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

sombered up then. “I’m thirty-five,” he said. “Now I’ve told you my age, how about you telling me yours?”

      “You’re not supposed to ask a lady that,” she said.

      “But I just did.”

      Those eyes again, piercing right through her. They demanded an answer. “I’m twenty-seven,” she said.

      “A good age,” he said thoughtfully.

      She made herself look down at the form. “Address?”

      “Sunchaser Marina. Route three, Okeechobee City.”

      “That’s the whole address?”

      “That’s two addresses.”

      She forced herself to look at him. “Let’s get this straight. What’s your primary mailing address?”

      “That would be the Okeechobee City one, ma’am. The marina one’s sort of borrowed.”

      This, then, explained the cowboy outfit. Okeechobee City was cattle country, a small town on the shores of Lake Okeechobee some miles west of Palm Beach, that much she knew.

      She wrote down both addresses. She knew the Sunchaser Marina well; she’d bicycled past it many times. It was home base for pleasure yachts, houseboats and assorted other watercraft, all of them expensive, none of them suited to a guy who dressed like he’d recently thundered on horseback right out of a John Wayne movie. Bermuda shorts in assorted pastel plaids and Gucci loafers with no socks were the preferred mode of dress at Sunchaser Marina.

      Slade Braddock shifted on his cushion. She’d better rush this along or he might cut the interview short.

      Karma fixed the cowboy with what she hoped was a serious and businesslike gaze. “And what brings you to Rent-a-Yenta?” she asked.

      “I want to get married,” he said doggedly. “I’m ready to find myself a bride.”

      Karma swallowed. She wasn’t accustomed to clients who came right out and stated their purpose. Most of them weren’t too sure what they’d be getting into when they signed with her, and they usually said something vague. “Introduce me to somebody nice to date,” was the usual statement. Sometimes they added embellishments, such as “He has to have a platinum Visa card with his picture on it,” or “I don’t go out with anyone who doesn’t know how to refold a map,” but that was about as specific as they got. No one, in the months since she’d become a match-maker, had flat out said, “I want to get married.”

      Slade Braddock looked so earnest that Karma was sure he meant it.

      “To what kind of woman?” she blurted.

      “Oh, I’ve got a woman in mind. I can describe her if you like,” he said as a dreamy expression filtered out the fire in those remarkable blue eyes.

      This wasn’t standard operating procedure, but Karma was fascinated by his honesty. Honesty was all too rare in this business, she’d learned. “Go ahead,” she said, realizing that she was holding her breath. She let it out slowly, wondering if it was too much to hope that he’d describe a five-foot-eleven natural blonde with large feet, green eyes and breasts slightly on the small side.

      “She’ll have light hair. Yellow, like sunbeams. Kind of like yours, only straighter.” He studied her. Appraised her. She didn’t know exactly what that look meant, but she took it that he didn’t exactly disapprove of what he saw. Until he went on talking, that is.

      “She’ll be tiny. A little bird of a woman. And her voice will be sweet. Maybe she’ll like singing in the church choir.”

      Karma couldn’t sing a note. And tiny she wasn’t. As her hopes faded, she said stoically, “Go on.”

      “She’ll be comfortable on the ranch, know how it works. Or be willing to learn. I don’t expect her to rope and brand cattle, but she should understand that this is part of what I do. And she’ll be crazy about me. From the very beginning if possible. I aim to have me a wife by this summer.”

      “What’s happening this summer?”

      He looked at her as if she was crazy for asking. “Why, our honeymoon. I’ve already signed us up for an Alaskan cruise.”

      “Oh.” Karma was nonplussed.

      He zeroed in on her astonishment. “What do you mean, ‘oh’?” Is there something wrong with that?”

      “Occasionally a wife likes to help choose the honeymoon spot,” Karma said, holding back the sarcasm with great effort.

      She judged from the perplexed expression in his eyes that this had never occurred to him.

      “I figured that if the woman loves me, then anyplace is all right with her. For the honeymoon, I mean.”

      She took pity on him. “In some cases, that’s true,” she relented, and his smile warmed her heart.

      Her heart had no place in this. She willed it to stop leaping around in her chest and pretended to make a notation on the form. But as she concentrated on her task, one side of her was having an argument with the other side. Sounding very much like her aunt Sophie, the yenta side counseled, “You’ve got yourself a client. You’ve got a paying customer on the hoof. Don’t scare him away.” The Karma side hissed, “Stupid! This is a really great guy. Why give him away to someone else? Why not keep him for yourself?”

      A disturbing thought. She’d given up on men two or three relationships ago.

      She cleared her throat. She cleared her mind. Or attempted to, anyway.

      “Mr. Braddock. This is certainly enough information for me to match you up with some charming clients.”

      He beamed. “Now that’s good news.” He produced a money clip and peeled off several bills. “Here’s the registration fee.”

      Karma’s eyes bugged out at the wad of cool cash. Most people paid with a credit card. Most people didn’t carry that much money around.

      He put the money back in his pocket. “I can’t tell you how downright scared I was coming in here today. I’d rather face a nest of full-grown rattlers than do this, I can tell you.”

      She turned the full wattage of her best smile on him. “Oh, everyone feels that way at first, I’m sure. The next step is, of course, our videotape session. Normally I’d be able to do that today, but my video camera is out for repairs. So I hope it will be convenient for you to come back tomorrow?” She’d play soft sitar music on the boom box, wear something flowing. She’d make carob-and-pine-nut brownies and serve them with flair. She’d—but of course she wouldn’t. She wasn’t in the market for a guy, even one as appealing as this one.

      Slade Braddock unfolded himself from the floor cushion, rising with spectacular grace. He looked down at her, a half smile playing across his well-sculpted lips.

      “No problem, but why don’t you stop by the marina this afternoon? There’s a video camera on the houseboat. No point in wasting time. Got to get me a bride by June, you know?” His smile so unnerved her that she levered herself upward, stumbling over the corner of the cushion and catching herself on the doorknob, barely averting an unladylike sprawl across her desk.

      “You okay?” he asked, frowning slightly.

      “Y-yes. And where will I find you at the marina?”

      “I’m staying on what they call Houseboat Row in a floating palace called Toy Boat. Silly name, isn’t it?”

      “Well,” Karma said, unsure how to answer this. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Guys sometimes got very attached to their boats.

      “I didn’t name it. That honor belongs to my second cousin’s wife. Renee thought it was cute.” He grinned, and Karma was totally charmed. Never mind that he had already told her the type of woman who appealed to him, and never mind