Matchmaking by Moonlight

Every man in the place was watching her, he realized. Heads kept turning away from legal briefs and legal pads, colleagues and clients, toward her and back again. Clearly, Ashe should have picked another spot for lunch.

Lilah looked up, spotted Ashe, then lifted a hand with flame-colored fingernails and waved. About a half-dozen multi-colored bracelets jangled on her wrist.

He could feel the heads turn from her over to him, see the double takes.

Judge Ashford and the hippie lady?

He made his way to her, stopping along the way to acknowledge friends and colleagues who greeted him with slight smiles, respectful nods of their heads and things like, “Afternoon, Judge.”

People respected him here.

He liked that.

He planned to keep it that way.

Ashe got to Lilah’s table. She stood and held out her hand, bracelets jangling, and he shook it briefly, waited for her to sit, then sat himself.

“Thank you for taking the time to talk to me,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you would, but Eleanor insisted no one but you would do for my classes.”

He was at a loss. “I can’t imagine why. I hardly know her, except for introductions at a charity event here and there. I’m just Wyatt’s friend. He’s Kathleen’s grandson-in-law. He said you might remember him from when you two were children.”

Lilah nodded. “Wyatt the wild man? I think he tried to look up my skirt one day on the playground at school when I was six or seven. Or maybe he was the one who dared his friends to do it.”

“That sounds like Wyatt,” Ashe agreed.

“Is he really married to Kathleen’s granddaughter?”

“Yes.”

“Happily? I’m so curious about her, but I haven’t met her yet. Kathleen said she’s written a book—financial advice for women—that’s coming out soon, and she’s busy getting ready to leave on a book tour. But the idea of the Wyatt I knew being happily married …”

“Well …” Ashe shrugged. What could he say? He had a hard time believing it, too, and he wasn’t the only one. He finally settled for saying, “They haven’t been married long.”

“Hmm. Kathleen and Gladdy believe he’s the perfect husband. I would think Eleanor knows better, living in this town as long as she has. But she doesn’t say anything when they start talking about how wonderful Wyatt is. I’m starting to worry about all of them. That they might be … you know, not quite all there mentally. Which is such a shame. They seem so nice. A little pushy, a little nosy, but nice.”

No arguments with that assessment from Ashe.

“I know Wyatt worries about them. And watches over them quite closely,” Ashe added, thinking maybe that would be enough to warn this woman off, if she had any thoughts of taking advantage of some nice, not-quite-there-mentally older women.

“Good,” Lilah agreed. “I think someone needs to be watching out for them.”

Okay, she was either sincere or she was playing him.

He really couldn’t tell, despite what he’d always considered to be really good instincts and people-reading skills.

The waitress arrived. Ashe knew what he wanted and asked if Lilah did as well, telling her they should really go ahead and order, because he didn’t have that long before he had to be back in court. She glanced at the menu for all of fifteen seconds and settled on the soup and sandwich special of the day.

The woman got points for being able to make up her mind quickly. So many couldn’t, he had found. And she got points for being … not so outrageous today. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as much of a chore as he feared.

Then the waitress came back and said, “I almost forgot, ma’am. I asked the manager. He said it’s fine to put one of your posters in the window.”

She pulled a small poster from her stack of menus and handed it back to Lilah, who smiled and said, “Thank you so much.”

Ashe caught a glimpse of the floaty, see-through veil her naked model had been wearing and couldn’t believe it. The naked lady on a poster? One that Lilah wanted displayed at the restaurant? Surely the manager hadn’t actually taken the time to look at it before agreeing to that.

“You can’t put that up here,” Ashe told her.

Lilah gave him an odd look. “You heard the waitress. She just said I can.”

“A photograph of a naked woman on a poster is not going to work in this town. In fact, I’m sure we have some sort of ordinance against it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with this photograph,” Lilah insisted. “Why don’t we let people judge for themselves?” She started to pull a small poster from the envelope she had with her.

“Don’t do that,” Ashe said, reaching for her. “Not now. Not here.”

“Just because you have a problem with a little nudity, Judge, doesn’t mean everyone else here does,” she claimed just a little too loudly.

Somehow in their minor tussle, the envelope tore, they both lost their hold on it, and her posters ended up all over the floor, a dozen or so of them, face-up, of course, for everyone to see.

Ashe winced and looked away.

Conversation around them stopped.

People turned and stared, started whispering. There were a few chuckles.

“Does anyone have a problem with this image being displayed here in town?” Lilah asked, holding one up for her audience to see.

Ashe heard mostly male voices, amused and offering no opposition. That was odd. When he turned back to Lilah, she looked quite pleased with herself. She leaned over to pick up her posters, but a number of men nearby had already jumped on that particular task for her, including one of the young waiters, who blushed as he handed them to her.

“Is that you in the picture?” he said, the poor kid’s voice cracking and moving up an octave or so.

“No, it’s not her,” Ashe said, loudly enough for the whole restaurant to hear, because he really didn’t need everyone thinking he was having lunch with the naked lady.

Murmurs of disappointment followed from the men in the room. A few speculated about the truth of what Ashe had said, and more than one man said something about wanting to be introduced to the woman who actually was in the photograph.

Lilah thanked her young admirer, then grinned mischievously at Ashe as she set her stack of posters on the table in front of him for him to see. “She might have been naked when I took her photo, but she doesn’t look it in the photograph. I’m not an idiot. I do know what I’m doing.”

Still skeptical, Ashe looked down at the poster, an advertisement for her Divorce Recovery Classes, and there was the naked woman. Except, well … not quite so naked.

There was the woman Ashe had seen, but shot through the gauzy haze of the wedding veil. Everything was a little fuzzy, so that she looked like a woman running away in a big, billowing wedding veil, but her body was no more than a shadowy impression.

Beautiful, provocative, but still tasteful, he conceded, and certainly that was the intent—to be just provocative enough to catch one’s attention and hold it. It was advertising, after all.

Ashe had misjudged Lilah badly, something a man in his profession should definitely not do. Although, honestly, he’d bet she took some devious bit of pleasure in trying to lead him to misjudge her in just this way. The flash of fire in her eyes when he finally looked up at her, that teasing, satisfied smile, told him just that.

“Are you like this with everyone you meet?” he asked. “Or is it just me?”

“I’ve recently made a vow to enjoy life to the fullest. I didn’t for too long,” she said. “Besides, most people are much too serious, don’t you think?”