Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars #6)(66)

“You’re using her to get to me, and I don’t like it.”

“It’s hard to use Annabelle. She’s pretty sharp.”

Phoebe shot him her no-nonsense look. “She’s special, Heath, and she’s my friend. Perfect for You means everything to her. You’re making things messy.”

A fairly accurate assessment, but a knot of anger still formed under his breastbone. “You don’t give her enough credit.”

“She doesn’t give herself enough credit. That’s what makes her vulnerable. Her family’s convinced her she’s a failure because she’s not earning six figures. She needs to be concentrating on making her business work, and I’m getting the feeling you deliberately turned yourself into a bad distraction.”

He forgot that he never let himself get defensive. “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

“I saw how you were looking at her last night.”

The insinuation that he might deliberately hurt Annabelle stuck in his craw. He wasn’t his father. He didn’t use women, and he especially didn’t use a woman he liked. But he was dealing with Phoebe Calebow, and he couldn’t afford to lose his temper, so he dug into his always reliable supply of self-control …and came up empty. “Annabelle’s my friend, and I don’t make it a habit of hurting my friends.” He pushed to his feet. “But then you don’t know me well enough to figure that out, do you?”

As he stalked away, he called himself every name in the book. He never lost it. He absolutely never f*cking lost it. Yet he’d basically just told Phoebe Calebow to go to hell. And for what? Because enough truth lurked in what she’d said to hurt. The fact was, he’d committed a foul, and Phoebe had dropped a penalty flag on him.



Annabelle waited for Heath on the front porch at the B&B along with Janine, whom she’d invited to ride into town with them for dinner. Annabelle had stayed in her bedroom at the cottage until she’d heard Heath come in. As soon as the shower started running, she’d jotted a quick note, left it on the table, and slipped out. The less time she spent alone with him the better.

“Any ideas about Krystal’s mysterious surprise?” Janine straightened the clasp on her silver necklace as they sat in the porch rockers.

“No, but I hope it’s fattening.” Annabelle didn’t really care what the surprise was, as long as it kept her away from Heath after dinner.

He pulled up in the car, and Annabelle insisted Janine sit with him in the front. On their way into town, he asked about her books. He’d never read a word she’d written, but by the time they reached the inn, he’d convinced her she had everything it took to be the next J. K. Rowling. The weird thing was, he seemed to believe it. No question that the Python was a powerful motivator.

The Wind Lake Inn’s rustic north woods decor complemented a varied menu of beef, fish, and game. Conversation was lively, and Annabelle limited her alcohol consumption to a single glass of wine. As they dug into their entrées, Phoebe asked the men how their book discussion had gone. Darnell opened his mouth to respond, his gold tooth flashing, only to have Dan cut in. “So much came up, I don’t even know where to start. Ron?”

“It was intense, all right,” the Stars’ general manager said.

Kevin looked thoughtful. “A lot of sharing.”

“Intense?” Darnell scowled. “It was—”

“Heath could probably summarize better than any of us,” Webster interjected.

The others nodded solemnly and turned their heads toward Heath, who set down his fork. “I doubt I could do it justice. Who figured we could have so many different opinions about postmodern nihilism?”

Molly looked at Phoebe. “They didn’t talk about the book at all.”

“I told you they wouldn’t,” her sister replied.

Charmaine reached over to rub her husband’s back. “I’m sorry, honey. You know I tried to talk the women into letting you join our group, but they said you’d upset our dynamics.”

“Besides trying to bully us into reading One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Janine added.

“That is a great book!” Darnell exclaimed. “Y’all don’t want to challenge your minds.”

Kevin had heard Darnell’s lecture on people’s reading tastes before and quickly moved to deflect it. “We know you’re right. And we’re all ashamed of ourselves, aren’t we, guys?”

“I am.”

“Me, too.”

“Can’t hardly stand to look in the mirror.”

Kevin seized on Annabelle as the next distraction to keep Darnell from getting worked up. “So what’s this I hear about you dating Dean Robillard?”

Everyone at the table stopped eating. Heath set down his knife. The women’s heads swiveled. Molly gazed into her husband’s not-so-innocent green eyes. “Annabelle’s not dating Dean. She would have told us.”

“I’m really not,” Annabelle said.

Kevin Tucker, the wiliest quarterback in the NFL, scratched the back of his head like a gorgeous doofus. “I’m confused. I talked to Dean on Friday, and he mentioned that the two of you went out last week and that he’d had a real good time.”

“Well, we went to the beach…”