Page 32 of Stupid Matchmaking Love

“Oh, you noticed, did you?”

“Not on purpose, of course. It’s just . . . it’s been very quiet.”

“So you’re saying I’m loud.”

“Not loud, just distinct.”

“That makes me sound like a deodorant.”

He barks a laugh. “Trust me, Cristina, the last thing you are is something as boring as a stick of deodorant.”

His dark eyes pull me in like an abyss.

My gaze drops to the sticky bar top.

“You look tired,” he murmurs.

I throw my hands up. “Why does everyone keep telling me that?”

“Maybe because it’s true.”

“Maybe you should mind your own business.”

“You’ve been working too hard.”

I grin tightly into his face. “I’ve barely been working at all.”

Which is absolute garbage. I’ve been seeing six clients a day, which is my max. Every night, my shoulders ache.

Today my hands are killing me. But it’s kept me from thinking about Glen and the money he wants. I’ve got reception screening my calls, so he hasn’t been in touch again.

But it’s only a matter of time before he finds another way to contact me.

“Besides,” I tell Rhett, tipping up my nose, “what do you care how much I work?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I run a resort.”

“Is that all you are?” I suddenly say, surprising even myself. “Just a guy who runs a resort? Don’t you have any hobbies? Pick-up basketball games? Shuffleboard?”

“You mean like making Bitty Beings.”

A word spear strikes me straight through the heart. “You remember what they’re called?”

He looks away, his neck tightening. “Who could forget?”

“Most people.”

Then he says, in a really deep, rumbly voice, the kind of voice that instantly impregnates women, “I’m not most people.”

And there falls another one of my eggs.

I’m just about to give the greatest comeback of all time—maybe I’m not most people—okay, not the greatest, but certainly it’s in the top one thousand. But instead I say, “I don’t get you.”

He drums his fingers on the bar top. “You don’t get what?”

“You help me pick up my Bitty Beings, then you get mad at me.”

“You headbutted me.”