Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (2 page)

“There, ma’am?” the cowboy asked politely, staring down at the nearest floor cushion, the bright orange one.

“Why, yes,” Karma said, acting as if nothing was amiss. “I’ll take the pink one.”

Looking disconcerted, the cowboy lowered himself to the indicated cushion. The position he took, knees upraised, back straight, strained the jeans tight against his thighs and calves. He didn’t look at all comfortable. What he did look was sexy.

Karma’s secondhand 1940s rattan desk was covered with an assortment of papers, old diet-drink cans, a dried-up paintbrush, and a dead hibiscus blossom awash in a jar lid half full of water. Karma yanked a form from a stack and, trying not to appear as ungainly as she felt, she also sat down on a cushion. Maybe she was crazy for going ahead with this. Maybe she should tell this man to come back tomorrow when the couch would be here and the chairs would have been delivered. But to dismiss him might mean losing him, and the business couldn’t afford that. Clients had been very few and far between, and this might be her last chance to succeed. At anything.

“What do I have to do to sign up?” asked the cowboy.

Karma fumbled in her tote bag for a pen. “At Rent-a-Yenta we chronicle your personal information, collect a registration fee and then we videotape our clients. We’ll study our database and pull up clients of the opposite sex that we think would be a good match for you.” There was no “we”; there was only her. But she thought it sounded more impressive than admitting that she did everything herself.

“And
I get to watch videotapes of the clients you pick?” He looked visibly cheered by the thought.

“Right. And they’ll watch videotapes of you.”

“Okay. That sounds like a good way to go about it.”

“Oh, it is, I assure you.”

After he wrote out the check, he folded his arms across his chest. A very broad chest. “Well, let’s get started.”

“Name?” she asked brightly.

“Slade,” he said.

“Is that your first name or last?”

“Slade’s my given name. Braddock’s my last.” His voice rumbled deep in his throat.

“Slade Braddock,” she repeated, liking the sound of the name almost as much as the way he said it. She wrote his name down on the form.

“Age?”

“Thirty-awful.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Thirty-awful. Too old for the young ones, too young for the older ones.”

She tried not to smile. “Should be thirty-awesome, if you ask me,” she retorted before she thought. She was always retorting before she thought, and before the words were out of her mouth, she wished she hadn’t said that.

He grinned, expanded it to a smile, then let out a hearty guffaw. She tipped her head uncertainly.

“That’s pretty good,” he said. “Thirty-awesome. I’ll remember that one.”

She wanted to laugh, too, but this was a client. She cautioned herself to remain businesslike, but her next words sounded like a reproof. “Are you going to tell me your age, or should I leave this line blank?”

He sombered up then. “I’m thirty-five,” he said. “Now I’ve told you my age, how about you telling me yours?”

“You’re not supposed to ask a lady that,” she said.

“But I just did.”

Those eyes
again, piercing right through her. They demanded an answer. “I’m twenty-seven,” she said.

“A good age,” he said thoughtfully.

She made herself look down at the form. “Address?”

“Sunchaser Marina. Route three, Okeechobee City.”

“That’s the whole address?”

“That’s two addresses.”

She forced herself to look at him. “Let’s get this straight. What’s your primary mailing address?”

“That would be the Okeechobee City one, ma’am. The marina one’s sort of borrowed.”

This, then, explained the cowboy outfit. Okeechobee City was cattle country, a small town on the shores of Lake Okeechobee some miles west of Palm Beach, that much she knew.

She wrote down both addresses. She knew the Sunchaser Marina well; she’d bicycled past it many times. It was home base for pleasure yachts, houseboats and assorted other watercraft, all of them expensive, none of them suited to a guy who dressed like he’d recently thundered on horseback right out of a John Wayne movie. Bermuda shorts in assorted pastel plaids and Gucci loafers with no socks were the preferred mode of dress at Sunchaser Marina.

Slade Braddock shifted on his cushion. She’d better rush this along or he might cut the interview short.

Karma fixed the cowboy with what she hoped was a serious and businesslike gaze. “And what brings you to Rent-a-Yenta?” she asked.

“I want to get married,” he said doggedly. “I’m ready to find myself a bride.”

Karma swallowed. She wasn’t accustomed to clients who came right out and stated their purpose. Most of them weren’t too sure what they’d be getting into when they signed with her, and they usually said something vague. “Introduce me to somebody nice to date,” was the usual statement. Sometimes they added embellishments, such as “He has to have a platinum Visa card with his picture on it,” or “I don’t go out with anyone who doesn’t know how
to refold a map,” but that was about as specific as they got. No one, in the months since she’d become a matchmaker, had flat out said, “I want to get married.”

Slade Braddock looked so earnest that Karma was sure he meant it.

“To what kind of woman?” she blurted.

“Oh, I’ve got a woman in mind. I can describe her if you like,” he said as a dreamy expression filtered out the fire in those remarkable blue eyes.

This wasn’t standard operating procedure, but Karma was fascinated by his honesty. Honesty was all too rare in this business, she’d learned. “Go ahead,” she said, realizing that she was holding her breath. She let it out slowly, wondering if it was too much to hope that he’d describe a five-foot-eleven natural blonde with large feet, green eyes and breasts slightly on the small side.

“She’ll have light hair. Yellow, like sunbeams. Kind of like yours, only straighter.” He studied her. Appraised her. She didn’t know exactly what that look meant, but she took it that he didn’t exactly disapprove of what he saw. Until he went on talking, that is.

“She’ll be tiny. A little bird of a woman. And her voice will be sweet. Maybe she’ll like singing in the church choir.”

Karma couldn’t sing a note. And tiny she wasn’t. As her hopes faded, she said stoically, “Go on.”

“She’ll be comfortable on the ranch, know how it works. Or be willing to learn. I don’t expect her to rope and brand cattle, but she should understand that this is part of what I do. And she’ll be crazy about me. From the very beginning if possible. I aim to have me a wife by this summer.”

“What’s happening this summer?”

He looked at her as if she was crazy for asking. “Why, our honeymoon. I’ve already signed us up for an Alaskan cruise.”

“Oh.” Karma
was nonplussed.

He zeroed in on her astonishment. “What do you mean, ‘oh’?” Is there something wrong with that?”

“Occasionally a wife likes to help choose the honeymoon spot,” Karma said, holding back the sarcasm with great effort.

She judged from the perplexed expression in his eyes that this had never occurred to him.

“I figured that if the woman loves me, then anyplace is all right with her. For the honeymoon, I mean.”

She took pity on him. “In some cases, that’s true,” she relented, and his smile warmed her heart.

Her heart had no place in this. She willed it to stop leaping around in her chest and pretended to make a notation on the form. But as she concentrated on her task, one side of her was having an argument with the other side. Sounding very much like her aunt Sophie, the yenta side counseled, “You’ve got yourself a client. You’ve got a paying customer on the hoof. Don’t scare him away.” The Karma side hissed, “Stupid! This is a really great guy. Why give him away to someone else? Why not keep him for yourself?”

A disturbing thought. She’d given up on men two or three relationships ago.

She cleared her throat. She cleared her mind. Or attempted to, anyway.

“Mr. Braddock. This is certainly enough information for me to match you up with some charming clients.”

He beamed. “Now that’s good news.” He produced a money clip and peeled off several bills. “Here’s the registration fee.”

Karma’s eyes bugged out at the wad of cool cash. Most people paid with a credit card. Most people didn’t carry that much money around.

He put the money back in his pocket. “I can’t tell you how downright scared I was coming in here today. I’d
rather face a nest of full-grown rattlers than do this, I can tell you.”

She turned the full wattage of her best smile on him. “Oh, everyone feels that way at first, I’m sure. The next step is, of course, our videotape session. Normally I’d be able to do that today, but my video camera is out for repairs. So I hope it will be convenient for you to come back tomorrow?” She’d play soft sitar music on the boom box, wear something flowing. She’d make carob-and-pine-nut brownies and serve them with flair. She’d—but of course she wouldn’t. She wasn’t in the market for a guy, even one as appealing as this one.

Slade Braddock unfolded himself from the floor cushion, rising with spectacular grace. He looked down at her, a half smile playing across his well-sculpted lips.

“No problem, but why don’t you stop by the marina this afternoon? There’s a video camera on the houseboat. No point in wasting time. Got to get me a bride by June, you know?” His smile so unnerved her that she levered herself upward, stumbling over the corner of the cushion and catching herself on the doorknob, barely averting an unladylike sprawl across her desk.

“You okay?” he asked, frowning slightly.

“Y-yes. And where will I find you at the marina?”

“I’m staying on what they call Houseboat Row in a floating palace called
Toy Boat.
Silly name, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Karma said, unsure how to answer this. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Guys sometimes got very attached to their boats.

“I didn’t name it. That honor belongs to my second cousin’s wife. Renee thought it was cute.” He grinned, and Karma was totally charmed. Never mind that he had already told her the type of woman who appealed to him, and never mind that she wasn’t it. All her misgivings about men evaporated in that moment.

“I’ll be glad to stop by the marina,” she said. “Would
five o’clock suit you?” She’d bring hors d’oeuvres, wear something revealing. She’d—yeah. She’d make a fool of herself. Again.

“Five o’clock. Right. Thanks, Ms.—O’Connor, is it?”

She scooped one of her cards out of the jumble on her desk. “Karma O’Connor. Like on the sign out front.”

He looked at the card, looked at her. “Nice name, Karma. What does it mean?”

“Destiny,” she said, staring him straight in the eye, and despite her reservations, in that moment she was certain that she had found hers.

A
FTER
S
LADE HAD LEFT HER OFFICE
, Karma immediately dashed across the street to the Blue Moon, where she rented a tiny three-room pad.

The Blue Moon was exactly the kind of place Karma would have chosen to live even if it hadn’t been right across the street from Rent-a-Yenta. The building had seen its heyday in the late 1940s. It was painted pale pink, the doors and windows were outlined in aqua, and a lavender-blue stripe circled the top of the building. A blue bas-relief half moon hung over the door. Karma had heard the place variously described as “an iced pastry,” and “a Wurlitzer jukebox done in pastels.” After the heavy dark brick of her apartment block in Connecticut, she loved it.

Goldy, manager, desk clerk, custodian and security officer all rolled into one, sat inside the doorway behind a counter. She glanced up from her knitting with rapid-blinking brown eyes. Her short spiky hair gleamed in the sunlight from the nearby window; it was an energetic shade of copper this week. In the background a radio blared some sixties girl group singing, “Today I Met the Man I’m Going to Marry.”

Was the song an omen? Maybe. Karma believed in omens.

“Hi
, Goldy, anything new?”

“I read the tarot cards for you today. Something big’s coming up. Something major.” Her voice was tiny, like a little girl’s.

“Like being able to pay my office rent?” Slade Braddock’s registration fee made that a sure thing.

“Hmm. Could be bigger than that.” Goldy set aside her knitting and adjusted the voluminous folds of one of the huge flower-print muumuus she liked to wear.

“Nothing’s bigger than paying the rent.”

“I thought since you gave up the five-room office suite, you’d be okay.”

“Only if I bring in more business. Things fell apart fast when Aunt Sophie was sick. She may have left me her business, but I’ve got to revive it. After quitting a market research job, being laid off from
Psychtronics Magazine
and getting fired from The Bickerstiff Corporation, it’s a welcome opportunity.”

“Maybe you should have your chakras read, get some direction. I have time late this afternoon.” Goldy’s shtick was anything New Age, and she never let anyone forget it.

“Can’t. I’m busy.”

“Well, there you go. Business must be picking up,” Goldy said with an air of idle speculation, which was how Karma knew that Goldy, from her vantage point by the window, had seen Slade Braddock.

“I have a new client,” Karma said reluctantly.

“Is he
anyone that Jennifer might be interested in?” Jennifer was Goldy’s niece, and she’d signed up with Rent-a-Yenta the first week after Karma had taken over. Jennifer was hard to place because she had no real interests other than herself. Her favorite pastime seemed to be playing “Boxers or Briefs” while guy-watching with her best friend Mandi on Collins Avenue, and Karma privately thought that her brain was so empty that she ought to wear a Rooms for Rent sign on her forehead.

Karma managed a casual shrug. She couldn’t see Slade Braddock with Jennifer. Or maybe she didn’t want to.

“Well, how about Mandi?” Goldy asked.

Karma had experienced some success in placing Mandi, who also lived in this apartment house, but most guys backed off after they realized that artfully streaked hair, acrylic fingernails, and weekly massages did not come without a steep price.