Chapter Seven
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“After I input your responses to my computer program,” Olivia Joyner explained, “I see who in my database you’re compatible with.” She smiled, the periwinkle in her eyes glistening. “I whittle it down, examine the compatibility ratio and then the fun stuff starts.”
“And by fun stuff, you mean...dates?”
Charity didn’t know why she was squirming so much. The office couch where she and Olivia sat was extremely comfortable. Much more so than the couch in her apartment. But right now, her nerves felt as if every one of them was being summarily hit by a jolt of electricity.
It had been a week since she’d called the matchmaker and then filled out the email questionnaire Olivia had sent. Charity devoted an entire evening at home to it, consuming half a bottle of wine and a full sleeve of stuffed Oreos while answering all the questions posed.
What’s your idea of a romantic date? Describe your life in five years. Favorite song? Genre of book you prefer. Color likes and dislikes. Live concert or chilling at home on the couch with a movie? Celebrity crush and hall pass. Birth order. On and on.
In all, the questionnaire comprised over two hundred and fifty queries, which seemed more random than specific to her mind.
Once she filled it out and went over it – three times!
– before sending it back, Charity came to see the patterns behind the questions, categories they fit into, and how the apparent randomness was anything but.
Life choices, how she dealt with crises, ideas and beliefs that she’d give on, and those that she held fast to, even how her past relationships ended, all gave Olivia the most information she could gather to match Charity with someone who viewed those preferences and choices in a similar, or positive manner.
Once she’d hit send, Charity stopped obsessing about her answers and waited for the meeting she and Olivia had scheduled to see how she fared.
On the assigned day, she’d left work early, telling Kolby, when he’d asked, that she had an appointment she couldn’t miss.
His natural nosiness had her hoping he wouldn’t push on who the appointment was with.
She was all prepared to tell him it was something personal and to back off.
Thankfully, he hadn’t asked, just looked at her with something akin to concern and told her he’d see her in the morning.
With a nod, she’d left the office, cautiously optimistic about what Olivia would tell her.
There weren’t many available unmarried men in Heaven. This she knew well.
Painfully well.
The two dates she’d gone on in the past year had been with divorced guys, both older than her by a few years.
One was the brother of a bride whose wedding she’d worked and who had flirted outrageously with her during the entire event, the other the ex-husband of another bride who’d been invited to the wedding because the couple shared two kids.
Neither was a date she was dying to remember, and both had left her feeling exhausted when they ended.
The brother had assumed sleeping with her at the end of the date was a sure bet – to which he found out very quickly wasn’t. The ex-husband spent the date bemoaning the fact the previous love of his life was now with someone else.
She could have been despondent and discouraged. But, because of who she was and whose she was – her parents both being cockeyed optimists – she had become neither, instead, forging ahead with Operation Find A Mate, Liv Joyner the first step in her strategy.
The smile Liv graced her with was so warm and tender that Charity tried her darndest to push her qualms down deep. After a few quiet, deep breaths, she stopped fidgeting.
“Dating can be anything but fun,” Liv said with a chuckle, “but I do my best to make the dates I send my couples on as stress-free as possible. Before you ever meet, you can guarantee I’ve vetted the person fully, and put you together based on a high score from your questionnaire responses, and, well, my own gut instincts. ”
“My mother is a huge believer in going with your gut and I have to admit, doing the same has never pointed me in the wrong direction.”
Nodding, Liv stretched out a hand and gently placed it over Charity’s clasped ones. In an instant, all the remaining nerves fled her body like they’d been sucked out by an unseen vacuuming force, and a sensation of total tranquility filtered through her.
“Gut instincts have worked well for me,” Liv said, “but there’s always the possibility the couple won’t connect for whatever reason. Which is why I always have two or three backups in your file.”
She wondered where Liv found those backups since she’d had such a tough time meeting anyone dateable in Heaven. But that’s what she was paying the matchmaker for, she guessed; Liv’s connections, knowledge, and database of people.
“So, how does this work?” she asked. “You know most of my weekends are busy working weddings. I’m usually free Monday to Wednesday nights and most of the time Sunday afternoons. I imagine most people who work regular jobs and regular work hours don’t like to meet up during the weeknights.”
“You’d be surprised,” Liv told her. “I’ve got clients who do shift work and work weekends as well, so finding you someone won’t be that difficult as far as work schedules go.
Now,” she stood and crossed to her desk.
“Enough about the questionnaire. Talk to me,” she booted up her laptop, “about your triggers.”
“Triggers? You mean like the things I won’t do, or...?” she shrugged.
“More the things that turn you off about a guy. Personality types, etc.” She glanced at the screen.
Kolby’s face shot into her mind. “Players,” she said automatically. “Guys only out for one thing. The kind who see a woman once, then never call again.”
Liv nodded. “I got that from your responses. Some girls like a player, think they can reform them. It hardly ever works. Okay, what else?”
Charity blew out a breath and sat back in the chair. “The overprotective kind. The ones who always need to handle everything because they’re the man and think you need to be coddled and protected from life just because you’re a female.”
Smiling, Liv said, “You’re a lot like my daughter. If a man holds a door open for her, she has a fit and reads him the riot act.”
“Basic manners don’t bother me. My parents drilled manners and courtesy into me and my five brothers, so holding doors open, or standing when you come into a room aren’t turn-offs. In fact,” she grinned, “being a Southern girl, it’s expected. It’s when it becomes smothering that I’m turned off.”
Liv nodded again, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “Anything else a no-no for you? Any more behaviors, or physical things, like length of hair or beards?”
Once again, Kolby appeared before her like she’d conjured him. His hair always looked like it was a month beyond a trim, and his razor didn’t get a great deal of use during the week. The relaxed, carefree attitude, surprisingly, wasn’t a negative in her mind, and she told Liv as much.
A half hour later, after a hug and Liv’s promise to call her as soon as she found someone, Charity left the office and, knowing the state of her cupboard and fridge, drove straight to the local market, Rhapsody in Your Mouth, known to everyone in Heaven simply as the Rhapsody.
Just another action-packed night in the life of a single gal.
She sighed as she pulled into an empty parking space.
I really hope Liv comes through.
Until then, she needed supplies.
So engrossed was she in scanning the shelves as she ambled along an aisle, she didn’t see the empty cart right in her way until she’d banged into it and sent it sailing backward and straight into someone.
Someone with ridiculously broad shoulders, ripped back, and trim waist she knew as well as the back of her hand.
When Kolby startled, then turned, she could read an annoyed expression on his face that turned on a dime to surprise when he realized who’d barreled into him.
“What are you doing here?” they both said at the same time.
Kolby grinned.
Charity did not.
“Okay, so that was a dumb question,” he said, ambling toward her. A hand basket dangled from one hand.
“Ya think?” she said with an eye roll.
An awkward silence separated the two feet between them.
Kolby banished it when he asked, “How was your appointment? Everything okay?”
His tone indicated that, although he didn’t know who she’d met with, he was concerned enough to want to ensure she wasn’t in trouble.
“Fine,” she answered, hoping he wouldn’t resort to his usual nosy ways and press for more.
He merely nodded, then glanced down at her cart. The grin that split his face again had her knees knocking as tiny tendrils of desire careened down her spine.
“Didn’t take you for a cookie junkie.” The laughter in his voice teased as he pointed to the four boxes lining the bottom of her cart.
The fact they were sitting next to three cartons of non-fat yogurt and skim milk, fresh vegetables and chicken breasts, he ignored.
“Seems,” he thrust his chin toward her cart, “you go heavy on the chocolate.”
Embarrassment flowed through her, competing with the sensations of lust. She had no desire to stand there and discuss her grocery purchases with him, especially since the reason behind the cookie haul was so...feminine.
Charity executed a flawless brain eye roll at the word.
Once she’d entered her teen years and started her period, the monthly cramps and mood swings that accompanied it proved too overwhelming for her to navigate through without a healthy dose of chocolate and sugar to bolster her system.
Her brothers had tormented her mercilessly whenever they noted their mother stocking up on Charity’s favorites, knowing the cause behind it.
Charity thought she’d just about die and dissipate up to the pearly gates in a plume of smoke if Kolby surmised the reason for her cookie haul.