Matchmakers 2.0 (A Novel Nibbles title) Page 5

I squirmed. Honesty genes again. “I didn’t buy it; my friend Jazie supplied it. She’s probably a good part of why I agreed to the second date, too.”

  Sam laughed, and pulled a pen out of his backpack. He signed the book and gave it to me. To Jazie. I owe you one. Sam. Yeah, like that wasn’t going to give her a big head.

  He grinned. “I’ll sign your copy, too, if you want.”

  You can only be embarrassed for so long. “Chapter Seven, maybe?”

  Sam looked confused. I opened the book to Chapter Seven and handed it to him. His turn for red cheeks. He was right; they were really cute. “I, uh, forgot about that chapter, but even I can tell that sounds really lame. Tell me you liked it, at least.”

  “Wasn’t much not to like, but I’m not walking in the Japanese garden with you later.” His cheeks got redder. Yup, that was definitely the location for Chapter Seven. “So tell me, do you make all that stuff up, or do you have a particular fondness for being reckless in outdoor places?”

  He handed me a drumstick. “I have a very vivid imagination and a fondness for the outdoors, but I’m a lot more private than my characters.”

  I munched on chicken. Privacy was good. I had some fairly stirred-up hormones after reading his stuff all weekend, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to act on them in the middle of Duke Gardens.

  A small child wandered onto our blanket. She grabbed Sam’s Frisbee and plunked herself down in his lap. She grinned up at him and talked gibberish. Add ‘fluent in baby-speak’ to Sam’s credentials. He flirted with her like an experienced pro. The toddler wobbled off a few moments later, still clutching his Frisbee.

  He waved at her. “I hope you weren’t really attached to playing Frisbee.”

  I make little squishy animal toys as a hobby. Of course I’m a total sucker for kids. “You were really good with her.”

  “My sister has twins. They’re five now and starting school, but it was pretty crazy when they were little. I put in a lot of uncle time.” He shrugged. “I like kids.”

  I gave him what he wanted to know. “Me, too. You’re lucky to have some that you can share close by.” I had no idea how we’d moved from erotic books to the unspoken desire for future parenthood in the space of one drumstick. Heavy stuff for a second date.

  I was getting way sucked in. It was really hard to believe I was going to have to thank MatchMakers for this. Or Derrick. Maybe something in Duke Gardens was contagious.

  Time for another moment of weakness. “So, do you want to go to an engagement party?”

  He looked puzzled, but agreeable. “Writers are up for all kinds of weird stuff.”

  “Remember the old lady and her date at Cosmic? Her name’s Hazel. I think he’s George.” My honesty gene was on overdrive. “I set them up through MatchMakers. They’re having an engagement party on Tuesday.”

  Sam grinned. “That, I didn’t find out on Google. I knew you had a total soft spot for her. How long ago did you set them up?”

  “Cosmic was their first date; you had them pegged.”

  “Go, George.” Sam looked very impressed.

  “I think it’s more like ‘Go, Hazel’,” I said. “She bagged her first husband in six weeks. I don’t think George stood a chance.”

  “This I have to see. Just let me know where and when on Tuesday.”

  I handed him back his book. “I think you’ll see Jazie there, too, so you can give her this yourself. It will save me from a multitude of questions I don’t want to answer.” I gave him my evil grin. “She can ask you, instead.”

  “That may require a guy date in compensation. Can I drag you to a baseball game? There’s a triple-A team here in town, the Bulls. They’re pretty good. I have season tickets.”

  I was pathetically grateful for common ground that didn’t involve sex or kids. “We’ll see whether your season-ticket seats are better than mine.”

  It was a fairly epic second date. We walked, we talked for hours, we even joined a Frisbee game for a while. He kisses at least as well as any of his characters. Anyone wanting more details than that will have to wait for Sam’s next book.

  Chapter 11

  Monday at the office was just plain unsettling.

  Miri gave her formal two weeks’ notice, which meant I needed to brave the waters with perky Crystal in HR to discuss hiring. Perky was really hard to handle on a Monday.

  Derrick was still in serious Lily infatuation, but he was also bereft at the news of Miri’s imminent departure. Going to miss his new love guidance counselor, I guess.

  I found myself mimicking some of Derrick’s more disturbing new behaviors, like staring at walls and smiling at no one in particular. I wasn’t used to being happy on Monday mornings. It was very creepy.

  Sam sent me flowers. That would have been really clichéd, except I think he stole them from Duke Gardens. They came with a book wrapped in plain brown paper with “This one’s for you” scrawled on the top. I managed to hide the package before Miri showed up. Under no circumstances were we having another impromptu erotica reading session.

  I kept grinning at the flowers. It was virgin territory for me. The last time I was lost in dopey-grin land, I was about eight.

  Trying to keep my inner dwarf under control, I joined most of the other MatchMakers’ employees in our biggest conference room. It was time for the annual report meeting. That’s about as much fun as it sounds.

  Derrick, Miri, and I fought for real estate in the back row. It’s highly competitive. No one wants to sit far enough forward to actually have to pay attention.

  This year they had a new gimmick. We all got little remote-control thingies. Apparently someone had noticed the number of people who slept through last year’s report, so this year there was going to be audience participation. At random points during the presentation, they’d ask questions, and we’d all have to vote with our little devices.

  Miri passed hers to one of the guys in IT, who looked like he was ready to play dueling gadgets. Derrick was already disassembling his remote and wiring it into the USB port on his handheld. If he had a way to vote and sleep, I wanted to know about it.

  He texted me back. He was piggybacking on my vote, so he could chat with Lily. This is why they pay me the big bucks as team leader, so that I can facilitate sloth.

  The first question came right at the beginning. We were supposed to vote ‘A’ if we had figured out how to use our remotes, or vote ‘B’ if we hadn’t. The votes showed up live on the big screen, which was cool. Eighty-six percent voted ‘A.’ Eight percent voted ‘B.’ Hello people, if you can push a button, you’ve got the stupid device mastered. Six percent voted ‘C.’ Either the monkeys were loose again, or the dueling-gadgets guy wasn’t paying attention.

  Derrick grinned at me and kept typing away on his handheld. Traitor.

  The person beside me elbowed me in the ribs. Shit. We were supposed to vote again. I’d missed the question, but I was college educated and knew what to do. When in doubt, always pick ‘C’. The presenter frowned. Apparently, we college-educated types hadn’t given the right answer.

  I tried to pay more attention, but sing-song voices should be illegal, especially on Mondays. Sudden laughter in the front row woke up the back half of the room. There had been no laughter in annual report meetings, ever.

  Our newly-hired psychostatistician was speaking. Even Derrick was paying attention, now. The guy was pretty funny. He had numbers for everything. More of our male clients wanted children than did our female clients. Marketing scribbled madly. I could just see our next marketing campaign, with lots of ticking clocks.

  The greatest impediment to women’s liberation is dumb commercials.

  Time to vote again. What percentage of our clients stayed hooked up for at least ninety days with one of their first three dates? I guessed ‘B’, for twenty percent. Most people said ‘A’, less than ten percent. Pessimists. Some nimwit said eighty percent. Probably the new Marketing intern.

  Fifty-five percent, said psychonu
mbers guy. The nimwit was closer than I was. I hadn’t considered the automatic matches, the ones the system suggests. Those clients never make it as far as the match team. A lot of people hooked up without us. That was comforting; the human race would survive, even if my team imploded.

  My favorite random factoid—thirty percent of our female clients prefer chocolate to sex. Of course, we’re too dumb to make ‘chocolate and sex’ an answer.

  By the end of the meeting, only the front row was even pretending to vote any longer. I’m not the only one that is resistant to change.

  I wandered back to my desk. I had procrastinated effectively enough that I now had less than six hours to deal with my Match the Loser picks. Miri had offered me her strategy, but I figured if she was opening her own store, she could use the $2,000 winner’s check.

  Maybe I should just repeat my cute babies deal. I opened up MakeMyBabies.com and fed in a couple of my potential matches, and then gave up. I sucked at ranking cuteness in babies, and there was no time to get help from the Granny Squad.

  Derrick walked by my office humming. I plucked his and Lily’s profile pictures off of Facebook and ran them through. It was gratifying to see that they would make very cute babies. Then just for kicks, I ran Hazel and George through.

  If Hazel had made her move fifty years ago, they could have made some sweet babies together.

  It’s the baby haze that made me do it, I swear. I ran Sam and me through. I haven’t been able to get that adorable baby face with Sam’s grin and my blue eyes out of my head since.

  Crystal walked into my office, which pretty much killed the baby haze. “Hello, Michaela,” she said. Stupid government forms that require your legal name. “I hear you’re going to need a new team member soon. Is now a good time to go over the job description?”

  I should get bonus pay for dealing with job descriptions in the same day as the annual report meeting. I read the job description she handed me. No one would ever have confused it for Miri. “It seems kind of dry. We really need someone that understands relationships and the complex factors that go into making good matches.”

  Yeah, that didn’t sound dry and boring at all, but you couldn’t exactly post for an astrology whiz that studies guys as a hobby and had fun in college acting as the dorm matchmaker. HR frowned on that kind of hiring.

  Crystal leaned over and whispered. “Unofficially, senior management would like to see us add some more life experience to our match team, since we’ve moved into the seniors’ dating market.”

  I had to hire someone old? Unless Hazel was looking for a job, that was going to suck. Maybe Hazel had some hip and slightly younger friends. I made a mental note to take copies of the job description to her engagement party. That’s the kind of sick thought that comes to you courtesy of corporate America.

  I looked over at the flowers from Sam. Inspiration can hit when you least expect it.

  “Crystal, I have a match emergency. Can we deal with this later?” I don’t know what her answer was. My lack of adherence to hiring procedure will probably get duly noted in my HR file.

  I did have a match emergency. I knew how to win Match the Loser and barely had enough time to get it done.

  Chapter 12

  You might think an engagement party at four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon would be boring. You’d be wrong.

  I’m pretty sure Hazel knows every cool person of any age in Durham. I want to be her when I grow up. I met a retired grunge musician, a pair of guys who scoop elephant poop at the zoo, and a woman who teaches belly dancing. And that was just in the first ten minutes as I hung out by the door waiting for Sam.

  I’d taken a quick tour through the house first. Hazel’s grandson was mixing some seriously eclectic dance music in the family room. I saw a couple of guys in tap shoes weaving amongst couples trying out the tango.

  Miri sat happily ensconced in a small parlor doing tarot cards and astrology readings. I had no idea Miri and Hazel even knew each other. I needed to keep Miri far, far away from Sam. No discussions of inventive Aquarius lovers were happening on my watch.

  Two very swank laptops were set up on the breakfast bar in the kitchen. A grinning picture of Hazel and George stood nearby, with a We Met at MatchMakers.com sign attached. The computers were doing a humming business. Marketing needs to get Hazel on the books.

  Hazel’s family didn’t seem at all surprised by either the speed or method of her engagement. George seemed happily overwhelmed.

  I saw Sam come in the front door and waved before he got waylaid by the elephant-poop scoopers. A party like this had to be a goldmine of writer’s material, but I wanted to try the tango. “Hey Sam, wanna dance?”

  He grinned and held up flowers. “Sure. I just need to give these to the lucky lady first.”

  I took his hand to lead him back to the kitchen. I had no idea where Hazel was, but we could probably round up a beer bottle for the flowers.

  Sam’s head swiveled much as mine had on my initial tour. The MatchMakers kiosk in the kitchen made him laugh. The belly dancer waved from one of the computers. “I never meet any guys at my job,” she said. “This is perfect.” Well, she shouldn’t be hard to match.

  I parked the flowers in an empty bottle and dragged Sam into the family room. The tango music had ended, replaced by big-band flapper music. My partner, however, was totally distracted by the tap dancers. “I really want to try that.”

  “So, give it a try.” Hazel stood just behind us. “You must be Mick’s nice young man.”

  “I am, but she’s lucky I didn’t get matched with you first. I’m Sam.”

  Hazel leaned over and stage-whispered in his ear. “Sam, I’m deeply in love with George, but I’d be open to a wild fling with a nice young man first. You’ll have to move fast, though; the wedding’s on Saturday.”

  Yeah, like that wasn’t going to end up in his next book. Heck, she was probably going to star in his next book. Hazel’s Last Wild Fling.

  Sam just grinned. “You might be too hot for me to handle, Hazel. George is a lucky guy.”

  “He knows it,” said Hazel. “So, I hear you’re a writer? I love to read. My friend Miri is opening a bookstore; you’ll have to do a signing for her.” Hey, that was my idea.

  Sam laughed. “I write the kind of books that don’t usually get carried around in public. None of the local bookstores carry them.”

  Hazel’s eyes opened wide. “You write sexy books?” She chortled. “I bet Miri would carry them.” She yelled down the hall for Miri. Hazel has some lungs on her.

  Miri came out of her broom closet. “Hey Hazel, have you stolen anyone else’s heart yet?” She looked at Sam and me. “Hazel’s a Gemini; they’re incorrigible flirts.”

  Astrology wasn’t always wrong.

  Hazel introduced my date. “Miri, this is Sam. He writes sexy books, and I think you should put them in your store. They’d be great for business.”

  Miri wasn’t slow. “You’re Mick’s writer?” She looked totally gleeful. Shit.

  Sam gave me a big, juicy kiss. “I am.”

  “You write some really good sex.” It’s hard to believe that was Miri’s opening to a business conversation, but it was. “I totally need you to do a book signing for me, maybe even at our grand opening.”

  Sam looked a little disconcerted. “Not everyone in Durham knows what I do. It might be a good thing to keep it that way.”

  Hazel winked at Miri. “After the book signing, they’ll all know. You’ll be our famous and sexy local author.”

  No one says no to Hazel. Or to Miri. One of them should run for President.

  Hazel had one more parting shot as she walked off to find George. “Sam, I want a full set of your books for my wedding present. At my age, I need some new ideas.”

  Sam shook his head. “I’m dazzled. And bulldozed, I think. Does George have any idea what he’s gotten himself into?”

  Miri laughed. “Nope. He’s a Taurus. They’re sweet and reliable, but they do
n’t move very fast.” She winked at Sam and handed him a business card. “Neither do certain Libras I know. I’m not kidding about the book signing. Call me.”

  Sam looked confused. “Who’s a Libra?”

  I sighed. “Me. Miri insists I’m the most unfit Libra she’s ever known.”

  “And how do you know Miri?”

  I sighed again. “She works for me. Or she did. She’s quitting to open her own bookstore. You should do the book signing; it would be really cool for her.” I’m a devoted friend, it says so right there in my astrology chart.

  Sam looked highly amused. “You use astrology to make matches?”

  “Sssshhh.” I looked around. “That cannot get out. It’s not all we use, but yeah, Miri’s stuff can be useful sometimes. I don’t know if it’s the astrology or she’s just got good instincts, but either way, it’s going to suck losing her.”

  Jazie came running up. Clearly, Miri had put out the word that my guy was present and accounted for. “Hey, Mick. You must be Sam. I’m Jazie; Mick and I have been friends forever.”

  Sam held up both hands. “I’m financially solvent, no criminal record, and I know about the guppies.” He was good. Very, very good.

  Jazie laughed and hooked his elbow. “Sure, but do you know about the little felted animals?” There are no secrets worth keeping in my life, apparently.

  Sam looked curious, and then got distracted. “Wait, you’re Jazie?” He pulled a book from his back pocket. “This is for you. Thanks. I owe you one.”

  Jazie grinned at him. “Thanks. I’ll find you later. We need to talk.”

  Sam wrapped me into his arms. “Little felted animals?” Not so distractible after all.

  “I make them. Knit them, shrink them in my washing machine, and sell them online. I’m really just an old lady in a younger woman’s body. I live a sad and lonely life with my balls of yarn and three cats.”

  “You’re cute. Do you really have three cats?”

  “No. Just the yarn.”

  “Can you make some felted critters for my nieces? They’ll be six next week.”