A Match for Celia

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, they did give you this vacation. Quite a nice birthday present.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Have you ever been married?”

Reed seemed startled by the question. “No. Why?”

Celia shrugged. “I know less about you than you do about me now. Only that you’re a tax accountant from Cleveland and that you like history. What else would I find interesting?”

“Nothing much,” Reed answered self-deprecatingly. “I live a quiet life, on the whole. I have a few good friends with whom I socialize, and a job I enjoy. I like to read and visit museums and historical sites, as you already know. I do a little wood carving, but I’m not very good at it. Just an average sort of guy, I guess.”

Celia almost sighed. An average sort of guy. Just as she’d suspected.

She wondered if any of his “few good friends” were women. She wondered if there was any woman who was an especially good friend. She wondered why she couldn’t seem to stop wondering.

“You’ve never been married, either, I take it?” Reed asked after their entrées had been placed in front of them.

“No. Not even close.” He probably wouldn’t believe how little experience she’d actually had with men.

And all because she’d been waiting so long for one who was so much more than “average.”

She suddenly discovered that she wasn’t quite as hungry as she’d thought when she’d placed her order. She picked up her fork and made a determined effort to eat, telling herself she was being silly.

What possible reason could there be for her to suddenly feel restless and discontented? As though there was something she needed, but couldn’t quite name. And it was especially foolish for her to think that Reed Hollander could do anything about it.

Celia was just beginning to regain her equilibrium when Reed asked, from seemingly out of the blue, “How long have you known Damien Alexander?”

Again, Celia felt herself growing self-conscious, and inexplicably anxious to clarify her relationship with Damien. “Almost a year now. We met when he started coming into the bank where I work. He’s thinking about building a new resort near Percy, and he wants to involve the local businesses as much as possible.”

“An Alexander resort in Percy, Arkansas?” Reed sounded skeptical. “Forgive me, but that wouldn’t have been a location I would have expected.”

“I know. Everyone’s been surprised that he’s even considering the possibility. But it makes sense the way Damien explains it. The area is really beautiful—unspoiled, natural, with several beautiful lakes and rivers available for water sports, lots of golf courses, and mountainsides for hiking and hang gliding. It’s reasonably close to Little Rock and Memphis for shopping and dining, only a couple of hours away from the riverboat casinos in Tunica, Mississippi, and from Branson, Missouri for the music shows that are so popular now. Damien says it’s a location with a great deal of potential.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Reed conceded. “I hadn’t looked at it that way.”

“You’ve never been to the area,” she pointed out. “Arkansas has a lot more to offer than most people suspect—or than the national press has led them to believe, lately.”

“Is that why you’ve stayed so close to home? Because you love the area?”

“That, and to be close to my sister and brother,” she replied. “But lately…”

“Lately…?” Reed urged when she fell quiet.

She shrugged. “Lately I’ve realized that there are a lot of other places to see and experience.”

“Places Damien Alexander could show you?”

Celia couldn’t quite read Reed’s expression. He looked suddenly distant, disapproving. Much like Rachel did whenever she mentioned Damien. And Celia reacted the same way with Reed that she did with Rachel. Defensively.

“Damien and I are friends. We have dinner together when he’s in town, see an occasional show in Little Rock, talk on the phone occasionally when he’s busy at his other resorts. When I told him I’d heard about this area and had always wanted to see it, he asked me here as his guest. We’re hardly trotting the globe together just because I’m visiting one of his smaller resorts.”

“Don’t be so prickly. I was just making conversation.”

Celia cut irritably into her fish. “I wasn’t being prickly. I was just…explaining.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations.”