Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) Read Free Page A

week, just one, when he didn’t ask? Not even her mother asked that often.
    “No, Mr. Richmond, no boyfriend. I told you that last week.” She smiled in a belated attempt to conceal exactly how much the question annoyed her.
    He shrugged. “Never know, with you kids. All this Internet dating and, what do you call them? Shot In The Dark ads, those things in the back of the Chronicle ?” He waved a hand as he clutched the sheet around his midsection and struggled to sit up. “A pretty girl like you should have a boyfriend. Someone nice to take you out and show you a good time.” He wagged a meaty finger at her. “I’ll tell you what, if I were single and twenty years younger, I’d be banging down your door.”
    Try thirty years, champ, she thought, and then very nearly winced as the unwelcome image invaded her mind of a trimmer, younger Harry Richmond, back hair in full splendor, kicking down her front door to ask her for a date.
    If that were the dating world, she’d just as soon stay single for life.
    Scanning the small room for any excuse to leave, she grabbed the bottle of massage lotion—the first thing she saw—and held it up like a weapon. “Well, um, thanks for coming in, and I’ll just let you sit here for a few minutes, okay? See you next week, Mr. Richmond.”
    She took the clipboard holding his client sheet and stepped out of the room.
    As soon as the sliding door was closed behind her, she exhaled in relief. The spa’s architecture lent itself to quiet and meditation, and always soothed her nerves. The doors to the massage rooms were built like Japanese screens, with blond wood framing rectangles of frosted glass that looked like thin rice paper but provided the necessary privacy for a bodywork session.
    She shook back her thick, dark hair, trying to get it off her neck, where it was clinging like vines in the jungle. The entire hotel was cooled to sub-Arctic temperatures against the May heat outside, and normally Lisa shivered throughout her entire shift. But working on Mr. Richmond’s bulk was no light workout.
    She took a deep breath to cleanse and calm herself, as Willow had taught her, and let it out slowly. The relaxation technique did help, sort of. It was just that stress seemed as natural to her these days as panting was to a dog.
    She slipped on her sandals and walked down the hallway to the reception area.
    “I just finished with Harry Richmond,” she told Clare. “He should be out in a minute.”
    Clare, sitting behind the reception counter with one bare, bony foot propped on the desk in front of her, was apparently transfixed by something on her toe. Lisa frowned as she placed the clipboard on the counter. “What are you doing?”
    Lower lip caught between her teeth, Clare stayed focused on her task even as her short-cropped burgundy hair swung into her eyes. She flicked it out of the way with a quick toss of her head, never breaking eye contact with the job at hand. “Plucking my toe hairs.”
    Lisa watched in horror as her friend yanked mercilessly at what looked to be a particularly stubborn whisker on her big toe. “How can you do that to yourself?”
    “It doesn’t hurt. We got these new tweezers in today, for the waxers. They cost almost two hundred bucks. And they really work.”
    Lisa raised her eyebrows. “Two hundred bucks, wow. They must work really, really well.”
    “Top of the line,” Clare agreed.
    Lisa snorted. If anyone could convince herself that a large price tag made it hurt less to rip hairs out of her toes, it was Clare, the queen of painful, high-dollar wax jobs and expensive shoes that looked to Lisa more like torture devices.
    She lowered her voice. “If those things are so amazing, maybe you could do Mr. Richmond’s back next.”
    Clare brayed out a laugh. “Let’s not go crazy, now. We wouldn’t want to wear the things out on their first day.”
    Lisa groaned and passed a hand over her face. “I swear, that man is like a stand-in for my