“So. What’s your favorite childhood memory?”
I cross my arms and shift in my seat. There’s an uncomfortable pit growing inside of me. “Not going to answer that either.”
“Great.” Rowan jots something down. “Your dream destination?”
“Anywhere but here.”
I see Rowan’s lips twitch. “There’s that humor again.”
“Look.” I blow out a hard sigh. I reach for my coffee cup and grip it so hard that I’m surprised it doesn’t explode like a geyser and paint the ceiling. “I’m sure you’re very good at what you do. I’m sure you make decent money off exploiting lonely people who have more dollars than common sense. I’m sure you sleep just fine at night knowing you helped stupid people find whatever false version of happiness they might be up for at the moment. I’m not buying into it. So, ask me whatever questions you have left. Ask me what my hopes and dreams are. Ask me what my goals are. Ask me what fruit I’d be if I could be one. Go ahead, but the same thing is always going to be true. All of your questions are pointless, and when you ask a pointless question, you get a pointless answer.”
“I believe that’s stupid.”
“What?”
Rowan’s face is completely neutral—like she eats douchebags for breakfast. She’s not disturbed at all by my rudeness. In fact, she’s smiling at me, and her eyes are twinkling. She’s still just as crazy beautiful as she was when she walked in here. It appears she’s also utterly undaunted by my less-than-thrilled attitude.
“I believe it’s ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.” She grins at me. “And I’m not going to ask you what fruit you’d be if you could be a fruit, because this isn’t a job interview, and people can’t be fruits, so what’s the point? I try and avoid questions that aren’t going to be helpful to me in choosing a match.” She starts gathering up her things, clearly done with this meeting.
For some reason, that makes me panic. It’s irrational. If I don’t want to be here in the first place, why am I worried about her leaving? Maybe because I actually have nowhere better to be, since my fire-breathing mother told me I’m now on vacation. Maybe this is the highlight of my day, which is incredibly sad. Or maybe because I like her smile.
No. No, it was definitely not that. It had everything to do with going home to unbearable silence and long hours to fill, and nothing to do with Rowan.
Rowan packs up her things and shoots me yet another charming smile. I’m starting to wonder if her face is hurting from all the smiling. I have no idea how long she can keep it up for. No one is actually that cheerful in real life.
“I’ll have your first date arranged for Friday night. In my experience, it’s a good night to go out. You’ll have lots of options then. I’ll send your date’s information—her name and a brief profile—over to you by tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll do the same for her. That way, it will be less awkward for you both. We create a personal account for each of you, and that includes an email. I expect you to be in contact and work out a pick-up time. Please note that you should keep things to a public place for your first meeting, and you shouldn’t exchange personal information like addresses or phone numbers unless you are extremely comfortable doing so.”
“You mean, don’t take her home and—”
“That’s not at all what I’m talking about.” Rowan shoves back her chair and reaches for her black coat. She shrugs it on and pulls her curtain of dark hair out from where it was trapped. It falls freely about her shoulders, the red highlights in the dark brown locks brought to life by the rays of sun drifting through the huge windows.
“It’s Wednesday,” I point out helpfully. “You must be a miracle worker if you can get a date arranged by Friday.”
“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by everything about this.” Rowan hoists her tote over her shoulder before picking up her coffee cup. “Thanks for meeting with me. You’re a little on the sour side, so I’d advise picking out one of the amazing desserts they have here. The lemon brownies are absolutely to die for.”
I literally don’t have time to say anything else before she turns and saunters out of the coffee shop, her head held freaking high. Oh yes. She’s quite confident in her abilities.
I grasp my coffee cup and sit there for a few minutes. I stare at the dark liquid sitting in the cup until I realize my eyes are dry from not blinking in ages. I blink slowly. Pointedly. We’ll see. We’ll see if Little Miss Confident lives up to all the I can conquer the world vibes she puts out there. I realize I’m actually looking forward to Friday night, just to see what Rowan comes up with. Which makes me realize I’m slightly excited if just for that reason. Well, no, not excited. Curious. But I do feel something. Which I vowed not to do.
Oh, she’s good. She’s really freaking good.
CHAPTER 4
Rowan
I wasn’t nearly as calm or as cool as I pretended to be in my meeting with Cliff on Wednesday. I’m a professional, so there was no way I was going to let my annoyance show. The guy would have probably got up and done a happy dance, knowing he pissed me off. Cliff Marshall is like a splinter under my skin, and the whole thing chaffed and bothered me until Saturday afternoon. I told him in the package I sent
