The Matchmaker's Plan

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “Proper. Now there’s a good word.” She flounced onto the sofa, the robe falling apart above her knees, exposing a flash of inner thigh, a length of lovely, long leg, which was immediately tucked up beneath her and the robe adjusted over it. But he’d had a glimpse…and his skin remembered the silky feel, the smooth, heated texture of her legs tangled up with his. She gave the robe a last flick of modesty. “I’m surprised, Matt, you didn’t use that word in your reasonable note.”

  She was being completely unreasonable, maddeningly petulant. Which meant he should remain calm and not allow her to goad him into further argument. So, he took the chair opposite her and sipped his wine as he watched her dunk a shrimp into cocktail sauce and then pop it into her mouth. “Are you upset because I wrote a note to your family or because I didn’t use the word proper in it?”

  She discarded the chitinous tail onto the tray and reached for another shrimp. “I can’t decide. Maybe I’m upset because you took it upon yourself to inform my family about our elopement without telling me. Or maybe it’s the idea that I now have to convince my dad we are crazy in love. Or maybe it’s because you always do what’s proper, Matt, and sometimes that’s just a little hard for me to handle.”

  “Oh, come on, Peyton. You know as well as I do how hard it is to ensure something like this remains a secret. Someone could have seen us together at the airport. The clerk at the license bureau might have recognized our names. I didn’t want to take a chance on our families hearing about our marriage because of some obscure coincidence. I thought the news should come from me. I thought you’d be relieved not to have to spring this news on your family out of the blue. I thought it would give you a little more time to get used to the idea yourself before you had to talk to them about it.”

  “Oh, well, thank you so much, Matt. But as it happens, you have just opened up a whole can of Louisiana worms!”

  “You can still call and tell them yourself. There’s a working phone right over there.” He indicated the phone with a nod. “Call them right now.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t want to call them now. I don’t want to call them later. I don’t want to call them at all.”

  It had been a stressful day. He tried to keep that in mind as he wrestled with the desire to tell her she wasn’t making any sense. And he was finding that increasingly hard to handle. “Would you rather your family found out you’re married from some gossipy busybody who knows someone who knows someone else who may have heard it from God knows who?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I would.”

  Frustration made him down the rest of his wine in a single swallow. “You’re not thinking clearly about this, Peyton.”

  “My thinking is perfectly clear, thank you.” She leveled a shrimp at him. “I’m not the one drinking.”

  He was tempted to go back for a refill just to spite her, but he saw no reason to court a hangover simply because she seemed determined to aggravate him. Fortunately, he was just as determined to maintain his composure. “Okay, Peyton, why don’t you explain to me how you think our families should find out we’re married?”

  She eyed him critically as she sucked another shrimp into her mouth and discarded the tail, wiping her fingertips on the napkin, then dabbing at the corners of her mouth. “By osmosis,” she said. “Or—here’s a thought—we could have told them together.”

  “After the fact.”

  “Well, of course, after the fact. Telling them beforehand defeats the purpose.”

  Seven months, plus one year, was beginning to look like a very long time. “The purpose of eloping? Or the purpose of telling them?”

  “Both. Neither. I don’t know. You’re only trying to confuse me.”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “How am I doing?”

  “It’s not funny,” she insisted.

  “I understand that, Peyton, and it will be even less funny if we start off our marriage arguing over which way we should have informed our families.”

  The current shrimp landed back in the bowl and she leaned forward to set the bowl on the tray, showing more cleavage than she meant to, and more than enough to distract his tenuous composure. “I just didn’t want my mother to have too much lead time,” she said, settling forward on the edge of the cushion. “You don’t have any idea what we’re in for.”

  “It can’t be worse than if she heard about this at the beauty shop or down at the deli.”

  Peyton sighed and stood up, wrapping the robe tighter around her. “I know this doesn’t really fit with your idea of proper, Matt, but please, believe me. My mother would be utterly thrilled if she had heard about our marriage from the man behind the counter at the deli.”

  “That is a little hard to believe.” His smile met a cool lift of her eyebrow and he quickly tucked it out of sight.

  She cinched the tie belt with another hard tug. “The only thing my mother would have loved more is if she could have planned a huge, showy splash of a wedding. I’ve cheated her out of that by eloping and now you’ve taken away the huge satisfaction she would have received from never letting me forget that she had to learn about my marriage from some totally unsuitable person.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair to her, Peyton?”

  Her response was simply a pitying look. “I seem to have lost my appetite, so I think I’ll just go on to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  He stood, afraid she was feeling ill again, afraid she was having second thoughts, afraid she wasn’t. “Good idea,” he said. “Sleep late in the morning, if you want. I thought we might drive over to the butterfly sanctuary in the afternoon, see if it’s open.”

  “Okay. If it’s not snowing.”

  God help him if it did snow and trapped him in this house alone with her all day. And the next day. And the day after that. They’d either be fighting like cats and dogs or…Even the thought of what followed that “or” was…well, dangerous. “If it’s not snowing,” he repeated brightly. “Good night, Peyton.”

  “Good night, Matt.”

  He watched her walk away and realized his appetite had vanished, too. Too much wine, probably. But he thought he’d have another glass, just the same. One he could enjoy in front of the fire. Alone.

  Which was not exactly the way he’d planned to spend his wedding night.

  PEYTON SAT on the edge of the bed and pushed her toes in and out of the fuzzy slippers. Matt’s friends had provided every luxury, from the fleecy robe to the slippers to the silky cotton sheets to the plethora of rich food in the kitchen. She’d lied to Matt about her appetite and she really wished she had some of that food now. Her stomach growled with hunger. Which seemed to be the way pregnancy affected her. Either nausea or an appetite of gargantuan proportions. There didn’t seem to be any room for compromise.

  The news that he’d sent her parents a note—a note!—should have stripped away the desire to do anything but strangle him. Her mother was probably in hog heaven by now, plotting some extravagant and overblown reception or regaling her friends and family with woeful accounts of her daughter’s inconsiderate behavior. Peyton knew she could pick up the phone and call them, but what would that accomplish, except making her feel worse? And letting them know she had nothing better to do on her wedding night than explain why she had chosen to elope.

  No. She wouldn’t call and she couldn’t leave the bedroom without having to explain to Matt that her appetite was running amok. Pushing up from the bed, she walked to the window, checked to see if it was snowing. She didn’t know what she and Matt would do tomorrow if it snowed.

  Well, okay, so her imagination was running amok as well, producing ideas that were, obviously, not on his agenda. He was in his bedroom. She was in hers. Which was exactly as it should be. She supposed.

  Her stomach rumbled again and she turned from the window to consider the bed. Jamming her hands into the pockets of her robe, she found a cracker and looked at it curiously. The evening was looking up. She’d ge
t into bed and nibble on the cracker while she read the mystery novel she’d brought along.

  It wasn’t the way she’d ever imagined spending her wedding night, true, but it wasn’t as bad as lying in bed alone, thinking about her husband lying alone in his bed thinking about her.

  Or sleeping soundly and not thinking about her at all.

  Which was even more depressing than wondering how one solitary cracker was going to put a dent in her appetite.

  Chapter Five

  “Andy?” Ainsley knocked on the door of Andrew’s studio as she opened it and stepped inside. “Andrew?”

  Crash! Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!

  Startled by the noise, Ainsley jumped back and looked to her right, where a pair of feet in spanking-white socks extended from beneath a tree. Actually, it was a painting of a tree. A backdrop. On top of a gray-swirled backdrop. On top of a blue-splotched backdrop. On top of about ten other backdrops. Normally, they hung on wide rods. Andrew used them for portrait work, pulling down one backdrop in front of another, or rolling them up as necessary to get the background he wanted for a picture.

  Now they were all in a pile on the polished wood floor on top of someone, who could only be Andrew’s assistant. “Hayley?” Ainsley stooped down and addressed the painted tree. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Hayley’s voice sang out, muffled but cheery. The backdrops shifted as she began wiggling out from beneath them. Gradually, a pair of drab olive pants appeared, the folds of the material emphasizing that they were too large for the long legs and narrow hips they covered. The waistband was cinched tight with a seventies-style macramé belt. With red wooden beads woven in with the ecru threads. Next, the smooth planes of a sleek belly appeared, a silver ring looped through the navel to add interest. A moment later, Hayley emerged in full and in all her baggy splendor.

  Ainsley watched as Hayley’s trademark T-shirt fell down to conceal the curves of a slim, athletic body, the silver belly button ring and the macramé belt. Unfortunately, the parts Hayley routinely kept covered weren’t—in Ainsley’s opinion—the part that needed to be kept out of sight. Her hairstyle was a disaster. Her vivid red hair had been braided so tightly, the individual coils spiraled and sprung in all directions, giving a whole new meaning to the term dreadlocks.

  “Need some help?” Ainsley extended a hand to Hayley.

  “Thank goodness, it’s only you. I thought it was Andrew coming through the door.” Hayley got to her feet and dusted herself off. She patted her T-shirt pocket, pulled out a pair of overlarge black-framed glasses and stuck them on her face. She looked like a raccoon in a wig. “He said he wouldn’t be back until after lunch,” she said. “But sometimes—a lot of times, lately—he changes his mind and comes in when he said he wouldn’t. I never know when he’s going to show up.” She cast a sheepish glance from behind the camouflaging black glasses. “And you know how that rattles me.”

  Ainsley sighed. “You have to stop being intimidated by him, Hayley. For heaven’s sake, he’s just a guy.”

  “Easy for you to say. He’s your brother. He can’t fire you.”

  “He’s not going to fire you, Hayley. I’ve told you that a hundred times. If he didn’t like your work, he wouldn’t have kept you on as his assistant for the past nine months.”

  “Ten,” Hayley said. “It’s been ten months since he hired me.”

  “I can’t even remember the last time he managed to hold on to an assistant for longer than four months. See? You’re already a fixture in the studio.”

  “Only because I do the work and I clean up after myself. I could bring in a trained chimpanzee as a substitute and Andrew would never notice the difference.”

  Ainsley laughed. “That isn’t true, and you know it.”

  A reluctant smile crept into Hayley’s green eyes and curved the corners of her mouth. “All right, so maybe he’d pay some attention.” She brushed at her clothes again and looked helplessly at the jumble of backdrops. “But he’ll always think of me as a klutz.”

  For months now, since the first time she’d heard her brother mention his new assistant, Ainsley had been studying Hayley, getting to know her and like her very much, despite the insecurities that drove Andrew nuts. It hadn’t taken long for Ainsley to discover that Hayley had a huge crush on Andrew…and it didn’t take much imagination to see the possibility that something more could develop, given the proper circumstances. For a couple of months now, Ainsley had offered broad hints that there were things a matchmaker could do to help level the playing field at the studio. Hayley didn’t have to feel ignored. She didn’t need to feel like a klutz. She could do something about the situation.

  But the hints produced no perceptible change. It was time to step in and do something drastic, Ainsley decided. “He knows how talented you are, Hayley. He’s told me. I know he’s told you. Maybe you ought to try believing what he says for a change.”

  Hayley shook her head. “He just says that to be nice. So I won’t quit.”

  “Why don’t you quit if you’re so rattled by him?”

  “Well, because…” Hayley looked as if the idea was ridiculous and the answer obvious. “I’d never quit. He’s the most talented, most experienced, most artistic, most wonderful man—I mean, photographer—in the world. And he’s teaching me so much I could never learn from anyone else. I’d be an idiot to walk away from this opportunity.”

  “Plus, you have an enormous crush on him.”

  Hayley’s shoulders sagged. “There’s that, too.”

  It was definitely time for action. “Come on.” Ainsley took the other woman’s arm. “I have an idea.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a New Year’s Eve party.”

  “Now? It’s not even ten in the morning yet.”

  “Tonight, but we have a lot of work to do between now and then.”

  Hayley balked. “Oh, I couldn’t leave the studio.”

  “You’re taking today off.”

  “But…”

  “No buts. You need a makeover to give you confidence and I’m giving you one. My treat.” Ainsley steered her toward the door. “We are going to have a wonderful day and tonight Andrew will be the one who gets rattled when you walk in.”

  “He is?” Hayley resisted, but only a little. “I don’t see how that could happen.”

  “You will,” Ainsley the matchmaker said. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

  “YOU MET MICHELLE in second grade,” Matt said, driving as effortlessly as he seemed to do most things, glancing occasionally in the rearview mirror, occasionally at Peyton. “And she’s been your best friend ever since. Her last name is…Trierre, and your nickname for her is…” He frowned, his profile clean-cut and aristocratic, the classic angles of forehead, nose, jaw and chin combining years of good genetics with strong character and confidence. “Why can’t I remember that?”

  Peyton laid her head against the headrest and closed her eyes, wishing she had never suggested they go over all this again. Actually, she wished she’d never made it into a game they’d played over the course of the honeymoon. Tell me the name of your best friend. Nicknames the other kids called you. Your first true memory. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. Favorite teacher when you were a child. Your favorite music group in high school. Music you listen to now. First book you ever read more than once. Happiest childhood memory. Most embarrassing moment. Details of their lives, past and present, little things that a newly married couple would know about each other, that would lend credence to their concocted story of all the dates they’d had, the time they’d spent together before this impulsive but so romantic elopement. No matter how seemingly insignificant or unimportant, Peyton had tried to cover all the bases, knowing it was often the tiniest nothing in conversation that brought down a house of cards. “Collie,” she said with feigned patience. “I called her Collie. Shel, short for Michelle. T, her last initial. Shel-T. Sheltie. Which is a dog that looks like—”

  �
�—a small collie. Right.” Matt nodded, apparently convinced he wouldn’t have trouble with that one again. “And she called you Pug.” He took his eyes off the highway long enough to glance at her again. “Because…?”

  “Because I called her Collie first and the first breed she thought of that started with a P was—”

  “Pug.” He grinned broadly, pleasurably.

  She didn’t have to open her eyes to see it. His enjoyment of this particular part of her past was already well documented in her memory. She had already warned him that Michelle was the only person who would ever dare call her by the nickname. It was private. Between friends. Which didn’t seem to bother him, or keep him from going over the story again and again…as if he couldn’t quite keep it straight.

  “Well, at least she didn’t call you Pekinese. Or Poodle.”

  “I think I’d have made a great poodle.” She moved her shoulder restlessly beneath the seat restraint, hoping they were close to home, dreading the actual moment they’d arrive as well as the evening ahead. “Now that you have my first experience with nicknames mapped in your brain, maybe we could turn on the radio and listen to music.”

  “Oh, I think we need to keep practicing,” he said, trying, without much success, to sound quite serious. “Tonight’s the big test, you know.”

  “Great. Nothing like a little added pressure.”

  “We’re probably ten minutes out. Still time for a pop quiz.”

  He was enjoying this. Or the idea of going home. Probably that, since it meant the pretense of the honeymoon lay behind them. Now all they had to do was get through the next seven months plus one year of pretending they were married. Well, they were married. Just not truly married. Except she had to stop thinking of it that way. Now—tonight, in fact—they were going to face the family and friends who, if they didn’t know about the elopement already from Matt’s proper notes—soon would get the news in person. She wished she could feign illness, or at least a queasy stomach and stay home, but she wasn’t one to hide from unpleasant tasks. And, in truth, she’d already used the nausea associated with pregnancy as an excuse more than once during the past few days when the intimacy of being alone with Matt sent her thoughts along paths they had no business going. Besides, the sooner they got through this first celebratory event, the easier it would be to fall comfortably into the lie.