Page 28 of Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars 6)

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.”

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