The Matchmaker Meets Her Match (5 page)

Don declined her offer of refreshment so she perched on her chair, pulled a fresh index card toward her, inscribed his name at the top, and said, as she had said approximately ten thousand times before for all the good it had done, “So tell me what’s going on.”

“Hmpf,” Don said. He hooked an elbow over the back of the chair and narrowed his eyes at her, as if she were the one undergoing questioning.
I love my job
, she told herself. Positive reinforcement. Creative visualization. Daily affirmations.
I love my job. Don’t arrest me as one of Marcus’s accomplices.

“We have to start somewhere,” Rilka said, folding her hands together so she didn’t start drumming her fingers impatiently on the tabletop. She should start charging by the hour. Then people could take as long as they wanted, and she wouldn’t mind. She would be calm and reassuring, like a lawyer racking up the billable hours. How much would she charge? One million dollars an hour. Then she’d only need one client.

“My wife ran off on me,” he said.

Rilka blinked. She gave him points for coming out with it so quickly and directly. “I’m sorry,” she said, because she was. She was always sorry when love didn’t work out because it meant more people showing up on her doorstep.

Gran used to ask compassionate questions to get the details so she could make a better match. Rilka didn’t want to know the details. She really didn’t.

“
I’m
not sorry,” Deputy Deane said, and he sounded like he believed it. “She said I didn’t take her seriously.”

Rilka struggled with herself for a moment. She
didn’t
want to know. She didn’t want to care. Curiosity won the wrestling match. Curiosity almost always did, even though afterwards she inevitably told herself
you just had to know, didn’t you?

“And?” she asked.

“What was there to take seriously?” he demanded.

See? That was what came of asking questions. You got answers. She gave him a steady look and he sighed and said, “I bust my butt keeping the community safe and she sits around writing romance novels no one’s going to publish.”

“Ah,” Rilka said. “She felt you were unsupportive.”

“It’s the truth. I
was
unsupportive.”

At least he was admitting it. Self delusion was the biggest problem she encountered among her clientele.
I’m a natural blonde
, they’d claim even as she saw the dark roots coming in. So, excellent, Deputy Deane wasn’t like that. She could make a note on her index card: refreshingly honest about himself and others. She tried to imagine a woman who would appreciate the “and others.” She failed.

Deputy Deane shrugged his bulky shoulders and asked rhetorically, “But hell, who wouldn’t be?”

Rilka bit back the desire to correct him:
Plenty of men support the women in their lives.
But did she actually have any evidence to back up this position? Honestly, why did people want to be together? She tried to remember. Assuage the loneliness? Have sex with someone other than Mr. Vibrator? She needed to make a cheat sheet to refer to in times like this.

“So you’re looking for what, exactly?” she asked.

“For someone who has a real job.”

Huh. That was new. Not ordinarily high on the list of requirements men gave her.
Hot
was usually a Top Three item for men. Very discouraging.
Has a real job.
That was usually a Top Three for women.

“What else? I mean, are you attracted to a certain kind of personality? Certain looks?”

He shifted in his chair. People often had a hard time expressing what they were looking for, like she might judge them for their preferences, which God knew she did, but why should that stop anyone?
Don’t worry
, she always wanted to say.
I’ve heard it all before.

Finally, he came up with, “My wife is blonde.”

“So you’re saying you like blondes?” Her pen hovered over the index card.

“No. I’m saying I don’t want to duplicate the experience.”

“No blondes. Do you like serious? Fun-loving? Family type?”

“I like all kinds of women,” he said. “At least I did before I got married.”

A person could take that several different ways. She went with the positive spin.

“So you’re in exploratory mode? You just want to play the field a little, see what’s out there?” she guessed. If his wife running off was a recent phenomenon, then he wouldn’t be looking for wedding bells any time soon. Or maybe he would be. For all their grousing about getting tied down, men couldn’t seem to wait to get themselves married as quickly as they could. Give a man a divorce and he didn’t pause to learn from experience, he just bought himself a new car, hit the singles’ bars, and said,
Better luck next time.

“That’s it,” Don said, nodding emphatically. “Exactly. Exploratory mode.”

Wonderful. She understood him. “You’d just like me to set you up with a variety of women for now.”

“Exactly. I just don’t have time to hunt ’em down myself,” he explained.

“Elegantly put,” Rilka said. She looked at his bulk as he shifted in his chair. She’d assured Julia that men dated fat women. Who more likely than a, well, fat man to date a fat woman? And he’d said he wanted a woman with a real job, which Julia certainly had. There — match made in heaven. Too bad she could practically hear Gran cackling at her.
It’s not that easy, darling.

“I have someone in mind,” she said.

“To start with?”

“Yes,” Rilka said.
We have an a la carte menu here, pick an appetizer and then an entrée …

“That’s fast.” He rubbed his hands together happily.

Oh, ick,
Rilka thought, and pasted a pleasant smile on her face.

“It’s someone who just signed up. If it doesn’t work out, it helps me learn a little more about both of you.”
Not that I don’t already know more than I want to.
“I’ll talk to her and then be in touch.”
That’s your cue to leave
, she thought, wishing her clients would pick up on her telepathic clues. But if they did, she’d have no clientele. Would that be good or bad?

“Sounds fine.” He extracted a business card from his wallet and handed it to her.

“So I don’t just call 911 when I need to talk to you,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “That’s reserved for emergencies.”

“I was joking.”

“We’re not allowed to joke about 911,” he said firmly.

Go away.

“Let me show you to the door,” she said.

“Marcus,” Rilka said, opening the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Are you with anyone?” he asked, looking like the spy who came in from the cold. If only she could put aside her annoying law-abiding tendencies, she could be happy with Marcus. He was charming, romantic, a good conversationalist, and from all reports extremely thoughtful in bed. But she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. She already did too much of that.

“No,” she admitted reluctantly. She had planned to spend this free half hour reading the paper and clearing her mind for her next client. Maybe start hitting the tequila, as she kept promising herself. Where was the follow through?

“Please?”

“All right,” she said ungraciously. “Come in.” She let him in, then turned and headed down the hall.

“Not the kitchen,” Marcus said with a pained expression, putting his hand on her arm to stop her. “Please don’t make me sit in that obscenely cheerful room one more time.”

“Okay,” she said, trying not to feel insulted, even though she hadn’t been the one to put all that thought into making the kitchen a cheerful room.
Accommodate the client
, Gran used to say.
It’s about them, not you.
Rilka halted their progress through the living room, then sat down on the sofa and gestured toward the armchair across from her. She tried to be generous. Perhaps Marcus was not a daffodil person.

“What’s up?” she asked, smoothing her skirt over her knees. She had started the morning with a firm commitment to herself to be professional and efficient and the suit was her effort to remind herself of the vow. “Steal any jewelry lately?” Hmm. Not, perhaps, the professional air she was trying to project.

Marcus gave her a sour look but let it pass. “I saw Deputy Deane here,” he said. “I dropped by earlier but saw him getting out of his cruiser so I kept going. What was he questioning you about?” From his anxious expression, she could tell he was expecting the worst. She wondered what he’d done now. No, she didn’t want to know. How many times did she have to tell herself? If she didn’t know she couldn’t go to jail as an accomplice. Probably.

Marcus looked on edge, the tension of waiting for an answer clear in his posture.

“I can’t disclose anything about other clients except what they’ve authorized me to,” she said, trying to ease his anxiety without actually violating a confidence.

He took a deep breath and covered his heart with his hand in a gesture of deeply felt relief. “Dare I believe? He was here because he can’t get a date?”

“You can’t get a date either,” she reminded him.

“That’s different,” he said, waving a dismissive hand at her. “I’m a suave, sophisticated man of discerning taste. Of course I have difficulty meeting the right woman. Deane, on the other hand, can’t get a date because he’s an unappetizing specimen of humanity.”

That did seem to sum the man up, but Rilka wasn’t about to admit it. If she started making disparaging comments about her clients out loud she’d never stop. Besides, it was easy taking potshots at people who came to what was essentially a dating service. Infinitely harder was admitting you were lonely and wanted help finding someone simpatico.

“Is that why you’re here? To see what Deane’s up to?”

“Keep your friends close,” Marcus said meditatively, “and your enemies closer.”

“Very nice,” she said, rolling her eyes. That was what she needed, epigraphs from the larceny-inclined. “Are you going now?”

“No,” Marcus said. “I came by to see if you would consider relaxing your rule about not dating clients.”

Rilka blinked. She had never gotten an
I think you’re attractive
vibe from Marcus, so his question took her by surprise. Of course, she’d gone five years without a man in her life, so maybe she’d just stopped being able to identify clues.

“Hmm,” she said cautiously. Not that she was going to get involved with a client. Just, how could she have failed to notice his interest in her? “And the reason you’re asking is?”

“I need a date to the art museum’s gala, and — ”

Rilka held up a hand. “No. You know I draw the line at abetting felonies.”

“A pity,” he said. “You’d be really good at it.”

• • •

“Thanks for meeting me,” Rilka said, giving Marilyn a half hug and scooting into the chair opposite. They were at Janie’s, a tiny restaurant downtown that specialized in the kinds of sandwiches you’d never make in your own kitchen, with Portobello mushrooms and goat cheese. It was Marilyn’s pick, of course; Rilka’s taste ran more toward a juicy porterhouse with mashed potatoes, gravy on the side. Not that she ever got such a thing in this town, with the friends she had. She needed a friend who didn’t wear Birkenstocks.

“You look a little … stressed,” Marilyn said as the waiter came to take their orders, paying a lot more attention to Marilyn than he paid to Rilka, but Rilka was used to that and Marilyn never noticed.

“I am stressed,” Rilka said. Marilyn had heard all of Rilka’s woes before and it was a mark of her friendship that she was still willing to listen to Rilka talk about them. “I got hit on by a client. Not because I’m so madly attractive but because he needed an accomplice.”

Marilyn gave one of her rare smiles, which made the waiter stumble as he delivered their plates.

Rilka took a nibble of her sandwich and looked at her friend. Marilyn was a statuesque brunette who had the kind of presence that made you notice her but a closed-off manner that prevented you from knowing her. Rilka had been her friend before the sad eyes and the closed-off manner, so she’d been grandfathered in.

“Maybe
you
need a matchmaker,” Marilyn said, taking a huge bite out of her sandwich. She was not as elegant as she looked.

A matchmaker. “Ha ha,” Rilka said sourly. “I’m not in the market.” And she wasn’t. Really. She had seen love and relationships up close and she wanted nothing to do with them.

“I mean it,” Marilyn said. “You know how shrinks have their own shrinks to keep from going crazy with the stuff their clients dump on them? Maybe you need a matchmaker to help you believe in your work again.”

“Trust me,” Rilka said, wondering how Marilyn knew that about shrinks and if it were actually true. “Nothing short of a verified miracle is going to make me believe in my work. And you know what I think about miracles.”

“You used to believe in your work,” Marilyn said, giving her a perplexed, somewhat wary look, as if Rilka had just admitted the desire to start tearing wings off flies. “Sometimes you even seemed to enjoy it.”

“I have never believed in my work.” Rilka took another nibble of her sandwich. “No. Let me rephrase that. I believed my work fed, sheltered, and clothed me, and therefore I was grateful to it. But I’m fresh out of gratitude lately.” Rilka knew she was whining and she disliked the sound of it but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Maybe a margarita would help.

Marilyn gave her a knowing smile. “When you have to start counting your blessings, you know you’re in trouble.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Margarita,” she said as the waiter approached. “And keep ’em coming.” The waiter gave a pained expression but made a note before turning to Marilyn with an inquiring look.

“I’m fine with my iced tea,” Marilyn said. She worked as a bartender and saw close up the effects of alcohol, so she didn’t drink it.
See?
Rilka wanted to say.
Same thing.

The waiter gave Marilyn a dazzling smile. Male creatures always reacted that way to her but she never noticed. Or if she noticed, she didn’t care. She’d given her heart away once and having done so had no further plans for it. A big waste all around, but Rilka wasn’t going to have that conversation with her again. Someday she’d find the right man for Marilyn, and she’d fix them up … somehow. Stealth matchmaking. Maybe that was the way to go from now on. No one could blame her for a failed match if they didn’t know they were being set up.