The Personal Touch

“In the meantime, my Palm Springs weekend is off.” Then she finally showed a sign of apology. “I’m sorry about your date. I had really been trying to sneak up to my room unnoticed. But you left the side gate open and Pom Pom flew through before I could catch her.”

The gentleman in him pressed him to say it was all right, but the sex-deprived bachelor wouldn’t let him. Right now, he was supposed to be working on his second orgasm, just the thought of which had him grinding his teeth so hard he nearly split a filling. He didn’t need apologies. He needed a good hard screaming climax with a beautiful blond bomb-shell to wipe away three weeks of anticipation and pent-up steam.

Instead, he had an irked and lonely mother and her puffed-up, oversized rat.

Hardly the life of a swinging single bachelor.

Setting his empty glass on the granite counter, he moved toward his bedroom to symbolically shut off the fire. “I’m going to drive down to the coast for a swim.”

“In the ocean? I don’t understand why you go all the way down there when you’ve got a perfectly good swimming pool right in your backyard.”

He slid open the glass door, flattened his lips and grumbled, “Water’s colder.”

2

“SHE’S DRIVING ME crazy.”

Clint was stretched out on the couch in the reception area of his Wilshire Boulevard office. For the last twenty minutes, he’d been spilling his problems to his office manager, Carmen Padilla, as though she were his personal shrink. After four years with his firm, it had become one of her unofficial job titles.

“Your mother’s not that bad,” she attempted.

She sat behind her large reception desk, the Bluetooth receiver a permanent fixture to her ear, while she listened to Clint’s woes.

“Do you know how I spent my weekend?”

“From what you’ve told me so far, I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“My mother and I toured health clubs for two days.”

“I thought she just joined one.”

“She did. With her ex-friend Marge. Now she insists on finding a new club so they don’t accidentally run into each other.” He pushed up from the couch and began circling the marble tiled floor. “Forget the fact that I’ve got a gym right in my own house. And the fact that she just paid a year’s membership at Rolling Hills. And the fact that in the end, she’ll go for two weeks, then find some reason to never go back again. I still spent my weekend touring every health club in Hollywood.”

He stopped and looked at Carmen. “Do you know how many health clubs there are around here?”

She shrugged and blinked her eyes innocently, though her smirk admitted evil pleasure in this. Having a large and close family, Carmen held little sympathy for Clint’s situation. “More than three?”

“You don’t care at all, do you?”

“Of course I do,” she insisted, but the grin said she was lying. Carmen’s family was tight-knit. The children stayed close to the nest and relatives were as much friends as family. And to Clint’s credit, he’d had the same relationship with his own family back when his father was his business partner and his brother wrote local stories for the L.A. Times.

But when his dad died suddenly of a heart attack, all that changed. For a while, his brother, Nate, had stayed with their mother, helping her through her grief while Clint dealt with the family’s contracting business. The arrangement got them all through the shock of their father’s death until Nate got the opportunity of a lifetime with an assignment that took him to Afghanistan. It was thrilling for Nate, but terrifying for their mother, who feared losing a son after her husband. And in the end, Clint was left holding all the bags. It was often that Clint thought of the other men in his family as if they’d abandoned him. And days like this, the taste was especially bitter.

Carmen must have seen the look on his face because her playful edge sobered.

“Okay, let’s tackle this like any other business matter,” she said. “Your mother’s bored and you’re all she’s got.” She tapped her pen on the dark cherrywood desk and thought for a while. “You need to find her someone else to play with.”

“I already bought her a dog.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a new man.”

He turned the idea over in his mind. “I’m listening.”

“Trust me. I know women. If your mom had a lover, she’d be the one complaining that you’re hanging around too much.”

He wondered if his mother was ready for it. It had been almost two years since his father died. She was past her stage of mourning. Had even mentioned on one or two occasions the thought of entering the dating world again—in a fearful kind of way, but Clint knew that meant she’d been thinking about it.

“How about your uncle, Gabe?” he asked.

Carmen frowned. “Gabe doesn’t speak English.”

“I’m not picky.”

“You need to be. The wrong man could make everything worse.”

“I don’t need worse,” he agreed.

“You need Margot.” She jotted a note on a pad and handed it to him.

“Who’s Margot?”

“My friend and only the best dating counselor in West L.A.”

“Oh, no. My mother will never agree to a dating service.” He shook his head with conviction. “Even if I could brighten her opinion of matchmakers, she wouldn’t see one now after the fight she had with Marge. It would be like admitting Marge was right, and Mom’s way too stubborn for that.” He crumpled the paper in his hand and tossed it back to Carmen. “Sorry. I need a Plan B.”

She took the note and smoothed it back out. “Talk to her anyway. I’m serious. She’s the one who got Nico and me together without even trying, and she’s got plenty of clients your mother’s age. If you talk to her, I’m sure the two of you will figure something out.”

He scoffed. “My weekend was destroyed thanks to my mother and her opinions about matchmakers.”

“Margot’s not just a matchmaker. She’s a counselor for singles. Your mom doesn’t even need to know you’ve spoken with her. Just seek her out for the advice.” She handed the note back to Clint. “Aren’t you the one who always said if you want a job done right, hire a professional?”

“I was referring to construction.”

“It’s true for everything. Your mom needs a new man in her life. Margot can tell you how to make that happen.”

Clint stared at the wrinkled page. Though a year ago he would have felt otherwise, the thought of his mother remarried to a nice guy now seemed like a dream come true. He’d love to have things back the way they used to be, her busy with her own life and him enjoying his. But Carmen was right. His mother had already been through enough. He didn’t want to see her hurt all over again by a dating game that could often be cruel and dangerous. Heck, the last time the woman was single, Jimmy Carter was president. Things had changed.

“Trust me,” Carmen said. “You won’t be sorry.”

“Famous last words.” But he tucked the note in his pocket anyway. He had to do something to fix this situation before his relationship with his mother was ruined forever. And the way things were going, that’s exactly where this would end.

“SHE MADE this funny noise when we had sex.”

Margot Roth stared at her client, not sure she wanted him to elaborate on that comment. The woman he was talking about had been Margot’s hairstylist for years and this conversation bordered on TMI—too much information. Not that Margot hadn’t had discussions like this before. To be successful as a dating counselor, she’d often had to peel back the layers of a client’s most intimate issues. She only wondered if she could sit for two hours every eight weeks having her highlights retouched knowing these kinds of details about her stylist, Gail.

Curiosity got the best of her.

“What kind of funny noise?”