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

He went on about the chickens that his mother had kept and how he liked to gun his pickup through the ditches, and all Karma could think of was that now that she’d gotten him started, he was going to be hard to shut up. His face was lit up, alive, and he was so sexy when he talked about something that was clearly near and dear to his heart. She couldn’t imagine why this man hadn’t been scooped up by some girl, someplace, some time ago.

“And I guess that’s about all you’ll be wanting to hear about the Diamond B Ranch.” He looked slightly embarrassed.

“Our clients might like to know more about Okeechobee City,” she prodded gently.

“Well, Florida is a major beef producer in this country. Lots of grass up Okeechobee way, and it grows lush and green all year ’round. Why, the western states have nothing on us, since we had our own range wars, rustling, and fence-cutting to worry about back in the late 1800s. Life on the north side of the lake has calmed down a tad now, but it’s still cow country. And how do I fit in? Admirably. Right now, I’m just one lonesome cowboy lookin’ for a wife,” he said.

“Your hobbies? The things you like to do in your spare time?”

“I don’t know if you want to hear about that.” He gazed down at his feet.

“Of course we do. Our clients like to get an idea of what they might be talking about on a date if they choose to follow up on you.”

“Oh, okay, then I might as well tell you. I like to watch birds. That’s my hobby.”

She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d said he liked to practice bull riding or steer roping or even sky diving, but bird watching? There was no way she would have guessed that this big rawboned cowboy was interested in birds, of all things. She had to admit that she was fascinated.

“I like to get up in the morning, walk out into the sunrise when it’s just skimming a bit of gold light over the pond. That’s when I see the best ones. I saw a rare roseate spoonbill a couple of weeks ago. They’re about as fanciful as a bird gets. You ever seen a picture of one?”

Karma shook her head, entranced.

“They’re bright pink in color, kind of like a flamingo. Prettiest thing you ever saw, but a roseate spoonbill has got a funny clown face. Almost makes you laugh when you see it.”

“I see,” said Karma. What she saw was a man who felt passionately about something that was important to him. If she had thought that Slade Braddock was shallow, and she conceded that maybe she had, she knew better now.

“But I’m sure you don’t want to hear anything more about that,” he said, lapsing into silence.

“Oh, no, I was interested. It’s just that—that we don’t like to let our videos get too long. A short interview usually lets our clients know enough to make a choice.” She got up and stopped the camera, removing the cassette. “I’ll take this back to the office and edit it. I should be able to offer this for my female clients to view next week.”

“Next week! What do you mean, next week?”

“I have to process your application. I need to check out references, edit the videotape—”

“You need to find me a wife,” he interrupted.

Her chin shot up. “That’s exactly what I’m planning to do. And if you’ll stop by the office tomorrow, I should have my psychological profile forms back from the printer. You’ll need to fill one out.”

“Psychological profile?”

“I’m a psychologist by training. The profile is something new that I’ve added to Rent-a-Yenta for the betterment of our services.”

“All right, all right. I’ll fill out the form. But what am I supposed to do between now and the time you set up my first date?”

Karma looked at him. She looked at the water and the sunset and the boats out on the bay. She looked back at Slade and said the first thing that popped into her head.

“You could have your chakras read,” she said.

HIS SECOND CHAKRA was twisted. At least that’s what Goldy told him.

“Excuse me?” Slade said, feeling foolish.

Goldy sniffed. “The second chakra is the center of sensation and feeling. It’s blocked.”

He didn’t see how his second chakra could be blocked, since when he glanced over at Karma, who was fiddling with flowers in a vase on the file cabinet, he felt a definite sensation. He likened it to the way a bull must feel when he saw a cow after a long dry spell. Only cows didn’t have calves like Karma’s. Her legs were shapely and well-defined in those tights she had borrowed from Renee’s closet.

He forced his attention back to Goldy, who had tilted her head and was toying with the strands of beads around her neck.

“And what do I do to unblock my, um, chakra?” he said distractedly.

“Embrace the flow,” Goldy said.

“Embrace the flow,” he repeated. Needing more guidance than he was getting from Goldy, Slade glanced at Karma, who nodded in agreement. Her hair rippled into motion, and he had the sudden inspiration that if he tried to run his fingers through it, she’d let him. Not here, of course. Not now. But sometime.

The phone rang and Goldy answered it. She became involved in a conversation that looked as if it might be prolonged.

“Movement would help,” Karma said to him as she plucked dead leaves off the flowers in the vase. “To unblock your chakra, I mean.”

“Movement? Like walking? Talking? Riding a horse?”

“No, nothing like that. The kind of movement that frees up blocked emotions. You could join a yoga class.”

Slade shook his head to clear it. This didn’t eliminate his growing attraction to Karma, however, and he had to remind himself sternly that she wasn’t his type. This conversation was more than enough proof of that.

“What is yoga?” he asked. He had a vague idea that it was something that Hollywood types did when they came out of drug rehab.

“The word yoga means ‘yoke,”’ Karma said. “It’s a discipline that yokes the individual with the divine through practice that joins our mundane and spiritual lives.”

“Okay, so explain what a chakra is.”

“Chakra means ‘wheel’ or ‘disk.’ A chakra is the sphere of bioenergetic activity coming from major nerves in the spinal column. You have seven chakras stacked in a column of energy from the base of your spine to the top of your head.”

It was worse than he thought, this stuff, plus if there had been chakras wrapped around his spine, he was sure they would have been shaken off by all that rodeo riding he’d done.

Karma kept talking, and she might as well have been speaking a foreign language. “What goes on in the chakras influences our minds and bodies. Maybe Goldy can explain how your second chakra is blocked.”

Goldy rolled her eyes at them and pointed at the phone while mouthing the words, “New tenant.” Slade ran an impatient hand through his hair and wondered distractedly if he could get a takeout somewhere around here for dinner—a nice quiet dinner during which he could enjoy his own company.

“We could go to the delicatessen on the corner. I could explain more about your second chakra,” Karma said, looking him straight in the eye. This statement was a direct answer to his unasked question, and for a moment he thought she might be able to read his mind but immediately discarded the notion. He was letting all this New Age stuff get to him, which was ridiculous.

“You want to?” Karma gazed at him hopefully.

He hadn’t a moment ago, but it struck him that her eyes had green depths that he hadn’t noticed before, and her neck was extremely graceful, putting him in mind of a snowy egret’s. Plus, all else aside, he was hungry.

“I sure do,” he said, and he was rewarded by a megawatt smile.