MAKE ME A MATCH (Running Wild) by Bobby Hutchinson

something to do with you and me looking like we got the short end in a long fistfight. He seemed the kind of dude who put a lot of emphasis on appearance.”
    “We can go somewhere else. We’re not married to him.”
    Eric thought it over. “Nope, let’s wait until the red and the black are a little less evenly matched on the month-end statements.” Maybe it wasn’t such bad news. He knew about using the bank’s money, but he hated not being in complete control of his affairs.
    “So how’d it go with the matchmaker?”
    He’d told Bruno what he was planning. He wasn’t about to tell him how it had actually gone. “About the same as the bank.”
    “No go with a refund?”
    “It’s complicated. There’s an outside chance, but I think I’ll have to resort to sabotage, make certain the women I get lined up with go screaming back saying they don’t want to see me again. When enough of them do, it’ll be game over. But I’ve gotta make it seem like I’m really trying.” ‘"Whatever works.” Bruno sounded distracted.
    “Everything okay with you?”
    “Just an argument with Anna, she wants me to sign up for yoga classes. It’s not my thing.”
    “Hang tough. She’ll cave.” Maybe. Anna had a one-track mind. But Eric couldn’t imagine Bruno in cowboy boots and a leotard, either.
    “Yeah, well, good luck with the dating game. Getting out of it, I mean.”
    After he hung up, Eric gave it more thought. It seemed as if it should be possible to discourage women, but after practically raising his sisters, the only thing he knew for sure about the species was that just when you figured you had them figured, they did the opposite of what you expected. It wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.
    For the first time, he felt a little excited about the whole project. It was a challenge, and he was up for it, although the fact that Tessa McBride was involved was a stroke of rotten luck. She’d do everything she could to make things rough on him. What could he do about that?
    He had a second coffee and thought about it. It wasn’t good to have her as an enemy; she held too many cards here. He could give her a call later and suggest they find a way to bury the hatchet. He could say that what happened between them was a long time ago. He could quote Anna, that crap about how unhealthy it was, carrying around old emotional baggage.
    Maybe there was something to that, after all. He’d had heartburn in his chest the whole time he was around her today. Probably an aftereffect of pepper spray.
    He’d also had a major hard-on, what the hell was that about?

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    If you leave me, can I come too?
     
    It was all about computers, Tessa fumed.
    If Clara wasn’t such a mastodon about computers, this whole thing with Eric Stewart couldn’t have happened, because everything would be organized, people would make appointments, she’d have checked the screen and known he was on his way in and bolted out the back door. Except there was no back door.
    With an unlit cigarette clutched between the first two fingers of her right hand and Eric’s questionnaire on the desk in front of her, Tessa forcefully dialed Clara’s number with her left forefinger, and this time her boss answered.
    “Clara, it’s me.” Outraged or not, Tessa didn’t want to dump this whole problem straight into her sick boss’s lap with no warning. She did her best to ease into it slowly. “I called earlier. I spoke to Bernard.”
    “He didn’t say,” Clara said in a monotone, as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other that Bernard the Beast was withholding messages. And she actually sounded impatient when she added, “What is it, Tessa? Why are you calling me?”
    Maybe because you’re the Boss Lady who always insists on knowing everything that’s going on down here? Tessa looked at the phone as if it were possessed and took a long, dry, hungry drag on the cigarette she’d managed so far not to light.
    Clara always called