“Not really.” He ducked his head so she wouldn’t see the lie reflected in his gaze. “But at least I look normal again.”

They ate in silence for a bit, but a roar from outside made a few patrons look up. “Sounds like a storm out there.”

“Yeah, we haven’t had rain in a while.”

A blob of ketchup fell on his pants to match the mustard on his lapel. He cursed his innate clumsiness and grabbed a few napkins. Kennedy pushed her lettuce around her plate. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Hmm, she looked cranky. Odd, she’d been fine till his burger arrived. As usual, he opened his mouth and his thoughts spilled out. “Why did you order that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Because it’s healthy.”

“Actually, too much roughage in the body can throw off your digestive system. Want a bite of my burger?” Her eyes lit up with sheer lust. Nate shifted in his seat. Damn, the woman was potent. He wondered what would happen if she ever looked at him like that. As if. “You probably need some protein.”

Her fingers clenched her fork in a death grip. She took a dainty sip of water with lemon. “I have tuna as my protein.”

He investigated the pile of lettuce and found a few dry pieces of fish scattered around. “Oh. No mayo?”

She glared.

“Are you one of those vegans? Or allergic to gluten or something?”

She stuck a leaf in her mouth and chewed. Nate felt sorry for her. Her usual vibrancy seemed to stagnate as soon as she got around food. As if her healthy choices sucked all the joy out of her. “No. I follow a strict balance to ensure good nutrition. Please don’t tell me you eat like this normally?”

He finished his burger and swallowed it down with a sip of beer. “No. I don’t mind eating healthy, as long as I allow myself a few vices. I try to stay away from fast food, but I’m a terrible cook, so I do eat out a lot. You don’t need to diet.”

A strange sound emitted from her lips. “I’m not on a diet.”

A crucial piece of information danced around his consciousness. Something that would solve a bit of the puzzle that made up this woman. “Good. Your body is amazing.”

Darkness stole over her features, seeming to capture her inner light momentarily. “Thanks.”

He could tell she didn’t believe it. Not one word. And there was something bigger there, underneath, buried so deep he wondered if anyone had ever discovered it. Like a physics equation, she begged for a solution, and he longed to be the one to find it. Of course, that’s why he sucked with people. He had no social filter and followed no rules. He dug until he hit dirt, by which point the person was usually so pissed at him he or she stalked off. Yep. He was a real winner.

“Do you ever let go and have something that’s bad for you?”

She pulled those luscious lips back and snarled. “Why don’t we move our attention from fries and concentrate on you? Now that you have the correct skin color again, we need to practice a bit on social conversation.”

“Nothing wrong with getting to the heart of a person. It doesn’t waste time.” His damp hair kept sliding in his face, so he pulled a rubber band from his pocket protector and tied it quickly back.

“Initial trust is built from the first dialogue. You’ll ruin it by mentioning sex, bodily parts, or making judgments on childbearing age, fear of commitment, or career choice.”

He frowned. “What do I have left to talk about?”

She smiled. A tiny piece of green lettuce stood out within her incisor. Her lipstick had rubbed off from the napkin. A vibrant intensity beat from her figure in waves. Today she wore a black lace shirt, short red skirt, and red pumps. She’d shrugged off her red jacket and he spotted an upper arm bracelet. The gold cuff reminded him of something a slave girl would wear. He glimpsed the black matching lace of her bra peeking out. He’d read a story once where the hero sucked the heroine’s nipples for an hour and made her come. Nate wondered if any of her lovers had ever treated her to such attention. Wondered if she’d be greedy, noisy, active. If she were his, he’d concentrate on wiping out every word in the English language from her mind so that she only moaned and whimpered his name.

His pants tightened to a painful degree. Down, boy. Never gonna happen in this lifetime. He had better get used to it. And stop reading those damn books.

“There are a million other topics to pick from,” she said. “We’ll practice now. Pretend we just met and decided to have dinner. What would you say to me?”

“You have a piece of lettuce stuck in your teeth.”

She blanched, and then placed her tongue over her teeth and sucked hard. “Is it gone?”

Damn, she was hot. “Yes. Gone.”

“Okay, that’s what I mean. You definitely want to let a woman know if she has something on her that could embarrass her, but you need to learn subtlety. A touch of your napkin to your mouth. A gentle smile and a tap of your finger over your teeth.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. But if I had something in my teeth or toilet paper stuck somewhere, don’t waste my time. Tell me.”

“Noted. Aren’t you going to have the last few fries?”

“No, here.” He pushed the plate across the table. “There’s only three. Live a little.”

She squirmed in her seat as if about to make the biggest decision of her life. Then palmed the three fries and began to nibble. The salt seemed to make her happy. A hazy glow of satisfaction came over her. Surrendering to her desires seemed to please her. Nate had a dozen other ways he’d like to make that look appear on her features, but he stopped himself from thinking about them—after all, she had flat-out refused to go out with him. Why would sleeping with him invoke any other response?

“Thanks,” she said, gesturing toward the fries. “Back to role-play. We just sat down and ordered. Let’s talk.”

She sucked on the fry as if intent on getting every last taste of salt from the murdered potato. Unfortunately, the distraction of her pink tongue, crooked tooth, and long, tapered fingers slammed another type of image into his brain. What was up with him? He needed to get laid fast, or he was just going to humiliate himself with her for the long term. “Umm, do you live around here?”

“Manhattan. How about you?”

“Westchester. Umm, do you have any hobbies?”

She sucked harder. “Yeah, I go to the gym three times a week. How about you?”

“I enjoy golf.”

“Oh, I’ve never played golf.”

He straightened up in his chair. “The sport is the perfect combination of skill and challenge. The swing is the key to success in the game, but it can be fine-tuned and changed to fit the individual. Tiger Woods actually spent more than a year completely redoing his swing in order to become a different type of golfer. Imagine the rush of watching the ball sail through the air and land perfectly on the green! Exciting, right?”

She finished the fries, and twirled her straw around in her glass. “Not really.”

Nate glared. “I don’t like this conversation. Let’s just admit we’re not suited for the long term.”

“Right there!” She jumped from her seat and pointed her index finger at him. “That’s where the breakdown occurs. You, Nate Dunkle, are a selfish conversationalist!”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “What? I asked questions. She had no interest in me! She was bored by my explanation of golf.”

“And so am I. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t be the perfect match. You just don’t want to take the time and effort to dig deeper. You need to get out of your own ego and focus on her.”

Irritation coursed through him. “You make me sound like an ass. I dig. I scored high on the surveys in Cosmo!”

She gave a snort. “Those surveys are fixed and give no helpful information. If a woman doesn’t agree with what you say in the first five minutes, you declare her incompetent for a long-term relationship. She doesn’t like golf. Big deal. How about asking what she does like and why? Don’t you enjoy figuring things out at your job? People are the same. They’re puzzles, made up of various pieces that need analyzing and understanding. You throw them away too easily if they don’t fit your idea of what you want in a spouse, and you’re going to regret it.” Something flickered in her eyes. A memory? Was she talking about herself?

“Fine. Reset. But this time, just be you. Don’t pretend to be someone else.”

“I don’t think—”

“I do.” He studied her for a while. Took in her high forehead, the sweep of caramel-colored hair tumbling past her shoulders. Her face was a collection of interesting angles that fascinated him. Her pupils dilated as if his stare were an actual caress, and the color darkened to a deep whiskey. “What made you get into matchmaking?”

He waited her out. Finally, she gave up and took another sip of water. “Kate and Arilyn were my two best friends in college. After graduation, we went our separate ways for a while but ended up getting drunk one night and came up with the idea to start our own matchmaking agency. Kate is the overall director, Arilyn handles the computer stuff and counseling, and I do the recruitment and social events.”

“Most drunken ideas are forgotten come morning.”

The memory sparked a smile. “Not us. We nursed our hangovers and immediately began researching.”

“Smart. It’s hard to start a small business lately. Have you been successful?”

“Yep. Our marriage stats are increasing every day, and we’re finally seeing a steady profit.”

He smiled a bit at the raw pride in her voice. She had guts. Not many dove into the deep end, let alone swam without drowning. “Why Verily?”