The Matchmaker Meets Her Match (16 page)

Oh, no.

She squared her shoulders and met his gaze. He was smiling, a charming smile, and he seemed relaxed and confident. He was very very attractive, the kind of man you could count on in a bedroom. He would know just where to touch and just how to caress and just what to say —

Why hadn’t Michael warned her? Of course, it probably never occurred to Michael that Greta could have such a regrettable weakness for attractive men. Not just attractive men, but a certain type of attractive man, and what she had learned, through pain and sorrow and a certain amount of therapy, was that
she
was the common denominator. That she picked the men, culminating in the most dangerous one, the one she had almost not escaped.

It was up to her to break the cycle. She
had
broken the cycle, though Tess said
Never dating is not breaking the cycle, Greta
, but what did Tess know.

“Hello,” she began, after a long, long moment had passed.

“Ms. Ferguson? I was expecting you. Come on in.”

He stepped back but Greta did not want to cross the threshold. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him — she didn’t know him to trust him or not trust him.
It’s up to you to make good choices,
the therapist had said, and Greta had a whole series of good choices she had made and could be proud of. But —

“So, take a look around,” he said. “You’ll need to see what you’re getting into.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Blake,” Greta said. She’d seen the lieutenant colonel’s insignia on his uniform, but she was willfully ignoring it. When he’d opened the door to her, she’d seen the interest spark in his eyes, and she fully intended to quench the spark before it got any bigger. She knew what happened with sparks. They caught and built into flames and before you knew it, you were calling in the parajumping firefighters and saying,
But I thought I could control it
. The moral of the story was that you couldn’t control fires, and that was why you stamped out the sparks when you saw them. Every last one of them. Whether they were his or yours.

Mr. Blake didn’t correct her on the proper title to use when addressing him, which she tried not to appreciate. Appreciating a man like him was as bad as being attracted to a man like him, because it short-circuited the rational part of the brain just the same way. It interfered with your judgment. It made you choose poorly.

“As you can see, it needs a woman’s touch.”

Greta hadn’t heard that phrase since she was about eight years old.

“Are you here on a permanent assignment?” she asked. She was pretty sure there was no such thing in the Army, but she’d willfully locked away everything she’d ever learned about Army life, except the one unalterable rule she’d derived from all of the misery:
No more military men. Ever.

“I’m retiring,” he said. “Got my time in. Going to be a civilian.” He smiled as if she should congratulate him, which she did, though privately she was a little disappointed. That meant there was no chance he’d be reassigned somewhere else, somewhere out of her hair. Which meant she was going to have to squelch the spark, hers if not his but hopefully both, by using more direct means.

“New job?” she asked, then could have bitten her tongue. How was expressing curiosity going to squelch the spark? Why was she standing here, prolonging the conversation?

“You bet,” he said energetically. He seemed possessed of more energy than one person needed, prowling around the empty house like a caged cat. Dealing with him, even if she were so inclined, would undoubtedly be draining. Like trying to shepherd a mountain lion who wanted to go in a different direction. He would want things. He would expect them. He would try to kiss her and she would kiss him back and it would be hot and erotic and she hadn’t had hot and erotic in so long she would want more. And then. And then —

If she didn’t want that eventuality to come to pass — and she did
not
— then she had to stop the spark in its tracks.

Happily, she had an extensive repertoire of spark-squelching techniques at her disposal, and she rifled through them for one that would suit her needs now.

“I’ll be doing a lot of entertaining,” Mr. Blake began. He smiled and it made his gray eyes crinkle up, and she stared at him for a long moment while he didn’t finish what he was saying, and she didn’t have the wit to call him on it. The spark was still in his eyes, and it was burning brighter now. He was probably seeing the same spark in her eyes even though the rational part of her brain knew better, even though she was not falling for another man in uniform no matter how many times her libido alerted her to how
my god he’s delicious.

He leaned a little nearer to her. She hadn’t squelched the spark.
She had fanned the flames.
What had she been thinking? Her heart was beating harder, her breath coming faster. Still not nerves. Every part of her body was on high alert. Every part of his, too — she did not let her eyes drop.

“What do you want me to accomplish here?” she cut in before she could do something stupid or encourage him in the same.

“I’ve collected some things in my travels,” he said.

Sure
, she thought, trying to remember why she was not going to be attracted to him. Mange, cholera, jungle rot. She knew all about the things soldiers collected on their travels.

“I have the stuff in a storage unit. I thought you could help me pull everything together. You know, figure out what goes where,” he said, waving vaguely at the unfinished room. “And maybe choose some curtains.”

He smiled at her again and she took a step closer to him. He was what, a damned magnet?

There she went, blaming someone else for her weakness. It wasn’t up to him to help her choose wisely. That was all on her.

“I’m not sure I can help you, Mr. Blake,” she said abruptly. Sometimes the wisest course of action was to walk away from a sale. Then there would be absolutely no danger of forest fires. No one could fault her for avoiding trouble. Wasn’t that what the experts advised? Walk away from trouble if you can, live to fight another day, never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

Good heavens. She was starting to sound like her mother. Worse, she was starting to
act
like her.
Tess
would jump into the fray with no thought as to how it might hurt. Although maybe taking Tess as a role model was a dumb idea. Surely there was a middle way between jumping into the river and refusing to get your toes wet.

Did Greta really want to find out? With Mr. Blake? What if she were wrong? What if thinking there was a middle way was the same mistake as thinking you could control the fire? Was she really going to take that risk?

No.
No
. She said, “My colleague Alison Scott, of Alison Scott Designs, could do an excellent job for you, Mr. Blake. She handles all tastes and budgets.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Please, call me Ian. I’m sure
you’d
do a great job — and you come highly recommended.”

Well. He left her no choice. “This is a very large job and unfortunately my schedule is quite full,” she said in the freezing tones Tess always teased her about but which she had found quite useful in her work. The tones were versatile, ranging from cool to icy, and on a scale of one to ten, this was an eleven. She stowed her notebook away in her leather bag and snapped the bag shut with a final-sounding click, then slung it over her shoulder.

“Ah.” Enlightenment dawned in his piercing gray eyes,
finally
extinguishing the spark. “I’ll be damned. You’re booked for the next three years — when it comes to me, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that,” she responded. “I’m very busy,” was the most she would allow. “I don’t know when I’ll have an opening. I could give you a call.”
When I lose my mind
. She gave him a guileless look, the one Tess accused her of practicing in the mirror.

“On the twelfth of never?” he guessed. His mouth quirked, as though something amused him, and she was deeply suspicious that it was
her
. “I’m sorry if I did or said something that offended you. Thank you for your time.”

Wait a minute
, Greta thought, narrowing her eyes.
She
had dismissed
him
and here he was turning the tables. She tried to remember if it had ever happened before. Then she realized she had to seize command of the situation.

“I believe I have Alison’s card here,” she said, showing him that she was always professional even though he’d implied that she wasn’t.

“I’m sure she’s in the phone book,” he said, ushering her toward the door. “Good day.”

• • •

Ian Blake closed the door behind Greta’s very proper — and, as he’d noticed right from the start, very attractive — figure, resisting the urge to watch her walk to her car because undoubtedly she’d catch him at it. She was the type who would. He felt himself smiling. He wasn’t used to being shut down quite so quickly and firmly. He generally had the opposite problem — although he didn’t really consider it a problem, per se: when he wore his dress uniform, he had to shut women down. Which he did gently and kindly because he was an officer and a gentleman, although so far Greta had failed to notice this about him.

He raked a hand through his hair. Years of sporting crew cuts hadn’t broken him of the habit. The challenge Greta had laid down piqued his interest. He’d been afraid that mustering out would mean his life would end up a little less exciting than he was used to it being.
Boring,
even. Had his buddy Michael guessed that steering Greta in his direction would be the equivalent of waving a red flag at a bull? That he would meet her and want to melt that icy reserve and muss up that understated elegance?

When Ian had agreed to sign on as a coach for business executives once his retirement from the service was final, and he had made the decision to move to Lawrence, a university town that was located near a couple of big cities where many of his clients would come from — his main client would be the university itself — he’d called up Michael Manning, who had lived there for some years. Meeting his friend for a cup of coffee early one morning, Ian had expressed his need to hire someone to do something with his newly purchased house, and Michael had immediately presented him with a solution.

But Greta hadn’t exactly turned out to be a solution, had she? At least not to his furnishing-the-house problem. He again resisted the urge to peek out the front window and see if she’d made it to her car yet. She was not a woman who rushed anywhere. For some reason, that struck him as an invigorating change of pace, instead of being off-putting. He could take it slow, no problem.

Okay, so far he was at
stop
, but that had never daunted Ian before and it wasn’t going to now.

He sat on the floor — he didn’t have any living room furniture yet — and contemplated his situation. He looked around the empty room and tried very hard not to take it as an obvious metaphor for his life. Soon it would be full of furniture, and his life would be, too. So to speak. He could just drag the furniture from the storage unit and put it in place himself, get some curtains from J.C. Penney (he could imagine Greta’s expression if he told her that), and call it good.

Still, he knew that calling it good and it actually being good were two different things. His new job required him to entertain regularly and to present himself as a knowledgeable, worldly man of some sophistication. He never doubted his ability to do the actual job, but he needed the house to showcase and reinforce the image he intended to project so that clients would be reassured that he could guide them through any difficulty.

Or at least those difficulties that did not require the intervention of the State Department.
Suave and sophisticated
would be a good start.
Inept and pathetic
was not the impression he wished to portray. Somehow he sensed that left to his own devices, he might not accomplish his goal, at least as regarded interior design.

He had great enthusiasm for his new job — his new purpose in life — and the Army had taught him everything he needed to know about the execution of a plan. He was certain, given enough time, that he could develop an appealing aesthetic sense, which had never been necessary before. But he was afraid that it was currently a little beyond his grasp. He didn’t think “develop an appealing aesthetic sense” was something he could learn by pulling a couple of all-nighters, and time was not on his side. He had to have everything in place sooner rather than later. Having found the job, he was inclined to keep it.

He knew Greta would give him exactly the sophisticated yet personal touch he was looking for. She was the walking embodiment of class, all high polished gloss and subtle elegance. Blonde hair in a neat bun — Michael’s mother, Mrs. M, would call it a chignon. Greta probably did, too. He’d bet good odds she never allowed a strand to fall out of place. Carefully understated makeup, exquisitely tailored pantsuit, and blue eyes that dismissed him at a glance. What more could any man want?

The first thing was to define the problem. Then he could devise a solution. To do that, he had to figure out why she didn’t want to cooperate. His ego, which was of a comfortable size and condition, wouldn’t let him believe that the reason she didn’t cooperate was because he personally repelled her. That was an unacceptable conclusion to reach, and Ian did not reach unacceptable conclusions, just as he did not fail when the Army sent him on a DNF mission. Besides, he had seen the spark in her eyes before she had blandly tucked it away. He knew she’d liked what she saw. So, what was the problem?

That chilly blonde elegance might be an unshakeable facade but something boiled under the surface, he’d bet good money. Her brush-off hadn’t really been a reaction to
him
but to something he represented. Which meant that if she spent a little more time in his company, she’d have to see that it wasn’t him she disliked. Ergo, she’d start liking him. She’d have to. Everyone did.

So what was the solution?

Time to call in the reinforcements, he decided, and picked up the phone.