Happily Letter After(22)

What song did you last sing in private?

Oh jeez. I might have to lie about this one. I’d been feeling a little down this morning, so before I went in the shower, I cranked up an oldie but goodie and twerked to Sir Mix-a-Lot while I shampooed my hair. I was pretty certain we all liked big butts, but it didn’t make a very appealing match profile. So I went with something a little more mature—Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” and then wasted time thinking about what type of music Sebastian might like. For some reason, I pegged him as a country fan—all those songs about lost women and dogs seemed to fit him. Though, oddly, I got the distinct feeling that Sebastian would be more intrigued by a woman who sang Sir Mix-a-Lot rather than Lewis Capaldi.

Complete this sentence: I wish I had someone with whom I could share . . .

My immediate response was to write everything. But I thought that might make me sound too needy. So I toned it down a little, yet still went with something that was true and had a bit more personality sprinkled in: cold pasta and laughs at two am.

The clickety-clack sound of a woman’s heels alerted me that Devin was coming down the hall, so I quickly hid the matchmaker questionnaire under some papers.

“Coffee time.” She breezed into my office. “You want the usual?”

“Yeah. That would be great. I’m really dragging this afternoon.”

“Oh? Do anything interesting last night?”

Since I didn’t categorize watching dog-training videos as interesting, I shook my head. “Nah. Just woke up early and couldn’t fall back asleep.”

Devin looked down at my desk. “What are you working on?”

“Copyedits for next month’s articles.”

“Mm-hmm.” She squinted at me. “Okay . . . well. It’s my turn to pay for coffee, so I’ll be back in a jiff.”

“Sounds good, thanks.”

Devin turned toward the door and then back to me. “Actually . . . I forgot my wallet. Can I borrow twenty dollars?”

“Yeah, sure.” I got out of my chair and walked over to the cabinet under the window where I kept my purse. As soon as I dug in to find my wallet, Devin snatched the pile of papers from atop my desk.

My eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Copyedits my ass.” She started to riffle through the papers in her hands. I attempted to grab them, but she pulled back too quickly for me.

“Give me that!”

She dug a few pages down into the pile and then yanked out a page. “Aha! I knew you were doing something you didn’t want me to see.”

“You’re crazy.”

She started to read the paper aloud. “Bloom Matchmaking Services. Boutique services for elite singles.” Devin rolled her eyes. “Let me translate. ‘Boutique’ equals ‘expensive.’ ‘Elite singles’ equals ‘a bunch of stuffy assholes who think they’re too good for Match.com or the bar scene.’”

“It’s research for an article.”

“So why did you just lie to me and tell me you were working on copyedits?”

“Because of exactly what you’re doing at this very moment. You blow everything out of proportion.”

Devin was too busy scanning the sheet for clues to even hear my defense. She smirked when she looked up. “The description of your ideal mate sounds very familiar.”

“I’ve always liked tall with dark hair.”

She arched a brow. “With good bone structure, green eyes, and a wide stance?”

“Who doesn’t like that?”

“Uh-huh. So you weren’t describing Sebastian Maxwell on this form?”

“Absolutely not.”

She flipped over the page and looked at the questions I’d answered earlier this morning. “How many children does your ideal mate have? Zero to one? Since when are you in the market for a single dad? This is the first time I’ve heard about this.”

I grabbed the papers out of her hands. “Don’t you have a job to do? Or coffee to mainline into your vein or something?”

“You need to just ask him out and you know it.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I need to do. Because the foundation of any good relationship starts off with a series of lies about . . . let’s see . . . my name, occupation, and relationship with his only child. It was obviously meant to be. We’ll probably be married by Christmas.”

Devin sighed. “Why don’t you just come clean, then? Tell him the truth.”

“And then what? Ask him out on a date?”

She shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

“Because he’ll go ballistic on me if he finds out. He bought an unruly Great Dane that is driving him crazy because his daughter suddenly became convinced her dead mother was mad at her for something she’d done. That was all my fault, Devin. I made a child think Santa Claus had a direct line to a dead woman.”

“But you meant well.”

“I’m sure Sebastian Maxwell won’t see it that way.”

“Well, you’ll never know unless you tell him, will you?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I could really use that coffee.”

Devin nodded. “Fine. I’m going. But think about it, Sadie. There’re eight million people in this little city of ours and somehow you wound up meeting this guy. Maybe it started out wrong, but maybe there’s a reason you two met.”