Matchmaker, Matchmaker

by Donna Ball

  "You're afraid," he said softly.

  A very strange, horribly remote look had come into his eyes, and it chilled Cassie's soul. She stopped in midbreath.

  "That's what this is all about, isn't it?" he said. His voice was quiet and matter-of-fact, and he looked at her as though he had never seen her before. "It's all very easy and safe for you to arrange other people's lives, but when it comes to your own, you back away." He shook his head, and now his eyes were touched with a trace of pity. "I guess maybe you're right. You're not what I need after all.''

  He turned and went into the living room, and Cassie heard him gathering up his clothes. She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed on her stomach, and fought down the burning knot in her throat. After a while she heard the front door close softly behind him, and she sank to the floor and let the tears come. Cassie went through the rest of the week in a stupor. Over and over she berated herself for ever having let things go so far with Shane. She had known such an involvement could only lead to disaster. She was supposed to be reasonable, so logical and thoughtful about everything, completely in control. Yet for one reckless moment she had cast control and reason and all her hard-earned knowledge aside for the sake of that giddy, irresponsible, dangerously seductive sensation commonly known as love, and she deserved what had happened. She deserved worse, for she had known better. But Shane didn't deserve it. He hadn't bargained for any of this.

  Yet what else could she have done? He had left her no choice. Marriage. She had never even thought about marriage, not for herself, not to him. Marriage meant forever, sacrifice, compromise, devotion. Shane deserved a woman who could give him all those things and more. He would never be happy with her. She was nothing like the woman he wanted, the woman he needed. She had done the right thing in turning him down. She had done the only possible thing, and surely one day they would both be grateful she had.

  Then why did it hurt so much?

  ***

  Mindy Howard called to say she had never met a man she liked more than Shane Bartlett and did Cassie think he would think she was pushy if she called and asked him to go camping in the mountains next weekend? Cassie had to put her on hold while she composed herself enough to tell Mindy that it might be too soon for a camping trip and Cassie would get back to her later. She felt like a hypocrite and a charlatan when she hung up.

  Every day she expected to hear from Shane. Her mood swung wildly from desperate hope to dark dread, and when nothing happened—not a phone call, not a knock on the door, not a note on her desk—she settled into a state of quiet despondency that clung about her like a shroud. She had never expected him to just walk away and not contact her again. At the very least they had the shreds of a business relationship to resolve. They should be able to sit down and talk about things like adults. They couldn't just leave things in midair, could they? What did he expect her to do?

  "Do you think he could sue us?" she worried out loud to Emma. There had been no point in trying to keep the story—or at least as much of it as she could bear to tell—from the older woman. Since Cassie's mother had moved to Florida, Emma had stepped into the surrogate role, and she took her job seriously. She never would have let Cassie get away with a secret like this.

  "It would be an interesting lawsuit," Emma speculated, and Cassie shivered.

  "I guess the best thing to do," Cassie said, rubbing her arms anxiously, "is to give him his money back as soon as we can."

  "That won't be soon."

  Cassie nodded bleakly. "I know."

  Emma reached across the desk and patted Cassie's hand, her face filled with concern and sympathy. "Honey, are you sure you did the right thing? Don't you feel anything for the man?"

  "I feel everything for him," Cassie confessed, leaning her head back tiredly, "but you know that's not enough. Our compatibility charts don't even touch. Our incompatibility quotient is off the scale. Even he would be the first to admit I'm not the kind of woman he's attracted to."

  "But he asked you to marry him." When Cassie started to object, Emma lifted her hand and went on, "Honey, I've never pretended to know anything about your charts and formulas, and I'll be the last one to try to tell you how to run your life. All I know is that when your mother formed this social club she did so without benefit of forms or statistics and nobody ever complained. She relied on what was in here." Emma tapped her chest lightly. "And she let everyone else do the same. She knew that when the right people found each other the time for thinking about it was over. All you could do was just step back and let it happen. Don't you think life would be easier if you did the same?"

  Cassie shook her head, wishing it could be that simple. "Things are different today, Emma. People are different. Commitment seems to mean something different. I don't know. All I know is that I just can't afford to take chances."

  Emma smiled. "Men and women have been doing that since the beginning of time. Why should you be any different?"

  Cassie was silent for a moment. "Shane said... I'm afraid. Of marriage, of permanence. Maybe he's right in a way. But it's not that I'm afraid of commitment. It's just that I don't like uncertainties. And Shane just doesn't... fit the formula."

  Emma looked sadly at her, then stood. "If it will make you feel better, I'll call him next week and find out what we should do about his account."

  Cassie smiled weakly in assent.

  But on Monday morning she received Shane Bartlett's personality profile form in the mail: concise, mechanical, complete in every detail, and as cold and impersonal as stone. There was no longer any doubt in Cassie's mind about where their relationship stood.

  She went home that night and cried until her eyes were so swollen that she couldn't see, then she resolved to put him out of her mind.

  That, of course, was easier said than done.

  ***

  When Cassie came into work the next morning, Emma was on the phone. There was a worried frown on her face and her voice was low. "I know you told me he was stubborn, and Lord knows, so is she, but this is the biggest mess I've ever seen. You'd think two halfway grown-up people could—"

  Suddenly Emma saw Cassie and stopped with a guilty expression on her face. She murmured, "Hold on a minute," and put the party on hold. Then she smiled at Cassie. "There's a Karen Doyle in your office. Here's her form."

  Cassie took the form and didn't even pause to wonder who was on the line. Emma's personal life—unlike the personal lives of everyone else in Dallas—was none of her concern.

  The young woman in her office was blond, well-groomed and attractive, and she greeted Cassie with just the right amount of warmth tempered with reserve. Her figure was very nearly perfect, her makeup skillfully designed to look like natural beauty, her hair almost waist-length. She was soft-spoken and composed, and Cassie disliked her on sight.

  She couldn't say exactly what it was about the young woman that set her nerves on edge, unless it was a purely female reaction to someone who was far more... well, female—than she. Cassie sat down and placed Karen Doyle's form on her desk next to Shane's, and then she knew exactly why the other woman made the hair on the back of her neck bristle. Here, sitting across from her, was the woman Shane had described when he first came into her office nearly a month ago.

  A close comparison of the charts and the personal interview only confirmed her suspicions. Karen Doyle was twenty-two years old. She had been working in public relations but was really more of a homebody. She confessed with a laugh that all she really wanted to do was find a nice man and settle down to raise a family. Her father had been in real estate. She drove a BMW and owned a town house in one of the exclusive suburbs of Dallas, so it was obvious money was not her prime objective in seeking a man. She didn't claim to be very well-read or particularly sophisticated. She did volunteer work at a day-care center in her spare time. She didn't like parties or bars and had a hard time meeting single men. She had never been married.

  Just for the hell of it, Cassie asked her what her favorite
food was. "Rocky road ice cream," Karen laughingly replied.

  The woman had a gorgeous tan that spoke of many hours by the pool. She loved to cook. She had a neat, orderly personality that would adapt itself well to homemaking. She had absolutely no ambition. She was perfect for Shane. She was so damn perfect that Cassie wanted to crumple up the profile form and fling it in the other woman's face. Instead, Cassie smiled politely, thanked Karen for coming in and told her she would be in touch.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon comparing the two forms, making charts and taking notes. Every result only sent her deeper into despair. Once she had told Shane he couldn't just order a woman the way he could a hamburger at a restaurant. She might now have to revise that opinion. Karen Doyle was everything Shane said he wanted—tailor-made, custom-fitted, precise in every detail. That little voice kept whispering over and over in the back of Cassie's mind But I don't like her! Repeatedly she ignored it. Of course Cassie didn't like her; Cassie had known from the beginning that she wouldn't have anything at all in common with the kind of woman Shane was interested in.

  Karen Doyle was gorgeous, unaffected, a little bit lazy and not too bright. She liked children and cooking and keeping house. She was the kind of woman who could dedicate herself completely to a man for the rest of her life without regret and count herself lucky to be able to do so. She could give Shane what he wanted.

  The more Cassie studied the situation, the angrier she became—at Shane, at herself, at the impossibility of the situation that had brought them together. He had sent in the form, hadn't he? He had made it clear exactly what he expected from her—business as usual.

  If there had been anything left at all of the feelings he so passionately professed for her, he would have called. He would have come to her. He would have tried to talk to her at least one more time. But, no, Shane Bartlett always knew what he wanted. And he wanted a wife. At the end of the day Cassie picked up both files and dropped them on Emma's desk on her way out. Her eyes were hard, her jaw set. "Give Mr. Bartlett a call, will you?" she said diffidently. "Tell him we have someone for him to meet."

  ***

  In the past ten days Shane had carried tiles, mixed concrete, driven nails and twisted wrenches. Today he was standing in the foyer, stripped to the waist in the summer heat, applying paint to the walls with aggressive, half-attentive motions. Consequently there was at least as much paint on him as on the walls, but he didn't care. All he wanted was something to do.

  "I hope you're not getting union wages," said a familiar voice behind him, "because that's a pretty poor job of painting you're doing there, boy,"

  Shane glanced over his shoulder at Jack, distracted. "Doesn't matter. They're going to wallpaper over it, anyway."

  "Whoa!" Jack stepped back as Shane slapped the paintbrush against the wall again. "Are they going to wallpaper my suit, too?"

  "Sorry." Shane dropped the brush into the can and reached for a rag to dry his hands. He managed a small grin. "I never thought I'd see the day when I'd pick up a tool of any kind again, but lately I just can't seem to find enough to do. Maybe Cassie was right. Maybe I wasn’t meant to just sit in the sun and do nothing." His voice fell as he concentrated his attention on meticulously scraping the paint from his nails. "Maybe she was right about a lot of things."

  Jack observed him in silence for a moment, then he asked, "How's it going?"

  "Oh... great." Shane gestured around the house. "Wallpaper's coming tomorrow, then the carpet. The foreman says they'll finish on schedule if I'll stop helping."

  "That's not what I mean," Jack said quietly.

  "Yeah, I know." Shane tossed the rag aside and sat down on an overturned paint can. "All this—" he nodded at the foyer and beyond "—is great, but it just doesn't seem as important as I thought it would. And I'll tell you the truth." Again he managed a weak smile. "I'm about to wear myself out trying to find things to do."

  "That's what a woman'll do to you," Jack agreed sagely.

  Shane ran his fingers through his hair, leaving white streaks and specks. "I don't sleep, I don't eat, I'm working myself to death... If I had known it was going to be like this, I would've stayed in Alaska."

  "Have you heard from her?"

  "Cassie?" Even saying the name made his heart jump a little, and his skin tightened. He shook his head. "Not her. Emma. She's arranged another date for me. Can you believe that? Hell, I only sent in that form so that Cassie would call me. I'm supposed to meet the girl tonight."

  Jack's voice was incredulous. "And you're going to do it?"

  Shane shrugged. At first he'd been so hurt he couldn't think straight, then he'd been angry, and that hadn't helped his thinking, either. It was during the angry period that he filled out the form, giving the answers he knew Cassie would most hate to hear, and sent it in. Since Emma had called he'd felt like an automaton, keeping his hands busy while his mind was on hold and his heart was stifled somewhere in his chest, almost too defeated to beat. No, he didn't want to spend another evening with another perfect woman. No, he didn't want to sit across the table from a buxom blonde while a vivacious redhead haunted the back of his mind. But lately it seemed easier to follow the course of least resistance, and he didn't know what else to do.

  Cassie didn't want him. She'd made that plain.

  "Cassie's a smart woman," he said. "She's been right about a lot of things. Maybe she does know what I need better than I do. Maybe I should just let her do her job."

  "Hellfire and damnation, boy!" Jack swept off his hat and slapped it against his thigh with a suddenness that startled Shane. "Since when in this world do you ever let anybody tell you what you want?"

  Shane was jolted into self-defense. "Well, she ought to know what she wants, shouldn't she? And it's not me."

  Jack fixed him with a piercing stare. "You know what the trouble with you and Miss Cassie is, don't you? You're two of a kind, both so set in your ways you won't give each other an inch. She's just in the habit, that's all—in the habit of doing for other folks and not herself, of doing it all a certain way and not making room for change. She just needs somebody to give her a little push. Just like me and—"

  He stopped, and Shane glanced up at him shrewdly. "Emma?"

  Jack cleared his throat and a faint flush of color stained his cheeks. He put his hat back on his head. "What do you know about that?" he demanded gruffly.

  "Nothing." Shane tried to suppress a smile. "Just that you do an awful lot of talking about flying to Vegas and checking out the clubs, but you spend your evenings over at her house playing cards. It doesn't take much to put two and two together."

  Jack looked at him severely for a moment, and then a small, embarrassed smile tugged at his lips. "Yeah, all right, you got me there. But let's just keep this between you and me, okay? No point in making a production about it."

  "Why not?" Shane asked curiously. "After all these years, what's keeping you two apart?"

  "Oh, hell, I don't know." Jack scrubbed the back of his neck with his hand. "Habit, like I said. You get used to a certain way and it's hard to change. And then there's Miss Cassie." He grinned. "She says we're all wrong for each other, and she's the expert. It's kind of hard to ignore a thing like that. I mean, with all that scientific evidence hanging over your head."

  Shane knew Jack was kidding, but his words registered in Shane's head with the click of a puzzle piece falling into place. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I guess it would be hard to ignore something like that...especially if you're the expert and you spent all your life proving that's just what you were—an expert." He looked up at Jack with sudden understanding. "Even if you wanted to you couldn't admit you were wrong, could you?"

  Jack clearly didn't know what his friend was getting at. Shane stood suddenly and dug into his jeans pocket. "Listen, Jack, will you do me a favor? Here's the information on that girl I'm supposed to meet tonight. Will you go to the Fairmont in my place? Just give her dinner and take her home, tell her whatever you want—"
/>
  "What?" Jack stared at the paper in his hand. "Why me? Why don't you—"

  "Because," Shane explained impatiently, "she's coming in from Bridgeport and it's too late to call her now. You'll do this for me, won't you, Jack? Unless—" he hesitated "—you think it'll mess up things between you and Emma. I wouldn't want to cause any trouble."

  Jack glanced at the paper in his hand, then at Shane. "Is it for love?"

  "Yes," Shane said without hesitation. "It is."

  Jack smiled. "Then Emma won't mind."

  Shane slapped him on the back gratefully, then hurried back to the trailer to wash up and change.

  ~

  NINE

  Cassie had sworn she wouldn't spend another night like the last one. Shane was on a date with his perfect match and she was pacing the floor, checking her watch, tearing herself apart inside. She was not going to do this.

  She took a deep breath, sat down on the sofa and picked up a magazine, idly flipping the pages. She didn't know what she was so upset about. She had done her job, that was all. What was she supposed to do?

  But pictures kept running through the back of her mind, and she couldn't ignore them. The view from Shane's bedroom, overlooking a flower garden that hadn't been planted yet. Herself, coming down a long staircase in a white dress and train, emerging into a foyer filled with flowers and smiling guests. A great room filled with chintz furniture and Navaho pottery and the two of them standing with their arms around each other's waists, watching the sunset. Deliberately she blacked out the picture.

  Fluffy jumped up on the sofa and arched against Cassie's arm, purring loudly. Cassie absently drew the cat into her lap. Karen Doyle was a perfectly nice young lady and Shane was a grown-up man. They were both capable of making up their minds about each other. It was out of Cassie's hands.

  Karen Doyle was a vapid, mindless mantrap, and Shane would be knocked off his feet by her. "So they can eat rocky road ice cream and grow fat together," she muttered. Fluffy rubbed against her face and she sneezed.