Match Me If You Can

  “Champion.”

  Annabelle took advantage of the distraction to reclaim her Frappuccino. As she closed her lips around the straw, she had the depressing thought that this would probably be as close as she’d get to swapping spit with a multimillionaire hunk.

  “The restaurant business is littered with the dead bodies of great athletes, Rafe. It’s your money, so I can only advise you, but…”

  The downside of being a matchmaker meant that she might never have another date. When she met attractive single men, she had to turn them into clients, and she couldn’t let her personal life complicate that. Not a problem in this particular case…She gazed at Heath. Just being near so much unbridled macho made her want to break out in hives. He even smelled sexy, like expensive sheets, good soap, and musky pheromones. The Frappuccino sliding down her throat didn’t do much to cool her hot thoughts, and she faced the sad truth that she was sex starved. Two miserable years since she’d broken her engagement to Rob …Way too long to sleep alone.

  The opening bars of the William Tell Overture intruded. Heath had the gall to frown as she retrieved her phone. “Hello.”

  “Annabelle, it’s your mother.”

  She sank back into the seat, cursing herself for not remembering to turn the thing off.

  Heath took advantage of her distraction to reclaim the Frappuccino while he continued his own conversation. “…it’s all a matter of setting financial priorities. Once your family’s secure, you can afford to take a flyer on a restaurant.”

  “I tracked the application through FedEx,” Kate said, “so I know you got it. Have you filled it out yet?”

  “Interesting question,” Annabelle chirped. “Let me call you back later so we can discuss it.”

  “Let’s discuss it now.”

  “You’re a prince, Raoul. And thanks for last night. You were the best.” She disconnected, then turned off her phone. There’d be hell to pay, but she’d worry about that later.

  Heath ended his own call and regarded her through those money green, country boy’s eyes. “If you’re going to program your cell to play music, at least make it original.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” She gestured toward the Frappuccino. “Luckily for you, there’s only a slight chance I have diphtheria. Let me tell you, those skin lesions are a bitch.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Put the drink on my bill.”

  “You don’t have a bill.” She thought of the parking garage where she’d once again been forced to leave Sherman since she hadn’t known how long they’d be gone. “Although I’m starting one today.” She retrieved the questionnaire from her tropical print Target tote.

  He eyed the papers with distaste. “I told you what I’m looking for.”

  “I know. Soldier Field, fart jokes, yada yada. But I need a little more than that. For example, what age group are you thinking of? And please don’t say nineteen, blond, and busty.”

  “He’s been there and done that, right, boss?” Bodie chimed in from the front seat. “For the last ten years.”

  Heath ignored him. “I’ve outgrown my interest in nineteen-year-olds. Let’s say twenty-two to thirty. Nothing older. I want kids, but not for a while.”

  Which made Annabelle, at thirty-one, feel ancient. “What if she’s divorced and already has children?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Have you considered religious preference?”

  “No fruitcakes. Other than that, I’m open-minded.”

  Annabelle made a note. “Would you date a woman who doesn’t have a college degree?”

  “Sure. What I don’t want is a woman without a personality.”

  “If you had to describe your physical type in three words, what words would you choose?”

  “Thin, toned, and hot,” Bodie said from the front seat. “He’s doesn’t like a whole lot of booty.”

  Annabelle shifted her own booty deeper into the seat.

  Heath ran his thumb over the metal band of his watch, a TAG Heuer, she noticed, similar to the one her brother Adam had bought for himself when he’d been named St. Louis’s top heart surgeon. “Gwen Phelps isn’t in the phone book.”

  “Yes, I know. What are your turnoffs?”

  “I’m going to find her.”

  “Why would you want to?” Annabelle said a little too hastily. “She’s not interested.”

  “You really don’t think I can be put off that easily, do you?”

  She made a business of clicking her pen and perusing the questionnaire. “Your turnoffs?”

  “Flakes. Gigglers. Too much perfume. Cubs fans.”

  Her head shot up. “I love the Cubbies.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  She decided to let that one pass.

  “You never dated a redhead,” Bodie offered.

  A lock of Annabelle’s own red hair chose that moment to fall over her cheek.

  Heath eyed the back of Bodie’s neck where a Maori warrior’s tattoo curled into his shirt collar. “Maybe I should let my faithful manservant answer the rest of your questions, since he seems to have all the answers.”

  “I’m saving her time,” Bodie replied. “She brings you a redhead, you’ll give her grief. Look for women with class, Annabelle. That’s most important. The sophisticated types who went to boarding schools and speak French. She has to be the real thing because he can spot a phony a mile away. And he likes them athletic.”

  “Of course he does,” she said dryly. “Athletic, domestic, gorgeous, brilliant, socially connected, and pathologically submissive. It’ll be a snap.”

  “You forgot hot.” Heath smiled. “And defeatist thinking is for losers. If you want to be a success in this world, Annabelle, you need a positive attitude. Whatever the client wants, you get it for him. First rule of a successful business.”

  “Uh-huh. What about career women?”

  “I don’t see how that would work.”

  “The kind of potential mate you’re describing isn’t going to be sitting around waiting for her prince to show up. She’s heading a major corporation. In between those Victoria’s Secret modeling gigs.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Attitude, Annabelle. Attitude.”

  “Right.”

  “A career woman can’t fly across the country with me on two hours’ notice to entertain a client’s wife,” he said.

  “Two on, no outs.” Bodie flipped up the volume.

  As the men listened to the game, Annabelle contemplated her notes with a sinking heart. How was she going to find a woman who met all these criteria? She couldn’t. But then neither could Portia Powers, because a woman like this didn’t exist.

  What if Annabelle took a different path? What if she found the woman Heath Champion really needed instead of the woman he thought he needed? She doodled in the margin of the questionnaire. What made this guy tick besides money and conquest? Who was the real man behind the multiple cell phones? On the surface, he was all polish, but she knew from Molly that he’d grown up with an abusive father. Apparently, he’d started rooting around in the neighbors’ garbage looking for things to sell before he could read, and he’d been working ever since.

  “What’s your real name?” Annabelle asked as they got off the East West Tollway at York Road.

  “What makes you think Heath Champion isn’t my real name.”

  “Too convenient.”

  “Campione. Italian for champion.”

  She nodded, but something in the way he avoided looking at her told her there was more to the story.

  They headed north toward the prosperous suburb of Elmhurst. Heath consulted his BlackBerry. “I’ll be at Sienna’s tomorrow night at six. Bring on your next candidate.”

  She turned her doodle into a stop sign. “Why now?”

  “Because I just rearranged my schedule.”

  “No, I mean why have you decided now that you want to get married?”

  “Because it’s time.”

  Before
she could ask what that meant, he was back on his cell. “I know you’re nearly capped out, Ron, but I also know you don’t want to lose a great running back. Tell Phoebe she’s going to have to make some adjustments.”

  And so, apparently, was Annabelle.

  Bodie sent her back to the city in a cab paid for by Heath. By the time she’d retrieved Sherman and driven home, it was after five. She let herself in through the back door and tossed her things down on the kitchen table, a pine drop leaf Nana had bought in the 1980s when she’d gone big on country-style decorating. The appliances were vintage but still serviceable, just like the farm-table chairs with their faded mattress-ticking pillows. Although Annabelle had lived in the house for three months, she’d always think of it as Nana’s, and tossing out the dusty grapevine wreath along with the ruffled cranberry curtain at the kitchen window were about as much as she’d done to update the eating area.

  Some of her happiest childhood memories had taken place in this kitchen, especially during the summers when she’d come for a week to visit. She and Nana used to sit at this very table, talking about everything. Her grandmother had never laughed at her daydreams, not even when Annabelle had turned eighteen and announced that she intended to study theater and become a famous actress. Nana dealt only in possibility. It hadn’t occurred to her to point out that Annabelle possessed neither the beauty nor the talent to hit it big on Broadway.

  The doorbell rang, and she went to answer it. Years earlier, Nana had converted the living and dining rooms into the reception and office areas for Marriages by Myrna. Like her grandmother, Annabelle lived in the rooms upstairs. Since Nana’s death, Annabelle had repainted and modernized the dining room office space with a computer and a more efficient desk arrangement.

  The old front door had a center oval of frosted glass, but the beveled border allowed her to see the distorted figure of Mr. Bronicki. She wished she could pretend she wasn’t home, but he lived across the alley, so he’d seen her pull up in Sherman. Although Wicker Park had lost many of its elderly to gentrification, a few holdouts still lived in the houses where they’d raised their families. Others had moved into a nearby senior living facility, and still others lived on the less expensive fringe streets. Every one of them had known her grandmother.

  “Hello, Mr. Bronicki.”

  “Annabelle.” He had a lean, wiry build and gray caterpillar eyebrows with a Mephistophelean slant. The hair missing from his head sprouted copiously from his ears, but he was a natty dresser, wearing long-sleeved checked sports shirts and polished oxfords even on the warmest days.

  He glared at her from beneath his satanic eyebrows. “You was supposed to call me. I left three messages.”

  “You were next on my list,” she lied. “I’ve been out all day.”

  “And don’t I know it. Running around like a chicken with your head cut off. Myrna used to stay put so people could find her.” He had the accent of a born-and-bred Chicagoan and the aggression of a man who’d spent his life driving a truck for the gas company. He bulldozed past her into the house. “What are you going to do about my situation?”

  “Mr. Bronicki, your agreement was with my grandmother.”

  “My agreement was with Marriages by Myrna, ‘Seniors Are My Specialty,’ or have you forgotten your grammie’s slogan?”

  How could she forget, when it was plastered over every one of the dozens of yellowed notepads Nana had scattered around the house? “That business no longer exists.”

  “Bull pippy.” He made a sharp gesture around the reception area, where Annabelle had exchanged Nana’s wooden geese, silk flower arrangements, and milk-can end tables for a few pieces of Mediterranean-style pottery. Since she couldn’t afford to replace the ruffled chairs and couches, she’d added pillows in a cheery red, cobalt, and yellow Provençal print that complemented the creamy new buttercup paint.

  “Addin’ some doodads don’t change a thing,” he said. “This is still a matchmaker business, and me and your grammie had a contract. With a guarantee.”

  “You signed that contract in 1989,” she pointed out, not for the first time.

  “I paid her two hundred dollars. In cash.”

  “Since you and Mrs. Bronicki were together for almost fifteen years, I’d say you got your money’s worth.”

  He whipped a dog-eared paper from his pants pocket and waved it at her. “‘Satisfaction guaranteed.’ That’s what this contract says. And I’m not satisfied. She went loony on me.”

  “I know you had a difficult time of it, and I’m sorry about Mrs. Bronicki passing.”

  “Sorry don’t cut the mustard. I didn’t have satisfaction even when she was alive.”

  Annabelle couldn’t believe she was arguing with an eighty-year-old about a two-hundred-dollar contract signed when Reagan was president. “You married Mrs. Bronicki of your own free will,” she said as patiently as she could manage.

  “Kids like you, they don’t understand about customer satisfaction.”

  “That’s not true, Mr. Bronicki.”

  “My nephew’s a lawyer. I could sue.”

  She started to tell him to go ahead and try, but he was just cranky enough to do it. “Mr. Bronicki, how about this? I promise I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  “I want a blonde.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek. “Gotcha.”

  “And not too young. None of them twenty-year-olds. I got a granddaughter twenty-two. Wouldn’t look right.”

  “You’re thinking…?”

  “Thirty’d be good. With a little meat on her bones.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Catholic.”

  “Of course.”

  “And nice.” A wistful expression softened the slant of those ferocious eyebrows. “Somebody nice.”

  She smiled despite herself. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  When she finally managed to close the door behind him, she remembered there was a good reason she’d earned her reputation as the family’s screwup. She had sucker written all over her.

  And way too many clients living on Social Security.

  Chapter Five

  Bodie readjusted the treadmill speed, slowing the pace. “Tell me more about Portia Powers.”

  A bead of sweat trickled into the already damp neckband of Heath’s faded Dolphins T-shirt as he set the barbell he’d been lifting back on the rack. “You met Annabelle. Do a one-eighty, and you’ve got Powers.”

  “Annabelle’s interesting. Kinda hard to get a bead on her.”

  “She’s a flake.” Heath stretched out his arms. “I’d never have hired her if she hadn’t struck it lucky with Gwen Phelps.”

  Bodie chuckled. “You still can’t believe you got rejected.”

  “I finally meet somebody intriguing, and she’s not interested.”

  “Life’s a bitch.” The treadmill slowed to a stop. Bodie climbed off and picked up a towel from the uncarpeted living room floor.

  Heath’s Lincoln Park house still smelled like new construction, probably because it was. A sleek wedge of glass and stone, it jutted toward the shady street like the prow of a ship. Through the sweeping V of floor-to-ceiling living room windows, he could see sky, trees, a pair of restored nineteenth-century town houses across the way, and a well-maintained neighborhood park surrounded by an old iron fence. His rooftop deck—which, admittedly, he’d only visited twice—afforded a distant view of the Lincoln Park Lagoon.

  Once he found a wife, he’d let her furnish the place. For now, he’d set up a gym in the otherwise empty living room, bought a state-of-the-art sound system, a bed with a Tempur-Pedic mattress, and a big-screen plasma TV for the media room downstairs. All of that, combined with hardwood and tumbled marble floors, custom-built cabinets, limestone bathrooms, and a kitchen outfitted with the latest in European-designed appliances made this the house he’d dreamed about since he was a kid.

  He just wished he liked it more. Maybe he should have hired a decorator instead of waiting, but he’d don
e that with his old place—cost a fortune, too—and he hadn’t liked the results. The interior might have been impressive, but he’d felt weird there, like a visitor in somebody else’s house. He’d sold everything when he moved here so he could start new, but now he wished he’d held on to enough furniture to keep the place from echoing.

  Bodie picked up a water bottle. “Word is, she’s a ballbuster.”

  “Gwen?” Heath stepped on the treadmill.

  “Powers. High employee turnover rate.”

  “Seems like a good businesswoman to me. She also does some volunteer work mentoring other women.”

  “If she’s so good, why aren’t you letting her sit through any of her introductions like you made Annabelle do last week?”

  “I tried once, but it didn’t work. She’s pretty wired, a little hard to take in big doses. But she’s sent along some decent candidates, and she knows how to get the job done.”

  “That explains all those second dates you haven’t asked anybody out on.”

  “Sooner or later I will.”

  Bodie wandered into the kitchen. He had a condo in Wrigleyville, but sometimes came over here so they could work out together.

  Heath turned up the treadmill speed. He and Bodie had been together almost six years now. After his motorcycle injury, Bodie had lost himself in drugs and self-pity, but Heath had admired him as a player, and he’d hired him to be a runner. Good runners tended to be former athletes, men the college players knew by reputation and trusted. Agents used them to bring potential clients to the table. Although Heath hadn’t spelled it out, Bodie had known he had to get sober first, and that’s what he’d done. Before long, his no-bullshit style had turned him into one of the best.

  Bodie had started driving for him accidentally. Heath spent a lot of hours on Chicago’s tollways, heading up to Halas Hall, out to Stars headquarters, or making endless trips to and from O’Hare. He hated wasting time stuck in traffic jams, and Bodie liked being behind the wheel, so Bodie’d started taking over when it was convenient for both of them. With Bodie driving, Heath could make phone calls, answer e-mail, and handle paperwork, although, just as frequently, they used their time to strategize, and this was where Bodie earned the six-figure income Heath paid him. Bodie’s intimidating appearance hid a highly analytical mind—cool, focused, and unsentimental. He’d become Heath’s closest friend, and the only person Heath completely trusted.