Annie Says I Do. Carole Buck
thank you.” Melinda preened a little. “I most definitely will.” She preened a little more. “Well, I really must be goin’. I’m meetin’ one of my ex’s for dinner. Nice to see you again, Annie. You take care of yourself, you hear?”
Annie made a gesture that was a cross between a bye-bye and a brush-off. The other woman responded with a languid waggle of her long-nailed fingers then sashayed away on four-inch stiletto heels.
“Interesting,” Matt commented, reseating himself.
“Don’t even think about it.” The words were out before Annie had time to consider their implications—much less to prevent herself from uttering them.
“Excuse me?”
Oh, well, Annie thought with a mental grimace. In for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, Matt had asked to be enlightened about the contemporary male-female thing. It wasn’t as though she was butting in with unsolicited advice.
“Melinda ‘Honeychile’ Reeves is the kind of woman who treats men like kites,” she said flatly.
“Kites?”
Annie gestured. “She gives them just enough string to let them think they’re flying free. Then she yanks on the string, hauls them in, and hangs them on a hook someplace until she’s ready to play again.”
Matt rubbed his jaw. “And here I thought she seemed sort of sweet.”
He was teasing her. Annie knew he was teasing her. She also knew she probably deserved it. Even so...
“You have a lot to learn about women, Mr. Powell,” she informed him.
Matt smiled. Slowly. Sexily. From somewhere deep inside Annie came to the realization that he hadn’t so much as bared a bicuspid at the blond and busty Melinda.
“That’s why I’m out with you, Ms. Martin,” he said.
* * *
“A strike?” Annie yelled through cupped hands. “Are you crazy? Get a pair of glasses! That was a ball!”
“Gee, Annie,” Matt said through a bite of hot dog. “Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?”
Annie turned in her seat and nailed him with a disdainful look. “People who didn’t start cheering for the Atlanta Braves until they won the pennant have no right to criticize people who were rooting for them when they were the worst team in the league.”
Matt took a moment to chew and swallow, then another moment to take a gulp of beer. Annie’s passion for the Braves had always amused him. She was so sane and sensible about everything else. Except, perhaps, for the enduring crush she had on Fred Astaire. But that was an interest she confided only to her closest friends. Her devotion to the Braves, she flaunted like a flag.
Going to this game had been Annie’s idea. She’d extended the invitation six nights before, when he’d brought her home from their inaugural practice date. While she hadn’t specifically said the outing should be categorized as their second date, he’d decided to treat it as such.
Within certain limits, of course. Although modern male-female etiquette might dictate otherwise, he had no intention of passing up a chance to twit his best buddy about her unswerving support for her favorite team.
“That pitch was in, Annie,” he said, fighting back a grin.
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