by Donna Ball
"The girl I've found for you. Mindy Howard."
"Do you want one of these?"
"No thanks."
He opened one anyway and brought it over to her, and Cassie tried not to be annoyed with his apparent lack of interest. She also tried not to be distracted by his lean brown thighs as he sat in the chair facing her, dangling his own bottle of beer by the neck between his knees.
"Mindy," she began, "is twenty-three and very sweet. She's from Oklahoma originally and was raised on a farm. Her stepfather is a troubleshooter for one of the big companies in town, so they have money. But they don't have too much and they haven't had it for long, Mindy's a little bit shy around the big wheeler-dealers her stepfather associates with, and I guess you could say she's not really used to the glamorous life yet. She's been brought up to believe that the home and family are all-important, so I think you have something in common there. Here's a picture of her."
Shane took the snapshot and studied it, and though Cassie watched carefully for some change of expression, there was none. "She's cute," he said after a moment, and returned the photograph to her. "I thought you said you didn't keep pictures of your clients."
"I said," Cassie corrected, "that we didn't keep photographs for browsing. Naturally people want to see a photo before they go out with someone."
"What about me? You don't have a picture of me."
She gave him a meaningful look. "If you had bothered to complete your form, you would have noticed instructions regarding obtaining a photograph."
He shrugged and took a swig of his beer.
Cassie went on determinedly. "Mindy is very easy to get along with. Feminine and charming and a good listener. She doesn't have particularly extravagant tastes and she's not very demanding." The more she spoke, the duller Mindy sounded. Or was Cassie merely trying to make her sound dull for reasons of her own? How clouded had she allowed her judgment to get where Shane was concerned? Suddenly confused, Cassie consulted the form. "She says here that her life's ambition is—"
"Do you really have to read all that?"
"Well, no. It's just that—"
"Good." Shane leaned back and stretched his legs out so that his bare ankles almost brushed hers. Cassie quickly shifted her legs the other way. "I think it would be more fun to find out some of this stuff on my own."
"This will go much more smoothly," Cassie insisted, "if you both know something about each other from the start. Then you'll have a foundation, a basis for—"
"I'd rather do it the old-fashioned way." He seemed bored and anxious to move on. "So when do I meet her?"
Cassie closed the file, hoping he showed more enthusiasm when he met Mindy than he was showing now. "I'll make the arrangements, if that's okay. Sometime next week?”
“Sure.” He took another sip of beer. "All finished?"
Reluctantly Cassie put the file back into her purse. Somehow she had expected this to take longer, and she wasn't looking forward to the long drive back into town. It had been pleasant, sitting for a few moments with the warmth of the sun on her back and the smell of chlorine in the air, watching light dance off the turquoise water.. .and being with Shane. It was the way a Sunday should be.
She stood, hitching the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and extended her hand to him in a very businesslike manner. "Well, then, I'll be in touch, all right?"
He ignored her offered hand and lifted a gaze to her that was lazy and sun-crinkled. "Don't you ever relax?"
"I beg your pardon?"
' 'Take the day off, sit around and do nothing, maybe even forget about work for a while. Don't you ever do that?"
She shook her head ruefully. "Not very often," she admitted, although he could have no idea how tempting the suggestion sounded.
"Today might be a good time to start. Do you have a date waiting for you at home?"
She blinked, startled. "Why, no."
He smiled. "Did you bring your swimsuit?"
Cassie hesitated. The crystal-clear water beckoned, the sun sparkled on the tiled deck, and the frosty droplets condensed on her untasted bottle of beer. This was so unprofessional. She shouldn’t even be considering it.
She looked at Shane. "Yes, as a matter of fact I did."
He grinned. "You can change in the trailer." After a moment she returned his grin and walked off toward the trailer.
~
SIX
You're very seductive. Do you know that?"
“For a moment Shane couldn't reply. He was entirely too busy noticing the way the shiny green maillot suit clung to her figure as she walked toward him, and the way her slim legs seemed to go on forever. Once he had thought bikinis were sexy, but he would be hard put to find anything more alluring than the way Cassie Averil looked in that emerald one-piece with the sun painting streaks of copper and gold in her hair. He let out a cautious breath, " I am?"
She sat on the edge of a chair to remove her sandals and sunglasses. Shane's eyes followed the bend of her ankle, the shapely arch of her foot. "Sure," she replied. "I shouldn't be doing this, you know. I never socialize with the clients."
“It's a big pool. No point in letting it go to waste."
"No, there's not." Suddenly she cast him an impish grin and got to her feet. "Race?"
Cassie was in the water with a graceful jackknife of slender limbs almost before Shane knew what she was about. She was two lengths ahead and a surprisingly strong swimmer, but Shane had the advantage of height and years of muscles conditioned by hard work. Still, he had to use effort to outdistance her, and was glad when, at the end of the third lap, she braced herself against the side of the pool and gasped, "Okay! Your match!"
He felt absurdly gratified as he turned in the water and balanced himself on the top step, grinning and breathing hard. Generally he didn't like women who competed with him on any level—especially when they came close to winning—but the race had actually been fun. "You're a good swimmer," he told her.
"All-state champion in high school," she replied, her voice a little choppy with exertion and the laughter of exhilaration.
He liked the way she looked with her hair slicked back and her eyes washed a brilliant green by chlorine and sunshine. She smoothed the water away from her face with both hands and, in an unexpected motion, suddenly brought them down flat against the surface of the water, splashing him.
She laughed at his startled exclamation and started to swim away, but he caught her by the arm and a playful water fight ensued. Shane went under more than once and so did she, and when she grasped his shoulders and tried to unbalance him by wrapping a leg around his ankle, he suddenly reversed the positions, catching her under the arms and pinning her close with her leg trapped between both of his.
Their laughter faded into a sort of pleased recognition of the closeness. Shane was aware of the pressure of her fingers on his bare shoulders, the suppleness of her muscles, the curve of her small breasts just above his thumbs. And there was a light in her eyes that revealed she enjoyed the touch as much as he did.
"You don't play fair," she said.
He could see her chest rise and fall beneath the water, could feel the rapid rhythm of her heart beneath the curve of his hand, which was, he knew, only from exercise. He slid his hands down to her waist. "Neither do you."
She lowered her eyes and moved her hands to his chest, exerting a small pressure. He let her go, and watched the water cascade off her body as she climbed out of the pool.
She walked across the deck, found a stack of towels and dried her face before spreading the towel on a chair. "That was nice," she said breathlessly. She picked up her bottle of beer and drank. "I can't remember when I've had so much exercise in such a short time."
Shane lifted himself out of the pool and reached for his own towel. "That beer's probably warm. Do you want another one?"
"No thanks." She set the almost-empty bottle back on the deck and stretched out on the chaise. "I don't really drink beer.”
Shane gri
nned and uncapped another one for her. He lay back in the chaise next to hers, and for a time they shared the sun in companionable silence. Occasionally Cassie would sip from her bottle, and more than occasionally Shane would let his eyes stray to the shape of her legs or the curve of her hip or the tiny beads of water that were evaporating from her chest. This, he realized slowly, was what he had always pictured when he thought about being married: being comfortable with someone, talking when it was good to talk and being silent when it was not; playing and laughing and relaxing together; admiring the way the sun shone on her hair or the way she curved her wrist when she lifted the bottle to drink.. .just enjoying being with her.
The fact that it was Cassie Averil who made him feel that way was a little disconcerting, and he wasn't sure it made sense. Nor was he sure he wanted to think about it.
After a time he thought it might be better to talk, so he said, "How'd you get into this matchmaking business, anyway?"
Cassie smiled behind her dark glasses. "It's a long story. My grandmother did it, then my mother. Most of those wedding pictures on the walls belong to them. I majored in psychology and was interested in human behavior. Still, I never seriously considered a dating service as a career. But it was a funny thing." Her expression grew thoughtful as she took another sip from the bottle. "For college graduation my parents gave me a trip to Hawaii. I was lying on the beach... you know how crowded the beach is at Waikiki." She glanced at him.
“Never been."
"Oh? Well, you should. It's wonderful. Anyway, I was lying there soaking up the sun, the way I'm doing now, and there was this couple next to me. As I said, the beach was crowded and I couldn't help overhearing them. At first I thought they had just met—maybe a pickup on the beach or something, because they sounded so silly and awkward with each other, you know. He was asking her if she liked seafood and she was asking him if he liked to read and it was apparent they didn't know each other at all. The longer I listened, the more I expected one of them to just say 'So long. It was nice to meet you,' because it was obvious they had nothing in common and the silence got longer and longer as they tried to find something to talk about. Then I happened to glance over. Well, I didn't 'just happen,'" she confessed. "I was curious, and I noticed they were wearing matching wedding bands that were so new the shine wasn't even dull yet. Those two were on their honeymoon and were just then discovering they had married strangers!"
She paused and took another sip of the beer. "It was at that moment that I knew what I wanted my life's work to be. If those two had come to me first, they never would have ended up on a beach in Waikiki trying to think of something to say to each other for the rest of their lives."
"But they did get married," Shane pointed out. "They must have had some reason.''
“Sure. They fell in love, and in that mad rush of passion they decided marriage sounded like a good idea. People are such fools."
Shane couldn't prevent an indulgent twitch of his lips. "And you, of course, know better."
"Of course, that's my profession. Not only do I know what ingredients to look for in the making of a relationship, but I can be objective and see things the people involved chose to overlook. That's why people in the old days used to arrange marriages for their children, you know, because most people don't know what's good for them in a situation like that. I'll tell you something," she added, drinking again. "The world would be a lot better off if all marriages were still arranged. Those marriages lasted a lifetime."
"Yeah, but the average life span back then was only twenty-nine years."
She shrugged. "A lifetime is a lifetime."
"I've seen pictures of some of those poker-faced women from the castle-and-dungeon days," Shane said thoughtfully. "I guess if I had to spend my life married to one of them, I wouldn't want to live past twenty-nine, either."
Cassie grinned and shook her head.
"What about you, Cassie?" Shane asked seriously after a moment. "Don't you ever think about making a match for yourself? Having a family?"
Generally Cassie would have ignored a question like that, or tactfully steered the conversation in another direction. It might have been the beer, or the sun and the relaxed atmosphere of the pool, but her usual reserve seemed to be melting away. She seemed to have no trouble talking to Shane—even about that.
"Oh, I don't know," she answered thoughtfully, twirling the beer bottle slowly between her palms. "I guess I've thought about it, but not very seriously. Marriage, a family—they just never seemed right for me. Maybe I'm just one of those people who was meant to have a career and nothing else."
"Sounds kind of sad to me."
"Not really. I like my life." She might have sounded just a touch too defensive, so she added lightly, "Besides, my standards are impossibly high. I could never find a match for myself."
Shane lifted his beer to her in a gentle salute. "A loss to men everywhere."
"You'd better believe it."
Shane chuckled as she finished off her beer and set the empty bottle on the deck with a flourish. She smiled at him, aware that she hadn't felt so comfortable with anyone in a long time. "You know," she said, "the first day you came into the office, I thought you were a real jerk."
"I know."
"I just wanted to apologize for that." It suddenly seemed very important that he understand, and her tone grew earnest as she explained, "It's just that— well, there aren't many men like you around, and I guess I had trouble believing you were real. But you're open and sincere and all you really want to do is commit to someone and raise a family. That is rare, Shane. And I meant what I said before—any woman would be lucky to have you."
His expression softened in a way that made Cassie's cheeks tingle unexpectedly, and he said gently, "That's nice, coming from you. It really is."
They shared a tenuous moment that seemed to come from nowhere, hovering on the edge of revelation yet drawing back shyly before the first word was spoken. And though Cassie felt she should say more, and wanted to hear more, confusion made it impossible. She knew it was best.
Then Shane moved suddenly, reaching beneath his chair to bring up a bottle of sunscreen lotion. "You'd better use some of this," he said lightly, tossing it to her. "You're going to burn."
Shane tried not to watch as she began to spread the lotion over her legs and arms, then he felt silly for making himself look away. Since when had it been illegal to look at a pretty girl in a swimsuit? It was simply that their relationship was a nebulous one and he wasn't sure what boundaries it encompassed. Was there something immoral about a man being attracted to his matchmaker?
He decided there probably was, but that didn't stop him from looking. He watched her spread lotion over her shoulders and her chest and noticed a small spattering of freckles beneath her collarbone that he found endearing. "How'd you ever get a name like Cassie?" he asked.
She glanced at him, amused. "How'd you ever get a name like Shane?"
He shrugged. "I guess that's something we'll never know. There's no one to ask."
Cassie was a little embarrassed for having forgotten that fact, and she recapped the bottle of sunscreen without looking at him. "Cassie's short for Cassandra. She was a prophetess from classical literature."
He nodded. "Just like you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Didn't you tell me you know things about me nobody else knows—even me?"
She laughed and stretched out in the chaise. "That's not prophecy. That's psychology."
"Well?" He got up and went to the cooler. "When are you going to tell me about myself?"
Cassie watched him speculatively, then came to a decision. "Okay. For one thing, you're not really the kind of man who can be happy doing nothing for very long. You've been active all your life and you're not ready to retire. In less than six months you'll be going out of your mind looking for something to do."
He chuckled as he lifted a beer from the ice. "Watch me prove you wrong. Do you want a Coke or something
?"
"Actually, I was just getting used to the taste of the beer."
He uncapped two beers and brought one over to her. "Go ahead," he invited.
"All right." She sipped the beer thoughtfully. "You're ambitious, determined and just a little bit reckless. You're also a lot smarter than you pretend."
He grinned and leaned back in his chair. "You must have me mixed up with somebody else. I'm the laziest man I know, and there's not a reckless bone in my body. Ask Jack. He's been trying to get me to go to Vegas for three weekends in a row. As for smart, well, I barely finished high school."
"A lazy man couldn't have turned a laborer's salary into a fortune in fifteen years," Cassie pointed out. "You didn't just stumble into success, Shane Bartlett, you planned it. You took risks, you thought it through, you made it happen. And you'll do it again if you have to." She drank from the bottle again. "Believe me, I've been around oil men all my life. There's a certain chemistry about the good ones—a kind of combination of shrewdness and talent that sets them apart from ordinary people and lets you know there's no stopping them. You're that kind of man."
Shane merely grinned and shook his head.
"You're adventurous, unorthodox and experimentative," she went on. "You like to be challenged. You even like conflict to a certain degree. If you had lived a century earlier, you might have been a cowboy or an Indian fighter or a merchant sailor—"
"Too much work."
"You're impulsive and contrary. All it takes is for somebody to tell you a thing can't be done and you'll dig your heels in and do it—your way. Telling me to find you a wife inside a month is a perfect example of that. And any man who holds on to a pair of boots that should have been thrown out with the trash ten years ago has got to be just a little bit sentimental."
"Those are my lucky boots," he objected.
Her eyes twinkled as she glanced at him. "Add superstitious to the list."
"This is crazy."
“And for these and other reasons," Cassie concluded blithely, "I couldn't possibly match you up with the kind of woman you first described to me. You'd be bored out of your head. If you don't know yourself, you can't possibly know what you want."