Turn Up the Heat. Isabel Sharpe
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drained her third cup of coffee. “You could scoop dog poo and have a better time.”
Candy smiled wanly, biting her lip, eyes distant. Marie’s instinct kicked in: She was thinking about Chuck, and not the way the three of them wanted her to be thinking about him. The last couple of times Marie and Candy had had lunch, Candy was still bringing his name up suspiciously often. The best way to evict that worthless lump from her heart was to replace him with someone new.
“Valentine’s Day is cursed in our family.” Candy gestured with her muffin. “My dad either forgot or the restaurant he was going to take Mom to burned down or the present he ordered arrived broken. My best friend Abigail planned a Valentine’s Day wedding, which her fiancé canceled. Chuck didn’t believe the calendar should dictate when he expressed love for someone, so it was usually up to me how we celebrated, or if we bothered. Most of the time I didn’t bother. It is overhyped.”
Marie leaned toward Candy. “Would you turn down flowers and candy and a declaration of undying love from a man on his knees in a fabulous restaurant just because of the date?”
Candy’s cheeks grew pink; her eyes shone. “Not on your life. In fact, I admit—guiltily—that exact scenario has been my proposal fantasy since I was a girl.”
“Come see me. It’s time.” Marie straightened and picked up the quarter of a cheese Danish she’d been determined to leave uneaten on her plate. “February is around the corner and we want you waist-high in roses and chocolate on the fourteenth.”
“That’s only a month from now.”
“You can find someone in a day if he’s right.” She took a guilty bite of the rich pastry—by now she knew better than to make dieting any part of her New Year’s resolutions. “And that’s where Milwaukeedates comes in. Matching clients shouldn’t be the job of some software program that doesn’t take human variation or taste into account. I work with each—”
“Marie.” Kim grinned at her. “You are sounding like your commercial.”
Candy snickered. “Yeah, I was looking around for the radio.”
“Okay, okay.” Marie brushed crumbs off her fingers and held up her hands. “But no apologies. I’m selling the real thing.”
“Ha!” Darcy shook her head in mock disdain. “You’re selling imprisonment, forced labor and a lifelong descent into—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Marie waved the comments away while pulling out her iPhone. She was sure Darcy’s posturing was more about self-protection than conviction. “Candy, it won’t cost you anything to come in and talk. Are you hosting any events tomorrow?”
Candy dug out her BlackBerry, an obvious ploy to buy time. In her line of work—party and event planning—she had to know what she was doing every day down to the last hour or she’d be sunk. “Well, no, nothing scheduled, but I have to prepare for a tea party on—”
“Tomorrow.” Marie pounced. “Ten o’clock?”
Candy turned helplessly to Darcy and Kim, the excitement in her eyes giving her away. “Am I really going to do this?”
“Looks that way to me,” Darcy said drily.
“Sure, why not?” Kim squeezed her shoulder. “You were smart to give yourself a year to get over Chuck. Now I agree with Marie, it’s time to move on. Remember, ‘Why leave meeting the right person to chance?’”
Darcy chuckled and joined in for the rest of Marie’s slogan. “‘Leave it to Milwaukeedates.com!’”
“Well?” Marie tilted her head, gave Candy a coaxing smile. “How about it?”
Candy attempted an exasperated sigh, entered Marie’s name in her BlackBerry, then held up the screen. “How does that look?”
Marie patted her friend on the arm, hiding the extent of her triumphant satisfaction. “Like you’re on the way to finding new love.”
1
CANDY PULLED INTO THE parking lot of Marie’s office building at 9:59 a.m. She’d spent the last hour with a jittery administrative assistant organizing an after-work surprise birthday party for her boss, the CEO of the company. She was the type of person who made Candy wish for patience pills: an anxious perfectionist worrywart. “Are you sure they spelled his name right on the cake?” No, Candy was sure they hadn’t, and she was thrilled because she loved doing a terrible job, which was why she was so much in demand.
Some people.
She picked up her briefcase containing a file of notes and Milwaukeedates.com paperwork filled in the night before, admittedly at the last minute. She’d popped a bowl of popcorn and settled down with a glass of wine to dull her nerves over this whole process. Then she’d been faced with trying to figure out how to represent her entire personality for an online profile in one paragraph, and how to summarize what qualities she wanted in a guy in another paragraph, all the while sounding witty and sexy and fun and appealing, yet honest and substantive.
Right.
Popcorn gone, bottle of wine half-empty, Candy had given up in exasperation. She had a personality as varied as the parties she loved to plan: whimsical, prim, raunchy—it ran the gamut. How to distill that into a neat sound bite without sounding as if she had multiple-personality disorder?
Exhausted and defeated, she’d finally decided problems like this were what she’d be paying Marie to handle, so she’d gone to bed and dreamed of marrying a guy with six heads.
Oh, baby.
Out into the frigid air of January, the harshest month of winter, though March won for the most wearing, Candy crossed an icy patch in the parking lot with the short, choppy steps people in winter states adopted to keep forward momentum to a minimum. Her breath sent mist streaming into the crisp, dry air, which swallowed the moisture gratefully. She was nervous, not entirely in a good way.
She couldn’t let go of the feeling that she was cheating on Chuck, which was ridiculous because he’d left her to pursue someone else, someone he claimed matched him better, which had been the most bewildering part of the breakup. Candy didn’t know any other couple that operated in such perfect unison. She and Chuck were so alike, and their minds ran in such complementary directions. She’d felt completely understood and accepted for the first time in her life.
Not that they never fought or disagreed—if couples never fought they were either suppressing emotions or had nothing to say to each other in the first place—but in everything that mattered, the big things, the values, what they wanted and expected from a relationship, on all those things they matched better than she ever could have imagined.
On top of that solid foundation, they shared a sense of humor, taste in movies, food and books, and their sex life was good, too. In short, Chuck never stopped being interesting, sexy and exciting to her; she lit up like a lightbulb every time she saw his face, yes, even five years later. How could she hope to find that again? How could he have let it go?
Most people recommended a year for recovery. Hers had been hell, but she was nearly through it. Maybe taking this first step would be the best way to banish her fear that she wasn’t ready, and her deeper fear that she’d never be able to remove Chuck entirely from her heart. When you loved someone that completely, gave yourself over, body and soul …
Yes. But. Chuck was with Kate now, living in her house in Racine, as much as that still managed to hurt, and Candy refused to stay stuck mooning over what wasn’t possible.
Plus, Marie’s point about Valentine’s Day was valid. Candy certainly didn’t want to spend the day alone, reliving the hell of the previous year. And being part of a lame-duck collection of single women that night didn’t appeal either. She wanted a date. A fun one, if not a really special one.
So.
She entered the warm building gratefully, stomped