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Karma shook her head. “I’ve got things to do,” she said.
Jennifer leaned forward, her breasts surging out of her vee neckline. They were conical in shape and tanned all over, at least from what Karma could see, which was considerable. Furthermore, it looked as if Jennifer had succeeded in her quest for artificial nipples. They were standing up straight and proud. Did guys really like that look? It seemed that as a matchmaker she ought to know such things.
Jennifer noticed her scrutiny. “Yes, Karma, I did get them. Do you want to know where? I could—”
“No, thanks,” Karma said hastily.
Jennifer treated her to a knowing smile. “They’d help you in the guy department, believe me. By the way, I took a message for you.” She bounced over to the desk and ripped a pink message sheet off a pad. “The caller said she was your cousin Paulette. She said she was recently fired from her job in New York and wants you to call her back.”
“Paulette? Call her back?” Despite Karma’s immediate sympathy for anyone who’d lost a job, this wasn’t anything she wanted to do. Paulette had been the butt of jokes from Karma and her sisters during their childhood. Karma knew she had never been completely forgiven for dipping the sleeping Paulette’s hand in a pail of warm water on the first night of sleep-away camp when they were both eight; Paulette had wet her bed, which was what Karma had been assured would happen. After that, Paulette’s nickname around camp had been P. P., which ostensibly stood for her initials, since her full name was Paulette Parham. But all the campers had known what the nickname really stood for, and the counselors probably did, too.
“Come on, Karma, sit down and watch with me.” Jennifer tugged Karma into the alcove and pushed on her shoulders until she sat on the chair.
“Roll tape,” Jennifer sang out as she pushed the play button, and Slade’s face popped up on the screen. A good-humored face, an animated face—until Karma asked him the first question and he froze up.
As Slade hemmed and hawed his way down into the conversational skids, Karma slid a glance in Jennifer’s direction to gauge her reaction. “Not much of a talker,” was all she said.
“Mmm,” Karma said noncommittally.
“Still,” Jennifer mused as Slade started running on about birds, “he’s a hottie. I can’t see what’s the big whoop about roseate spoonbills and great blue herons, they sound boring to me, but I think I’ll give Mr. Slade Braddock a whirl.”
Karma’s heart sank.
Jennifer switched off the tape. “Set it up for Friday night, won’t you, Karma?”
“Well, I—”
“I mean, why not?” Jennifer skewered her with a look.
“I’ll have to check to see if he’s busy,” Karma hedged, getting up and shuffling through a pile of papers on her desk.
“Aunt Goldy says she’s met him. She says he’s nice. What do you think? Are we well suited, he and I?”
“Why don’t I study your personality profiles in relation to each other and get back to you on that? Of course, I won’t see his until he brings it back.”
Jennifer shrugged, which went a long way to show off her breast assets. “Oh, don’t bother with that psychology stuff. I want to go out with him. Friday night is good because my mother is trying to set me up with her best friend’s son, Sheldon. If I already have a date, Mom won’t insist.” She flipped her hair back off her shoulders, and Karma was nearly blinded by the shimmer of it in the slant of sunshine coming in the window. Slade, she thought sourly, would go crazy at the sight of Jennifer.
“So do you promise to set it up?”
“All right,” Karma said reluctantly. “I’ll do it.”
“Tell Slade to pick me up at seven,” Jennifer said airily on her way out the door.
When she had gone, Karma collapsed onto her desk chair and pillowed her head on her arms in dismay at the thought of setting Slade up with Jennifer.
“Well, he may be a client, but Jennifer won’t like him,” counseled the Aunt Sophie side of her. In fact, the voice in her head sounded so much like her aunt’s that Karma’s head jerked up in surprise.
Whereupon the Karma side of her cautioned, “Why wouldn’t Slade like Jennifer? She’s blond, sexy and eager.”
Unfortunately it was the Karma side of her that made the most sense.
Still and all, Friday was still four days away. Karma could only hope that Jennifer, who could usually be counted on to show her fickle side, would decide before then that Slade wasn’t a real possibility.
SLADE BRADDOCK SHOWED UP at the rooftop sundeck yoga class right on time that night. He strode in wearing those cowboy boots, jeans and a white T-shirt that made his tan look darker than ever. He nodded to Karma, balancing his hands on his hips and looking the group over.
“Who is that?” Mandi asked as she unfurled her purple yoga mat.
“Oh, just someone I invited to join us,” Karma answered.
“Mmm-mmm. I sure would like to hear him say, ‘You know you want it, baby. You know you do.”’ Mandi lowered her voice in imitation of a male consumed by lust, which might have been funny if Karma were in the mood for it.
“Don’t they all say that to you?” Karma asked innocently. Mandi let out a sort of halfhearted giggle as Karma unfolded herself from her mat, where she had been sitting in Half-Lotus position. She strolled over to where Slade stood.
He grinned at her, the light in his eyes rivaling the moonlight spilling down from a clear night sky, his grin revealing teeth that gleamed whiter than the promise of any toothpaste commercial on TV. “Didn’t think I’d show up, did you?” he asked.
What to reply? She had and she hadn’t, both at the same time. One thing for sure, she had developed a dry mouth from merely being in his line of sight, and at that moment, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to open it to speak.
“Uh, glad to see you,” she managed to say after what seemed like a couple of eons. Slade looked out of place, she thought, in those jeans. “Be better if you’d worn fewer clothes,” she said, not realizing until the words were out of her mouth how they sounded.
His delighted laughter boomed out over the assembled regulars, most of whom were gawking at him with their jaws hanging down to their knees. Which was not an approved yoga pose as far as Karma knew.
“Most things,” Slade said wickedly but in such a low tone that the others couldn’t hear, “are better without so many clothes. You mind telling me which items you’d like me to discard first?”
She blushed. She couldn’t help it. “Your boots for a start,” she said crisply.
The instructor, a powerful bare-chested yogi from The Om Place whose previous address was listed as an ashram in India, sauntered over. “A new student?” he asked in precise tones as he inspected Slade from head to toe.
“Prashant, this is Slade. Slade, Prashant.” Karma made her introductions as quickly as she could and scurried back to her mat.
“How do you happen to know that big hunky guy?” Mandi wanted to know. Her favorable assessment of Slade and his muscles and his tan and his white, white teeth was undisguised and avid.
“Oh,” Karma said with a vague wave of her hand, “we met on the street.”
Jennifer arrived, running late as usual. She stopped to talk to Karma. “Isn’t that Slade Braddock talking with Prashant?” she asked, aiming a come-hither look and up-standing nipples in his direction.
“Yes,” muttered Karma. “I’m afraid so.”
“Should I introduce myself? Or do you want to do it?”
“After class,” Karma told her.
“Mmm,” said Jennifer, her gaze still on Slade. “Boxers for sure.”
“Briefs,” Mandi corrected. “He’s a briefs kind of guy.” Having made that pronouncement, Mandi leaped up, her melon-sized breasts jostling each other for room under her Om Is Where The Heart Is T-shirt. She undulated over to the corner where Slade was approaching the stack of spare mats.
“Need some help?” Mandi asked.
Karma wondered, Help? Help with what? Deciding whether he wanted a blue mat or a purple one? Putting one foot in front of the other until he reached the rest of the group? Oh, pu-leeze!
Karma shut her ears to the byplay between Slade and Mandi and forced herself to breathe deeply, trying to find her center. The trouble was that by the time Slade, looking like every dream man in every one of her fantasies since she was twelve years old, began to spread his mat out beside hers, her center seemed to have moved downward considerably to that warm place between her—
“Karma,” Slade whispered under his breath while fielding admiring glances from virtually every woman present without so much as acting as if he noticed. “Karma, what am I supposed to do?”
She opened her eyes. “What Prashant says.”
“Oh,” Slade said in a puzzled tone. He glanced from her to Prashant. “He likes you, I think.”
“Prashant? That’s doubtful.”
“He certainly came running when he saw us talking. Defending his territory, maybe?”
The observation was too ridiculous to be worthy of reply, and Karma was saved by Prashant’s settling down on his own mat at the front of the group and welcoming them all to the lesson.
Prashant began the class by chanting an Om. “Allow yourself to go with the flow, and then you will find what you’ve been looking for,” he said afterward with reverence.
“I’ll be damned if I think that’s going to get me a wife, which is what I’m looking for lately,” Slade muttered under his breath. Karma threw him a reproachful look.
“Well, don’t I have you to find me what I’m looking for?” he whispered.
“Go with the flow anyway,” she whispered back.
Prashant coached them through a few simple warm-ups. With Slade beside her, Karma, for the first time ever in yoga class, found it difficult to concentrate. As they progressed through various poses, he doffed his shirt, revealing a torso that was leaner, harder, and more muscular than she could have imagined. And she had been imagining it plenty, starting from the first moment she saw him.
It was an intense class, and the members of the group, most of whom were intermediate students, flowed from pose to pose with little recovery time in between. Sun Salutation, Warrior, Downward-Facing Dog…and Slade, who seemed to be struggling valiantly to keep up, looked slightly more musclebound with each pose. Musclebound was not good with yoga. Flexible was good. Agile was good. Slade seemed to be neither.
“Are you doing all right back there, Slade?” Prashant asked once, and Slade replied with what looked like a grin superimposed on a grimace. “Fine,” he gritted through clenched teeth, but the next pose, a backbend, drew an incredulous intake of breath from him as he lay on his back and attempted to lift himself up.
“Karma, you are the best at backbends. Will you please demonstrate?” suggested Prashant.
“Well, I—” she began, but Mandi said, “Yes, Karma, do!” and was rapidly echoed by Jennifer.
All eyes were upon Karma, but the only ones that mattered in that moment were Slade’s. He lay on his mat looking up at her with a challenging grin, and all she could think at the moment is that if they were in bed, this is what he would look like—well-muscled and fit, his grin fading into passion as he reached for her and pulled her down across his body, the better to kiss you, my dear.
“Backbends are important,” intoned Prashant, breaking into her reverie. “They help our bodies release emotion in a positive way.”
“Wouldn’t backbends be good for me?” Slade urged. “Since my chakra is blocked, I mean?”
He might have something there, but the thing that finally decided Karma was that if she were in a backbend pose, she wouldn’t have to look down at him and thus wouldn’t be tempted to reach over and unbutton his jeans, a behavior that surely would be frowned upon.
Karma forced herself to lie down on her mat; she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled as she firmly planted her hands behind her ears and her feet flat on the floor. While inhaling the next breath, she hoisted herself up into a backbend, keeping her eyes closed and wishing she’d never invited Slade to class. Slowly she walked her feet in a bit closer and arched her back even more, thrusting her breasts up. She knew that the quickly inhaled breath next to her came from Slade, and too late she realized that she was exhibiting more of the very thing that he probably wanted to see if Jennifer were correct in her thinking. Karma was wearing a thin exercise bra along with tight shiny leggings. Neither did anything to disguise her womanly attributes. This could be good. This could be bad. But all she could think about at the moment was that she wanted to get out of this pose.
As she began lowering herself to her mat, she was horrified to hear the separation of stitches somewhere along her front. Then she felt a quick rush of air in a private place and realized with horror that her leggings had split somewhere south of her belly button.
Thump! She hit the floor abruptly and sat up, yanking her mat up to cover herself.
“Excellent,” Prashant was saying. “Only next time do not come down so quickly. You could get dizzy that way.”
“Oooh, Karma, did you rip your new leggings?” Mandi said in a loud voice.
“Oooh, Karma, that’s too bad,” echoed Jennifer.
“I—I think I’d better go change clothes,” Karma said, running the words all together and hoping she wasn’t wearing the panties with the lace panel in front. They would reveal too, too much.
She scrambled to her feet, clutching her mat in front of her as she sidled sideways toward the door. Slade was staring at her, his eyes wide, a devilish grin on his face. Without a single word to him, she turned and darted inside the building.
“Unfortunate,” she heard Prashant murmuring. “Shall we try the backbend one more time and then rest for a few moments in Child’s Pose before our final relaxation?”
Karma slammed the door behind her and looked down. Sure enough, more of her was exposed than Slade Braddock needed to see. She owned one pair of lace panties, only one pair, and guess what?
She was wearing them tonight.
Unexpectedly she burst into tears. Prashant was right—backbends promoted the release of emotion. Too bad that in her case, backbends made her blubber.
SLADE DRAGGED HIS ACHING carcass along to the Blue Moon’s lobby after the class. He was still reeling from his meeting with someone who had claimed that she was his Friday night date, a woman who had introduced herself as Jennifer Something and looked so artificial that she terrified him. He couldn’t believe that Karma would set him up with someone completely wrong for him, someone that he would never in a million years take home to introduce to his parents. He’d fled as fast as it was possible to flee without being downright rude.
Goldy hunched in her chair behind the desk, knitting. She blinked at him over the top of her half-glasses when he entered the lobby.
“How was the yoga class?” she asked brightly.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that I’m feeling freer all the time.” This was not necessarily untrue, though what he was feeling freer about was pursuing Karma. She might not be the sort of woman he had hoped to find in Miami Beach, but she had certain—attributes, all of which had been more in evidence tonight than at any previous time.
“I received a lot of energy in the class,” he offered helpfully. And a novel view of Karma, he thought to himself.
“That’s good,” Goldy said, and she beamed.
“There are a few things I’d like to discuss about it. About the expression of this energy, I mean. But Karma won’t answer my knock.”
“Maybe she’s not in her apartment.”
“She left class early. Did you see her go out?”
“No, I didn’t see Karma leave. Not that I would, necessarily. Not if she went out the back. She often slips out that way to walk on the beach, especially when she’s feeling all mellow from yoga class. The door’s down that hall.” Goldy inclined her head toward her left.
“Thanks, Goldy,” Slade said. He grinned at her, and she grinned back.
“You know, Slade, I seem to recall that you live on a boat.”
“At the moment, that’s so,” he said.
“Karma has need of a boat. She wants to scatter her aunt Sophie’s ashes at sea.”
Goldy’s intent was not lost on Slade. She was giving him another boost, a clue as to what he could do to capture Karma’s attention, possibly even her undying gratitude.
“Like I said, Goldy, thanks. I owe you.”
“Remember, you can’t escape your Karma.” She winked.
He winked back before loping off down the hall.
