Mix and Match — Beverly Sommers

Ariel felt she was too old to be playing games...

Scott Campbell may have looked like a surfer, Ariel thought, but he could never have been a good one. Scott seemed to be as blind as a bat. Why else would he bypass the bikinied denizens of Seal Beach, California, to make a play for a woman who was almost middle-aged? A woman whose teenage daughter cast disapproving glares at him and whose younger daughter skulked around him menacingly, distressingly attired in combat fatigues.

True, Ariel respected Scott's advice--he'd improved both her painting and her business. But anything more than a friendly relationship was unseemly. Preposterous. And so appealing....