Page 73 of Matchmaking On The Menu

“You want them to stop seeing you as the baby,” he says, watching me carefully. “Then don’t ask them to. Show them.”

I breathe out slowly, buying myself a second before I respond. “How?”

He huffs out a quiet breath, already thinking. “I don’t know. Something that gets their attention. Something they don’t expect from you.”

I nod slowly, like I’m considering it for the first time.

“She loves true crime,” I say after a second, like it’s just something that slipped into my head. “And superheroes.”

His brow furrows slightly. “Who does?”

Shit. I’ve been speaking about all the girls, but now I’ve slipped up. “Dannica,” I say, a little too quickly. “I think I should start with her. Dannica is the easiest. She’s always talking about documentaries and cases and that kind of thing.”

He goes still for half a second, then it’s like a lightbulb goes off over his head and something clicks into place.

His mouth tilts, just slightly. “All right,” he says slowly. “I’ve got an idea.”

I don’t say anything. I wait because I know what he’s going to say.

“Let’s prank her.”

Do not fist bump, Mary, don’t you dare. I knew he would settle on a prank. When we were younger, we used to prank people all the time. Especially his mom. She would fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

I rub my hands together. “I knew I came to the right place. What do you have in mind?”

“What about a fake mugging?”

I blink. “A what?” Even though this is exactly where I wanted this to go, I didn’t expect it to go dark this quickly. I shouldn’t be surprised though, since we’ve always kind of had a hive mind situation going on.

“Not real,” he adds quickly. As if I didn’t cotton on to the word ‘fake’. “Just staged. Someone grabs her bag, makes a bit of a scene. Enough to get everyone’s attention.”

I let a second pass, like I’m processing it. “And then?”

“And then you handle it,” he says, like it’s obvious. “You don’t panic. You don’t freeze. You step in, take control, stop it.”

Me.

Of course he’d think that. To Luke, this is about me proving something. And now all this feels a lot more real than it did five minutes ago. “You think I could pull that off?”

He doesn’t even pause. “Yeah. I do.”

That shouldn’t make me feel as relieved as it does. And the guilt just deepens.

I nod slowly. “Okay. Yeah. That could work.”

It will work. Just not the way he thinks. Because I can’t take the credit for rescuing Dannica, not if Dannica is going to be a true damsel in distress. No, Mystery Man needs to rescue her. The whole reason for this plan.

I need to go to church on Sunday.

“Okay,” I say, like I’m still just thinking it through. “Then we should probably rehearse it.”

Luke blinks. “Rehearse it?”

“Yeah.” I nod, like that’s the most obvious thing in the world. “If we’re going to do this, it should look real. Not awkward-real. Actually real.”

He studies me for a second. “Why do we need to rehearse?”

“Because,” I say, keeping my tone light, “you’re going to be the mugger.”