Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars #6)(75)

“Now there’s a surprise.” Those cold green eyes could have cut glass. “Bait and switch.”

“I—I’m afraid so.”

“How did you get the husband to go along with it?”

“A—uh—year of free babysitting.”

A blade of wind cut through the clearing, ruffling his hair. He stared at her for so long her skin started to itch. She thought of all she’d put herself through this morning…For nothing.

“You conned me,” he said again, almost as if he were still trying to take it in.

Apprehension knotted her stomach. “I couldn’t see another way.”

A bird shrieked overhead. Another screeched in response. And then the edges of his mouth crinkled. “Way to go, Tinker Bell. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about.”



Just because Heath approved of Annabelle’s scam didn’t mean that she escaped a lecture about business ethics. She defended herself by saying, truthfully, that it wouldn’t have occurred to her to do something so dishonorable to any other client.

He was only partially satisfied. “Once you start flirting with the dark side, it’s hard to turn back.”

And didn’t she just know it.

Kevin eventually popped through the trees. “Oh, good,” he said as he spotted Annabelle. “I told Molly you’d probably still be alive.”

She stayed at Kevin’s side as they all walked back to the gazebo. Shortly after that, Heath took off. As he left, she found herself thinking that this deception crap was getting old. How would Heath have reacted if she’d been honest? Right. Like that wouldn’t have been a recipe for destroying everything from her self-esteem to her professional dreams. But she was sick of deceit. She wanted to make love with someone she didn’t have secrets from, someone she could build a future with. And didn’t that just say it all. This was about chemistry. It had nothing to do with an eternal meeting of kindred souls.





Chapter Sixteen




Portia hit the Enter key on her office computer to sort the data file. This time she’d searched by hair color, which was stupid because hair color could change from one week to the next, but surely someone lurked in her data bank whom she’d missed, someone who’d be perfect for Heath, and she kept envisioning a blonde. She winced as the aggressive whine of a power saw cut through the Sunday afternoon quiet. Non-union laborers were remodeling the office overhead, and the intrusion grated at her already frayed nerves.

Heath had taken off for the weekend with Annabelle Granger. Portia had gotten the news from his receptionist, a woman she’d befriended several months earlier with front-row seats at a Shania Twain concert. Portia still couldn’t quite absorb it. She was the one who spent weekends with important clients: Vegas jaunts, Wisconsin winter excursions, lazy afternoons at one beach or another. She’d thrown wedding showers and baby showers, attended bar mitzvahs, anniversary parties, even funerals. Her Christmas card list had over five hundred names on it. Yet Annabelle Granger had spent the weekend with Heath Champion.

The power saw emitted another abrasive screech. Generally she stayed away from the office on Sunday afternoons, but today she’d been more restless than usual. She’d begun the morning with mass in Winnetka. When she’d been a kid, she’d hated going to church, and in her twenties, she’d given it up altogether. But about five years ago, she’d started attending again. At first it had been a business tactic, another way to make the right contacts. She’d targeted four upscale Catholic churches and rotated among them: two on the North Shore, one in Lincoln Park, and one near the Gold Coast. But after a while, she’d begun to look forward to the services for reasons that had nothing to do with business and everything to do with the way the knots inside her unraveled as the familiar words of the liturgy washed over her. She still alternated churches—God helped those who helped themselves, didn’t he?—but now her Sundays had become less about business and more about the possibility of peace. Not today, however. Today the serenity she needed so desperately had eluded her.

She’d met some acquaintances for coffee after mass, socially prominent friends from her brief marriage. How would they react if she introduced them to Bodie? Just the thought made her headache worse. Bodie inhabited a secret compartment in her life, a sordid, perverted chamber she could never let anyone peer into. He’d left two messages on her machine this week, but she hadn’t returned either of them, not until today. An hour ago, she’d given in to temptation and dialed his number, then hung up before he could answer. If she could get one good night’s sleep, she’d stop obsessing about him. Maybe she’d even be able to stop worrying so much about Heath and the feeling that her business was falling apart.

The power saw shrieked again, drilling through her temples. Before her marriage, she’d had her share of affairs. More than a few of them had brought her unhappiness, but none of them had degraded her. Which was what Bodie had done last week. He’d degraded her. And she’d let him do it.

Because it hadn’t felt degrading.

That’s what she couldn’t understand. That’s why her insomnia was growing unmanageable, why she hadn’t been able to unwind during the mass, and why she’d forgotten last week’s weigh-in. Because what he’d done had felt almost tender.