Which is why I was an idiot to agree to beta test Rory’s new Matchmake Me app. His company developed it with a local matchmaking business, run by his now-fiancée and her sister, a woman who seems to delight in pissing me off, and now they’re testing it on five hundred people around the county. In a weak moment involving more than a couple of beers, I committed to thirty days of talking to women through messaging on the app. No photos. No real names. We can only meet after we’ve messaged back and forth for thirty days.
What a nightmare.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and when I pull it out, I see a notification from the app. The gimmick is that the app gives you a real matchmaker experience, complete with an AI matchmaker named Judith who apparently doesn’t take kindly to being ignored.
Judith:Your match sent her first message two days ago. First impressions are big, Hot Rod. I just wanted to remind you that you two are a 97% match. That’s rare. Your next highest match is only a 62%, and she says she doesn’t like bars. We both know why that would be a problem. Respond to Cherrybomb now?
Well, fuck me.
I’d ignored the message last Friday telling me about my match. Hell, is a 97% match even possible, especially in such a small pool? Honestly, I’d promptly forgotten about it, but then Judith sent me a notification on Sunday telling me I’d gotten a message from my match. I nearly opened it but deleted the notification instead.
Something about messaging a stranger felt wrong. Impersonal.
And now the stupid app is stalking me.
Ireallydon’t have time for this, and I can’t believe I let Rory talk me into it. The Matchmake Me mystery woman will just have to wait. Possibly forever.
I’ve picked up Jane from the nurse’s office before, so I know where to go. I march down the hall and stop in the doorway. Jane is wearing a dark gray T-shirt and a pair of jeans, sitting in a chair with a wad of paper towels pressed against her nose. Her legs are crossed at the ankles, showing the soles of her Skechers. They look worn, and I make a mental note to look for a new pair. She’s scowling at the floor as though it was the one to bloody her nose.
“Hey, Cole,” the nurse says softly when she looks up from her desk. “I think you know that we don’t usually send kids home from school for bloody noses, but in this situation…” Her voice trails off like I’m supposed to know what she’s inferring, which means she has more information than Mrs. Knuckleberry gave me.
Jane’s eyes lift to mine, then instantly fall again as her cheeks flush.
Shit. She’s guilty.
But I want to hear the whole story before I lay down the law. Jane’s tough—I suppose that’s a consequence of being raised by a single father with a heavy influence from one of her single uncles—but she’s also kind. I can’t believe she would push someone unprovoked.
“You ready to go, Jane?” I ask, my voice gruffer than I intended, but I can’t deny I’m disappointed in her.
She nods, still keeping her gaze down. She picks up her backpack and walks toward me in the doorway. We walk down the hall together in silence until we go outside. When we’re next to the passenger door of my pickup, I stop her and pull her into a hug.
“You okay?” I ask, holding her tightly against me.
She nods against my belly and clings to me for a moment like she did when she was a toddler. I’d pick her up, and she’d wrap her arms around my neck and hang on tightly enough that I could let go and she wouldn’t drop. She’s holding on to me like that now, as though she thinks I’m going to let go.
I tighten my hold.
“What happened, J?”
Her body stiffens, and her hold around my waist loosens. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her too bad, sheisgoing to talk about it, but instead, I surprise us both and say, “Let’s go get some cocoa at Christmas All Year Coffee.”
She steps back and looks up at me, wrinkling her nose. “That place is for babies.”
I lift a brow but bite back that it’s a coffee shop mostly filled with people she would consider old, aka thirty and up. “So you don’t want cocoa?”
“I want to go to Tea of Fortune.”
“The tea shop?” I say it like she’s suggested we walk through poison ivy.
“Yeah.” Excitement fills her eyes. “They tell your fortunes there, Dad.”
“I know, J,” I say with a sigh. “We were there last summer.” We came for a watch party and skipped the tea.
I really shouldn’t be rewarding her if she pushed a girl off a riser, but something is going on with my daughter, and this might get her to talk. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Really?”
