the flattened mess. “With hair like hers, I suppose she can be forgiven a little vanity.”

  “She hates it,” he said triumphantly. “I told you she was a nutcase.”

  “Yet this is the woman you chose to marry.”

  His anger faded. He felt wrung out, and he wanted another drink. “The whole thing sort of sneaked up on me. She’s sweet, smart—really sharp, not just book smart. She’s funny. God, but she makes me laugh. Her friends love her, and that tells you something right there, because they’re incredible women. I don’t know…When I’m with her, I forget about work, and…” He stopped. He’d already said too much.

  Portia wandered to the fireplace, her coat gaping to reveal red sweatpants and what looked like a pajama top. Normally, he couldn’t have taken a woman with a Smurf-blue face and an advanced case of bed head too seriously, but this was Portia Powers, and he kept his guard up, which was fortunate, because she hit him again. “But despite all that, you seem to love her.”

  He could barely control his turmoil. “Come on, Portia. You and I are two of a kind. We’re both realists.”

  “Just because I’m a realist doesn’t mean I don’t believe love exists. Maybe not for everyone, but…” She made a small, awkward gesture that seemed out of character. “Your proposal must have thrown her for a loop. She loves you, of course. I had an inkling of that during our ill-fated meeting. I’m surprised she wasn’t willing to overlook your emotional constipation and take you up on your offer.”

  “The fact that I wouldn’t lie to her doesn’t mean it wasn’t a damn good offer. I’d have given her everything she needed.”

  “Except love. That’s what she was waiting to hear, right?”

  “It’s a word! Action is what counts.”

  She nudged the scotch bottle he’d left on the floor with the toe of her shoe. “Has it occurred to you—and I’m merely asking because it’s my job—it is possible Annabelle’s the sane one, and you’re the nutcase?”

  “I think you’d better go home.”

  “And I think you’re protesting too much. You’ve been introduced to a dazzling array of women, but Annabelle is the only one you’ve wanted to marry. That in itself has to give you pause.”

  “I looked at the situation logically, that’s all.”

  “Oh, yes, you’re the master of logic, all right.” She stepped around the broken glass. “Come on, Heath. Cut the crap. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me the truth about that wall you’ve built around yourself.”

  “What is this? Shrink time?”

  “Why not? God knows, your secrets are safe with me. It’s not like I have an army of intimate friends waiting to tear them out of me.”

  “Believe me, you don’t want to hear about my childhood traumas. Let’s just say that, right around the time I turned fifteen, I figured out my survival depended on making sure I didn’t keep throwing my heart at people. I backslid once, and I paid the price. Do you know what? It’s turned out to be a saner way to live. I recommend it.” He advanced on her. “I also resent like hell your implication that I’m some kind of cold-blooded monster, because I’m not.”

  “Is that what you’re hearing? You do have all the classic symptoms.”

  “Of what?”

  “A man in love, of course.”

  He flinched.

  “Look at yourself.” Her voice softened, and he thought he heard a note of genuine sympathy. “This isn’t about a deal gone bad. This is about your heart breaking.”

  He heard a roaring inside his head.

  She walked to the window. Her words drifted back to him muffled, as if she were having a hard time getting them out. “I think…I think this is the way love feels to people like you and me. Threatening and dangerous. We have to be in control, and love takes that away. People like us…We can’t tolerate vulnerability. But despite our best efforts, sooner or later love seems to catch up with us. And then…” She drew a jagged breath. “And then we fall apart.”

  He felt like he’d been sucker punched.

  Slowly she turned back to him, her head high, silvery tracks running down her bright blue cheeks. “I’m claiming my introduction.”

  He heard what she was saying, but the words made no sense.

  “You promised Annabelle and me one last introduction. Annabelle used hers up with Delaney Lightfield. Now it’s my turn.”

  “You want to introduce me to someone? Now? After you’ve just told me I’m in love with Annabelle?”

  “We have a deal.” She swiped at her nose with the sleeve of her trench coat. “You’re the one who outlined the terms, and I have a lovely young woman who’s just what you need. She’s high-spirited and intelligent. She’s also impulsive and a little temperamental, which will keep you interested. Attractive, of course, like all Power Matches candidates. She has this amazing red hair…”

  He wasn’t usually so slow on the uptake, and he finally understood. “You want to introduce me to Annabelle?”

  “Not want. I will,” she said fiercely. “We have a deal. Your contract doesn’t run out until midnight Tuesday.”

  “But—”

  “You can’t go any further by yourself. It’s time for a professional to take over.” Just like that, she ran out of steam, and a fresh tear rolled down her cheek. “Annabelle has …She has the breadth of character you lack. She’s the woman who’ll …keep you
human. She won’t put up with anything less.” Her chest rose as she drew a long, unsteady breath. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to find her first. I made inquiries. She’s not home.”

  The news jolted him. He wanted her tucked safely away in her grandmother’s house. Waiting for him.

  The pink seam of Portia’s lips tightened below her damp blue cheeks. “Listen to me, Heath. As soon as you find her, call me. Don’t try to handle this yourself. You need help. Do you understand me? This is my introduction.”

  Right now, the only thing he understood was the depth of his own foolishness. He loved Annabelle. Of course he loved her. This explained all these feelings he’d been too frightened to label.

  He needed to be alone to think this through. Portia seemed to understand, because she tugged her trench coat closed and left the room. He felt like he’d been hit in the head with a fly ball. He sagged down in the chair and buried his head in his hands.

  Portia’s heels clicked on the marble floor in the foyer. He heard her open the front door, and then, unexpectedly, Bodie’s voice.

  “Fuck!”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Portia fell into Bodie’s arms. Just fell. He wasn’t expecting it, and he stumbled backward. She went with him, wrapped her arms around him, and wouldn’t let him go. Not ever again. This man was solid as a rock.

  “Portia?” He gripped her shoulders and pushed her a few inches away so he could study her face.

  She gazed up into his horrified eyes. “Everything you said about me was right.”

  “I know that, but…” He ran his thumb over her papery blue cheek. “Did you lose a bet or something?”

  She rested her head against his chest. “It’s been a really bad couple of months. Could you just hold me?”

  “I could do that.” He pulled her close, and they stood like that for a while, surrounded by a pool of light from the copper porch fixtures. “A paintball game gone bad?” he finally asked.

  She gripped him tighter. “An acid treatment. It burned so bad. I thought maybe I could …peel away the old me.”