All Night Long (4 page)

"Well, actually, I didn't at first," Susannah admitted, sure he must already know that much. "Not until you said you didn't care if
he
was seventy, as long as
he
was a young seventy. I'm embarrassed to admit it but I actually thought you were talking about a woman up until that point." Her eyes meet his, wide and guileless.

Matt felt his lips twitch with the need to smile. He ruthlessly quelled the need and continued to gaze at her, silently calling forth more information.

"I didn't realize you were describing your ideal man." Her tone was faintly accusing, as if she suspected him of having misled her on purpose.

With a strangled sound, somewhere between a groan and a snort of smothered laughter, Matt's sense of outraged masculinity finally succumbed to the absurdity of the situation. The really funny part, he thought, was that she was absolutely right. He
had
been describing the ideal man.

"For my mother," he said, still struggling to hide his smile.

The woman who had innocently impugned his manhood stared at him as if he'd gone crazy. "Your mother?"

"I was describing a man for my mother."

She stared at him blankly, unable to put what he'd just said together with what had gone before.

"To
date
my mother," Matt clarified, his piercing blue eyes dancing with barely suppressed merriment. "She's a widow."

"To date your..." Comprehension dawned. "Oh, good Lord." The rosy color in her cheeks, which had faded somewhat in the last few moments, bloomed into full color again. "Your mother."
 
She covered her burning cheeks with both hands and stared at him over them. "Oh, good Lord," she said again, unable to think of anything more apropos to the situation.

Matt's hidden smile curved into a full-fledged grin. "Yes, I'd say that just about covers it," he agreed, enjoying her flustered consternation.

Susannah stared back at him for a second longer, taking in his grin and the amusement lurking in his eyes. Her hands dropped back down to the desk. "You're not angry," she said wonderingly, hardly able to believe it. Most heterosexual males of her acquaintance would be furious—or, at least, highly installed by her assumption.

"I'm crushed," he said, clearly not crushed at all. "My ego may never recover from the blow."

Susannah couldn't stop her lips from curving up into a small answering smile. "Somehow I doubt even a Sherman tank could crush your ego," she said, her tone half-admiring. "But I'm really sorry, anyway." And
vastly—unaccountably,
she told herself—relieved. "I just assumed you were here to find a date for yourself. A quite natural assumption, under the circumstances," she added in her own defense.

"Oh, quite natural," he murmured, still grinning.

"And when you said
he,
well...." She lifted one hand, palm up. "What can I say?" Her smile widened to match his. "I jumped to an obviously erroneous conclusion."

"You didn't think it was so obvious a minute ago," Matt reminded her, unable to resist the urge to tease her. She blushed so beautifully, the rosy color staining her cheeks and throat before spreading downward under the lacy collar of her blouse. The expression in his eyes heated as he wondered just how far down the color went. Because she'd had the temerity to suspect him of being gay, he let the heat build. And made sure she felt it.

Susannah took a quick little breath. "Yes, well..." She flicked her hand, brushing the remark—and the heat—aside, and picked up her pen. "Shall we start over?" she said briskly, intent on putting the whole embarrassing episode behind her. "The notes I took—" she tapped the pad with the point of her pen "—aren't going to be very helpful the way they are."

* * *

"I've got to warn you, Matt, I've never worked this way before," Susannah said fifteen minutes later, after he'd told her what he felt were all the pertinent facts about his mother. "I've never matched up anyone without meeting both parties face-to-face first. Matchmaking for me has always been much more than a matter of pairing up lists of compatible likes and dislikes," she explained, indicating the notepad in front of her. "I rely on my impressions and intuition about a person, too."

"Intuition?" His smile was gently teasing, full of masculine amusement. "You mean, like, feminine intuition?"

"Gut instinct. Hunch," Susannah said, refusing to rise to the lure. "Whatever you want to call it. The point is, on paper two people can appear to be as compatible as twin peas in a pod and yet have absolutely no chemistry together. And, vice versa," she added, involuntarily thinking of her unwanted reaction to him. "Some of my best matches have been between people who didn't seem to have anything in common at all. But they hit it off instantly."

"I'm sure you'll manage to come up with someone who'll be just fine."

"Even if I do come up with a suitable candidate, I don't see how I'm going to get him together with your mother unless she knows what's going on."

"Don't worry about that part of it," Matt said. "You just find the right guy. Getting them together is my department."

"And you've already got that department organized. Right?"

"Of course." Matt's nod was the epitome of assured self-confidence. "Easiest thing in the world to introduce him to her during my next campaign appearance or at some benefit or other. As long as he's discreet—" and Matt's tone said he'd better be "—she'll never suspect a thing."

"So why haven't you done it before now?"

Matt lifted an eyebrow. "Come to a dating service?"

"Fixed her up. You must know lots of eligible men. Lawyers. Judges. Captains of industry." Her tone was gently mocking. "Pillars of the community. Political bigwigs."

"I've tried." Matt sighed. "Believe me, I've tried. But all the eligible men I know, she knows. And has known for years. Most of them either worked with or were friends of my father's before he died. If she had any interest in any of them, don't you think it would have manifested itself by now?" He shook his head. "I know when I've exhausted my options." He smiled appealingly and spread his hands. "And when it's time to call in the professionals."

"Well, speaking as a professional, I think you should tell your mother what you're up to. It seems... I don't know—" Susannah shrugged "—dishonest to do it behind her back. Especially if she hits it off with whoever. It'd be like starting off a relationship with a lie. Not a good idea," she warned him.

"It's just a tiny little white lie. And it's the only way my mother's going to be open to meeting anyone new."

"But—"

"Like I said, I've already tried fixing her up but she refuses to cooperate. She says she's 'past all that nonsense.' I suspect what she really means is that she wouldn't feel comfortable dating any of my dad's old friends."

"Maybe she's still mourning your father," Susannah suggested gently. "Two years isn't really all that long to grieve."

Matt sighed. "I think a part of her will always grieve for my father but the signs that she's finally gotten over the worst of it are there, believe me. She's begun to take a real interest in life again." In
his
life, especially, and most especially his recently announced bid for district judge. "She's ready to go on to the next stage, whatever it is." His grin flashed briefly. "God knows, I'm ready for her to go on to the next stage."

"Well, I'll give it my best shot but I can't prom—" The phone rang shrilly, cutting her off in midsentence. She glanced at it, waiting for the light to go on that would tell her it had been picked up by one of the women in the outer office. It rang twice more before she excused herself to Matt and reached for the receiver.

"The Personal Touch," she said pleasantly. "How may I help you?" She listened a moment. "I'm sorry, sir, we don't match people up over the telephone. You'll need to come in for an inter—" A frown drew her brows together as she listened to the caller restate his request. "You've obviously made a mistake," she said, icicles dripping from every word. "We're not that kind of dating service. No," she said firmly, when the caller tried to argue. "I haven't misunderstood anything. You have."

Matt lifted an eyebrow at her as she replaced the receiver.

"Some men seem to think
dating service
is a euphemism for
escort service,"
she said with a grimace of distaste.

At her words, a light went on in Matt's mind. "Your receptionist," he said, suddenly picturing the sleek, seductive young woman he'd seen in the outer office in a far different setting.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I knew I'd seen her somewhere before, but I couldn't place her until just now. She's been in court more than once." His gaze was steady and speculative. "Are you aware that your receptionist is a prostitute?"

"Ex-prostitute," Susannah corrected him calmly. "She hasn't been out on the streets for almost a year."

The lawyer in him had formed his next question before he even thought about it. "Do you know that for a fact?"

"Yes, I do. Judy's been working for me part-time since she quit the streets. Her parole officer is an old friend of mine," she added, feeling compelled to explain.

"Only part-time?"

"She goes to secretarial school the rest of the time," Susannah said, her voice edging toward cool. "And I resent your implication."

Matt ignored the warning. "If I remember her case rightly," he said, and he remembered just about every case that had ever crossed his desk, "she's got a string of arrests going back, oh, a good seven years, at least. And not just prostitution. She's done time for drug possession and petty theft, too."

"I'm aware of that." Susannah's tone slipped from cool to frosty. "What's your point?"

Matt inclined his head toward the phone. "You don't think she had anything to do with that?"

"No," Susannah said firmly. "I don't."

"Don't you think you should consider the possibility?"

"The Personal Touch has received the occasional call like that practically since the day we opened for business." There was almost as much ice in her tone now as there had been when she was talking to the caller. "Well
before
Judy started working here. As I said, some men think the terms
dating service
and
escort service
are interchangeable." She stood up, deliberately signaling the end of the interview.

Matt remained seated. "Seems to me working part-time for a dating service might be an excellent cover for less savory activities."

Susannah abruptly wondered how she could have ever thought him attractive, or even considered voting for him. The man was obviously a hard-nosed, hardhearted hard-liner without an ounce of compassion or understanding in his whole gorgeous body. "It must be very difficult, going through life burdened with all that suspicion and self-righteousness."

"I'm an attorney with the DA's office," he said easily, refusing to be baited. "It's my job to be suspicious."

"And the smug self-righteousness? Is that part of your job, too?"

Matt found it just a bit harder to reply calmly this time. "I prefer to think of it as common sense," he said, surprised that such a relatively mild jibe had gotten under his skin. He'd been accused of much worse in the course of his career and been able to brush it off with an unconcerned shrug. But this woman seemed to have a real knack for riling him. "Habitual criminals rarely turn into model, law-abiding citizens," he said sharply. "Especially not overnight."

"Judy Sukura is not a criminal, habitual or otherwise," Susannah said heatedly, all trace of coolness disappearing from her voice and manner. "She's a young woman who was given a very raw deal in life. She's been physically and sexually abused, both at home and on the streets, and she's dealt with it the best way she could, doing what she thought she had to in order to survive. And, for your information,
Counselor—"
the inflection she gave the word made it sound like a particularly virulent disease "—she didn't make some miraculous, overnight change. It's taken months of therapy and hard work and plain, gut-wrenching effort for her to get to where she is today. And it's going to take a lot more of the same before she can completely overcome the abuses of her past, including, I might add, those inflicted by the callous, uncaring maze we call a legal system, which treats women like Judy as if they were dangerous criminals instead of giving them the help and understanding they so desperately need."

She stopped and took a deep breath, forcibly bringing herself under control. "So, you can just take your nasty little suspicions and your self-righteous smugness right on out of here. Now." She gave him a heated glare, full of simmering indignation on behalf of her receptionist. "I don't have the time or the inclination to deal with some tight-ass district attorney with more ambition than compassion."

Five seconds of utter silence greeted her tirade.

"Ex-social worker, right?" Matt asked.

Susannah gaped at him for a moment. "What?"

"That bit about 'the callous, uncaring maze we call a legal system'" he said, a touch of asperity in his tone. He was getting really tired of all the abuse heaped on lawyers lately. And of people who thought anything the government had a hand in was automatically suspect. "Either you used to work within that system and burned out, or you feel you were worked over by it," he said, watching her for a reaction. "I'd go with the first." She didn't strike him as someone who had been through the system herself, although you never knew. There was enough anger there for her to have been a recipient of the government's slow-moving, unsentimental largess. He leveled an uncompromising, implacable look at her over the desk. "State, county or city?"