wasn’t even about me. I want to propose a double wager. Since we both need dates to the Holbrook wedding, I’ll let you fix me up, if you’ll let me fix you up.”
The daughter of Celebration Memorial Hospital’s chief executive officer Stanley Holbrook was getting married in mid-July. Jake had his eye on a promotion and attending his boss’s daughter’s wedding was one of the best ways to prove to the man he was the guy for the job. Since Holbrook was a conservative family man, Anna’s offer to fix him up with a woman of substance wasn’t a bad idea.
She was looking at him funny.
“Deal?” he said.
She opened her mouth, but then clamped it shut before saying anything. Instead, she shook her head. “No. Just...no.”
“Come on, Anna, fair is fair. I know Hal hurt you, but you’re too young to put yourself on a shelf. You want to get married again. You want to have kids. There are good guys out there, and I think I know one or two who would be worthy of you.”
She stopped chopping. “Worthy of me?” Her expression softened. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in a very long time.”
“Case in point of why you need to get out more, my dear. Men should be saying many nice things to you.”
She made short order of chopping the peppers, scraping the tiny pieces into a bowl and then drying her hands.
“Okay, I’ll make a deal with you,” she said. “We’ll do this until Stan Holbrook’s daughter’s wedding. Between now and then, I’ll bet I can match you with your soul mate and cure you of your serial monogamy issues.”
He winced. “What? As in something permanent?”
She shrugged. “Just give me a chance.”
“Only if you’ll let me do the same for you. Do we have a deal?”
She nodded.
“So what are we betting?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t really mean it as a serious bet.”
“I think making a bet will make this more interesting. We don’t have to decide the prize right away. Let’s just agree that the first one who succeeds in making a match for the other wins.”
Anna wrinkled her nose. “Knowing you, you’ll let a good woman go just to win the challenge. You’re so competitive.”
“But if you think about it,” he said, “who will be the real winner? One will win the bet, but the other will win love.”
“That’s extremely profound for a man who has such bad taste in women.” She gave him that smile that always made him feel as if he’d come home. He paused to just take it in for a moment.
Then Jake shook her smooth, warm hand, and said, “Here’s to soul mates.”
Soul mates.
Why did hearing Jake say that word make her stomach flip? Especially since she wasn’t even sure if she believed in such a thing as soul mates. After all she’d been through with Hal, she still believed in love and marriage enough to try again...someday. But soul mates? That was an entirely different subject. The sparkle had dulled from that notion when her marriage died.
“I’m done chopping.” Anna set the bowl on the granite counter next to the stove where Jake was melting butter in a frying pan. Then she deposited their empty beer bottles into the recycle bin in the garage.
“Now what can I do?” she said when she got back into the kitchen.
“Just have a seat over there.” With his elbow, he gestured toward the small kitchen table cluttered with mail and books. “Stay out of my way. Omelet-flipping is serious business. I am a trained professional. So don’t try this at home.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, eyeing the mess on the table’s surface. “That’s why I have you. So you can fix me omelets. Apparently, I will repay you by setting the table for us to eat. And after I’ve excavated a space to put the plates and silverware, then I might clean the rest of your house, too. I thought you had a housekeeper. Where has she been?”
“Her name’s Angie and she’s been down with the flu. Hasn’t been available to come in for two weeks.”
Anna glanced around the room at the newspapers littering the large, plush sectional sofa in the open-plan living room. There were mugs and stacks of magazines and opened mail on the masculine, wooden coffee and end tables. Several socks and running shoes littered the dark-stained, hardwood living room floor.
“Wow. Well...” In fact, it looked as if Jake had dropped everything right where he’d stood. “God, Jake, I didn’t realize you were such a slob.”
Jake followed her gaze. “I’m not a slob,” he said. “I’m just busy. And I wasn’t expecting company.”
Obviously.
Anna thought about asking why he didn’t simply walk a few more steps into the bathroom where he could deposit his socks into the dirty clothes hamper rather than leaving them strewn all over the floor. Instead, she focused on being part of the solution rather than nagging him and adding to the problem. She quickly organized the table clutter into neat piles, revealing two placemats underneath, and set out the silverware she’d just washed and dried.
“Where are your napkins?” she asked.
He handed her a roll of paper towels.
This was the first time in the month that she’d been home that they’d cooked at his place. Really, it was just an impromptu meal, but it was just dawning on her how little she’d been over at his place since she’d been back. That was thanks in large part to Jake’s girlfriend. She wondered if Dorenda had seen the mess—or had helped create it—but before she could ask, she realized she really didn’t want to know.
“It must be a pretty serious case of the flu if Angie has been down for two weeks. Has she been to the doctor?”
Jake gave a one-shoulder shrug. “She’s fine. I ran into her at the coffee shop in downtown the other day. She looked okay to me. She’ll probably be back next week.”
Anna balked. “Why do you keep her?”
She crossed the room to straighten the newspapers and corral the socks. She couldn’t just stand there while Jake was cooking and the papers were cluttering up the place and in the back of her mind she could hear him toasting soul mates.
Even that small act of picking up would help work off some of her nervous energy.
“I don’t have time to find someone else,” he said. “Besides, it’s not that bad around here.”
She did a double take, looking back at him to see if he was kidding.
Apparently not.
But
