“You’re Lillian Harte, aren’t you?” he said fiercely.
The anger in his voice made her mouth go dry. She came to a halt in the middle of the busy sidewalk, fervently grateful for the fact that she was surrounded by a large number of people.
The man looming in front of her appeared to be in his mid-forties, big, heavily built with blunt features and thinning, short-cropped hair. She could not see his eyes. They were concealed behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Not real useful on a cloudy, rainy day, she reflected, but they certainly added a note of menacing drama.
“Do I know you?” she asked cautiously.
“No.” His heavy jaw jerked. “But I know you, lady. You’re the matchmaker, aren’t you?”
She clutched the laptop very tightly. “How do you know that?”
His mouth twisted. “I’ve been watching you for the past couple of days.”
A blast of stark fear left her palms damp. “Youfollowed me? You had no right to do that. I’ll report you to the police.”
“I didn’t do anything illegal.” He looked disgusted. “I just wanted to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“Sure you were the woman who runs that matchmaking outfit, Private Arrangements.”
“Why do you care who I am?”
He moved in closer. “You’re the one who took Heather away from me. You hooked her up with someone else, didn’t you? I called her a couple of days ago. Thought I’d give her another chance, y’know? That’s when she told me that she planned to marry this guy you set her up with. She thinks she’s in love. I think you messed with her mind.”
Ice touched Lillian’s spine. “Are you talking about Heather Summers?”
“Heather was with me before you tricked her into thinking I was no good for her. She left me because of you.”
It took everything Lillian had to stand her ground. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Witley.” He took another step toward her, his face clenching with anger. “Campbell Witley. Heather and I were together before you came along. You ruined everything.”
She glanced quickly around again, reassuring herself that she was not alone here on the sidewalk. Then she looked very steadily at Campbell Witley.
“Please, calm down, Mr. Witley. I did match a woman named Heather but when she filled out the forms I gave her she stated that she was not currently seeing anyone. I always insist that my clients be single and unattached when they sign up with my firm.”
“I don’t care what Heather said on your damned forms.” He tapped his wide chest with a stubby thumb. “She was withme.”
Lillian remembered Heather very well. She was a shy, nonconfrontational type who would have found it extremely difficult to deal with an aggressive man like Witley.
She also recalled that Heather had been a different woman after her first date with Ted Baker. Baker was the quiet, studious sort, very much a gentleman. He and Heather had attended the opera together. It had been love at first sight.
“Out of curiosity,” Lillian said, “do you enjoy the opera, Mr. Witley?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Heather loves the opera. I just wondered if you shared her interests.”
Witley’s mouth creased into a thin line. “Are you saying I didn’t have anything in common with her just because I wouldn’t go to the damned opera? That’s bullshit. Heather and I had a lot in common. We went to ball games. I took her camping. We went white-water rafting. We did lots of stuff together.”
“Those were all things that you enjoyed. But it doesn’t sound as if you did many things that she liked to do.”
“How do you know what she liked?”
“She was very specific on the questionnaire I had her fill out. She is really quite passionate about the opera, you know. And she likes to attend film festivals.”
“I took Heather to the movies. We sawBattle Zone twice.”
This was hopeless, Lillian thought. Campbell Witley would probably never understand, much less care, that he and Heather had had no common interests.
“I’m sorry about your personal problems, Mr. Witley, but I assure you, I had nothing to do with the breakup of your relationship,” she said.
“The hell you didn’t. If it hadn’t been for you, Heather would be with me now.”
“When did she end your relationship?”
Witley scowled furiously. “The night we went to seeBattle Zone the second time. When I took her home that evening, she said she didn’t want to date me again. Why?”
“You say that she broke up with you after you took her to back-to-back screenings ofBattle Zone. As I recall, that film came out early last fall. I remember the ads were everywhere.”
“So what?”
“Heather didn’t register with Private Arrangements until December. I matched her in January.”
“Who cares when she registered with your damned agency?”
“I’m trying to explain that my firm had nothing to do with the end of your relationship with Heather,” Lillian said patiently. “She didn’t come to me until after the two of you had stopped seeing each other.”
“Don’t try to weasel out of this. She’d have come back to me by now if you hadn’t fixed her up with someone else.”
“I don’t think so,” Lillian said as gently as possible. “It doesn’t sound like the two of you were a good match. You need an outdoorsy type. Someone who likes to camp and hike. Someone who isn’t afraid to argue with you.”
“That just shows how much you know. One of the things I really liked about Heather was that she never argued with me.”
“Guess there wouldn’t have been much point.”
His face worked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I get the feeling you didn’t listen to her very well, Mr. Witley.”
“That’s a damned lie. I listened to her.”
“Can you honestly say that Heather never once indicated that she preferred attending the opera to camping?”
Witley grimaced. “She may have mentioned the opera crap a couple of times but I told her to forget it. That highbrow stuff is boring. No beat to it, y’know?”
“In other words Heather did everything you wanted to do but you didn’t do any of the things she liked. You don’t see that as a problem in a relationship?”
“I told you, Heather and I had a great relationship.” Witley’s voice got louder. “And you wrecked it. What gives you the right to play games with other people’s lives, Lillian Harte? You can’t get away with treating folks like lab rats.”
She held the laptop in front of her as if it were a shield. “I don’t treat them that way.”
“Using a damned computer to figure out who people should date and marry? You don’t think that isn’t treating them like rats in a maze? Hell, you’re like some mad scientist in a movie or something. Like you know what’s best for everyone else.”
“Mr. Witley, I can’t discuss this with you. Not while you’re in this mood.”
She made to step around him but he blocked her path.
“You can’t mess up my life like this and then just blow me off,” he said. “You took Heather away from me. You had no right to do that. You got that? No right, damn it.”
“Excuse me, I’ve got to go now,” Lillian said.
She whirled abruptly to the left and plunged through the glass doors of the large department store that occupied most of the block. There would be security staff inside if she needed help, she thought.
But Campbell Witley did not follow her into the store. She paused in front of a cosmetics counter and glanced over her shoulder to see if he was still on the sidewalk outside.
There was no sign of him.