Katrina steepled her hands under her chin. “Does this have something to do with Peter?”
Ouch. Couldn’t hide anything from her best friend. “This has to do with success.” If that success was also about revenge, well. Rhiannon couldn’t help that. “I’ll talk to Samson. Listen to him, talk to him, get my closure.” Rhiannon shrugged. “And then, I’ll ask him for a favor.” When he was feeling bad.
Katrina looked straight-up worried now. “This feels manipulative. It’s not the reason I thought you should see him.”
“I’ll only ask. Nothing more. It’ll be a nice, direct, closure-heavy conversation. And then I’m done with him.” What she didn’t say, what she was thinking, was that yeah, Samson fucking owed her. If he was as nice as she’d originally thought he was, then he’d feel the same way.
And if it was manipulative to introduce a request when a person felt like they owed a person, well then, yes, she was being manipulative. Sue her.
“Well, you don’t have to be done—”
There was that hope again, that malicious hope. Actively seeking out someone who had ghosted her was already borderline foolish, only acceptable because she had hard evidence to back up the excuse he’d inevitably give her. Getting back into bed with a zombie? That was inexcusable, given all that she knew about the dating world. Rhiannon slashed her hand across her throat. “Then I’m done.”
Chapter Seven
SAMSON?”
Samson shook his head and refocused on the young blonde sitting at his dining table. Tina was a sweet girl and had been his aunt Belle’s admin since she’d graduated from college a few years ago. Her bubbly and cheerful personality was the last thing he needed right now. “Sorry. What’s that?”
“No need to apologize!” She gestured at the open laptop screen in front of her. “I know you have company coming over soon, but I thought we could go through your next batch of matches while we have a minute.”
He put down the knife he was using to slice salami and rinsed his hands. “Ah, sure. Are you certain you don’t want a snack, though?”
Tina blew her bangs out of her face. Wearing her casual uniform of jeans and a loose T-shirt, with her legs curled under her on the padded dining table chair, her shoes kicked off under the table, she looked about eighteen. “You’re so cute. No, thanks, I’m fine.”
He wasn’t cute. Samson just wanted to delay this as much as possible. Also, he was his mother’s son. He may be out of practice having people in his house, but he didn’t know how to have someone over and not feed them.
Even if it wasn’t really his home. The downtown L.A. apartment was filled with afternoon sunlight from the indulgently large windows that looked out over the city. He’d told Annabelle he could handle his own accommodations when he needed to be in L.A., but she’d insisted he stay in this corporate apartment owned by Matchmaker. It had a perfect view of the skyline and tasteful, impersonal furnishings, all leather and metal accents and modern shapes.
He sat down at the glass table, next to Tina. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
Tina gave him a sympathetic look. “It’s not so bad, is it?”
He’d been putting this off, but they had a small crew on standby to film the first date aka commercial/webisode. He was trying not to think about it too hard. “It is what it is.” Samson shifted and did his best to shrink into his chair. Limas were born big, and he had always been supremely conscious of his size, especially when he was seated next to a much smaller woman. Tina didn’t seem intimidated by him, but he knew sometimes women hid their fear well.
He’d been comfortable around Rhiannon. She wasn’t that big, but her no-nonsense personality made her seem as large as him. At one point during that perfect, sweaty, lust-hazed night, she’d flipped him over onto his back with her strong legs and straddled him, using her palms against his to hold him down.
You have to protect your heart. No one will do it for you.
“I told you, I could pick someone for you.”
He refocused, trying to tamp down his guilt spiral. In the week since the interview, Samson had managed to find breaks from thinking about Rhiannon, but she crept back in at the oddest of times.
You did all you could do. By the time he’d finished talking to Helena’s dad and taking selfies with the crew and made his way offstage, Rhiannon had been gone. Someone had pointed out her assistant, and so he’d taken a chance and slipped the woman his card. Going by the arch look the intimidating woman had given him, Samson didn’t hold out much hope on that front.
Still, he’d checked his phone eight hundred times in the past few days. At some point he’d have to accept Rhiannon wasn’t going to get in touch with him. He’d left the conference the day after the interview, but even if he had stayed, he wouldn’t have tried to find her. She’d made it clear she was furious with him. A next step, if there ever was one, would have to come from her. He wasn’t about to stalk the woman.
In the meantime . . . “No, I’ll vet my own dates.” He ought to do something to justify the salary Matchmaker was paying him.
Reluctantly, Samson perused the faces of all the women smiling back at him from Tina’s laptop. There were selfies and group shots and full-length photos. The group was diverse in body type and ethnicity. And not one of them looked like the woman who had occupied his mind for the last week.
He shifted, hating that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Hating that he had a job to do, and he couldn’t shelve her enough to do it. Hating that the job he was doing felt far too much like window-shopping for a woman. “This is a lot.”
He meant everything, in general, but Tina misunderstood him. “No, this is about right. You usually get about ten matches at a time,” Tina explained.
“Can I see their profiles?”
“Which ones?” Tina hovered the mouse over the first girl.
“Uh. All of them? Since I don’t know anything about them?”
Tina blinked at him. “You don’t want to knock any of them out on appearance alone?”
He looked at the women again and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d barely known what Rhiannon looked like before he’d met her on the basis of a sentence and a few messages, and they’d had an immediate connection. What if he got rid of someone based on her dimples or lack thereof and missed out on a good thing?
Uh, a good thing for the camera, that is. Not for him, personally. “They’re all pretty in their own ways. I’d rather see what they have to say.”
Tina beamed at him, though he wasn’t sure what he’d said or done to get that response. They started going through the matches. A kindergarten teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, a receptionist. All perfectly normal women who didn’t deserve to be used by him for a gimmicky photo op.
When Annabelle had come to him with this idea, he’d proposed doing the whole thing with hired actresses, but she’d nixed that. He’d still been deep in his grief over Uncle Joe and hadn’t protested too hard. He’d been happy to have some project forced upon him so the endless future hadn’t seemed so endless.
He should have protested harder. Meeting real women hadn’t felt so distasteful when it had been conceptual, but now that he was faced with a buffet of individuals, he couldn’t get the sour taste out of his mouth.