Chapter Six

Someone took the seat next to Heath in the first-class cabin, but he was too preoccupied with the spreadsheet he'd pulled up on his laptop to pay attention. It wasn't until the flight attendant called for electronic devices to be shut off that he grew conscious of a dark, subtle perfume. He lifted his head and found himself looking into a set of intelligent blue eyes. "Portia?"

"Good morning, Heath." She leaned against the headrest. "How in the world do you cope with these early morning flights?"

"You get used to it."

"I'll pretend to believe you."

She was wearing some kind of a silky lilac wrap dress, slim and sleeveless, with a purple cardigan knotted around her shoulders and a silver chain at her neck studded with three bezel-set diamonds. She was a beautiful woman, cultured and accomplished, and he liked doing business with her, but he didn't find her sexy. She was too carefully put together, too aggressive. Pretty much a female version of himself. "What takes you to Tampa?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"Not the weather, that's for sure. It's going to be ninety-three degrees there today."

"Is it?" Heath paid no attention to any weather that didn't affect the outcome of a game.

She gave him a smile designed to charm. It might have worked if he didn't own a similar smile that he used for exactly the same purpose. "After your phone call last night, I decided we needed to evaluate where we are and see what adjustments we should make. I promise I won't talk your head off the entire flight. Nothing is more annoying than being trapped on a plane with someone who won't shut up."

If he had to be cooped up on a plane with one of his matchmakers, he would have preferred Tinker Bell. He could have bullied her into leaving him alone. Portia's appearance this morning had nothing to do with a sudden urge to visit Tampa. He'd explained the new arrangement to her over the phone last night then hung up while she was still in shock. Obviously, she'd recovered.

She contented herself with general chitchat until they were in the air, but once the breakfast service started she began working her way to the point. "Melanie really enjoyed meeting you. More than enjoyed. I do believe she has a bit of a crush on you."

"I hope not. Nice person, but I didn't feel any real connection with her."

"You were only together for twenty minutes." She gave him the identical sympathetic smile he used when a client was being difficult. "I understand exactly where you're coming from, but the time limit you've set is a bit of a problem. I've been in this business long enough to recognize when two people need to give themselves a second chance, and I think you and Melanie qualify."

"Sorry, but it's not going to happen."

Her forehead remained smooth, her expression composed. "This won't work, you know." She toyed with the yogurt carton on her fruit plate. "I never put down the competition, especially when it's a tiny operation like Marriages by Myrna. It smacks too much of bullying. But-"

"Perfect for You."

"What?"

"She calls it Perfect for You, not Marriages by Myrna." He couldn't imagine why he felt the need to clarify this, but somehow it seemed necessary.

"A wise decision," Portia replied, with only a whiff of condescension. "But let me just say this. I resent the way people think a trip to Kinko's to get business cards printed up is all it takes to be a matchmaker. But then, as a sports agent, you know exactly what I mean."

She'd scored a field goal with that one. Annabelle had no depth of experience, only enthusiasm.

Portia pushed aside her tray, although she'd only nibbled at the corner of a honeydew cube. "Is there something we're not providing that makes you feel the need to expose my candidates to an outsider? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the tiniest bit threatened, especially since I offered to sit in on these initial interviews myself."

"Don't worry about it. Annabelle lacks the killer instinct. She liked Melanie better than she liked her own candidate. She tried to talk me into seeing her again."

That caught her by surprise. "Really? Well… Ms. Granger is an odd little duck, isn't she?"

It must have been the engine noise because, for a moment, he thought she said "odd little fuck," and he was hit with a vision of Annabelle naked. The notion took him aback. Annabelle amused him, but she didn't turn him on. Not really. Maybe he'd thought about her sexually a couple of times, and he'd made a couple of smarmy references to fluster her. But nothing serious. Just messing around.

The plane hit an air pocket, and he pulled his mind from the bedroom back to business. "I don't expect you to be comfortable with this, but as I said last night, the process will go smoother if Annabelle's there for all the introductions."

The fire in her eyes told him exactly what she was thinking, but she was too much of a pro to lose her cool. "That's a matter of opinion."

"She's a tadpole, Portia, not a shark. The women relax with her, and I can get a clearer picture of who they are in a shorter period of time."

"I see. Well, I've been doing this for a lot more years than she has. I'm sure I could expedite these interviews better than-"

"Portia, you couldn't be nonthreatening if you tried, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. I told you from the beginning that I intended to make this easy on myself. It turns out that Annabelle's the key, and nobody's more surprised about that than I am."

She retrenched, but she wasn't happy about it. He didn't entirely blame her. If somebody poached on his territory, he'd have come out swinging, too. "All right, Heath," she said. "If this is what you need, then I'll make sure it works."

"Exactly what I want to hear."

The flight attendant took their trays, and he pulled out his copy of the Sports Lawyers Journal. But the article on tort liability and fan violence didn't hold his attention. Despite his best efforts to keep it simple, his hunt for a wife was growing more complicated by the day.

I like her," Heath said to Annabelle on the following Monday evening as Rachel left Sienna's. "She's fun. I had a good time."

"Me, too," Annabelle said, even though that was hardly the point. But the introduction had gone better than she'd dared hope, with lots of laughter and lively conversation. The three of them had shared their food prejudices (Heath wouldn't touch an organ meat, Rachel hated olives, and Annabelle couldn't stomach anchovies). They told embarrassing stories from their high school years and debated the merits of the Coen brothers' movies. (Thumbs-up from Heath, thumbs-down from Rachel and Annabelle.) Heath didn't seem to mind that Rachel wasn't a knockout on the order of Gwen Phelps. She had both the polish and the brains he was looking for, and there were no cell phone interruptions. Annabelle allowed the twenty minutes to expand to forty.

"Good work, Tinker Bell." He drew out his BlackBerry and typed a memo to himself. "I'll call her tomorrow and ask her out."

"Really? That's great." She felt a little queasy.

He looked up from the BlackBerry. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"You have a funny expression."

She pulled herself back together. She was a professional now, and she could handle this. "I'm just imagining the newspaper interviews I'll give after Perfect for You hits the Fortune Five Hundred."

"Nothing's more inspiring than a girl with a dream." He returned the BlackBerry to his pocket and withdrew his well-stuffed money clip. She frowned. He frowned back. "Now what?"

"Don't you have a nice, discreet credit card tucked away somewhere?"

"In my business, it's all about the flash." He flashed a hundred-dollar bill and tossed it on the table.

"I'm only mentioning it because, as I think I told you, image consultation is part of my business." She hesitated, knowing she had to tread carefully. "For some women… women of a certain upbringing… obvious displays of wealth can be a little off-putting."

"Believe me, they're not off-putting to twenty-one-year-old kids who've grown up with food stamps."

"I see your point, but-"

"Got it. Money clip for business, credit card for courtship." He slipped the object under discussion back into his pocket.

She'd basically accused him of vulgarity, but instead of being offended, he seemed to have filed the information away as dispassionately as if she'd given him tomorrow's weather report. She considered his flawless table manners, the way he dressed, his knowledge of food and wine. Clearly these things had all been part of his curriculum, right along with torts and constitutional law. Exactly who was Heath Champion, and why was she beginning to like him so much?

She pleated her cocktail napkin. "So… about your real name…?"

"I already told you. Campione."

"I did some research. Your middle initial is D."

"Which stands for none of your damned business."

"Something bad then."

"Horrifying," he said dryly. "Look, Annabelle, I grew up in a trailer park. Not a nice mobile home park-that would have been paradise. These heaps weren't good enough for scrap. The neighbors were addicts, thieves, people who'd gotten lost in the system. My bedroom looked out over a junkyard. I lost my mother in a car accident when I was four. My old man was a decent guy when he wasn't drunk, but that wasn't very often. I earned everything I have, and I'm proud of that. I don't hide where I came from. That dented metal sign on my office wall, the one that says beau vista, used to hang on a post not far from our door. I keep it as a reminder of how far I've come. But beyond that, my business is mine, and yours is doing what I tell you. Got it?"

"Jeez, all I did was ask your middle name."

"Don't ask again."

"Desdemona?"

But he refused to entertain her, and she ended up staring at his back as he headed for the kitchen to pay his respects to Mama.


* * *

I want you in the clubs every night," Portia announced to her staff the next morning. Ramon, Sienna's bartender, had awakened her at midnight with the disturbing news about Annabelle Granger's success with her latest match, and she hadn't been able to fall back to sleep. She couldn't get past the feeling that another important client was slipping away from her. "Pass out your business cards," she told Kiki and Briana, along with Diana, the girl she'd hired to replace SuSu. "Pick up phone numbers. You know the routine."

"We've done that," Briana said.

"But apparently not well enough or Heath Champion wouldn't have made plans with Granger's prospect last night instead of ours. And what about Hendricks and Mccall? We haven't shown them anybody new in two weeks? What about the rest of our clients? Kiki, I want you to spend the rest of the week staking out the modeling agencies. I'll hit the charity luncheons and the Oak Street boutiques. Briana and Diana, work the hair salons and the big department stores. All of you-clubs at night. By this time next week, we're going to be screening a fresh batch of candidates."

"A lot of good it'll do with Heath," Briana muttered. "He doesn't like anybody."

They didn't get it, Portia thought as she returned to her office and flipped through her calendar. They didn't understand how hard you had to work to stay on top. She gazed down at Friday's calendar entry. In a short, terse phone conversation, Bodie Gray had set up their date for this weekend. She'd done her best not to think about it since. Just the possibility that someone might see them together gave her nightmares. But at least he didn't seem to have told Heath about her spying episode.

A helicopter flew overhead. She rubbed her temples and considered setting up a spa day. She needed something to lift her spirits, something to make her feel like her old self again. But as she turned toward her computer, a traitorous voice whispered there weren't enough massages, ayurvedic facials, or hot stone pedicures in the world to fix whatever wanted to stop working inside her.

Annabelle couldn't afford to pin all her hopes on Rachel's date with Heath, so she spent the rest of the week hanging out at two of Chicago's top universities. At the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, she alternated between haunting the hallways of the Graduate School of Business and lingering by the steps of the Harris School of Public Policy. She also made her way to Lincoln Park, where she spent most of her time with the music majors at the De Paul Concert Hall. At both schools, she kept her eyes open for comely graduate students and beautiful faculty members. When she found them, she approached them directly, explained who she was and what she was looking for. Some were married or engaged, one was a lesbian, but the world loves a matchmaker, and most of the women were interested in helping her. By the end of the week, she had two great candidates ready to go if she needed them, as well as half a dozen women who weren't right for Heath, but who were interested in signing on as clients themselves. Since they couldn't afford the kinds of fees she wanted to charge, she established an academic discount. Heath was out of town for the week, and he didn't call. Not that she expected him to. Still, for someone who spent all his time on the phone, she would have thought he could have spared a few minutes to check in with her. Instead of stewing about it, she slipped on her sneakers, jogged to Dunkin' Donuts, and distracted herself with an apple Danish.