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.