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He put away the food. He didn’t want to eat alone. He didn’t want to be alone. He wanted someone to talk to.
Marissa.
As he strolled to his bedroom, he dialed her number.
“Hello?” The sound of her voice filled his gut with tension and forced him to stand still. This woman had him in a chokehold.
“Hi. How is your son?” He paced the carpet at the foot of his bed.
“In bed. The whole ordeal tuckered him out. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but the entire ride home, he talked about the stitches and how cool they are. I’m almost afraid he’ll do the same thing again tomorrow so he can hit his head again!”
“You have your hands full with him.”
“Yes, I do,” she said with a laugh.
“Well, I’m glad he’s okay.” Pause. “I didn’t know you had a son. You never mentioned him before.”
Another pause.
“I didn’t think my family situation was any of your business.”
“What about the trust we discussed? That doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does.”
“Yet you kept your son a secret.”
“He’s not a secret. I didn’t mention him to you, that’s all.”
That’s the part that stuck in his craw and twisted like a knife. Why had she excluded him from the knowledge of her son?
“Is Theo’s father in the picture?”
“He’s in Theo’s life but not mine. Our relationship ended a long time ago. That doesn’t change what I said to you, Bruno. There’s too much at stake if you and I become involved. It will complicate my life, and as a single mother, my life is complicated enough.”
For the first time in his life, Bruno wanted to pursue a woman and couldn’t have her. Even more frustrating, she obviously wanted him, so his brain couldn’t compute that they couldn’t be together.
“I don’t want to complicate your life, Marissa,” he said.
“Good. Then we’re on the same page.” She sounded relieved. “I’ll let you go now. Good night, Bruno.”
“Sweet dreams, Marissa.”
Chapter Eighteen
Marissa had spent the weekend thinking, and she knew what to do.
On Monday morning, she entered the office with a cheery, “Hey, Lori,” for the receptionist before briskly walking back to her office.
Her plan of action was simple. She was going to ask the CEO to remove her as Bruno’s matchmaker. There were other qualified matchmakers in the company who could find him the right partner. His removal as her client would eliminate the tension of working together and safeguard her job.
Marissa didn’t go to see Arnie right away. She spent the morning working on projects for other clients and sent a written testimonial that arrived in her email overnight to their webmaster to post on the site. By the time eleven thirty came around, she made the decision not to delay any longer and went down the hall. When she arrived at the CEO’s office, his executive assistant was nowhere to be found, so Marissa sailed past her empty desk and knocked twice on the door.
Arnie’s voice boomed from the other side. “Come in.”
She smoothed her tightly bound hair and entered the office, closing the door behind her. Arnie Rogers’ hulking body was hunched over his desk, marking up a paper with a red pen. He didn’t look the way one would expect the owner of a matchmaking services firm to look. He was a giant—over six and a half feet—with meaty arms squeezed into the sleeves of a powder blue shirt and a jawline as square as a Rubik’s cube.
That’s why he was not the face of the company. His sister, Angela, was the Director of Marketing and did the promotional interviews and commercials and starred in the videos they posted to the website. She was over six feet with the same black hair, but her appearance fit more in line with the brand the company wanted to project to potential clients. Cool, polished, sexy. None of which came to mind with Arnie.
