She raised her chin. “You bet I could. In fact, I’ll bet I could introduce you to your soul mate if you gave me a fair chance.”
He chuckled. “You are the eternal optimist. Do you want to stay for dinner? I’ll make us an omelet.”
She put her hand on her stomach. “That sounds great. I’m starving. We can talk more about this wager. How can I help with dinner?”
“You can wash and dice the onions and red peppers.”
She stepped up to the sink to prep the peppers, but first she began by putting some dirty dishes into the dishwasher and hand-washed several pieces of flatware.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I didn’t have time to clean up this morning before I left for work. I’ll do those later when I clean up the dinner dishes.”
“Actually, it’s sort of hard to wash the peppers with dishes in the way. I don’t mind, really. You are fixing me dinner. And we’re going to need forks to eat with.”
Jake left her to do what she needed to do because God knew she would anyway.
He took a bowl out of one of the cupboards and began cracking eggs into it. “Since when did you become a matchmaker? And what makes you think you can find me the right woman? I’ve been trying all these years and I haven’t been successful.”
“That’s easy. A—I know you better than you know yourself, and B—you are attracted to the wrong women. Your judgment is clouded. Mine is not.”
She might’ve had a point. But after just getting out of a relationship, he wasn’t very eager to jump back into anything serious. So looking at it from that perspective, what harm would a few dates do? Other than take up what little free time he had away from the hospital. He could indulge Anna. She meant that much to him. Then again, could he ever really expect to find his soul mate or anyone long-term when he never wanted to get married?
That was something he’d known for as long as he’d had a sense of himself as an adult. He did not want to get married. Marriage was the old ball and chain. It took something good, a relationship where two people chose to be together, and turned it into a contractual obligation. He’d witnessed it firsthand with his parents. All he could remember was the fighting, his mom leaving and his father’s profound sadness. Sadness that drove him to seek solace in the bottle. Anna knew his family history. Sure, she’d have good intentions. She’d think she was steering him toward someone who made him happy, but what was the point?
Jake vowed he’d never give a woman that much power over him.
So he said, “Before we go any farther, I have a stipulation.”
“Jake, no. If we’re going to do this and do it right, you have to play by my rules. You can’t give me a laundry list of what you want. That’s where you get into trouble with all these preconceived notions. Maybe we can talk about deal breakers, such as must not be marriage-minded or must not want kids, etcetera, but we’re not getting into the superficial. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
He poured a little milk into the eggs, a shake of salt, a grind of black pepper and began to beat them. Even though they’d spent a lot of time apart, Anna still knew him so well. A strange warmth spread through him and he whisked the eggs a little faster to work off the weird sensation.
“I wasn’t going to get superficial. In fact, my stipulation wasn’t even about me. I want to propose a double wager. Since we both need dates to the Holbrook wedding, I’ll let you fix me up, if you’ll let me fix you up.”
The daughter of Celebration Memorial Hospital’s chief executive officer Stanley Holbrook was getting married in mid-July. Jake had his eye on a promotion and attending his boss’s daughter’s wedding was one of the best ways to prove to the man he was the guy for the job. Since Holbrook was a conservative family man, Anna’s offer to fix him up with a woman of substance wasn’t a bad idea.
She was looking at him funny.
“Deal?” he said.
She opened her mouth, but then clamped it shut before saying anything. Instead, she shook her head. “No. Just...no.”
“Come on, Anna, fair is fair. I know Hal hurt you, but you’re too young to put yourself on a shelf. You want to get married again. You want to have kids. There are good guys out there, and I think I know one or two who would be worthy of you.”
She stopped chopping. “Worthy of me?” Her expression softened. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in a very long time.”
“Case in point of why you need to get out more, my dear. Men should be saying many nice things to you.”
She made short order of chopping the peppers, scraping the tiny pieces into a bowl and then drying her hands.
“Okay, I’ll make a deal with you,” she said. “We’ll do this until Stan Holbrook’s daughter’s wedding. Between now and then, I’ll bet I can match you with your soul mate and cure you of your serial monogamy issues.”
He winced. “What? As in something permanent?”
She shrugged. “Just give me a chance.”
“Only if you’ll let me do the same for you. Do we have a deal?”
She nodded.
“So what are we betting?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t really mean it as a serious bet.”
“I think making a bet will make this more interesting. We don’t have to decide the prize right away. Let’s just agree that the first one who succeeds in making a match for the other wins.”
Anna wrinkled her nose. “Knowing you, you’ll let a good woman go just to win the challenge. You’re so competitive.”
“But if you think about it,” he said, “who will be the real winner? One will win the bet, but the other will win love.”
“That’s extremely profound for a man who has such bad taste in women.” She gave him that smile that always made him feel as if he’d come home. He paused to just take it in for a moment.
Then Jake shook her smooth, warm hand, and said, “Here’s to soul mates.”
Soul mates.
Why did hearing Jake say that word make her stomach flip? Especially since she wasn’t even sure if she believed in such a thing as soul mates. After all she’d been through with Hal, she still believed in love and marriage enough to try again...someday. But soul mates? That was an entirely different subject. The sparkle had dulled from that notion when her marriage died.
“I’m done chopping.” Anna set the bowl on the granite counter next to the stove where Jake was melting butter in a frying pan. Then she deposited their empty beer bottles into the recycle bin in the garage.
“Now what can I do?” she said when she got back into the kitchen.
“Just have a seat over there.” With his elbow, he gestured toward the small kitchen table cluttered with mail and books. “Stay out of my way. Omelet-flipping is serious business. I am a trained professional. So don’t try this at home.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, eyeing the mess on the table’s surface. “That’s why I have you. So you can fix me omelets. Apparently, I will repay you by setting the table for us to eat. And after I’ve excavated a space to put the plates and silverware, then I might clean the rest of your house, too. I thought you had a housekeeper. Where has she been?”
“Her name’s Angie and she’s been down with the flu. Hasn’t