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

“How cool is he?” she murmured to herself in awe.

“It’s hot today like always in Miami,” Nate said as he eased himself down on the bench beside the door to the corridor that led to her office.

Karma kept forgetting that she had to speak loudly so that her uncle could hear. He wore a hearing aid but often forgot to turn it on.

“No, I wasn’t talking about the weather. I was admiring that cowboy heading our way.”

Nate scoffed at this. “You should be thinking about business, not some meshugeneh cowboy. Like I told you before, Sophie managed to make fifty good matches a year and you haven’t made any yet.”

“I wish I could have trained with her for a while,” Karma said wistfully. Unfortunately Aunt Sophie had been too sick during her final illness to work, and the business had gone downhill fast.

“An apprenticeship with my Sophie might have helped. Then again, maybe not. No offense, Karma dear, but a two-time college graduate like you doesn’t necessarily know the human factor.”

“My degrees are in psychology,” Karma reminded him gently as the cowboy continued toward them.

“Psychology, shmycology. You got to know people. Not that you don’t,” he added hastily. “Sophie thought you had potential. ‘That girl has real potential,’ she’d always say after we saw you at one of those family dinners at your parents’ house.”

This was nice to hear, but Karma couldn’t remember a single one of those dinners in which she’d been able to get a word in edgewise, what with all the big talkers in the family. She’d always been the quiet one, the too-tall sister who passed the hors d’oeuvres while her three siblings noisily showed off their piano-playing and dancing talents.

And since when had any of her relatives thought she was anything but a loser compared to her talented and brilliant sisters, not to mention that colossal suck-up, Paulette? “I hope I can live up to your expectations,” Karma murmured.

Truth to tell, her full attention was drawn to the cowboy. In a tropical climate where people customarily wore sandals or even went barefoot, this man was clomping along Ocean Drive in cowboy boots. A couple of children hung back on their mothers’ hands and stared.

“Come along, Chuckie,” urged one of the mothers, tugging.

“Aw, Mom, I want to see the cowboy.”

So did Karma. She wanted to see him up close. And it looked, at this very moment, as if she might have that opportunity.

His boots were finely tooled leather, elaborated worked. She’d heard you could tell a lot about a cowboy by his boots. These were clearly expensive, maybe even hand-made, and definitely too dusty. The boots didn’t jingle, however. This cowboy wasn’t wearing spurs. Which she supposed made sense, since she didn’t see a horse around anywhere.

“I guess I better stop talking about Sophie, I’m getting hoarse.”

“Horse?” Karma said, caught off guard.

“Yeah, my throat itches. Sit down for a minute, Karma, while I catch my breath.”

Karma felt her own breath grow shallow as the cowboy’s gaze fell upon her. Up it went, then down. Never mind that this took a few embarrassing seconds because of her height. Was she blushing? No, she wasn’t that susceptible to nuanced glances. She was twenty-seven years old and the veteran of more than one ill-fated heavy relationship. She was dedicated to carving a career for herself out of the match-making business. So why did this man make her heart beat like—well, like thundering cattle hooves?

Because he was possibly the handsomest man she had ever seen. Because his cowboy boots had stopped right in front of the bench. Right in front of her.

The cowboy stuck a hand in one of his back jeans pockets and rummaged around. Going to roll a cigarette, Karma thought. That’s what cowboys always did in the movies, and the movies were the only place she’d ever seen a cowboy. She watched spellbound, expecting him to extract a fistful of rolling papers and some tobacco. Instead he pulled out a red bikini bra. A very ample red bikini bra.

He stared at it and then, with a puzzled and pained look, he crumpled it up and stuffed it back in his pocket.

As Karma watched, her mind was racing faster than a spooked mustang. She wasn’t exactly thinking about this cowboy. What she was thinking was that things never came easily to her. Not graduating from college nor getting a master’s degree, and certainly not holding a job. People always thought that if you were a natural blonde, you were home free in life. Well, nothing was free, and at the moment, Karma didn’t have a real home. What she did have was a couple of possibly useless degrees in psychology, a generous great-uncle and a third or fourth chance to make something of herself.

She jumped up from her seat, feeling absurdly like a jack-in-the-box. She said to the cowboy, “Sir, I don’t suppose you could use the services of a matchmaker, could you?”

He looked her over. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. “That’s exactly what I need,” he said.

“You’ve come to the right place,” Karma said, praising whatever gods were in charge of lucky coincidences.

The cowboy angled his head toward the shiny new sign on the building behind them. “That your place?”

“Yes. As of two months ago.” She held 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.