Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) (26 page)

“This is stupid,” she muttered. She took it off again, tossed it back into the drawer, and went into the living room.

“Mr. Monkey,” she said to her cat, who sat serenely on the back of the couch, “I’m in a fake relationship, and I don’t even know whether we’re still fake-together or if we’ve fake-broken up.”

Mr. Monkey blinked at her, shifted his feet infinitesimally, and went back to staring stoically into the middle distance.

“I know,” Lisa sighed. “It’s ridiculous.” She flopped down onto the other end of the couch, wrinkling her nose when its smell poofed up around her.

Clare was right. The thing was old and nasty, and not befitting of a grown woman. Living frugally be damned; she needed to buy a new couch.

In a rare show of overt affection, Mr. Monkey chose that moment to slink over to where Lisa sat and bump his forehead against the side of her head. Instantly, unexpectedly, tears prickled at the corners of her eyes.

“It’s going to be a long weekend,” she said to the cat, who leapt down onto the cushion next to hers and bumped his head against her hand, demanding to be caressed.

At least she wasn’t completely alone, she reflected. She had this cranky, reclusive, mercurial cat for companionship. And that would have to be enough, because her brief taste of intimate companionship with an actual human being seemed to be already in the past.

Chapter
30

____________________________________

O
n Monday, Lisa pushed herself through three morning massage sessions, barely able to keep her mind on the task at hand.

Even Harry Richmond, normally dense as a doorknob, noticed the difference. He reared up onto his elbows and looked over his shoulder at her as she was working on his hamstrings.

“Everything okay today, Lisa?”

She jolted a bit. “Of course. I’m sorry, is something wrong?”

“No, you just seem a little bit out of it.” He squinted at her. “Something happen to you? You change your hair recently?”

“No,” she said, slightly embarrassed that he was paying such close attention to her, and very embarrassed that he’d noticed her distraction. “I went to the beach last weekend. Maybe I got some sun.”

“Must be it.” He settled back onto his stomach with a long, damp sigh. “Some ol’ boy ain’t causing you trouble, now, is he?”

Apparently, her pause confirmed his suspicion, because Harry nodded knowingly. “Yep. When a woman sulks, it’s always over a man.”

Lisa felt her cheeks burn, and resisted the perverse urge to grill him on whether he believed lesbians never sulked or if they, too, were prey to the whims of the male species.

“I’m not sulking, Mr. Richmond. Shall we continue the massage, or would you like to finish up for today?”

He assessed her out of narrowed eyes. “You know, you’ve been calling me Mr. Richmond for a year now. Don’t you think it’s time we got a little less formal? I mean, you see me in my birthday suit every dang week.”

He pronounced it
ever’ dang
, in his adorable Texan accent. Lisa couldn’t help but laugh. “All right...Harry.”

“That’s better.” He plunked his big head back down and oozed out another of his signature wet sighs. “I’m going in for a waxing session after this. You think I should’ve scheduled it for before the massage? It’s prob’ly gonna make me all tensed up, isn’t it?”

“Waxing?” Lisa stopped massaging him for a moment. “What are you having waxed?”

“My back.” He shifted his great bulk. “I’m doing it for Sherry.”

“Sherry?”

“My beloved wife.”

“What?” Lisa squeaked. The man had so, so much hair. “Mr.—Harry, is your wife forcing you to do this?”

“’Course not. We came up with it together. Thought it’d bring some spark back into the relationship.”

“Oh.” It was so sweet, and ridiculous, and such a bad idea, that her eyes stung with instant tears. “That’s—that’s very sweet. I hope it works. And doesn’t hurt too badly.”

“Oh, it’ll be great,” he said, with such conviction that Lisa’s throat developed a sudden lump.

When the session was over, she left him alone in the room and went out to join Clare in reception.

“You okay?” Clare asked as she entered the room. “You look a little funny.”

“God, everyone’s asking me that today. Do I have something stuck in my teeth, or something?” Lisa attempted a laugh that came out short and brittle, and plopped into a chair. “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

“Three sessions, back to back,” Clare said carefully. “That’s a lot.”

“Yeah.” Lisa frowned. “Can we all do lunch together, today? You, me and Willow?”

Clare glanced at the clock above her computer. “I’ll have thirty free minutes in about a half-hour.” She consulted her computer screen next. “Looks like Willow’s schedule is clear then, too. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Lisa shook her head. “Everything. I need to figure out what to do about Adam.”

“Ah.” Clare nodded wisely. “Lunch it is. We’ll figure it out together.”

A half-hour later, the three of them sat at an iron table on a sun-dappled patio at a little Mediterranean restaurant on Third Street, with an order of pita bread and hummus to share.

“I’m telling you,” Clare said as she dipped a pita triangle into the hummus, “you should just call him. This isn’t the nineteen-fifties. I know you don’t have a cell phone, but landlines work perfectly well for making calls. Sometimes even better.”

Lisa rolled her eyes, grabbed a Greek olive and popped it into her mouth. “I can’t call him,” she said around it.

“Sure you can. You have his number. Hell, I have his number.” She pulled out her cell from her bag and held it out to Lisa. “Call him. Will and I can wait.”

Lisa shrank back. “I can’t.”

“Why not, sweetie?” Willow wrapped a wedge of pita around an olive and then dipped it delicately into the hummus. “Do you want to use my phone? I have his number, too.”

Lisa gave her a look. “You both have Adam’s number?”

Clare and Willow both blinked innocently back at her.

“You guys are weird,” Lisa said, and took a bite of pita wedge.

“Don’t try to avoid the subject,” Clare said. “Why can’t you call him?”

“Because...”

“Because you’re scared,” Clare said matter-of-factly. Lisa was relieved to see her drop her cell back into her bag.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Lisa asked, a touch defensively. “I don’t even know what our status is. Or our fake-status. All I know is, I hurt Adam, and then I screwed things up even worse with the whole Jacob thing.” She shook her head and took a dispirited sip of iced tea.

“Technically, Adam started the whole thing when he lied to that interviewer that you were his fiancée,” Willow said mildly. “Let’s not forget that.”

“Look, if there’s one thing I know about men,” Clare said, “it’s that they can’t stand to lose. It’s, like, coded into their DNA. They can’t help it. Every single one of them, even the betas, have that competitive streak that makes them all grumpy and grouchy and boo-hoo-ey when they think they’ve been beaten by another man.”

“So?” Lisa said.

“So, granted, Adam is hurt because he’s in love with you—”

“He is not in love with me,” Lisa groused.

“—but he’s also hurt,” Clare went on, as if Lisa hadn’t spoken, “because he bought into the press about his cheating fiancée, and he thinks he’s been beaten by all these other guys you’ve been banging.”

“I haven’t ‘banged’ anyone,” Lisa protested. “Except Adam.”

“Whoa, tiger.” Clare held up a quelling hand. “You know that, and I know that. Even Adam knows that, on a logical, conscious level. It’s that pesky subconscious level that’s the problem.”

Willow nodded. “I have to say, I agree.”

“Thank you,” Clare said, inclining her head regally.

“So what is she supposed to do about it?” Willow asked, selecting another pita wedge from the tray.

“What am I supposed to do about it?” Lisa repeated. “What, it’s up to me to work against some sort of caveman impulse inside Adam’s subconscious mind that has him all hurt and wounded because he thinks I had sex with someone else, and that means—what—he lost the biggest-dick caveman DNA war?”

Clare burst out laughing. “Something like that, yeah. And yes, you have to work against it. I mean, if you care about him. Which you obviously do.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “Have you ever heard people say men are highly visual creatures?”

“Sure. It’s why they all watch porn. So what?”

“So, right now, Adam has an image of you making the beast with two backs with some other dude,” Clare explained. “Which means it’s up to you to plant a new visual in his head.”

Willow looked closely at Clare. “I’m impressed. I’m serious. You know what you should really do? You should go back to school and become a therapist. A counselor.”

“Go back to school?” Clare snorted. “Nope. Not going to happen. And I’m pretty sure it takes a bunch of years to become a therapist, not to mention a bunch of money, so that’s definitely not in my plans.”

“Then you should have your own talk show,” Willow insisted. “Or something. You should be counseling people on their love lives. You’re really good at this. You read men better than anyone else I know.”

“Well, I do have a gift,” Clare said, with a silly grin, pretending to fluff her hair. “Hey,” she added, “maybe Adam can help me set up a website where people come to me with their hopeless love lives and I straighten them out and help them find the love of their lives. Or at least really great sex.”

“That’s actually a fantastic idea.” Willow sat up straighter. “Maybe you could be Miss Match on the Mister-Match site. Like the in-house advice columnist, or something.”

Clare barked out a laugh. “Yeah, right. I think you need to be famous to do something like that, or at least have a degree in, like, relationship-ology. And writers probably can’t have dyslexia. So, yeah, no. I have absolutely no qualifications for a job like that.”

“Adam’s only qualification for Mister-Match was that he had a lot of personal experience with divorce,” Lisa pointed out.

“Yeah, that and his degree in Psychology from Harvard.” Clare shook her head. “I don’t think my thirty semester hours at Austin Community College would really impress anyone the way a Harvard degree might.”

“You’ll find your niche,” Willow said. “It’s in your birth chart that you get better with age. Among other things, your Mars is in Capricorn.”

“I get better with age.” Clare grinned. “I like that. I like that a lot.”

“Wait,” Lisa interrupted, “can we focus on my man problems, for a second? How am I supposed to plant a new visual in Adam’s head?”

Clare pointed at her. “This is where some nudie pics from your hot weekend in Galveston would really come in handy. You sure you guys didn’t take any?”

“No, we didn’t take any nudie pics,” Lisa grumbled.

“Of course not—you don’t have a cell phone. What am I thinking?” Clare frowned, considering. “I guess we could do a little boudoir photo shoot after work. I have some pretty sweet lingerie that would fit you. Your boobs are bigger than mine, but that’s a good thing—they’ll totally just spill over the top, and a little nip-slip is always welcome—”

“What,” Lisa interrupted, “are you talking about?”

“Taking some sexy pictures of you,” Clare said, slowly, as if talking to a simpleton, “so we can text them to Adam.”

“I am not doing that,” Lisa said, in the same slow, deliberate tone.

Clare sighed. “Well, then, if you want to plant a new visual in his head, I guess you’ll just have to do it in person.”

Lisa’s stomach quaked at the thought. “What do you mean?”

Willow gave her a knowing smile. Clare’s expression was more withering. “Come on, DeLuca, you aren’t that innocent, are you?”

She grabbed her bag, shoved back her chair and stood. “I need to get back to the spa.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Willow said, and took one last bite of pita.

“Wait, how do I plant a new visual in person?” Lisa asked, but her friends just waved at her and set off down Third, their hair shining brightly in the sunlight—Willow’s wispy, pale blond hair glistening like gold, and Clare’s burgundy bob gleaming darkly.

Lisa slumped in her chair. They were seriously like the devil and angel on her shoulders, live and in human form.

And of course she knew exactly what Clare meant. She even knew how Clare would do it, if she were in Lisa’s position: She would go to Adam, strip down to a lacy demi-bra and cheeky panties, and force the poor man into lust-driven submission.

But that wasn’t Lisa’s style, not by a long shot. Even if she wanted to do something as crazy and risky as that, she had no idea where Adam was, at the moment. The New Orleans Dream Date had ended yesterday. He could have flown anywhere in the country by now.

Come to think of it, she had no idea where the man lived. She’d fallen in love with someone who could be homeless, and she would have no idea.

The thought, which had popped into her head out of the blue, shocked her. Not Adam’s potential for homelessness—there were worse things, and if the man didn’t have a home address, he certainly hid it well in all his first-class travels all over the country.

No, it was the love bit that had taken her completely by surprise.

“I love Adam Masters,” she murmured aloud, trying it out to see how it felt.

It felt real, and simple, and true. Somehow, at some point in all the craziness over the past few weeks, she’d fallen for this sweet, innovative, sharp, creative, sexy, wonderful man.

“Oh, God,” she said, and tossed the wedge of pita bread she’d been holding back onto the tray. She was head over heels for the guy, and she didn’t even know where he was so she could go find out if he might possibly feel even a fraction of the same way.

She frowned at her half-empty glass of iced tea, which was sweating condensation onto the iron table as its ice melted. It wasn’t her style to show up in a man’s bedroom wearing something naughty. But it also wasn’t as if her usual style had been working out all that well for her.

Maybe it was time for her to step outside her comfort zone—well outside of it—and try something different, for a change.