The Matchmaker's Playbook

“Oh, hey, do you guys know each other?” DJ asked. “David, you should have seen this guy play.”

“Oh?” David crossed his arms. A hundred bucks said that the last thing he wanted to hear was my glory-day stories.

“Nah, let’s not bore him.” I chuckled. “Nice to meet you, David. Are you a friend of my girl’s then?”

“Your girl?” He repeated, his eyebrows nearly getting lost in his hairline. “Your girl?”

And this—this reaction was what I lived for, what I waited for. I’d just touched Blake, intimately. She was still feeling the effects of the buzz, riding the chemicals that were released when any sort of intimate action was explored. Men, for some reason, picked up on that kind of hormonal release, meaning that for the first time in his entire life, David was finally seeing Blake as a woman.

Her blush helped.

And the fact that her hair was down.

Back ramrod-straight, she puffed out her chest a bit. My fingers itched to cover up the treasure I’d just discovered. Instead, I winked. “Yeah, my girl.”

“Didn’t know you were dating,” David muttered as his gaze drifted toward her chest, then flashed away.

I burst out laughing. “What are you? Her dad?” When he didn’t say anything, I pushed further. “Aw, how cute. Have you always been like a father figure to my Blake?”

Blake made a whimpering noise beside me as I held out my hand to her and helped her stand.

“What? Hell no!” He let out a nervous laugh. “We’ve been buds since we could walk.”

“Cute story.” I nodded like I was faking being impressed. “Well, it was nice meeting Blake’s dad.” I laughed. “Kidding. It was nice meeting you, man.” I shook his hand, then draped my arm over Blake’s shoulder, waving good-bye to DJ as I dropped our tray off and left the eating area.

Blake was deathly silent until we reached the parking lot.

This was usually the part where the girl freaked out and jumped up in down in triumph, or tried kneeing me in the balls.

Granted, I’d never actually groped any of my other clients, but desperate times and all . . .

Kissing them? Yeah, that’s typically how I got the first reaction out of the clients, but Blake had never been kissed, and I was still a gentleman. It wouldn’t be my right to take that kiss from her, not when she’d clearly been saving it for him.

A voice in my mind screamed that I’d done a hell of a lot more by touching her boobs, but the ass in me shrugged off the voice.

Hormones released. Reaction given. It worked. Bingo!

“You okay?” I let go of her.

“That was”—she pressed her hands to her temples—“really stressful.”

I let out a laugh as adrenaline surged through me. “It usually is.”

Her bright eyes met mine. “Thank you. I think that was the first time he’s actually looked at me—”

“Like you had boobs.”

Blake laughed harder. It was deep, and a bit addictive to listen to. She nodded in excitement. “Exactly.”

“So now will you go to Victoria’s Secret?”

Sheer delight made her eyes sparkle. “Only if you go with me.”

Shit.

Typically, I didn’t need to do this much work. Typically, my clients knew what lipstick was.

I eyed her up and down. Yeah, she wasn’t typical. Not at all. She was special, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “But you better treat me to froyo after.”

I waved good-bye as she jogged off toward her dorm while I slowly made my way back to my car.

My phone buzzed with a text.

I knew it was probably Shell, but I didn’t want to think about my other clients. I wanted to think about Blake. And in all my time being a wingman, I’d never done that.

I’d never given a girl a second thought. I never took business home with me.

But I was still thinking about Blake long after she left.

And it wasn’t in a sense of Gee, how can I help her? It was mostly about why the hell she was chasing after some guy who clearly hadn’t seen that he’d had a good thing in front of him for over ten years.

I was reading too much into it. Guys were blind, end of story.

Damn egg rolls.

Yeah, let’s blame those.

CHAPTER NINE

“I’m going to count to five.” I banged on the dressing room door one last time. “And then I’m coming in.”

“No!” Blake’s voice was muffled. “I’m . . . It’s . . . I’m . . .”

Cursing, I pressed my forehead against the pink wood door. “Blake . . . I’m starving!”

“You’re always starving! Why don’t you eat before our meetings?”

“I’m busy! I hate protein bars. I forget. And Gabi didn’t pack me a lunch!”

She was quiet. And then, “Gabi packs you lunches?”

Groaning, I made another feeble attempt at grabbing the doorknob and twisting. Still locked. “Gabi sucks. She was supposed to come.”

“Gabi had a test.”

“Wanna know how many tests I’ve flunked because of her?”

Absolutely zero, because she’d never needed me during a test, but I would have gone to her. Maybe. If she was dying, or if the only way for her to pass her class was for me to have sex with her professor.

“Seriously?”