Judith McWilliams - The Matchmaking Machine

The sound of the clock as it struck half past the hour jerked her out of her thoughts. If she didn’t hurry up, she’d be late, and he might not wait.

After dressing, she grabbed a cab. She had the driver drop her off a block from the museum so that she could casually walk up. She didn’t want Richard to think she had been standing around, waiting for him.

To her relief, Richard was already there when she arrived. She paused slightly behind a woman pushing a double baby stroller and studied him as he stared out into the street, clearly waiting for a taxi to pull up.

Compulsively, her eyes ran over him. He was wearing a pair of cream chinos, a pale blue T-shirt and a white linen jacket that made his shoulders seem even broader. His dark hair was slightly disheveled from the wind and her fingertips tingled with a compulsion to touch it.

Richard turned, tensing when he caught sight of her. He felt the impact of her presence in every cell of his body. On the way over he’d told himself that his memory had exaggerated her appeal, but clearly it hadn’t. He still found her physically fascinating. She drew him in on some instinctive level that totally bypassed rational thought.

Okay, so he was sexually attracted to her. There was nothing wrong with that. He was a free adult male. There was no reason for him not to explore that attraction. Especially considering that his interest had to be reciprocated or she wouldn’t have accepted his invitation to dinner. And she’d accepted it without knowing who he really was. Normally, he never knew if a woman liked him or his considerable bank balance, but with Maggie, he knew he didn’t have to wonder. She didn’t have a clue as to his net worth and she still wanted to go out with him. He was looking forward to the novel experience of just being an average man.

“Hi,” she said when she reached him.

“Good evening.” He took her arm and started down the steps toward the street.

“Did Worthington show before you left?” she asked.

“No one came before I left,” he said honestly.

A block away from the museum, he paused in front of a restaurant. “Is this the place you were talking about?”

“No, I’ve never been here.” She read the menu posted beside the door and barely suppressed a wince. There were no prices listed.

“See anything you like?”

Maggie stared blankly at the menu as she tried to decide what to do. Business lunches with clients had taught her that restaurants that didn’t post their prices were expensive. Very expensive. And she most emphatically didn’t want Richard to remember their date as one that had cost him an arm and a leg. On the other hand, she didn’t want to imply that he couldn’t afford it. If the dating articles she’d read were right, men tended to have surprisingly fragile egos when it came to money.

To her relief, Richard provided the answer himself. “Don’t you like French cuisine?” he asked.

“No,” Maggie lied without a qualm. “They eat some very strange parts of animals, and I’m always worried about what might show up in a sauce. That place I mentioned is only a little farther and it’s…” She scrambled to come up with an acceptable synonym for cheaper and failed.

Richard stared at her with a feeling of unreality as he suddenly realized what the problem was. She was actually worried about what this place would cost. He couldn’t ever remember any woman trying to save him money. On the contrary, they were usually trying to separate him from large chunks of it.

Should he tell her who he really was now? That would certainly take care of her worries. But it would also change the way she responded to him, and he was enjoying being treated like a normal man too much. Not only that but also he needed more time to convince her that he wasn’t the ogre that office gossip had painted him.

No, he’d stick to his original plan and tell her his real identity when the evening was over, he finally decided. After he’d thoroughly kissed her good-night.

“Here’s that place I mentioned,” Maggie said.

Richard peered inside. It was only half-full, so getting a table wouldn’t be a problem. “Looks good to me,” he said.

Opening the door, he ushered her inside. The man at the bar gestured them toward the tables, and Maggie chose one well away from the door so that she wouldn’t get hit with cool air every time it opened.

“May I get you something to drink?” The waitress who had materialized by their table was staring at Richard as if she’d suddenly hit the jackpot.

“A glass of white wine,” Maggie said, feeling a gust of anger when the woman’s attention never wavered from Richard. She wanted to post a sign on him that said Taken—Keep Your Hands Off! And Eyes, Too. Maggie watched the waitress literally devour him with her gaze.

But to Maggie’s surprise, Richard didn’t even seem to notice the woman’s obvious interest. Was it because he was so used to attracting feminine attention or because he had the good manners not to flirt with one woman while he was out with another? She didn’t know, and it was hardly the kind of question she could ask. It would appear that there were some pitfalls to dating a fabulous-looking man, she thought. But in Richard’s case, it was worth it.

After the waitress had brought their drink orders, Maggie stole a quick look at Richard over the rim of her glass of wine. He was eating the appetizers the waitress had left with a single-minded concentration that bespoke imminent starvation.

A twinge of tenderness flashed through her at his absorbed expression. He was so gorgeous, and yet he seemed totally unaware of his looks. Was it normal for a man to be that oblivious to his physical appearance? She didn’t have enough experience to tell. She’d only had one date with a man who couldn’t even approach Richard for looks, and that had been a total disaster.

The man had been a coworker who, after ignoring her for the six months he’d been with the company, had suddenly asked her out. She’d spent the incomprehensible concert on modern music he’d taken her to trying to figure out why. She’d found out afterward when he’d mentioned, with elaborate casualness, that he had this design problem with his program and asked if she could help him solve it.

Strangely, finding out that he only wanted to use her hadn’t even hurt that much because the whole evening had had a surrealistic feel to it. As if he were some celluloid character from a bad movie who had been temporarily animated.

Richard glanced up and asked, “Why the pensive look?”

“Just thinking,” she muttered as she frantically searched her memory for something to say. Something that would capture his interest and convince him that, if she wasn’t exactly a brilliant conversationalist, she was, at least, a passable one. A sense of frustration filled her as her mind refused to come up with a single idea from all those articles on dating that she’d consumed for the purpose of fascinating Worthington, if she could ever get him to ask her out.

Finally, one bit of advice rose to the surface of her muddled thoughts. People, be they men or women, liked to talk about themselves, so ask a leading question.

“What made you go into plumbing?” she blurted out. It might not be scintillating conversation, but it was a start. Anything was better than a pregnant silence.

A flush of heat poured through her at the thought of pregnancy of any kind. Of being in Richard’s strong arms. Of being held close to his broad chest. Of…

“My father was in construction and he got me my first job when I was thirteen.” Richard told her the absolute truth. His father was in construction. He owned one of the biggest firms on the West Coast, and from the time Richard had turned thirteen, his father had demanded that he earn all his spending money by working on various construction projects in the Bay Area.