at me over her shoulder.
God she was sexy. I smiled and she smiled back.
“I told you I was good at helping people find true love,” Tanner said. “Just trust me.”
“You own a sex club.”
“That’s a matter of interpretation. But this is all going according to plan. Quite perfectly as a matter of fact.”
“What plan?”
“You and Kennedy falling for each other.”
“You had nothing to do with that.”
“Of course I did. I admit, I was a little perturbed that you asked Penny to be your matchmaker instead of me. So I decided to interfere. I recently acquired the real estate company your agent Bill works for. I had the owner hire Kennedy’s photography company. It was a huge contract. I knew she’d been considering moving back to the city and just needed one final push.”
“What? How did you…”
“And I hired a security team to follow you after all the hitwoman nonsense. So they knew you went straight home the other night instead of coming to my place. Which I’m still quite angry about. But it was a good opportunity, so I let it go. I arranged for Kennedy to show up to take your listing pictures that night. And bam. True love. You’re welcome.”
“But last night…you thought I was dating Poppy. You were all excited about it.”
“No, I knew you weren’t. It was all a ruse. Because you hadn’t told me about Kennedy yet and I was trying to force your hand. It worked, didn’t it? You told me everything. Before you told Rob by the way. Just saying.”
Wow. He’d orchestrated this whole thing?
“And Penny thought she was your matchmaker the whole time.” Tanner laughed. “I win.” He lifted his hand for a high-five.
I literally had nothing to say. Because I was pretty sure he had in fact won. I just had no idea he’d had anything to do with it. I high-fived him. “Wait, you’ve been having me tailed?”
“For your own safety. Don’t look at me like that. It’s like you have a penchant for getting into trouble.”
Well that explained why it still felt like someone was watching me.
“So you can tell Penny that you no longer need her services. And I’ll send you the bill for mine.”
I couldn’t even imagine how much he was going to charge me for all that. Was I going to own the real estate company after this? What the hell was I going to do with a real estate company?
He laughed. “Just kidding. I did it gratis for that.”
“For what?”
“Take a look in the mirror, Matt. I haven’t seen you this happy in years.”
He was right about that. “But your plan failed. She just wants to be friends.”
“Give me till the end of the night. I’ll have her in your bed by midnight.” He slapped me on the back and hurried over to where everyone else was still talking.
I didn’t doubt him at all. He’d brought Kennedy back to the city. He’d made the two of us run into each other.
I watched Kennedy laugh at something Tanner said. She smiled over at me again.
Damn, Tanner was a pretty great matchmaker. He was wrong about one thing though…he hadn’t gotten me to fall in love with her. Kennedy had done that all on her own. And I wasn’t about to be put back in the friend zone.
Chapter 39
Friday
I couldn’t pull my eyes away from Kennedy’s smiling face.
“So he did it butt naked,” Rob said.
Kennedy started laughing again. “No.” You could barely hear the word through her laughter. “You didn’t.” She put her hand on my knee.
All night long she’d been doing things like that. Grabbing my arm. Touching my thigh. I wasn’t even sure she realized she was doing it. It was like her body just gravitated to mine.
I smiled at her. “They dared me to. Of course I did.”
“You could have gotten arrested,” she said. “Who runs butt naked into a convenience store for a bottle of water?”
“One lesson you learn in college is that while breaking the law you should break said law naked,” Rob said. “It’s a lot easier to slip away from an officer when he’s trying not to touch your junk.”
Kennedy shook her head. “I didn’t learn that lesson in college.”
“Oh, well it’s different for girls,” I said. “I think police officers like when women are naked. They’ll probably grab you even faster.”
“There are girl officers too, you know,” Kennedy said.
“Which I’m sure aren’t all straight,” Rob said.
Kennedy laughed. “Well surely there were some gay officers that would have loved to