Hare Today, Bear Tomorrow (Mating Call Dating Agency #1)(2)
“Got you down,” Dora said, although from the noise on the line she was barely audible. “And don’t be late. Eve hates it when people are late.”
2
Yvette Lorraine – Eve to her friends and Ms. Eve to her clients – plucked a golf ball-sized hunk of chewing gum out of her mouth and deposited it in the ashtray that had been sitting on her desk in the same place for the better part of fifteen years.
“Eve, we got someone coming in,” the voice on the intercom belonged to her best friend, confidant, and infallible office manager, Dora Long. Dora’s voice crackled a bit. Eve thought she should probably call an electrician at some point to get that fixed, but she was terrified at the notion of actually having to bring Mating Call Dating Agency’s building up to code. That was something that needed to wait until some tiger-shifting billionaire got a wife through her place and ended up so happy with the whole thing that he offered to pay for it all.
Right, she thought. As if we could get anything coming through here except janitors and lawn keepers. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of them, but damn... sometime it’d just be nice to have someone in a dapper suit stroll through the door. Then again, I guess that type hardly needs matchmakers. “A girl can always dream,” she said with a sigh, not really aware that she was speaking out loud.
“Huh? Are you daydreaming about billionaires again?” Dora asked, a twitch of fun sarcasm tipping her words.
“Yeah, maybe so, but I’m allowed,” Eve replied. “Anyway, what do we have coming in? I know I’m supposed to say ‘who’ but when they all turn into animals, my grammar gets all confused.”
“You’re a walking dictionary,” Dora said, her teeth clicking together – squirrels are as squirrels do – and noisily thumbed through her notepad. She refused to keep her appointments on a computer or a phone, because she never quite believed they weren’t going to come to life and attack. She’d maybe watched The Terminator a few times too many, but what the hell, she’d never lost track of what she was doing, even when the computers crashed.
The door clanged open, and a deep, gruff voice came through the intercom and caressed Eve’s ears. All these years of matchmaking, and she’d never found the time to get herself a bear... or a lion, or a, well, anything really. It just wasn’t ever in the cards. She found her peace in helping other people find happiness, and that was good enough.
Her interview process was part of the reason she’d been so successful, she figured. Eve didn’t let anyone walk out with a date that she didn’t think was a prize for someone. She prided herself on cautious dealing, and truth be told, she enjoyed the whole thing. It gave her a little shot of excitement to know someone’s life would be better because of what she did, and aside from that, she loved her ability to make the biggest, baddest guys on the planet squirm under her reading glasses.
“Mr. Uh... what did you say your name was?” Dora asked. “The name I have on the paper isn’t the one you gave me.”
The mystery suitor growled something that Eve couldn’t quite understand, but once again, his rumbling tone gave her a stir where it counted.
“Right, okay, so Mr. Graves is here to see you for his interview.” Her voice lowered as footsteps tromped away. “He’s big, Eve. Really big. Don’t be alarmed.”
“Can he hear you?” she asked. “We don’t want to offend a giant. Bear?”
“Yeah, and... oh my lord what a bear.” Dora’s chair pushed back from her desk with a decided squeak, and a moment later, she poked her head into Eve’s office. “Here’s his file. I recommend not looking at it until he’s here. And sorry for the late notice, he called late last night and I sort of forgot until just now.”
“That goes against every shred of paranoid caution in my body. Why the short notice?”
Dora shook her head. “He’s a special one, this guy. Trust me. He’s got a kind smile, eyes that sort of twinkle in that way that tells you he’s used to getting his way, and... those traps. His shoulders touch his ears. Got anyone in your rolodex that wants a giant bear?”
“Uh,” Eve snickered. “Yeah, I think at least three-quarters of this here rolodex wants a giant bear. Does he seem like a nice guy? Or one of those overblown bros? Tell me this,” she said when Dora was very obviously unable to formulate a reasonable answer. “Is he wearing a sideways baseball cap?”
“His arms,” she said. “I don’t... I don’t think I’ve ever seen arms like this. And he’s not deformed or anything, it’s not like he’s been skipping leg day either. I bet he could pick up a semi.” Her face was glazed and slightly pallid. Eve couldn’t help but grin. She’d seen Dora fall for a client before, but never like this. At least, not in recent memory anyway.
“Well, all right then,” Eve said, blinking and twisting her neck until it popped to the left, and then the right. “I’ll take your word for it. Send him in, I guess.”
Dora stood there for a second, apparently staring right into the middle of Eve’s forehead. “Dora?” she asked. “Send him in?”
“Oh... right,” Dora said. “Yeah, yeah of course. I’ll go out and get him.”
As her friend turned and walked slowly out of the room, Eve giggled to herself as she kept repeating under-her-breath comments about the size and muscularity of the creature who she was expected to match with someone.