Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling Read Free Page B

camera on the houseboat. No point in wasting time. Got to get me a bride by June, you know?” His smile so unnerved her that she levered herself upward, stumbling over the corner of the cushion and catching herself on the doorknob, barely averting an unladylike sprawl across her desk.
    “You okay?” he asked, frowning slightly.
    “Y-yes. And where will I find you at the marina?”
    “I’m staying on what they call Houseboat Row in a floating palace called Toy Boat. Silly name, isn’t it?”
    “Well,” Karma said, unsure how to answer this. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Guys sometimes got very attached to their boats.
    “I didn’t name it. That honor belongs to my second cousin’s wife. Renee thought it was cute.” He grinned, and Karma was totally charmed. Never mind that he had already told her the type of woman who appealed to him, and never mind that she wasn’t it. All her misgivings about men evaporated in that moment.
    “I’ll be glad to stop by the marina,” she said. “Wouldfive o’clock suit you?” She’d bring hors d’oeuvres, wear something revealing. She’d—yeah. She’d make a fool of herself. Again.
    “Five o’clock. Right. Thanks, Ms.—O’Connor, is it?”
    She scooped one of her cards out of the jumble on her desk. “Karma O’Connor. Like on the sign out front.”
    He looked at the card, looked at her. “Nice name, Karma. What does it mean?”
    “Destiny,” she said, staring him straight in the eye, and despite her reservations, in that moment she was certain that she had found hers.
    A FTER S LADE HAD LEFT HER OFFICE , Karma immediately dashed across the street to the Blue Moon, where she rented a tiny three-room pad.
    The Blue Moon was exactly the kind of place Karma would have chosen to live even if it hadn’t been right across the street from Rent-a-Yenta. The building had seen its heyday in the late 1940s. It was painted pale pink, the doors and windows were outlined in aqua, and a lavender-blue stripe circled the top of the building. A blue bas-relief half moon hung over the door. Karma had heard the place variously described as “an iced pastry,” and “a Wurlitzer jukebox done in pastels.” After the heavy dark brick of her apartment block in Connecticut, she loved it.
    Goldy, manager, desk clerk, custodian and security officer all rolled into one, sat inside the doorway behind a counter. She glanced up from her knitting with rapid-blinking brown eyes. Her short spiky hair gleamed in the sunlight from the nearby window; it was an energetic shade of copper this week. In the background a radio blared some sixties girl group singing, “Today I Met the Man I’m Going to Marry.”
    Was the song an omen? Maybe. Karma believed in omens.
    “Hi, Goldy, anything new?”
    “I read the tarot cards for you today. Something big’s coming up. Something major.” Her voice was tiny, like a little girl’s.
    “Like being able to pay my office rent?” Slade Braddock’s registration fee made that a sure thing.
    “Hmm. Could be bigger than that.” Goldy set aside her knitting and adjusted the voluminous folds of one of the huge flower-print muumuus she liked to wear.
    “Nothing’s bigger than paying the rent.”
    “I thought since you gave up the five-room office suite, you’d be okay.”
    “Only if I bring in more business. Things fell apart fast when Aunt Sophie was sick. She may have left me her business, but I’ve got to revive it. After quitting a market research job, being laid off from Psychtronics Magazine and getting fired from The Bickerstiff Corporation, it’s a welcome opportunity.”
    “Maybe you should have your chakras read, get some direction. I have time late this afternoon.” Goldy’s shtick was anything New Age, and she never let anyone forget it.
    “Can’t. I’m busy.”
    “Well, there you go. Business must be picking up,” Goldy said with an air of idle speculation, which was how Karma knew that Goldy, from her vantage point by