Claiming My Soulmate, page 3
“It’s fine,” I said as I clicked the browser window closed. Jasper took a deep breath, looked like he was about to say something, then stopped. I nodded at him. “Just say it. I have a conference call in ten minutes.”
It took him two more false starts before he finally got his thoughts out. “You need a makeover.”
Botox? He thought I needed Botox?
“Excuse me?” I asked, incredulous as hell. How many times had I made “Austin’s Hottest Bachelors” list? Oh yeah, the past two years and running.
“Image makeover, Tanner,” Jasper said, not bothering to hide the massive eye roll he gave me. “We need to rehab your image, like, yesterday. And I’m not talking your usual bullshit press releases or morning show interviews like you usually do. You need to do something bigger. Deeper.”
I held my tongue, waiting for him to go on. Because it was Jasper, he was pausing for dramatic effect, and I gave it to him. But when seconds continued to tick by, I waved my hand for him to confess all. “Do tell.”
“A girlfriend.”
My reaction was instant and intense. I recoiled back from my desk so fast, anyone watching would have thought the damn wood had burned me. The look of disgust on my face was obvious because Jasper smirked.
“I know, I know,” he said, his hands up in defense. “Crazy, right? But you need to be seen out and dating. Prove to people that you’re not so cynical about love. Prove to your investors that you’re not a fake — someone pedaling snake oil, to quote one particular website.”
I’d read that one. Snake oil salesman had been the nicest thing they’d said about me.
“I don’t want to date,” I grumbled, pretty sure I sounded like a toddler who’d just been told it was nap time. “I’m really not that guy, and you know it. Come up with something else.”
But Jasper just shook his head.
“No can do, boss. I’ve thought a lot about it, and this is the best way. I even have an idea of who can help.”
Again, my head was shaking, and I was backing away from my friend and whatever harebrained idea he’d gotten into his head. No. Way. In. Hell. To whatever he was suggesting.
“It’s so quaint, it’s sure to get you tons of sympathy,” he said, ignoring me completely as Jasper was wont to do when he and I disagreed.
“No.”
“You see, my grandmother goes to a church over on Constitution Drive,” he went on, completely ignoring me. “And one of her best friends has had this business for the past forty years.”
“No.”
Nonplussed, Jasper pressed on. “And this woman, she’s been setting people up forever, and according to my Nan, she’s really good at it. Like, amazing at it.”
“No!”
The tone of my voice and the volume broke the spell, and he blinked up at me. I thought I’d finally gotten through to him, but when his face darkened, and he looked angry at me, I paused.
“Listen to me, Tanner,” he said, his voice deceptively low as he leaned forward and pointed a finger at me. “I was with you every step of the way through the whole Layla shit show. And every time you and Shane butt heads, I’m there for you. But I’m not going to let your stupid pride sink a ship full of good, hardworking employees who’ve helped you build this dream of yours the past six years.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came. What could I say?
Jasper had no problem with words. He was fired up and kept going. “You let Shane get the board involved, they’re going to sell to the highest European bidder and make a mockery of this place, mark my words. You’ll lose so much more than your pride.”
I blinked. Was he right?
“So, if I tell you that all you need to do to keep this wagon from going ass over teakettle into the ditch is let a little old lady set you up on a couple of dates, you’re going to listen to me. Aren’t you, Tanner?”
I watched Jasper a moment longer as the anger drained slowly from his face, and he straightened his tie.
“Who are you?” I whispered, my eyebrow raised.
“You have a meeting tomorrow at noon with the woman,” he said. “Her name is Josie Amato, and you’re meeting her at her favorite restaurant.”
Jasper slid a paper across the desk toward me with the details scrawled on it in his anal retentive blocky handwriting.
Josie Amato
Match Made in Heaven LLC
Noon on Tuesday
Ruggerio’s
I took the paper from his grasp and gave him a blank stare.
“You know this isn’t going to work, don’t you?” I asked, trying one more time to make him see reason. “Things like this don’t work.”
Jasper only shook his head.
“You have to do something,” he said. “And my grandmother swears this woman has already set up hundreds of couples over the years. It will buy you some time and some sympathy at least.”
I frowned, still not buying it. “Are we going public with it? Making some sort of dating circus?”
Jasper considered my question for a moment. “Not necessarily, but I wouldn’t shy away from it if the story broke.”
It didn’t make sense.
“But I’m the creator of a dating app.” I frowned, trying to make his puzzle pieces make sense. “Why wouldn’t I just let our AI find me my perfect match?”
“You will.”
Now I was really confused. “I will what?”
“We will use the app while, on the side, Josie will be working her magic. Our story will be that you said those things while still nursing a broken heart over your failed engagement. But that you’re ready to believe in love again.”
I considered it. “That’s our story?”
Jasper nodded. “That’s the story you’re putting forward. You believe in love, and you’ll do whatever you have to in order to find it. You’ll say that hearing yourself sound so jaded was a real wake up call, blah, blah.”
I stared out my window a few moments, considering.
At worst? I’d be out a few hundred bucks in dinner dates, I supposed.
At best? Maybe a few snaps of me looking like a normal human being in the dating pool.
Normal.
Relatable.
Non-threatening.
Hell, if it would keep the board from overreacting, what harm could there be in it?
“Fine.” I pressed my knuckles to my temples. “But I’m only playing this game for three months, tops.”
“Works for me,” Jasper said, doing his best to hide his smirk and failing miserably.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gemma
The thief struck at four in the morning.
I knew this because Nonna’s obnoxious Chihuahua mix, George Clooney, was barking his fool head off at the front door and woke me up. For her part, Nonna had her hearing aid out and slept through the whole thing.
Thankfully.
Once I realized that the engine that was starting so close to the house was my engine, I dashed outside in my tank top and pajama pants, hissing like a wild woman as the brake lights flashed red just before it pulled onto the street.
“Seriously,” I yelled to my retreating ancient Accord as I ran down the driveway. “Please! Stop!”
I didn’t know what I expected. That maybe the thief or thieves would hear my plea and turn around at the next intersection, bring my poor little car back to me with a heartfelt apology and a full tank of gas.
As the sound like a sewing machine grew more distant, I shook my fist at the heavens, feeling like I’d been targeted by God these past few weeks. A part of me wanted to scream, Why, God? Why? using all the dramatics that’d been instilled in me during my four years of drama class.
Instead, I turned on my heel and marched back to the house, calling the police to report the theft.
***
Shit. Crap. Damn.
I was screwed.
After the policeman left after taking my statement, I realized that finding my twelve-year-old Honda wasn’t high on their priority list. Even after I tried batting my mascara-crusted, swollen eyes at the cop and more than likely looked more psychotic than beseeching, I knew my theatrics wouldn’t help.
I also realized that only carrying liability insurance meant that it didn’t matter who did what to me, unless they found the thieves and those thieves happened to have insurance themselves, my vehicle wasn’t covered.
Being an adult sucked in seriously significant ways.
I’d never been rich, but after moving back in with Nonna a year and a half ago, I’d been able to put a little bit of money away each month. But that money still wasn’t a lot, and it certainly wouldn’t buy me a new car, leaving my grandmother’s giant 1998 Cadillac Seville as my only mode of transportation.
I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t — I was crying.
And stupid George Clooney had pissed himself in the doorway in all the commotion.
Wiping my snotty nose with the back of my sleeve as I knelt down and dabbed paper towels at the little Chihuahua puddle on the linoleum floor, I wondered how I’d fallen so far, so fast.
I’d moved in with my grandmother a year and a half ago after getting in over my head with a two-bedroom condo that I couldn’t really afford. My plan had been to save enough money and fix my credit enough so that I could buy Nonna’s house from her. Her big dream was to move into Zilker Heights, a retirement community that the majority of her church friends had been moving into the past three years.
Shuffleboard. Bridge. Bingo. Knitting circles. And karaoke.
The old folks at Zilker Heights were living the dream, and it was now Nonna’s dream to join them. Nonna wanted out of the house she’d raised two sons and a granddaughter in, and I loved the old place so much that I was doing everything I could to not only get her the retirement she’d earned, but stake a piece of my family history and put roots down at the same time.
But how on earth was I going to manage that now? I was still paying down the high-interest credit cards I’d survived on for two years. And my car…
I scrubbed at my face with my hands.
I still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to tell Nonna about losing my job and had been faking going in every day since being kicked to the curb. Instead of my cubicle career, I’d applied for and was waiting to hear if I’d gotten a part-time job as a waitress in a twenty-four-hour bar. Yes, how far the mighty had fallen.
Wiping up the last of George Clooney’s pee was a reminder of how badly my life sucked sometimes, and in an attempt to feel better, I started the coffee and sent a prayer up to whoever might be listening for some sort of miracle. Nonna lived on social security and whatever pennies her “business” made her, which couldn’t be much these days with the never-ending rotation of dating apps that our smartphones offered up.
I remembered watching Nonna in her glory as a youngster. It was long after my father fled, and my mother was left to bust her ass to support me on her own — with Nonna’s help, of course. It meant long summer days staying out of Nonna’s way while she worked her magic.
Glancing over at the long wooden dining table that’d served as her office over time, I remembered the parade of sad, miserable faces beseeching my Italian grandmother to find their daughter “a good, Jewish man” or a “strong, Persian prince” or even “someone with a job and a house of his own. Anything just to get her out of my house!”
And damn if Nonna couldn’t do it too. She was amazing at it, from what I remembered, though I often had to hide my enthusiasm at her matchmaking abilities because my mother never approved of her ex-mother-in-law’s quirky ways.
“Nonsense,” Mom would say as she picked me up after a long weekend at a real estate conference or some other event that took her away. I didn’t mind, actually. I preferred Nonna to my mother most days.
With coffee in hand and the Chihuahua mix calm and quiet, I watched the sun rising through the small window above the sink and plotted my next move.
If I got hired, I could maybe pick up a few shifts at the bar and continue to pay on the credit cards and chip in for the bills around the house. Getting a new car or buying Nonna’s house? Highly unlikely.
“It’s fine,” I mumbled to myself, more to convince than to assert. It wasn’t fine right that minute. But it would be. Eventually. Surely.
George Clooney’s ears perked up from his gold and black dog bed, and I heard Nonna shuffling in her room on the other side of the house. What the hell was I going to tell her about the car?
Would she have a heart attack after learning we’d been victims of scumbags with hotwiring skills? A stroke? Could I keep the missing vehicle a secret and pretend it never existed?
I wasn’t good at lying, and lying to my grandmother, I couldn’t do it. But still. Admitting such treachery while knowing I didn’t have a game plan to fix it was a bitter pill to swallow.
A few minutes later, she shuffled into the kitchen just as I decided not to bring up the missing Accord if she didn’t.
“Good morning, Gemmie,” she said, fixing herself a cup of coffee in her usual “I Do What I Want” mug. It was adorned with a cartoon cat with both middle fingers in the air.
“Morning, Nonna,” I said, scrambling for something to talk about to keep her from looking out to the driveway just yet. “How was Family Feud last night?”
I cringed at my own question. So. Lame.
My grandmother, in her fluffy pink robe and obnoxious pink slippers with floppy flamingo heads over the toes, glanced over her shoulder at me and frowned.
“Since when have you ever been a Steve Harvey fan?”
Nonna was obsessed with Steve Harvey and called him her “celebrity crush.” I, on the other hand, had often made fun of the fact that she watched Family Feud on the gameshow network every single night before bed.
“It gives me good dreams,” she’d said defensively when I’d cracked a joke about it a few months ago.
I tried my best to give a nonchalant shrug. “Just asking.”
She turned back to her creamer and finished stirring before joining me across the table. When Nonna had a feeling something was up, she was like a bloodhound on the trail, so I prepared to have my story picked apart and ripped to pieces like confetti.
Only she didn’t. Instead, she glanced around, put a delicate fist to her mouth and coughed. Staring at my coffee, I frowned and looked up when she did it again, this time her eyes on me.
“What’s with the cough?”
It wasn’t that I was insensitive or uncaring, it was just that the cough was so fake. If we were in a public setting, I’d be self-conscious and looking around at what I’d just said or something. It was almost one of those coughs that people used to alert you that you’d just said something you shouldn’t. A theater cough.
Nonna looked offended and scowled.
“I’m sick, Gemmie,” she said, and for a second, I thought she might hack up a lung. “That’s what’s with the cough.”
Her tone made me nearly flinch.
“I’m sorry, Nonna,” I replied, trying to placate her. “Can I get you something?”
So far, this had been the strangest conversation in a long time, and the only reason I wasn’t getting to the bottom of what my grandmother was up to was because I was doing everything in my power to keep her from looking outside.
“No, but you can — cough cough — help me — cough cough — out today,” she said, slick as a salesman. And that was when I knew I’d played right into the master’s hands. Here I’d tried to maneuver our conversation in one direction to keep her from noticing the empty driveway and she’d been doing the same thing. Tricky old lady.
Letting out a defeated sigh, I only nodded. Whatever Nonna needed, Nonna got.
“What is it?”
She gave a curt nod of her head and stood to grab her datebook from its spot in the hallway. As she lowered herself back into her chair and opened the small leather book to the day’s page, she smiled.
“Business meeting at noon that I’m too — cough cough — sick to attend,” she said, putting the cat-eyed glasses she kept hanging on a chain around her neck up on the bridge of her nose. “I need you to fill in for me.”
I had many reasons for never wanting to be part of her matchmaking business, but first and foremost, I considered myself a terrible reader of people.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said slowly, not wanting to hurt her feelings but really not wanting to get caught up in someone’s love life. It could end in disaster.
“It’s a great idea,” she said, sipping her coffee and peering over the cup at me with her shrewd eyes. “And besides. You have no job. As of this morning, you have no car. What else are you going to do with your day?”
The world shrunk to the size of a pinhead as it dawned on me that Nonna knew absolutely everything. She’d known about my layoff this entire time I’d been trying to hide it from her. And what’s worse? Even without her hearing aid, she’d managed to witness one of the most horrific moments of my life.
My mouth opened and closed like some pathetic, oxygen-starved creature as my mind spun.
“It’s okay, Gemmie,” she said, waving her hand dismissively at me. “I knew the day it happened.”
Frowning, I rubbed my eyes with my hands. “Another one of your feelings?” I asked miserably. I’d been trying to keep the whole nasty business from her so she wouldn’t worry about not being able to move to Zilker Heights.
“Well, yes, remember I did try to warn you that day,” she said, just a tiny bit smug. “But I also looked through the box you brought home and saw the letters of recommendation in there.”
Shit.
I let out a long breath and leaned back in my chair.
“Sorry,” I finally said. “I didn’t want to worry you. I’ll have another good job soon, I promise.”
Again, she waved my worries away.
“I have a job for you, silly girl,” she said. “My friend Rosie from church. Her grandson has a boss who needs help. Big money. And I can’t go today, so you’ll need to go.”
There was no ask. There was no negotiate. There was simply a truth that Nonna had passed down to me, and honestly, I had no real logical argument I could present to persuade her.
