“So how does it all work?” Lopez asked through a mouthful of pizza. “You know, the matchmaker thing.”
“Why? You need some help in that area?” Huck teased.
Lopez scowled at him. “I’m just curious.”
“Sure,” Huck said. “I’m only curious to watch the crazy unfold.”
“You’ve always been a reality TV fan,” I said, shaking my head. It really was a lot like reality TV. In fact, I’d bet my Ultimate Steelbook Edition of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla that they already had a show about a matchmaking company like First Comes Love. Maybe I should watch it so I could see what I was in for.
I blew out a breath. “Well, for starters, I don’t pick the women and I don’t pick the place.”
“Do you pick your own clothes or does your mom do it for you?” Huck asked.
“Actually, I’m gonna ask your mom to do it when she comes over later,” I deadpanned. “The matchmaker handles everything, if you can believe it. I’m supposed to trust this person to find my perfect match based on a file of my likes and dislikes and one conversation over coffee.”
Huck frowned. “Did you get to tell the guy what kinds of chicks you like? Sounds like it could be kind of cool. Like ordering up the perfect woman, ya know?”
I wasn’t surprised that Huck had made the same assumption I had about my matchmaker being a guy. It seemed like an obvious choice to me. Why wouldn’t they pair men up with men for this? Like I said that day, we probably understood what each other would want better than a woman matching up a man, and vice versa. How was Amy supposed to sift through her piles of eight-by-tens and find the right woman for me based only on what I’d told her so far? Clairvoyance?
“Actually,” I said, wiping my hands on the paper napkin next to my plate, “my matchmaker isn’t a guy. Her name is Amy.”
Huck and Lopez looked at each other with matching expressions of confusion, then Lopez held up a finger. “Didn’t see that coming. Next you’re going to tell me you have to wear an earpiece on your dates so she can tell you what to say.”
I rolled my eyes, putting on a brave face. “I’d like to think I can talk to women without someone feeding me lines.”
“Oh, yeah?” Huck challenged, taking a swig of beer and nodding towards my Playstation on the entertainment center. “What would you talk to a woman about? Your progress in The Witcher?”
“Hey, cut him some slack,” Lopez said.
I tipped my bottle at him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied. “Don’t worry, I know you wouldn’t talk about The Witcher. You’d talk about Call of Duty. Gotta play up the Marine thing for the ladies, right?”
“Wrong,” Huck and I said together with a laugh, and then Huck sat up straighter in his chair. “Wait, for real though, what’s the matchmaker like? Is she hot?”
My stomach clenched as Amy’s big brown eyes popped into my head. I’d loved the way she’d sat across from me at that coffee shop, trying to inconspicuously mirror the way I was sitting so I’d be more comfortable. In reality, it just made me want to mess with her and make her sit in weird poses. I’d refrained though, partly because she seemed like a professional, and I didn’t want to mock her, and partly because watching her take charge and direct the conversation had been pretty stimulating.
I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t matter if she’s hot. I’m sure she’s not on the menu for her clients.”
“Who said anything about her clients?” Huck asked. “I meant for me. I don’t need a matchmaker, but I wouldn’t mind making yours match me, if you know what I mean.”
I stared at my friend as he wagged his eyebrows, then shook my head very slowly. “No, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, I don’t get it either,” Lopez agreed.
“Whatever.” Huck waved a hand. “When’s your first date?”
“Tomorrow night,” I replied. “I’m hoping it’s not a total disaster. My mom has done a lot of crazy stuff in the name of marrying me off, but this VIP matchmaking thing takes the cake.”
“Remember when she brought a girl to our bootcamp graduation?” Lopez asked.
“How could I forget?” I replied.
Lopez shook his head. “I hadn’t known you very long, but we’d been through some crazy stuff together by that point. I’d never seen you look as green as when she introduced you to your blind date for the day.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Huck said, holding up a hand. “She brought a blind date to your graduation? Man, I would have paid good money to see that. What happened?”
“Can I?” Lopez asked.
My lips pulled into a thin line. “Go ahead.”
He swallowed, pausing for dramatic effect. “She was the daughter of one of his mom’s friends. We all sat together for lunch. No joke, this chick sneezed all over her plate without covering her mouth and nose, saying she had allergies. It was like, ten sneezes, at least. Maybe fifteen. And she sat there eating her food the whole time like it was no big deal.”
“She even offered me one of her fries,” I added.
Huck shook his head. “Okay, that’s gross. But it still doesn’t beat my blind date story.”
“Of course not,” Lopez said. “It’s impossible to beat a one-upper at anything. Lay it on us.”
“Well,” Huck said, “we stopped at her family’s barbeque on the way to our date. After I kissed her.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said. “What happened?”
“We found out we were third cousins,” he replied.
Lopez pointed to Huck with his pizza crust. “Okay, you win.”
6
Amy
“You’ve got this in the bag,” Claire said, taking a sip from the glass bottle in her hand. “Belinda doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Thanks,” I replied, looking around the break room to see if any of Belinda’s lackeys were around. Couldn’t be too careful. “I just can’t believe Belinda thinks she deserves to take over. She might be Julia’s best friend, but she’d probably ruin everything Julia built here.”
“Do you mean before or after she changed out all of the fixtures to yellow gold monstrosities and installed that black-and-white checkerboard flooring from my grandma’s kitchen?”
“Right?” I lifted my coffee halfway to my mouth before pausing. “Are you sure you don’t mind if I drink this in front of you?”
Claire eyed my cup of coffee like she was the bad guy from Titanic and my mug was that coveted blue diamond. “Whether you’re drinking it in front of me or not, I’m still going to want it. Just the fact that you can drink it makes me want to stab you even if you’re not actively drinking it.”
I swallowed the sip I’d just taken. “Sounds like the juice cleanse is going well.”
“Oh, swimmingly. I have to pee all the time, sometimes I’m dizzy, I’m tired because I obviously can’t drink coffee, and I got sick of juice by like … the third serving.”
“How soon was that?”
“Halfway through the first day. I have to drink six bottles. Every. Freaking. Day.”
“Ah.”
“Plus, of course, I’m constantly confronted with things I can’t have. Like your coffee.”
“Which probably makes the mood worse.”
Her eyes zipped to mine. “What mood?”
Before I had a chance to backpedal my way out of that hairy situation, in walked Belinda’s assistant, Bobby. Claire was my assistant, so she and Bobby shared a tight smile as he crossed the break room towards us. The support staff at First Comes Love was a pretty tight-knit bunch, but there was just something about Bobby that made the group uncomfortable. It was like the fact that he worked for the Wicked Witch of the West meant that he was—by extension—also a green-skinned witch with a pointy hat. I didn’t know him as well as Claire did, but I definitely knew his boss, and I hated her with a fiery passion.
“Bobby,” Claire said with a curt nod.
“Claire.” He raised a bro
w at the label on the bottle of juice in her hand. “Isn’t that cleanse like sixty-five dollars a day?”
She bristled. “It’s healthy. I like to invest in my health.”
“You know what else is healthy?” he asked, one hand on his hip. “Three square meals comprised of whole foods. And it costs a lot less than sixty-five dollars a day.”
Claire lifted a brow at him. “Bobby, I don’t hope you’ll die or anything, but I do hope you’ll suddenly develop an allergy to bacon. And ice cream.”
“Do you think I look like this because I eat that crap?” he retorted. “I cannot believe you’re paying all that money for someone to squish up some veggies and put it in a cute little bottle.”
“There’s fruit, too,” Claire snapped.
“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands, “nice to see you, Bobby, as always.”
Bobby chuckled to himself and waved a hand like we weren’t worth his time. He sauntered towards the fridge and pulled out the bento box he’d packed his lunch in. I turned back to Claire, eyeing her carefully. In the last three days of this juice cleanse, she’d gotten scarier and scarier. I wanted to ask for the tenth time how much longer it would go on, but I didn’t want to face her wrath. Even though I’d forgotten the timeline, I was sure she was counting down the minutes.
“How did the meeting with Dexter Harrington go?” Claire asked, looking at the tablet on the table in front of her.
My whole body warmed as I pictured his strong jaw and critical eyes. I shook my head. Where had that come from? “It was good. He’s got some baggage, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“Don’t we all?” she said, taking a sip of juice and looking ill as she swallowed it. “What kind of baggage? Is he a cheater?”
“No, definitely nothing bad on his part. He got his heart broken by his first love when he was younger and hasn’t been willing to put himself out there ever since.”
She nodded. “Ouch. So, he’s got like zero dating experience.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I knew what she was thinking. On the one hand, zero experience could mean less baggage in a good way. Most people bring their past partners into their new relationships and compare and contrast in unfair ways. But when you have too little experience, you often don’t have a clue about what’s normal on a date. You can’t spot the red flags. And you can’t give the green lights for more intimacy if you don’t even know what that means. Plus, when your only past love did a real number on you, you wouldn’t trust again very easily. I’d have my work cut out for me with Dex, for sure.
“Next up is Debbie. You’re meeting with her after work today.”
“Right.” I was excited about Debbie. From her file, she seemed like she’d be a fairly straightforward client that I could probably match up in only a few dates. Which was good, because she was the second of the three clients assigned to me for the competition with Belinda.
Debbie was a middle-aged divorcée with one adult daughter. She was a retired grandma who volunteered to help with the grandkids as much as she could. She was looking for a man who also had adult children, preferably with grandchildren of his own, so he would understand how important they were to her. There was no shortage of men like that in the First Comes Love client pool, so I was looking forward to setting her up with the most family-friendly ones in the bunch.
“And when is my appointment with Bill?”
Claire looked at the tablet. “Tomorrow at lunch.”
“Sounds good.”
I sipped my coffee and tried to remember what I’d seen in my third competition client’s file. In addition to those three, I still had all of my regular clients to keep track of. I was grateful that as a senior matchmaker I was entitled to an assistant to help keep everything straight. When I was an entry-level matchmaker, I’d had to learn pretty quickly that I couldn’t take on too many clients at once. I’d only made a few scheduling errors before I learned the ropes, but the ones I did make were the talk of the office.
That client who showed up for a date with his own mother? My fault.
The time when the restaurant was closed for repairs when my clients showed up for their date? My fault.
The fact that the restaurant needed repairs in the first place? Also, my fault.
But that was a story for another time.
“Remind me about Bill again. I’m sorry, I think I’m mixing him up with another client,” I said.
Claire tapped the screen on the tablet and began to summarize his digital file. “Bill is a widower. His wife died about ten years ago and his kids have signed him up for our services to get him back into the dating world.”
I nodded, remembering now. It was a common enough story around here. These kids thought their parents were pathetic and needed some help in the dating world. They felt guilty for all of their time spent away at college or starting their own families and wanted their single mom or dad to be happy, too. Sometimes the parents told them to shut up and leave them alone to enjoy being completely independent for once. Other times, the parents were legitimately lonely and appreciated the push to find companionship. I got the sense from browsing Bill’s file that he was one of the latter examples, which should make him fairly easy to match up.
Now that I thought about it, could I match Bill up with Debbie and call it a day on two out of the three competition clients?
“Aren’t you ladies going to be late?” Bobby asked, making me jump.
“Bobby, you need to wear a bell,” I said, hand on my heart.
“Very funny,” he drawled.
“Late for what?” Claire asked.
“Didn’t you get the e-mail? Julia wants us to come in for story time.” Bobby wagged his brows.
Story time at work was when something particularly sweet and romance-movie worthy happened with our clients. Julia made it a point to bring us all into the conference room so she could praise the matchmaker who made it happen and remind us all why we did what we did. Julia got to be all showboaty and praise her empire of cupids, and we left the meeting with what she hoped was an air of anything-is-possible giddiness. Usually, however, the impromptu meeting interrupted the very act of finding matches for our clients, so I wound up being slightly peeved every time it came up.
“What time is it?” I asked Claire. I had a to-do list as long as my arm and hated that I’d need to sit through an hour of Julia reminding us how important our jobs were to the people of Southern California.
Before I could register what was happening and stop her, Claire lifted her hand and tilted her wrist to look at her watch. I don’t know if she forgot she was holding the glass bottle of bright-orange veggie juice, or if she’d simply thought she’d had the lid screwed on, but as she tipped her hand to check the time, the entire bottle freely poured right into her lap. The neon beverage soaked into her cream-colored dress, splashing up to her neck and face.
You could have heard a pin drop in the break room at that moment. All eyes were on Claire and her drenched dress. I don’t know what I expected to happen, whether it be screams of panic and frustration or unbridled laughter over such a ridiculous blunder. But my poor, splattered, carrot-juice-smelling assistant just sat there, silently staring at the mess in her lap.
After a minute, Bobby let out the snort that he’d probably been holding in. “Oh, honey.”
Claire looked up and met my eyes. “I really hate this freaking juice.”
7
Dex
“Why are you early?”
I jumped, not expecting to hear Amy’s voice from behind me. Turning to face her, I was immediately struck by the way her royal-blue shirt made her skin almost glow in the dim restaurant. The neckline of the shirt started at her shoulders and sloped across her chest, not too low, but wide.
Her brown hair was piled high on her head, and the combination of the hairstyle and the shirt drew my gaze down her neck and over her collarbone. My lips tingled at the thought of tracing light kisses along that route. What would
happen if I just stepped forward and reached for her?
Wait. What was I thinking? When, in all of my life, had I ever envisioned trailing a line of kisses along a woman’s collarbone just based on the slope of her neckline? I wasn’t that smooth guy who could pull off a move like that with no lead-up. And Amy would probably headbutt me if I tried.
“Earth to Dex. Why are you early?”
“I like to be early,” I said, clearing my throat and trying to wipe away my surprising train of thought. The early bird gets the … extra time to ogle his matchmaker.
Amy checked the time on her watch. “An hour early, though? That’s a little extreme.”
“I had a rough day at work and wanted to get out of the house. Why does it matter?”
“Because you’re not my only client, and I strategically plan several dates for the same very long and tiresome evening so I’m not working sixteen-hour days all week. You coming early just cuts into my time between dates and stretches my availability too thin.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and shifted on the barstool so I was facing her. Her full lips were pulled into a terse line and there was a slight crease between her brows. She looked positively piqued. “Are you serious? So, what, you hang out at the bar during the date in case your client needs you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a little excessive, don’t you think?” A thought occurred to me and my mouth dropped open. “Oh no. Are you going to fit me with an earpiece so you can tell me what to say on my date? My friend warned me this might happen.”
“Do you need me to?”
I quirked a brow. “No. But if I said yes, is that a thing?”
“Anything for a VIP.”
A Match for the Marine: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (First Comes Love Book 1) Page 4
