Life Is A Beach: Life Is A Beach / A Real-Thing Fling. Pamela Browning

her breath, half expecting him to walk away.

      “The thing is, you’ll have to tell me something. Just what exactly is a yenta?”

      Nate stood up. “It’s a Yiddish word. In Jewish communities, where marriages used to be arranged, you would go to a yenta that you trusted to find the right person for you. It’s a family tradition, like with my Sophie. She was a good businesswoman, Sophie was. Knew how to change with the times.”

      “So Rent-a-Yenta is a dating service?” the cowboy asked politely. His voice was deep and rich, slightly raspy. It reminded Karma of Clint Eastwood’s but with considerably more expression.

      Nate’s head bobbed up and down. “Yes, you might as well think of a yenta as someone who matches people up with their significance.”

      The cowboy looked slightly confused.

      Karma found her tongue. “He means their significant others,” she injected hastily.

      “Hmm,” said the cowboy. He appeared to be thinking this over.

      Two things occurred to Karma in the next stretch of thirty seconds or so. One was that she wanted to make a success of this matchmaking business that had so providentially and unexpectedly landed in her lap. The other was that this was a client—a real walking, talking, live client.

      “Won’t you come into my office?” she asked, smooth as silk. Despite the bra in his pocket, this man needed her services. He’d said so.

      “Sure,” said the cowboy. He had a way of smiling that lifted one corner of his mouth and cocked the opposite eyebrow, and the effect was intriguing.

      “I’ll just amble along,” said Nate. “Leave you to business.” Karma knew he was running late for his daily game of pinochle at the café down the street.

      “If I’m interrupting,” said the cowboy.

      “No, no, you two go right ahead,” said Nate. He patted Karma’s arm. “See you tomorrow, bubbeleh.”

      “Well,” Karma said as she watched Nate disappear in the throng of people on the sidewalk. She spared a look at the cowboy. He looked more resigned than eager, which was typical of the clients that she’d dealt with so far. She supposed that resignation was the last step before jaded. She hated jaded. It was so hard to win those folks over.

      She aimed her brightest smile up at him. Up at him was a miracle, since she was almost six feet tall herself. Ever since puberty, her smiles had been mostly aimed downward. “Follow me,” she said.

      Karma had been told that she had nice hips. This was a good thing, considering that the cowboy’s eyes never left them as they walked up the flight of stairs to the tiny cubicle that was Rent-a-Yenta. She’d rather have him staring at her hips, or, more accurately, her derriere, than, say, her feet, which were overly large. Or her mouth, ditto. Or her breasts, which weren’t. That bikini bra in his pocket had looked like about a 38DD.

      She dug the office key out of her purse and promptly dropped it.

      The cowboy immediately bent down and picked it up. He didn’t immediately straighten, however. That took a while. His eyes moved up, up, studying her ankles, her calves, and what he could see of her thighs, which was probably too much considering the fact that her skirt was very short. She had a hard time finding clothes that were long enough.

      “Thanks,” she said dryly as he handed her the key. At the moment that their hands touched, their eyes locked. His were the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. They were brilliant, sparkling like sunlight on the sea, heating up like a blue flame. They took her breath away.

      She made herself shove the key in the lock, but the door opened before she turned the key. She’d better get that lock fixed one of these days, but it was low on her list of priorities since there wasn’t much worth stealing in the office at present.

      The cowboy was right behind her. She followed his gaze as he took in the half-painted lime-green wall, the plastic bead curtain that screened off the supply closet, the TV alcove for viewing client videos. She supposed the decor was startling, but this was her style. After downsizing the office into a mere one and a half rooms due to lack of funds, she’d painted over plain vanilla walls, banished Aunt Sophie’s heavy mahogany desk, thrown out the dusty chintz curtains at the windows so she could look out at the multicolored pastel facade of the Blue Moon Apartments across the street where she lived.

      “You—um, well, you could sit down,” she said.

      He looked puzzled. Oops! She’d forgotten that she’d sent the couch and client chairs out for cleaning yesterday. The only places to sit were on a couple of floor cushions that she’d brought over from her apartment and her desk chair.

      Omigosh, she thought, if I sit in the chair he’ll be able to look right up my skirt.

      “There, ma’am?” the cowboy asked politely, staring down at the nearest floor cushion, the bright orange one.

      “Why, yes,” Karma said, acting as if nothing was amiss. “I’ll take the pink one.”

      Looking disconcerted, the cowboy lowered himself to the indicated cushion. The position he took, knees upraised, back straight, strained the jeans tight against his thighs and calves. He didn’t look at all comfortable. What he did look was sexy.

      Karma’s secondhand 1940s rattan desk was covered with an assortment of papers, old diet-drink cans, a dried-up paintbrush, and a dead hibiscus blossom awash in a jar lid half full of water. Karma yanked a form from a stack and, trying not to appear as ungainly as she felt, she also sat down on a cushion. Maybe she was crazy for going ahead with this. Maybe she should tell this man to come back tomorrow when the couch would be here and the chairs would have been delivered. But to dismiss him might mean losing him, and the business couldn’t afford that. Clients had been very few and far between, and this might be her last chance to succeed. At anything.

      “What do I have to do to sign up?” asked the cowboy.

      Karma fumbled in her tote bag for a pen. “At Rent-a-Yenta we chronicle your personal information, collect a registration fee and then we videotape our clients. We’ll study our database and pull up clients of the opposite sex that we think would be a good match for you.” There was no “we”; there was only her. But she thought it sounded more impressive than admitting that she did everything herself.

      “And I get to watch videotapes of the clients you pick?” He looked visibly cheered by the thought.

      “Right. And they’ll watch videotapes of you.”

      “Okay. That sounds like a good way to go about it.”

      “Oh, it is, I assure you.”

      After he wrote out the check, he folded his arms across his chest. A very broad chest. “Well, let’s get started.”

      “Name?” she asked brightly.

      “Slade,” he said.

      “Is that your first name or last?”

      “Slade’s my given name. Braddock’s my last.” His voice rumbled deep in his throat.

      “Slade Braddock,” she repeated, liking the sound of the name almost as much as the way he said it. She wrote his name down on the form.

      “Age?”

      “Thirty-awful.”

      She blinked. “Excuse me?”

      “Thirty-awful. Too old for the young ones, too young for the older ones.”

      She tried not to smile. “Should be thirty-awesome, if you ask me,” she retorted before she thought. She was always retorting before she thought, and before the words were out of her mouth, she wished she hadn’t said that.

      He grinned, expanded it to a smile, then let out a hearty guffaw. She tipped her head uncertainly.

      “That’s pretty good,” he said.