Annie Says I Do

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She responded with a singularly indelicate noise. “Traitor.”

“Better that than a blind loyalist.”

“Just because you—” Annie broke off, the crack of a wooden bat connecting solidly with a leather-covered ball diverting her attention back to the brightly illuminated field below them. She surged to her feet shouting. “Go for it! Go for it!”

Thousands of other fans were screaming variations on the same imperative. A few seconds later the stadium erupted in a thunderous cheer as one of the Braves slid into home plate in a cloud of dust.

“All right!” Matt exclaimed as the umpire signaled the runner was safe. While he wasn’t a Braves fanatic, he wasn’t immune to the thrill of a home team score.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Annie exulted, raising her arms in triumph.

“And the Braves take the lead in the bottom of the seventh,” an announcer boomed through the stadium’s public address system as the scoreboard lit up with a razzle-dazzle display of computerized images.

“Whew.” Annie sank back down into her seat, removing her official Braves baseball cap and swatting a lock of chin-length brown hair off her cheek. She turned toward Matt. “Can I have a sip of your beer?”

“Sure.”

She took more than a sip from the condensation-fogged plastic cup he handed her. Matt watched as she did so, his gaze tracking the working of her slender throat then drifting downward.

Like himself, Annie had been a late bloomer. But just as he’d finally shot up, she’d eventually filled out. She’d never been in the cup-floweth-over category, he decided as he studied her modest T-shirted curves, but she definitely looked as though she could pass the enough-for-a-handful test.

“Thanks,” she said, returning the beverage container with a dimple-flushing smile. “I needed that.”

If she’d noticed his assessment of her shape, she gave no indication of it. While Matt supposed he should be grateful for this, he found her seeming obliviousness irritated him. Had this been a “real” date—had he been, say, that TV newsman with the helmet of cement-sprayed hair—he was damned sure she would have registered being ogled!

Then again...maybe not. Annie had less vanity than just about any female he knew. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d seen her fuss over her appearance.

Was it possible she didn’t think such fussing was worth it? Matt asked himself suddenly. Was it possible she didn’t know how appealing she was?

So what if her features were too asymmetrical to meet the standards of so-called classic beauty? So what if they were too strong to be classified as “cute”? There were qualities in Annie’s face—the generosity of her mouth and the warmth of her big brown eyes to name just two—that caught a man’s interest and held it. Surely she must have discovered that!

And then there were those long, slim legs of hers. No one could persuade Matt that Annie didn’t know what kind of assets they were! Just look at the way the skimpy white shorts she had on showed them off.

Heck. Just look at the way the snug-fitting garment displayed the firmly feminine contours of her backside! Now that was a view guaranteed to kick any male pulse into high gear.

“Oh, no!” Annie leapt up, her creamy-skinned face flushing with dismay. “Go back!”

A despairing groan rolled through the stands as the opposing team’s right fielder fired the fly ball he’d just caught to second base for a double play.

“And that’s the inning,” the stadium announcer intoned. “At the end of the seventh, it’s Atlanta five, New York four.”

“That was terrible,” Annie moaned, collapsing into her seat. She slumped forward, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes as though trying to blot out the athletic incompetence she’d just witnessed.

“Yeah,” Matt agreed, watching her intently. “Terrible.”

There was a pause. Finally Annie lifted her head and looked at him. “Why are you staring at me?” she demanded.

He opened his mouth. After a moment he closed it.

“Yes?” An emotion he couldn’t put a name to fizzed in the depths of her dark, long-lashed eyes like carbonation in a cola drink.

Matt hesitated, the clichéd phrase about “No guts, no glory” zipping through his mind. “Did you, uh, do something to your, uh, h-hair?” he finally stammered.

Annie blinked several times. Then, remarkably, she started to laugh. The sound rippled through him like liquid sunshine, warming every fiber of his body.

“You know, Matt,” she said, taking his cup of beer from his suddenly slackened grasp and raising it in a saucy salute. “You may have less to learn about women than I thought.”

* * *

“Call me old-fashioned,” Matt declared, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of his car. “But I’m never going to get used to women doing stuff like that.”

“Like what?” Annie asked, undoing her seat belt. She and Matt had just parked in front of her condo after an evening of Cajun food and dancing. “Patting you on the rear end?”

He stiffened visibly. “The place was crowded. It could have been an accident.”

“Mmm.” Annie considered telling him that this seemed highly unlikely to her. Whether Matt knew it or not, his tush was extremely...er, pattable. Especially when it was encased in tight, wash-faded jeans the way it was this evening. Although she’d never goosed a guy herself, she could understand why another woman might succumb to the temptation Matt’s backside presented.

Of course, understanding didn’t mean she had to like it....

Matt unhooked his own seat belt and turned to face her. “Tell me the truth, Annie. Have you ever waited for another woman to go to the ladies’ room so you could hit on the man she was with?”

Annie shook her head. “That’s not my style. But you’d better get used to being vamped. The brunette who slipped you her phone number tonight was just the beginning. You’re a very desirable commodity.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You’re straight. You’re single. You’re attractive.” She ticked the qualities off on her fingers. “You’re also the co-owner of a successful business.”

Matt remained silent for several moments, then asked, “A ‘desirable commodity,’ you said?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I guess I can adjust to the ‘desirable’ part.” His mouth twisted. “Where was all this female attention when I was suffering through puberty?”

“You wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”

“True.” Chuckling wryly, Matt swung open the driver’s side door. “I’m not sure I know what to do with it now, either.”

Annie waited patiently while he walked around and opened the door on her side of the car. “Thank you,” she said as he handed her out.

“You’re welcome,” he responded, shutting the door. “I was meaning to ask if it was okay for me to do this.”

“To do what?”

Matt gestured. “The door thing.”

“The...door...thing?”

“Yeah. Am I—or am I not—supposed to open them for the women I take out? I refuse to light cigarettes because I don’t want to encourage anyone to smoke. But what about opening doors? Is there a rule? Or is this another one of those damned-if-a-guy-does, damned-if-a-guy-doesn’t situations like that sensitive-but-not-too-sensitive routine you tried to explain to me during our first date?”

Annie had to tilt her chin to meet his gaze. Matt—with whom she’d once stood eye-to-eye—was now six feet tall to her five-foot-five.

“I don’t think the ‘door thing’ is significant anymore,” she said. “I’m not sure it ever really was, to tell the truth. I, personally, put it in the same category as the great shaving debate.”

“The what?”

A warm spring breeze sent a lock of hair fluttering across Annie’s face. Before she had a chance to brush it away, Matt reached forward and casually smoothed it back into place. As light as the contact was, it sent a quiver of response arrowing through her.

“The, uh, great shaving debate,” she repeated after several tremulous seconds. “It revolves around the question of whether women who shave their legs and underarms are victims of the oppressive standards of beauty imposed by a male chauvinist society.”

“I take it you don’t spend much time anguishing over the matter.”

“Let’s just say I think women have a lot more important things to be concerned about than the socio-political implications of using depilatories—or of having doors opened for them.”

“Yeah.” Matt nodded his agreement, shoving his hands into the pockets of the lightweight leather jacket he’d worn with his jeans. “Me, too.”

The walk from his car to her condominium was made in silence. Once they arrived at their destination, they turned to face each other. The light that hung next to her front door cast a pale spill of illumination over both of them.

The silence stretched on.

“Well,” Matt finally said, taking his hands out of his pockets, “I guess it’s time for me to make my big move.”

Annie’s heart performed a sudden hop-skip-jump. “Your big move?”

“This is our third date.”

“So?” Her voice was only marginally steadier than her pulse.

“So, I skimmed through a couple of paperback romances during the last few weeks and I noticed that the hero tends to make his big move on the heroine at the end of their third date. Unless, of course, he was overwhelmed by passion and pounced on her the first time they met.”

“You’ve been reading romance novels?”

Matt shrugged nonchalantly, apparently undisturbed by the tone of her question. “I remembered how Lisa used to talk about them and I figured I might pick up a few pointers. I mean, romances are basically written by women, for women, right? They offer a guy insights into the feminine psyche he’d probably have trouble getting otherwise.”

“I...see.” His explanation actually made a great deal of sense.

“Have you ever read any?”

“Romance novels?”

“Yeah.”

“A, uh, few.”

“And?”

“Some of the language is a little flowery for my taste. But I enjoy the relationships. And the happy endings.”

He grinned. “No less than I’d expect from a woman who has a nine-year-old wedding bouquet bagged up in plastic.”

Annie sighed. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Nope.” Matt paused, cocking his head. “What do you think about that famous cover model? You know—the big blond guy with the incredible hairless chest who can’t seem to keep his shirt on?”

“Oh, puh-leeze.”

“Not your type?”

“Hardly.”

“I’ll bet your heart still belongs to Fred.”

“Fred? As in...Astaire?”

“Who else? Unless you’ve developed a thing for Fred as in Flintstone.”

“I wouldn’t call my, uh, admiration for Fred Astaire a thing,” Annie quibbled. The image of a tuxedo-clad man and an elegantly gowned woman glided through her mind. She wasn’t certain about the genesis of her fascination with this sort of male-female partnership. She only knew that her Fred-and-Ginger fantasy was an enduring one.

“Hey, do you remember the ballroom dancing lessons you conned me into taking back in sixth grade?” Matt asked suddenly. “The ones in the basement of our church?”

“Conned you?” Annie echoed, stiffening with indignation. “You made me shell out ten dollars of my hard-earned baby-sitting money before you’d agree to be my partner!”

“Well...”

“You hated it, didn’t you.”

Matt seemed genuinely taken aback by this accusation.

“No,” he denied, shaking his head. “Of course not. I’ll admit I had some misgivings about going. I mean, waltzing and all that stuff seemed kind of wimpy to me. But once we got there...” He paused, an odd expression stealing into his eyes. “You wore a cream-colored dress to the first class. And flat shoes with little bows in front. Sort of like ballet slippers.”

Annie moistened her lips, conscious of an abrupt acceleration in her pulse. It had been years since she and Matt had talked about this particular chapter in their friendship. She’d had no idea his recollection of it was so vivid.

“My palms started sweating as soon as I took hold of you,” he continued reflectively. “I was afraid I was going to leave wet handprints everywhere I touched. And there seemed to be a total disconnect between my brain and my feet. I felt like such a klutz.”

“At least you didn’t keep mixing up your right and left the way I did.”