Free Match Me if You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

be a snap.”
    “You forgot hot.” Heath smiled. “And defeatist thinking is for losers. If you want to be a success in this world, Annabelle, you need a positive attitude. Whatever the client wants, you get it for him. First rule of a successful business.”
    “Uh-huh. What about career women?”
    “I don’t see how that would work.”
    “The kind of potential mate you’re describing isn’t going to be sitting around waiting for her prince to show up. She’s heading a major corporation. In between those Victoria’s Secret modeling gigs.”
    He lifted an eyebrow. “Attitude, Annabelle. Attitude.”
    “Right.”
    “A career woman can’t fly across the country with me on two hours’ notice to entertain a client’s wife,” he said.
    “Two on, no outs.” Bodie flipped up the volume.
    As the men listened to the game, Annabelle contemplated her notes with a sinking heart. How was she going to find a woman who met all these criteria? She couldn’t. But then neither could Portia Powers, because a woman like this didn’t exist.
    What if Annabelle took a different path? What if she found the woman Heath Champion really needed instead of the woman he thought he needed? She doodled in the margin of the questionnaire. What made this guy tick besides money and conquest? Who was the real man behind the multiple cell phones? On the surface, he was all polish, but she knew from Molly that he’d grown up with an abusive father. Apparently, he’d started rooting around in the neighbors’ garbage looking for things to sell before he could read, and he’d been working ever since.
    “What’s your real name?” Annabelle asked as they got off the East West Tollway at York Road.
    “What makes you think Heath Champion isn’t my real name.”
    “Too convenient.”
    “ Campione. Italian for champion. ”
    She nodded, but something in the way he avoided looking at her told her there was more to the story.
    They headed north toward the prosperous suburb of Elmhurst. Heath consulted his BlackBerry. “I’ll be at Sienna’s tomorrow night at six. Bring on your next candidate.”
    She turned her doodle into a stop sign. “Why now?”
    “Because I just rearranged my schedule.”
    “No, I mean why have you decided now that you want to get married?”
    “Because it’s time.”
    Before she could ask what that meant, he was back on his cell. “I know you’re nearly capped out, Ron, but I also know you don’t want to lose a great running back. Tell Phoebe she’s going to have to make some adjustments.”
    And so, apparently, was Annabelle.
     
     
     
    B odie sent her back to the city in a cab paid for by Heath. By the time she’d retrieved Sherman and driven home, it was after five. She let herself in through the back door and tossed her things down on the kitchen table, a pine drop leaf Nana had bought in the 1980s when she’d gone big on country-style decorating. The appliances were vintage but still serviceable, just like the farm-table chairs with their faded mattress-ticking pillows. Although Annabelle had lived in the house for three months, she’d always think of it as Nana’s, and tossing out the dusty grapevine wreath along with the ruffled cranberry curtain at the kitchen window were about as much as she’d done to update the eating area.
    Some of her happiest childhood memories had taken place in this kitchen, especially during the summers when she’d come for a week to visit. She and Nana used to sit at this very table, talking about everything. Her grandmother had never laughed at her daydreams, not even when Annabelle had turned eighteen and announced that she intended to study theater and become a famous actress. Nana dealt only in possibility. It hadn’t occurred to her to point out that Annabelle possessed neither the beauty nor the talent to hit it big on Broadway.
    The doorbell rang, and she went to answer it. Years earlier, Nana had converted the living and dining rooms into the reception and