by Joss Wood
But life had changed her and she wasn’t that free-spirited girl anymore. She walked back into her real life knowing she certainly wasn’t the type of woman who could handle sexy, bachelor millionaires tempting her to walk on the wild side.
Six months later
Brodie typed her client’s answer into her tablet, hit Enter and looked up. Dammit, she thought, instantly recognizing the interest in his eyes. This appointment was already running overtime and she really didn’t want to fend off his advances.
This was one downside to dealing with male clients in her matchmaking business. Because she was reasonably attractive they thought they would skip the sometimes tedious process of finding a mate and go straight for her.
“What type of woman are you looking for?” she asked, deliberately playing with the massive-but-fake emerald-and-diamond monstrosity on the ring finger of her left hand.
“Actually, I was going to say a tiny blonde with a nice figure but I’m open to other possibilities. Maybe someone who looks like you...who is you. I have tickets for the opera. Do you like opera?”
Ack. She hated opera and she didn’t date her clients. Ever. She didn’t date at all. Brodie sent him a tight smile and lifted her hand to show him her ring. “I’m flattered but I’m engaged. Tom is a special ops soldier, currently overseas.”
Last week Tom had been Mike and he’d been an ace detective. The week before he’d been Jace and a white-water adventurer. What could she say? She liked variety in her fake fiancés.
Brodie took down the rest of his information, ignored his smooth attempts to flirt with her despite her engagement to Tom and insisted on paying for coffee. She watched as he left the café and climbed into a low-slung Japanese sports car. When she was certain he was out of view, she dropped her head to the table and gently banged her forehead.
“Another one asking for a date?” Jan, the owner of the coffee shop, dropped into the chair across from Brodie and patted her head. Despite Brodie trying to keep her distance from the ebullient older woman, Jan had, somehow, become her friend. She rarely confided in anybody—talking about stuff and discussing the past changed nothing, so what was the point?—but Jan didn’t let it bother her. Like her great-aunt Poppy, Jan nagged Brodie to open up on a fairly regular basis.
Funny, Brodie had talked more to Kade in three weeks than she had to anybody—Jan and Poppy included—for the last decade.
Well, that thought had barreled in from nowhere. Brodie rarely, if ever, thought about Kade Webb during daylight hours. Memories of him, his kiss, his hard body under her hands, were little gifts she gave to herself at night, in the comfort of the dark.
“Being asked out on dates is an occupational hazard.” Brodie stretched out her spine and rolled her head on her shoulders in an effort to work out the kinks.
Jan pushed a pretty pink plate holding a chocolate chip cookie across the table. “Maybe this will make you feel better.”
It would, but Brodie knew there was something other than sympathy behind Jan’s fat-and-sugar-laden gesture. “What do you want?”
“My cousin is in her thirties and is open to using a matchmaker. I suggested you.”
Brodie scowled at her friend, but she couldn’t stop herself from breaking off the corner of the cookie and lifting it to her mouth. Flavors exploded on her tongue and she closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Better than sex, I swear.”
“Honey, if my cookies are better than sex, then you ain’t doing it right,” Jan replied, her voice tart. She leaned forward, her bright blue eyes inquisitive. “You having sex you haven’t told me about, Brodie?”
She wished. The closest she’d come to sex was Kade Webb’s hot kiss six months ago, but sex itself? She thought back. Three or so years?
She was pathetic.
After taking another bite of the cookie, Brodie pulled her thoughts from her brief encounter with the CEO of the Mavericks professional ice hockey team and narrowed her eyes at her friend. “You know I only take men as my clients, Jan.”
“Which is a stupid idea. You are halving your market,” Jan said, her business sense offended. But Brodie’s business model worked; Brodie dealt with men, while her associate Colin only had women clients. They pooled their databases and office resources. As a result, they were doing okay. In the hectic twenty-first century—the age of the internet, icky diseases and idiots—singles wanted help wading through the dating cesspool.
“Women are too emotional, too picky and too needy. Too much drama,” Brodie told Jan. Again.
Brodie snapped off another piece of cookie and wrinkled her nose when she realized she’d eaten most of it. She was a sucker for chocolate. And cookies. Thank the Lord she had a fast metabolism. She still ran every day, but never in the morning.
“The men don’t really want to date me. They just like the attention I pay them. They tend to forget they are paying me to pay attention. And I know far too much about them too soon.”
An alert on her tablet told her she’d received a new email. Jan pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll let you get back to work. Do you want another cup of coffee?”
Brodie already had caffeine-filled veins but why should that matter? “Please.”
She swiped her finger across her tablet and accessed her inbox. She’d received quite a few messages when she’d been dealing with Mr. Suave but only one made her pulse accelerate.
Your donation to the auction at the Mavericks’ Charity Ball filled the subject line and all the moisture in her mouth disappeared. Jeez, she’d had a brief encounter with Kade months ago, shouldn’t she have forgotten about him by now?
Unfortunately Kade wasn’t the type of man who was easily forgotten. And, if she had to be truthful, she still missed those early-morning runs when it seemed like they had the park to themselves. She missed the way her heart kicked up when she saw him, missed the way he pushed her to run faster, train harder. She’d enjoyed him, enjoyed that time with him, more than she should have.
Brodie rubbed her hands over her face and gave herself a mental slap. She was almost thirty, a successful business owner and matchmaker to some of the sharpest, richest, most successful bachelors in the city. She should not be thinking about the sharpest, richest, best-looking bachelor in the city.
Pathetic squared. Brodie shook her head at her ridiculousness and opened the email.
Dear Ms. Stewart,
On behalf of the Chief Executive Officer of the Vancouver Mavericks, Kade Webb, may I extend our heartfelt gratitude for your donation to the Mavericks’ auction to be held on June 19.
Attached is your invitation to a luncheon my department is hosting for our valued sponsors earlier on the day. You are most welcome to attend the ball and charity auction; the cost and details are attached.
We look forward to your presence at lunch on the 19 of June. Please see the attached document for the venue and time.
Yours,
Wren Bayliss
Public Relations Director
Vancouver Mavericks
Thanks but, no thanks. She wouldn’t be attending. Donating to the charity auction had been Colin’s idea and he could attend the luncheon and ball on their behalf. She wasn’t even sure donating their services to the charity auction would raise any money... What bachelor or bachelorette would admit to wanting to use a matchmaker in a room full of their friends and colleagues? Their business was based on discretion and her clients came to her, mostly, via word of mouth. But Wren, and Colin, had dismissed Brodie’s concerns. They seemed to think sisters, brothers and friends would bid on their siblings’ or friends’ behalf. Besides, the guest could bid silently via cell phone as well, so anonymity, if it was required, would be assured.
Thanks to the competition of online matchmaking Colin was convinced they needed to cement their position as matchmakers to the elite of Vancouver society and they
needed to network more and foster relationships. Being part of the Mavericks’ silent auction was a huge coup and would be excellent direct advertising to their target group. Since marketing and PR was Colin’s forte, she’d told him he could represent them at the luncheon.
Yes, a part of her reluctance was the fact there was a chance Kade would be at the function. Months might’ve passed but she was still embarrassed down to her two-inch designer heels. She’d acted like a ditzy virgin who said yes but meant no. God! How could she be in the same room with him without wanting to jump him—the man still fueled her sexual fantasies—but also wanting to hide under the table?
Her computer dinged again and she looked at the new message that popped into her inbox.
Hey, Brodes,
I presume you received an invite to attend the sponsor’s lunch hosted by the Mavericks? I can’t attend. Kay and I are seeing a fertility specialist that day. Can you go and do the thing for us both?
Thanks,
Col
Brodie groaned.
Please let Kade not be there, she prayed.
Two
“Whose stupid idea was this?”
Kade Webb scowled at his two best friends and rolled his shoulders under his suit jacket, wishing he was anywhere but in the crowded, over-perfumed bar area of Taste, one of the best restaurants in Vancouver. He’d spent most of last night reading P&L statements and had spent a long, tedious morning with Josh Logan’s hard-ass agent negotiating a deal to buy the hotshot wing, and all he wanted was to plant himself behind his messy desk and make a dent in his paperwork. He was trying to finalize their—his, Mac’s and Quinn’s—partnership with old man Bayliss, Wren’s grandfather, so the four of them could make a solid counteroffer to buy the Mavericks franchise before Vernon’s widow sold it to Boris Chenko, a Russian billionaire who owned a string of now generic sports franchises.
Kade didn’t have the time to socialize. To play nice.
What he really wanted, despite it only being noon, was a cold beer, a long shower and some hot sex. Or, to save time, some long, hot sex in a shower. Since he hadn’t had time to date lately the hot sex would have to be a solo act later—how sad, too bad—but really, he’d give it all up, sex included, for a solid eight hours of sleep.
He was burning the candle at both ends and somewhere in the middle, as well.
“Will you please take that scowl off your face?”
Kade looked down into the face of his newly appointed director of public relations and wondered, for the hundredth time, why there was no sexual attraction between him and Wren. She was gorgeous, slim, vivacious and smart, but she didn’t rock his boat. He didn’t rock hers, either. They were friends, just like he was with Mac’s new fiancée, Rory, and for the first time in Kade’s life he was enjoying uncomplicated female relationships.
That being said, he still wouldn’t say no to some uncomplicated sex.
“Kade, concentrate!” Wren slammed her elbow into his side and he pulled his attention back to business.
“Your guests of honor, the main sponsors, should be arriving any minute and you need to pay them some special attention,” Wren insisted, a tiny foot tapping her only indication of nervousness.
“Who are they again?”
Frustration flashed in Wren’s blue eyes and Kade held up his hands in apology. “Wren, I’ve been dealing with player negotiations and your grandfather as our new partner, and fending off Myra’s demands for us to make a counteroffer. Sponsors for this ball haven’t been high on my priority list.”
“Did you read any of the memos I sent you?”
Kade shrugged. “Sorry, no. But you can tell me now and I’ll remember.”
He had a phenomenal memory. It was a skill he acquired as a child hopping from town to town and school to school following the whims of his artist father. Within a day of arriving in a new place, he’d find a map and memorize the street names so he’d know exactly where he was at all times. He’d felt emotionally lost so often that being physically lost was going a step too far. His memory helped him catch up with schoolwork and remember the names of teachers and potential friends, so he could ease his way through another set of new experiences.
Wren ran through the list of the bigger donations and then said, “The Forde Gallery donated one of your father’s paintings, a small watercolor but pretty.”
Jeez, he remembered when his father had to swap paintings for food or gas or rent money. Even his small paintings now went for ten grand or more... It was a hell of a donation.
“We have dinners on yachts, holidays, jewelry, the usual bits and pieces businesses donate. The item that will be the most fun and will get the crowd buzzing is the matchmaking service...”
“The what?”
“Brodie Stewart and Colin Jones are providing their matchmaking services. The winners, one girl and one guy, will be matched up and sent on three dates to find a potential mate. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
Brodie Stewart? His Brodie? The girl who’d kissed like a dream but who’d bailed on him before they got to the bedroom?
“It sounds like hell.” Kade managed to utter the response even though his mind was filled with memories of Brodie, dark hair spilling over her shoulders as she lay against his chest, bright green eyes languid and dreamy after one spectacular hot, wet kiss. He dimly recalled her saying something about her having her own business but why did he think she was in consulting?
“Is she attending this lunch?” Kade asked and hoped Wren, or his friends, didn’t hear the note of excitement in his voice.
“You know this Brodie person?” Quinn demanded. And there was the problem with being friends with someone for so damn long. There was little you could get past them.
“Not really,” Kade replied, sounding bored.
“Let me give you a hint about your boss, Wren,” Mac stated, his arm around Rory’s waist. “When he lies he always sounds disinterested, faraway, detached.”
Unfortunately, being in love hadn’t affected Mac’s observational skills and he was as sharp as ever. “Shut the hell up, McCaskill, you have no idea what you are talking about. I met Brodie once, a while ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about her?” Quinn demanded, unsatisfied.
“Do you tell me about the women you meet?” Kade responded.
Quinn thought for a moment before grinning. “Pretty much, yeah. And if I don’t tell you, then the press will.”
Kade pulled a face. The society pages of their local papers and many internet sites devoted far too much time speculating about their love lives. Mac had provided a break for Kade and Quinn as the media devoured the news that he was settling down with the lovely Rory, but recently they’d restarted their probing inquiries about the state of his and Quinn’s love lives. Many of the papers hinted, or outright demanded, it was time the other two “Maverick-teers” followed Mac’s example.
Kade felt that he would rather kiss an Amazonian dart frog.
Only Mac and Quinn knew his past, knew about his unconventional upbringing as the son of a mostly itinerant artist who dragged him from place to place and town to town on a whim. They understood his need to feel financially secure and because they worked together, invested together and always stuck together, the three of them, along with Wren’s grandfather, were in the position to buy their beloved hockey team, the Vancouver Mavericks.
Yeah, he might be, along with Quinn, a wealthy, eligible and elusive bachelor, but he had every intention of staying that way. Legalities and partnership agreements and a million miles of red tape—and his belief in the loyalty of his friends—had allowed him to commit to his career with the Mavericks, formerly as a player and now as the CEO and, hopefully, as a future co-owner. But a personal commitment? Hell no.
He’d learned that hard lesson as a child. As soon as
he found someone to love—a dog, a friend, a teacher, a coach—his father would rip it away by packing up their lives and moving them along. Emotional involvement sent Kade backward to his powerless childhood.
He’d hated that feeling then and he loathed it now. His theory was if you didn’t play in a rainstorm, then you wouldn’t get hit by lightning. He made damn sure the women he dated had no expectations, that they thoroughly understood he was a here-now-gone-tomorrow type of guy. That they shouldn’t expect anything from him.
Despite his up-front attitude, there were always women who thought they could change his mind so he’d still had to ease himself out of situations. Sometimes he managed it with charm, sometimes he had to be blunt, but when he sensed his lovers were becoming emotionally invested, he backed off. Way, way off.
Brodie Stewart was the only woman who’d ever turned the tables on him, who’d backed away before he could. Backed away before he’d even gotten her into bed.
“...she had all the emotional depth of a puddle!”
Kade pulled his attention back to the conversation and caught the tail end of Rory’s comment. She was scowling at Quinn and he looked unrepentant, being his bad-boy self.
“Honey, I wasn’t dating her for her conversational skills,” Quinn stated.
Rory shook her head and rested her chin on Mac’s shoulder. “One day you are going to meet someone who you can’t resist and I hope she gives you hell,” Rory said, her tone and expression fierce.
“Rorks, unfortunately butt-face here claimed you before I did so I am destined to be a free spirit.” Quinn put his hand on his heart, his eyes laughing.
Rory, smart girl that she was, didn’t fall for Quinn’s BS. Instead, she poked Quinn’s stomach. “You will meet her and I will not only laugh while I watch you run around her like a headless chicken, I will encourage her to give you as much trouble as possible.” She stretched past Quinn to jab Kade in the stomach. “That goes for you, too, Kade. The female population of Vancouver has spoiled you two rotten.”