Blind Date

CHAPTER ONE

Annie found herself playing a game she hadn’t even thought about since she was twelve years old and Robbie McCormick cut his lip on her braces. Her image of some benign affair, where everyone stood around with a wine glass and nibbled canapes, was deteriorating faster than her last blind date—with Stan the Used-Car-Salesman.

She’d had no idea when her sisters had invited her to this thing that it was going to be some nightmarish, pre-teen flashback. Annie felt ridiculous in such a revealing position, sitting cross-legged, trying to tuck her pastel patchwork skirt between her thighs. She noticed a lot of the women had discarded their shoes, but she was wearing soft, knee-high black boots that didn’t lend themselves to a casual slipping-off. The entire room had morphed from mingling adults to a gang of unruly adolescents, hooting and howling and elbowing each other the minute they all sat in a circle on the floor in their suits and skirts.

Her oldest sister, Chloe, spun the empty rum bottle and everyone roared when the narrow end settled on Rebecca, the middle sister. While the men whistled and whooped, both women crawled, giggling, toward the center of the large circle. Their cheeks flushed the same shade of rosy pink as they briefly touched lips.

Annie blushed as well, appalled and astonished at how her body remembered these old games with a dreadful pang and tingle: first kisses and two-minutes-in-the-closet fumblings. There was the time she and her sisters had tried to make their own soap opera just to have an excuse to kiss the boys. Then there was the summer they’d built a fort made of someone’s discarded turquoise carpet and played spin-the-bottle with an empty gin bottle Gary Hillman snitched from his mom’s stash.

There was a burst of laughter from the other room and Annie glanced toward the adjoining door to the den. She wondered what they were playing in there. Truth or dare? They sound just like teenagers, she thought, like some feral pack full of adolescent angst. Are we really just one immature game away from that part of ourselves? She smiled wryly, feeling far removed from any sensible adult reality as she watched Rebecca creep back to the middle of the circle to spin the bottle.

A chorus of “woo-hoos!” sang out when the bottleneck found John, Becca’s husband of two years, and they kissed. Annie winced when she saw his tongue slip into her mouth. She looked away, focusing on the red and white streamers hanging above her head. There were red foil hearts with plump cupids pasted in their centers spinning wildly on thread and attached to the ceiling by thumbtacks.

Annie was surprised Chloe had allowed tacks in her ceiling, even for something as important as maintaining the theme of the night-the sound of the bottle spinning on the hardwood floor brought Annie’s focus back to the game.

John’s eyes were glued to the bottle as it slowed. She ducked as if she could avoid it as the bottle stopped, pointing just past her knee to the chubby girl on her left. Thank god. John was crawling toward them, grinning and eyeing Annie’s hemline, while the redhead next to her blushed to match her hair. Rebecca was watching, looking casual, but Annie knew better.

“Hey, I think this is pointing to Anne,” John exclaimed as he drew nearer.

“Look at the angle.”

“This isn’t geometry, John, come on,” Annie hissed at him, keeping her voice low, hoping her sisters couldn’t hear. “Kiss the girl and get it over with already! Looks like she needs it more than I do.” Annie cut her eyes to the redhead’s face, which had flushed a deeper shade. The girl looked down at her lap as if there were something interesting there.

John raised his eyebrows at Annie, and she saw she had made a mistake.

“Rebecca, I’m serious. Come look! I swear this thing is pointing at your sister.

Chloe, are you the referee here?”

“John, it’s pointing at Lynn, not Annie,” Chloe called. “Come on, let’s keep the game going.”

“It is not,” John insisted. “You aren’t even over here! Come look!”

“Oh fuck this,” Annie muttered, struggling to stand without flashing the entire group a shot of her panties. For a moment, she thought she had succeeded, but from the look on a few of the guys’ faces, she realized they had seen something. Raising her voice, she said, “You know what, John? You kiss the fat girl here, and I’ll just step out of this juvenile little game that I never in a million years thought I’d be playing at the age of twenty-seven, okay? What do you say?”

Annie nudged him hard in the side with her shin as she passed. She heard him grunt. She turned back when she got to the kitchen door and saw the redhead standing, wobbly, making her way in the opposite direction. Annie felt a stab of guilt and shoved open the swinging door to her sister’s pristine kitchen.

The light was off, and she left it, knowing her way even in the dark. She plopped onto one of the stainless steel kitchen chairs and unzipped her boots with a sigh, then toed them off.

Annie could hear her sister busily trying to save the day. “Let’s play the kissing game!”

She heard someone-possibly John-say, “I thought we were?” Annie sighed in relief when that awful, stunned silence turned back to party chatter. She wished she drank or still smoked-or did anything dangerous and bad for her. Anything that could make her feel good-or just alive-even for a moment. Her sisters seemed to think the answer to Annie’s attitude was a man and had set about finding her one-with a vengeance! When she looked at Chloe and Rebecca’s lives though, she didn’t find much to envy. If that’s what having a man was about, she didn’t want to have any part of it.

Besides, Annie wanted something more, something different. She was tired of all the games and hookups and pretending. She had been to hundreds of parties like this one, and she always felt like some aging, dark-haired Barbie doll propped up in the corner by her sisters for all the Kens to come by and gawk at.

She could never be herself, even for a moment. She always felt too guarded to let herself really get to know people, let alone really feel anything for anyone.

Chloe poked her head through the swinging kitchen door, spilling light into the room. Annie covered her eyes, which had already adjusted to the darkness.

“What do you think you’re doing? You’re going to ruin everything!” Chloe hissed.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Annie spat back, giving her sister the finger.

Chloe rolled her eyes, opening the door to step in.

Annie leaped to press against the swinging door, trapping Chloe firmly between the door and the frame. Chloe grunted in surprise.

“I’m not kidding. I am not going back out there, so you can forget about it.

What the hell are they doing now?” Annie stared past her sister, her brow furrowed and her mouth agape in horror as men and women in a circle were passing a playing card from person to person, mouth to mouth.

“The kissing game,” Chloe replied meekly.

“Oh my god. That’s it. Get out of this room and don’t let anyone else in here! You got me? I am done with this Hook-Annie-Up-Valentine-Shindig!”

“But, sweetie, you—”

“No! Not another word from you, okay?”

“Okay, fine. Could you…?” Chloe waved her hand, the one inside the kitchen, indicating the door where she was stuck. Annie eased off a little and Chloe sighed, stepping back out into the living room. “We were all just trying to do something nice for you, Annie.”

“Yeah, yeah. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Go!”

Annie flopped into the kitchen chair, tipped it back and put her bare feet up. She smiled with a bit of satisfaction, knowing she was probably the first and only person to have a body part other than maybe an elbow on Chloe’s expensive table.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you could crack your head open doing that?”

Annie let out a yelp and the chair toppled backwards onto the hand-laid Italian tile. She saw stars bursting in the darkness behind her eyes and blinked rapidly to clear them. “Fuck!” she swore, rubbing the back of her head and rolling off the chair onto the floor. Her head was tender and already swelling, and she thought she could feel the wetness of blood. “I think I’m bleeding. Who’s there?

Where are you?”

“Right here. Are you okay? I’m sorry.”

Annie saw the shadowy figure move out from underneath the kitchen table.

“I don’t know if I’m okay. I think I’m bleeding.” She tried to stand but immediately felt woozy again and had to sit. She rubbed the swelling on the back of her head, wondering how bad it really was. “Could you turn on the light, please?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” he replied, steadying her with a hand on her arm. It was a warm hand, large, with a firm grip.

“Gee, thanks, buddy. Fine, I’ll do it myself.” Annie sighed and started to stand again. His hand on her arm kept her from moving.

“No, please, don’t.” It was a request, but it didn’t sound like one.

“Why? I think I’m really hurt.”

“Here, let me see.” His hands were in her dark hair, moving over her scalp, finding the aching knot and massaging it. At first, she winced and pulled away, but then let him continue. God, it’s been too long since someone touched me like this.

“You’re not bleeding,” he assured her.

“How can you tell? It’s too dark in here. Let me turn on the light, and—”

“No!”

Annie jumped. “Okay, weirdo… who are you?” He moved away from her.

“Hello?” There was no response, but she could make out his shape back under the table. Annie sighed and rubbed her head again. With her dizziness abating, she stood and headed for the light switch. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m—”

“I’m asking you.”

Annie’s hand hesitated on the switch.

“Please,” he implored her. “Don’t do that.”

“Why?” she asked again. There was no response, just a deep silence from the darkness under the table.

In the quiet, she could hear the party continuing in the living room. She turned her eyes to the dim outline of the door and heard Chloe direct, “No, no! Kitchen is off limits!”

Annie smiled gratefully. At least the door was being guarded for a while.

“Hey, are you still there?” She cringed, mentally slapping herself for asking such a stupid question.

“Yeah.”

Something in his voice drew her to him. There was a strength in it, a certainty that shouldn’t be coming from underneath a kitchen table. She moved away from the door and back toward the voice, getting down on her knees to peer underneath. She thought she saw the shimmer of a pair of glasses. She saw his hands resting in his lap and found herself searching for the glint of a ring.

A moment later, she smiled at her effort.

“So… why are you in here? Why don’t you want me to turn on the light?”

“I don’t…” He cleared his throat. It was the first time she had heard him hesitate. “I don’t want you to see me.”

Annie sat back on her heels, unmindful of her skirt. There was no reason to worry about him glimpsing her panties in the dark! She let out her breath, feeling unsure and a little ambivalent about her sudden desire to reach out to him, this strange guy sitting alone in her sister’s kitchen. Empathic by nature, she knew what it was like to want to get away from a party like this.

“Can I join you?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure, come on.” He patted the tile floor and she crawled under, leaning against the wall next to him. It wasn’t a big table, pressed into a little breakfast nook. It only sported two chairs since only Chloe and David lived in the huge old Victorian house, but Annie and the stranger both fit comfortably enough underneath.

“So… you just wanted a break from all of that?” She waved her hand toward the door.

“Something like that.”

“Me, too.” Annie sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. She had forgotten about the bump and winced when she made contact. She brought her hand up to rub the sore spot-at least it was something to feel.

“I noticed.” He chuckled.

She flushed. “You didn’t hear what I said out there, did you?” That thought made her cringe with embarrassment.

“Yeah.” He sounded sad, but she didn’t sense a lot of judgment or a big guilt trip coming.

“Whoops. I was hoping you didn’t know what a bitch I can be,” she admitted. “First impressions and all…”

“Maybe it’s better if we all start out knowing who we really are. Wouldn’t that be a great change? Instead of just looking at people and assuming you know who they are…”

Annie waited for him to finish, but he didn’t, so she went on. “Actually, I’m not really like that. Most of the time. I mean, sometimes, sure, aren’t we all? But tonight, well, let’s just say there were extenuating circumstances.” Annie remembered John crawling across the circle, his eyes flickering between the hemline of her skirt and the V of her blouse. She couldn’t recall if he was licking his lips, but she could have sworn he was. It was always the same—even with her own brother-in-law.

“Were there?” He sounded interested, but Annie didn’t want to go there.

“Something like that.” They sat in silence for a moment, but it was a comfortable one. “I know what it’s like, not wanting people to judge you on appearances.”

“Do you?”

Whenever he asked a question like that, he seemed to want to know more. A man with a genuine interest in what she had to say was something Annie was unfamiliar with. Perhaps it was just that she found it hard to believe a man when he was looking at her. “Maybe not like you,” she said. “I mean, maybe it’s not the same, but I’ve spent my whole life being the beautiful one, and it’s just as hard as being unattractive. At least, you know, by society’s standards, or whatever…” Her voice trailed off and she wondered how that had sounded out loud.

“So I shouldn’t hate you because you’re beautiful?” She laughed, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have made that comparison. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but maybe I am, a little. Maybe you can’t help it when everyone looks at you a certain way.”

“So, how is it the same?” Again, there was that interest.

Annie glanced once more at his hands. She loved a man’s hands-large, strong, yet capable of being so soft, so caring. His long legs were stretched out beyond the table’s edge, and she could see he was wearing boots. Darkness was funny. The way your mind used shapes and lines to fill in the blanks, how you could see some things and not others.

“Well,” she began, “it doesn’t matter, attractive or unattractive, really. At either end of the spectrum, people still judge you. They make assumptions about you based on how you look. They treat you differently. Do you know what I mean?” She found herself eager for him to understand. Her heart raced with the wanting.

Relief flooded her chest when he said, “Yeah, I do.” His fingers brushed hers in the darkness. “You have beautiful hands, Annie. So delicate.” She flushed at the compliment, but didn’t respond, wondering if he had been looking at her hands with the same ulterior motive. Compliments often felt more like sharp barbs to her than anything else, but this particular arrow landed softly, with precision.

“What about that girl out there, the one sitting next to you?” he went on.

His words jarred her, and she turned to look at him even though she could only see the outline of his profile in the darkness. “A little overweight, not conventionally pretty…”

“I… do you know her?” Annie asked, slinking down the wall a little.

“No, not really.”

Annie felt that flood of relief again. “I didn’t really mean it, you know. I wasn’t trying to be cruel.”

“No one tries to be cruel.”

“Well, that’s an unbelievably rosy view of the world, isn’t it?” Regretting the words immediately, she admonished herself and wished she could take them back. She certainly wasn’t succeeding in making a good first impression. She found it harder in the dark, and the irony didn’t escape her.

He sighed. “Maybe I’m too much of an idealist.”

“Or a romantic at heart. I can understand that.” The silence grew uncomfortable, and Annie tried to think of a way to say she was going to get up and leave. This was just too strange. Besides, she needed an aspirin. Her head was beginning to ache. She surprised herself when she asked, “What’s your name?”

“Eric. You?”

“Annie.”

“Well, Annie, since we’re on the superficial questions, what do you do for a living?” She laughed, nudging him with her hip. She could almost hear him grinning.

“I’m a psychologist.” She enjoyed telling people that for the varied responses she received, ranging from fear to curiosity. People were either afraid she was trying to analyze them, or they asked her to.

“Should I pull up a couch?”

She laughed again, giving him another nudge.

“Hey, I bruise easy, watch it.”

This time she was sure she could hear the smile in his voice. She found herself genuinely wondering for the first time what he really did look like. “What about you?” she asked. She knew this was always the big question for guys, as if everyone of the masculine persuasion was defined by his profession.

“Me? I’m a matchmaker.” He said it without a hint of hesitation or pride, just a simple matter of fact.

Annie gasped out loud, covering her mouth with her hands in shock. “Oh, you’re kidding!”

“Nope.”

“Oh my god. Just my luck to be under the table with a matchmaker at a matchmaking party. Did my sister hire you?” she asked suspiciously.

“No. Which one is your sister?”

“I have two. Chloe and Rebecca. In that order.”

“And you’re the pretty one. Where do you fall?”

“At the end, the baby. And I’m really not that pretty.”

“Don’t lie. How’s your head?” There was that genuine concern again. In her playfulness, she had nudged herself quite close to him in the dark, and she was enjoying the warmth of his thigh, hip and arm touching hers.

“It hurts,” she admitted. “I think I need an aspirin.”

“I bet I can help. Do you want me to rub it?”

Annie hesitated. That was a fairly intimate thing to be doing anywhere, let alone in a dark kitchen under a table. Remembering how good his hands had felt when he’d checked to see if she was bleeding and then had continued to rub the growing knot, she relented. “Sure.” She suddenly didn’t care if it was sending him the wrong message. Then again, maybe it wasn’t the wrong message at all.

“Come here, then. Just put your head in my lap.”

Annie lay down on the tile, resting her cheek against his denim-clad thigh.

His fingers slid through her hair, first finding then caressing the throbbing knot.

The sensation seemed to lift and change as he touched her.

“This is cozy,” she murmured.

“Mmm.” His concentration seemed too focused for him to say much more.

His hands worked over her like magic. She closed her eyes and sighed happily. Eventually the silence stretched too taut for her. “You know, it was appearances that caused that whole scene out there in the first place.”

“Yeah?”

How could he show so much feeling in just one simple word, one genuine expression of interest? Feelings were the domain of her profession, for the most part, and she was well-attuned to them. This man could emote without any effort at all. That intrigued and disarmed her.

She sighed. “My sister’s husband, John. He came on to me for the first time at their engagement party, drunk off his ass and feeling me up on their own bed while I was looking for my coat. He’s never stopped. Sometimes I think my sisters got what they settled for in men, you know?”

“You don’t have a very high opinion of men, do you?” His fingers slipped lower, digging into the soft curve of her neck. She sighed, letting out a soft moan as he worked out the kinks. “Like that?”

Annie nodded. “Anyway, tonight isn’t the first time he’s pulled something like this. He made that huge scene out there because he wanted to kiss me instead of that sweet little redheaded girl,” Annie sighed, listening to the sounds of the party, still going strong just outside the kitchen door.

“Now she’s sweet, not fat?”

The sound of his chuckle delighted her, but his comment made curl inward. “I was making a point. Let me tell you, it was for his sake, not hers.”

“It was quite a point. Game. Set. Match. But I think you may have missed your target. That’s the thing about going for the win like that. You need to have good aim.” His fingers worked their way down her spine, his other hand fanning her hair out over his thighs.

“Ouch.”

Eric’s hands paused. “Am I hurting your head?”

“No… my heart.”

He continued to rub her head in the silence, and slowly she found that the pain, at least the pain in her head, seemed to dissipate.

This time it was Eric who broke the quiet. “So, do you get along with your sisters?”

“I love them. Sometimes I can’t stand them, but I love them. They both set up this whole Valentine’s party to try to get me a man.” Annie giggled at the irony.

She was now secreted in the kitchen with a matchmaker, despite her sisters’ Herculean efforts to line up all the single surgeons, tax attorneys and actuaries they could find-courtesy of Rebecca’s once-famous little black book.

“Sounds like you can get your own.”

“It’s not as easy as it sounds, actually,” she told him. “Ow, ow, too hard.” His touch became lighter, almost feather-light, and it made her shiver. “Most men just want one thing.”

“What’s that?” He sounded distracted as his hand stroked her shoulder.

“Um…”

“Oh, that. Right.”

Again, she could hear his smile. She had never noticed how much one could tell about someone’s expression even in the dark. That would make therapy interesting.

“And if I’m being honest, it’s not even that. I’m not averse to sex,” she admitted.

“Good to know.” It was a veritable grin now.

She smiled, too, letting that one slide. “If we could get to the sex that would be great, actually. Most men are, well… intimidated by me.”

“Is it your gracious charm?” He stroked her cheek with his fingertip.

She couldn’t even pretend to be angry at him with his hands doing such kind and generous things to her body. “Don’t be mean. I’m really not like that.”

“I know,” he said, and she believed him.

“Still, it’s funny how sometimes the prettiest girl in the room never gets hit on. Both of my sisters are married, and I’m by far better looking—at least that’s what everyone says.”

“You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were conceited. Who is everyone?” He traced the shape of her jaw, trailing his fingertip down her throat.

“I’m not conceited. Maybe I do sound it… to someone… like you…” she hesitated. “I just mean, you know, someone who feels like he wants to hide under a table…”

“Who is everyone?” he asked again.

“Oh, everyone.” She sighed. “You name it-my parents, my sisters, teachers, friends, family. The thing people say most often about me is: ‘Annie is the pretty one.’ It’s always followed by that silent assumption that I’m an idiot.”

“Hence the degree in psychology,” he mused. “Let me guess, you’ve got a doctorate.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Law of compensation.”

“Very funny. So, do you have a degree in matchmaking, then?” Annie rested her hand on his thigh and snuggled up a little closer. The tile was getting cold under her hip and his warmth was comforting.

“They didn’t offer it where I went.”

“And where is that?”

“Olympia.”

Annie snorted, letting her Ivy League pretension show. “Are you kidding?

Did you really go to Olympia? Which degree, medical transcription or vet tech?”

“Massage therapist.”

“Oh…” Annie tried to cover yet another unintentional, but clear, insult.

“Well, that explains why my head feels so much better.”

“Does it? Would you like me to do your shoulders? You’re pretty tight.”

“Eric, that’s gotta be the oldest line in the book for you massage therapists.” She laughed. Looking up at him, she could see the outline of his face-and yes, there were glasses-but she still couldn’t really make out his features.

“Perhaps.” This time she saw the flash of his teeth.

She smiled back. “Well, it’s working.”

“Then come here and sit between my legs.” His voice was warm and inviting and she flushed like a school girl as she delicately felt her way over his thigh, sensing him adjust to her shape as she settled herself.

“I haven’t been between a man’s legs…”

“In too long, I’d gather.” He chuckled.

The sound of his short laugh was rich and deep and it thrilled her again.

She wondered what he would sound like if he really laughed out loud and she longed to hear him do so. His hands massaged her shoulder blades open as if they were wings she was just beginning to spread. She sighed, rolling her neck and inching back toward him. She heard his sharp intake of breath as she clutched his thighs.

“I take back what I said about Olympia,” she murmured. “Great school.”

“Is that a compliment?” He brushed her hair from her shoulders for better access.

“If I was a religious kinda girl, I’d say I’d died and gone to heaven,” she breathed, feeling both of his hands spreading over the entire expanse of her back from spine to ribs. “Ahhhh god, Eric, that… feels… incredible…”

“How about this?” His breath tickled the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck before he kissed her there, his lips full and warm. Annie shivered, her nails digging into his thighs, making him jump. She had forgotten they were sitting under her sister’s kitchen table in the dark, with a party going on in the other room. She had forgotten she didn’t know this man, that she had never seen his face. There was nothing but his hands, his mouth, and the soft velvet darkness all around them.