In Stereo Where Available Read Free Page B

fun-loving. He was a thirty-two-year-old Sagittarius named Marty, and, according to his profile, he drove a red Jaguar.
    “Bad, bad, bad,” said Lauren, shaking her head in the doorway of my bedroom as I smoothed on lipstick. “You’re going about this
all wrong
.”
    “He came up as a match,” I reminded her gamely, stepping into a pair of black high heels—the highest ones I owned. “One hundred percent.”
    “You’ve got to look beyond just the Myers-Briggs,” she insisted, rhythmically chopping at the air with her open hand.
“Please
, Phoebe. The astrology is bad, the car is bad, the
date
is bad. Coffee, remember? Go out for coffee. You don’t do dinner and a movie on a blind date. It’s just a bad idea.”
    “I’m tired of coffee. Practically all Bill ever wanted to pay for was coffee. I want a
date
. One where you go someplace with cloth napkins and no screaming kids, and then you see a movie where all of the action takes place on Planet Earth. No time travel, no alien life forms.” I picked up my purse from the bed and checked for my wallet. “Maybe even something with subtitles. Ooh.”
    “Don’t start going overboard.”
    I hugged her and headed toward the door. “Don’t wait up for me.”
    She leaned against the wall and sighed wearily as I lifted my keys from the hook beside the door.
    “Make good choices,” she called.

    Marty was cuter in person than he had been in his picture. He was tall and dark-haired, with a lot of five o’clock shadow and a broad, sexy grin. When I reached to shake his hand, he pulled me toward him and hugged me instead.
    “Great to meet you, Phoebe,” he said, and I bit my lip, suddenly shy. He kept his hand on my back as we stepped into the restaurant, slid my jacket from my shoulders, and touched my waist as he guided me toward the table. I kept trying not to flinch.
    “So,” he said, pouring me a glass of wine, “ever been here before?”
    I glanced around. The restaurant had been his choice—an Italian place with dim lights and waiters in jackets and ties. I had been relieved when I’d flipped open the menu and discovered that it was in English.
    “No,” I admitted. “I suppose
you
have, right?”
    “Yep, many times. It’s got the most authentic Italian food around. And the best wine list, bar none. Bar none.”
    I nodded and rolled the stem of my wineglass between my fingers. “Have you, uh…have you been to Italy?”
    “Quite a number of times. Well, you saw in my profile that I travel a lot. And I do.”
    I cleared my throat. I hadn’t known if it was acceptable to talk about the profile on a date. It seemed unromantic, admitting that you’d chosen your date out of a catalog.
    “For work or for fun?” I asked.
    “Both, but mostly for work. My job’s pretty demanding, pretty busy. You’ve got to travel a lot to stay competitive. You’ve got to keep in shape, too.” He slapped his stomach. It made a solid sound, like hitting the side of a briefcase. “Otherwise, you’re done.”
    I reached for my wine. “So are you in sales, or business, or…”
    “Neither. I’m a professional Santa.”
    I coughed, my wine rippling in the glass. I struggled to swallow, then repeated, “A professional Santa?”
    “Yep. Since I was twenty.”
    “Is that, uh…that’s not a year-round job, is it?”
    He leaned toward me excitedly, folding his arms in front of him on the table. “No, that’s a common misconception. There’s the busy season, but the rest of the year I still work forty to sixty hours a week. There’s Christmas shops, Christmas villages, catalog work, theme parks—and private parties, of course. It’s a lot of travel. And then there are the conventions—”
    “Conventions? They have…professional Santa conventions?”
    “Sure, what’s wrong with that?”
    I shook my head hastily. “Nothing.”
    “I took first place in the ‘Ho Ho Ho’ competition in Toronto two years ago. I’ve got a trophy for it on my bookshelf.”