“You match Champion’s description.”

She didn’t ask how Heath had described her. She tried not to ask any question where she wasn’t certain of the answer, and something had gone seriously haywire in her relationship with Heath the moment Annabelle Granger had entered the picture.

“I won’t apologize for doing my job,” she said. “Heath is paying me a lot of money to help him, but I can’t do that properly if he cuts me out.”

“So it’s okay if I tell him about the spying?”

“What you call spying, I call earning my paycheck,” she said carefully.

“I doubt he’ll see it that way.”

She doubted it, too, but she wouldn’t let him intimidate her. “Tell me what you want.”

She watched as he thought it over. Reading people was an important part of her business, but her clients were wealthy and well educated, so how could she tell what was going on behind those ice pick blue eyes? She hated uncertainty. “Well?”

“I’m thinking.”

She opened her purse, extracted two fifty-dollar bills, and set them in front of him. “Maybe this will help that difficult process along.”

He looked down at the money, shrugged, and shifted his weight to stuff the bills in his pocket. His hips were much narrower than his shoulders, she noticed, his thighs long boned and solid.

“Now,” she said. “We can just forget all about tonight.”

“I don’t know. It’s a lot to forget…even for someone like me.”

She gazed at him more closely, trying to decide if he was putting her on, but she couldn’t read him.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we talk the situation over next weekend? Let’s say a week from Friday. See how things are coming along by then.”

She hadn’t expected this. “Why don’t we not.”

“I’d do it this weekend, but I gotta be out of town.”

“What do you want?”

He studied her openly. His mouth was finely chiseled, almost delicate, which made the rest of his features seem all the more sinister. “I’ll let you know when I decide.”

“Forget it. I’m not going to allow you to string me along.” She tried to stare him down, but he refused to play. Instead, his mouth quirked in a gangster’s cocky grin.

“Are you sure? If you are, I can always talk to Mr. Champion tonight.”

She gritted her teeth. “Fine. Next Friday.” She slid off the stool and pulled open her purse. “Here’s my card. Don’t try to screw me, or you’ll regret it.”

“Probably.” His eyes slid over her like hot caramel on ice cream. “Still, it might be interesting.”

Something heady and unexpected shot through her. She snapped her purse shut and left the bar to the sound of a wicked chuckle.

The next Power Matches candidate proved to be beautiful but self-centered, and Annabelle led the conversation to showcase her flaws. She needn’t have bothered. Heath had the woman’s number from the start. At the same time, he treated her with the utmost respect, and Annabelle realized that Heath wasn’t quite the egomaniac she’d first thought. He seemed to find the human condition in all its forms interesting. Knowing that made it tough for her to hold on to her dislike. Not that she’d been holding on to it very hard.