Finding Forever (8 page)

Laughing, I turned on the speaker function and placed the phone on the table. “I’m sorry, Des. You’re going to have to repeat that. For a second I thought you asked me to take your brother on as a Matched client.”

Desiree gave a loud sigh on the other end of the line. “That
is
what I said, and you know it. Stop trying to be funny, Tee.”

“I’m not trying to be funny. It
is
funny. What makes you think I would ever accept Avery as a client?”

“Because you love me?”

I giggled again as I pulled open another pod, sending peas flying all over the porch. “Sorry doll, love isn’t gonna be enough this time.”

“What about money? I told him your fee was double what it actually is, and he didn’t blink!”

Hmm. That
was
appealing, but still.

“Nope, not enough money in the world,” I said.

“Tori!”

“Des!”

“Tori, please? Avery needs this.”

“And I should care because… ”

“Because you’re a good person, and when you see someone in need, you help them out. And let’s not act like you don’t
owe
me.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing Des was about to cash in the ‘bad friend’ credit I had extended her after not telling her about what was going on between Rafael and I. “Owe you for what?” I asked anyway, feigning ignorance.

“Girl, please. You know why.”

Digging into the bucket for another pod, I breathed a heavy sigh of my own. “Fine, Des. I’ll meet with him, but that’s all I can guarantee. If he’s rude to me, I’m punching his ass again, and I will
not
work with him.

“That’s completely understandable, Tee, but I promise, nothing like that is gonna happen again.”

“It had better not. And you can tell him I want
triple
my normal fee, and make sure he knows he’s paying extra.”

“Not a problem.”

Hearing movement behind me, I glanced up to see that my stepmother, Lynne, was eyeing me from the door to the porch. “Hey Des, I’ve gotta go. Have Avery send me his availability, and we’ll set the meeting up.

“I will. Thank you
so
much Tori. He appreciates it.”

“I don’t need his appreciation, I need his participation. Make it very clear that
if
I take him on, he
will
do anything I ask, or I’m dropping him. I’m only doing this for you, and I don’t want my time wasted..”

“Well,
I
appreciate you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Des.”

We exchanged goodbyes, and I reached into the bucket beside me for the last few pea pods.

“So… Who is Avery?” Lynne stepped out onto the porch to peer into the nearly full bowl of peas I’d shelled.

I shook my head as I dropped the last of the peas in with the rest. “Just a new client— Des’ brother.”

“Sounds like you were giving her the blues about him.”

Lynne’s tone was bored, but I knew she was hyper-alert, and analyzing every word out of my mouth. I was 13 when my father married her, three years after my mother’s death. Right on the brink of my teenaged rebellion phase, Lynne had come in my life, with no intentions of allowing a smart-mouthed little girl to run the household. For about two years, I pretended to hate her
and
six-year old Melanie, her child from her first marriage, but secretly, I’d been relieved. I needed a mom, and the little sister that came along wasn’t too bad either.

I smiled at her. “Were you eavesdropping, Lynne?”

“Ain’t no eaves around here, but I may have been doing a little dropping.” She laughed at her own joke, and it was so contagious I couldn’t help but laugh with her.

“Well, since you heard it anyway, yes, I was giving her a hard time about working with her brother. He wasn’t very nice to me at the wedding.”

She nodded her head as she picked up the bowl of peas to carry inside. “That the reason you got off the plane looking like somebody stole the last biscuit from you?”

“Part of it.” I stood to follow her into the house, averting my eyes as she glanced back, but she waited for me to elaborate before she would move out of the door. “That was the same weekend I signed the final paperwork from the … thing with Rafael.”

Lynne lifted an eyebrow at me as she dropped the bowl into the sink to rinse. “Thing? Call it what it is. It was a divorce. You got a divorce, no shame in that. Not with the way that man was carrying on.”

I didn’t respond, but I remained in the kitchen with her, taking a seat at the granite island as I breathed in the scent of the sautéed bacon, garlic, and onions that would go into the pot with the peas once they were cleaned to Lynne’s satisfaction. She placed the canisters of cornmeal, sugar, and flour in front of me, then slid the baking powder across the counter. “I’m on cornbread duty too?” I asked, watching as she retrieved the eggs and milk from the refrigerator.

“Yeah, I don’t know where that sister of yours is.”

I grinned. “She’ll be here.” My stepsister was 23 years old, and a fresh college graduate. Chilling with her mom and sister on a Sunday afternoon wasn’t exactly her idea of a good time, but I knew she — and my dad, who was out playing golf— would be right on time for dinner.

“Oh I know that girl ain’t missing any meals.
You
, I was a little worried about.”

Looking up after I measured the last ingredient into the bowl, I made sure to keep my expression neutral. “Why’s that?”

“You’re looking a little thin round the middle. I raised you, Victoria, I know exactly how you treat yourself when you’re feeling down. You get all focused and intense, running yourself ragged tryna keep busy so you don’t have to think about your troubles. You put all that effort into taking care of everything but yourself.” She stared at me, daring me to contradict what she was saying, but I couldn’t. Not truthfully anyway.

“I’ll be ok, Lynne.”

“Oh I know
that
, Sugar. I know you’re going through a little rough patch, but you’ll bounce back. Now you know that old saying, don’t you? Best way to get over a man is to get up unde—”

“Come on, Lynne, don’t do that,” I said, laughing as I poured the cornbread batter into her heavy cast-iron skillet.

“I’m serious! How old is this Avery boy? What he look like?”

I shook my head, blushing as I thought about Avery’s athletic body. “He’s mid-thirties. Tall…
dark
… very handsome.”

“Well there you go!” Lynne exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “He’s obviously single if Des wants you to fix him up, right?”

“Right.” I handed her the skillet to place into the pre-warmed oven. “
But
, I’m not interested in pursuing anyone right now, especially not my friend’s brother. Besides,… he was rude to me. There’s nothing there.”

Lynne twisted up the corner of her mouth in disbelief. “You’re about to make me send you outside to get a switch!”

“What did I do?”

“Lying to me! Talking about there’s nothing there. I saw the way those little pretty hazel eyes lit up when you were talking about him,
before
you remembered about your little disagreement.”

“It wasn’t a
little
disagreement.”

“Mmhmm. Fine. Doesn’t have to be him.”

“It’s not gonna be
anybody
,” I insisted. “We talked about this.”

With a softened expression, Lynne placed the top over the bubbling pot of peas and came to sit down beside me. “Victoria, you are way too young to be talking about giving up on love. You know that, right?”

“All
I
know is I’m thirty years old, and I’ve never had a successful relationship. I got
divorced
a month ago and I’m a matchmaker. What sense does that make?”

“It makes perfect sense when I know you give everything to helping other people fall in love. When are you gonna keep something back for yourself?”

I shook my head. “I
did
. That’s how I ended up with Rafael. I took a chance because it said I was a match, and we see how that turned out.”

“Your little program said you were a match, but did you
feel
like he was the right one for you?”

“I was definitely attracted to him.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“We had a lot of fun together.”

“Still not what I asked you.”

“We had a ton of sexual chemistry.”

Lynne raised an eyebrow at me. “And
that
is definitely not what I asked you. How many times have you come in here, talking to me about how frustrating it was when your program gave you matches that just didn’t
feel
right to you?”

“I don’t know. Dozens, maybe,” I admitted.

“Exactly. So I don’t care about what the program said, or any of this extra stuff you’re trying to tell me. Answer my question. Did Rafael feel right to you?”

I swallowed hard before I responded, with a whispered “No.”

“Then
why
, Victoria? I could see sleeping with him, but you saw fit to marry this man. I left you alone about it before because that was your husband, but I want you to make me understand why you made that decision.”

With my elbows on the counter, I rested my chin in my hands. I wasn’t sure I knew for myself
why
I had married Rafael. Yes, I loved him. I wasn’t so naive that I thought love was the only thing you needed to make a relationship work, but at least we — well,
I
— had that. And good times, followed by good sex, whenever he bothered to give me his attention. But that was part of the problem right there, I had to
bother
him to get what a man who loved me should have been willing to give freely. Then again, who could blame him? I liked to have fun, but I wasn’t
exciting
, or wild, or crazy like the other young celebrities Rafael met on a daily basis. I’d known I couldn’t compete with his glitzy lifestyle from the beginning, but that’s part of what had attracted me to him. I was bored. And lonely. God, I was
so
lonely.

“Timing.” I answered. The week before, or the week after… maybe I wouldn’t have given a second thought to turning Rafael down, as I did with other clients who tried to hit on me. However, that particular week— the day before he came in, actually— I’d gotten one of the worst phone calls I’d ever had to endure. One of my first clients, the first ones to trust me, passed away. The wife was the one who called to tell me, through heart-wrenching sobs, that her husband, who she’d only had three short years with, had been in an accident he didn’t make it survive. It was devastating news, and my heart broke for her and their child, but in the back of my mind, all I could think about was the fact that I would never know the kind of grief she was feeling, because I’d never known that kind of love. What kind of crazy ass person is jealous of someone’s bereavement? That made me feel hopeless, and scared, and… desperate.

“You’re telling me Rafael was in the right place at the right time?”

I shrugged. “Basically. I was in the right frame of mind to be completely reckless. If it weren’t him… it would have been the same disaster with someone else. That’s what my entire dating life has been, a series of disasters. I’m over it.”

“So you … give up?”

Turning to her, I nodded my head. “Yep. I give up.”

I was relieved when the timer went off on the oven, and like clockwork, I heard my dad and sister’s voices entering the front door.

“Hey,” Lynne said, gently grabbing my hand as I stood. “I know you’re a grown woman now Victoria, but I want you to listen to me, okay?” When I nodded, she continued. “I was a lot like you, Sugar. When your daddy came along, a man was the last thing I was worried about. I had
just
escaped Mel’s daddy, and I was happy my little girl and I were alive. My heart was closed up like a fist, to everybody except your sister, but your daddy tried his damndest to pry his way in. I almost missed a good thing because I wouldn’t open my heart. You’re still hurting, Sugar, I get it. But you can’t walk around all locked up and expect to have a happy life. That’s not how it works.”

I gave her a small smile. “Thanks for the advice, Lynne.”

She shook her head, knowing I was going to lock her words away with the rest of the ‘shit parents say’ files. “You’ll remember it when you’re ready. But in the meantime… help me feed your greedy family.”

— 4 —

— Avery —

Dimples.

That’s the first thing I noticed about the attractive young woman staffing the front desk when I walked into Tori’s office. She looked up at me with a flirtatious smile, flipping her long hair over her shoulder.

“Welcome to
Matched
, cutie. What’s your name?”

I was taken aback by her casual greeting, but again, she was attractive, so I rolled with it. “Avery… I have a 1pm appointment with Tori,” I said as I approached, leaning against the high front of the desk.

“Avery Anderson?” There was something sultry about the way she said my name, letting it roll off her lips, with a little smirk at the end as she looked me up and down. I felt objectified, and shit… I kinda liked it. She couldn’t have been any older than twenty-five, so while everything I could see — big brown eyes, caramel skin, and that pretty, dimpled smile— was appealing, I was there on a mission. I couldn’t see myself doing anything other than well,
doing
a woman who was probably ten years younger than I was, so I decided it was best to keep the flirting to a minimum.

Still, I flashed a smile. “That’s me.”

“I’ll let Tori know you’re here. You can have a seat.” She gestured toward the couch behind me, then began tapping at the keys on the computer in front of her. While I waited for Tori, I took in my surroundings. Briefly, I wondered if she’d decorated her office suite herself. I could see her choosing the sleek, modern furniture, then accenting the space with the bohemian accessories that kept it from being cold and sterile. It felt very
her
.

Yeah, because you know her so well.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Anderson.”