Hot and Bothered(9)

                Or maybe she saw what he saw most of the time when he looked inside.

                Failure.





                                      2

                “NO MORE HEDGE-FUND MANAGERS.”

                Haven leaned over Elisa Henderson’s broad desk and smacked its surface for emphasis. She had to find a blank space between all the photos Elisa kept of the couples she’d match-made over the years. Brides in white, husbands and wives romping across tropical beaches on their honeymoons and even a few couples mooning over swaddled-up newborns and fat-cheeked infants. Haven had plenty of satisfied clients, but even she had to admit that you couldn’t beat Elisa’s job for visible results.

                Her dating coach frowned at her. “You’ve already said no more lawyers, no more surgeons and no one who’s involved in any way in film. You stipulated up front you wanted a successful, independent, professional man who dresses well. That right there makes the field pretty narrow. You can’t keep eliminating whole categories of men. Next you’ll be saying no chest hair.”

                The thought had crossed Haven’s mind, but she kept her mouth shut. She did like things smooth, metaphorically and literally.

                She had a quick flash of Mark Webster’s decidedly un-smooth face. Probably only because she’d spent so much time staring at it, trying to picture how it would look clean shaven. The last time he’d been photographed without stubble, he’d been considerably younger.

                “Haven.”

                “Sorry, just thinking about work.”

                “Can we agree? No more eliminating whole categories of men?”

                “No one in finance,” Haven amended.

                “That’s even worse. That’s half the professional, well-dressed men in the city.”

                “And no musicians,” Haven said, thinking of Mark again. He was not going to be an easy project. He hated the idea of the tour. Money was forcing his hand, and that never made for a good situation.

                “I’d already eliminated musicians. They don’t tend to be well dressed, at least not according to your vision of what well dressed entails.”

                For Haven, that involved a suit, or at least pressed slacks and a dress shirt hanging on broad shoulders. An expensive leather belt around a narrow waist. It was possible she was salivating slightly at the thought. She’d been sex deprived too long for her own good.

                Haven had hired Elisa after Elisa had pulled a surprise two-match victory out of a tricky dating–boot camp weekend. Both Haven and Elisa had briefly looked like fools as their shared client, Celine Carr, tromped all over a Caribbean island sucking face with a paparazzo, while her two handlers chased after her and failed to catch up. But just when it had seemed that nothing good could come out of the weekend, Elisa had realized that Celine and her paparazzo, Steve Flynn, were head over heels for each other, and she’d managed to make a splash of it on national television. On top of that, she’d found true love herself with a former friend-turned-lover on the trip.

                Haven had been so impressed that she’d signed up for Elisa’s Love Match package, which included both advice and actual matches. Elisa didn’t always make matches. Sometimes she just poked and prodded from behind the scenes. But Haven felt as though she’d exhausted enough possibilities on the island of Manhattan that she’d better seek new blood. She wanted access to Elisa’s top secret, intensely coveted, expensive database.