Page 16 of Meet Cute or Your Money Back

Duke deflates a little in his seat, pouting. “Fine.”

Suppressing my chuckle, I take a clean napkin and wipe away the remnants of cookie from his face. “How about half extra cheese and half chicken and broccoli? And a side salad.”

Duke scrunches up his nose. “Salad, too?”

I lean back in my seat and take a casual sip of coffee. “We can always scrap the entire negotiation and go home to cook instead.”

“No! I’ll eat some salad, I promise.”

“So it’s a deal?”

“Deal!” He holds out a tiny hand and I shake it, as he seals our negotiation with a giggle.

“Let’s roll, partner.” I scoop him up, feeling his warmth seep into my chest—a reminder of what’s truly important. The paperwork can wait; these moments with Duke are fleeting and precious.

“Operation Dinner is a go!” he announces, saluting sharply as we exit the coffee shop.

“Operation Dinner is a definite go,” I echo, knowing in my heart that no mission has ever been more vital.

On the TV,Errol Flynn leaps over a table, grasping a chandelier. Inexplicably, Duke has become obsessed with old Errol Flynn movies,Robin Hoodbeing his favorite.

But as the clink of sword fighting flickers across the screen, Duke’s already out like a light, curled up on the couch.

I switch off the TV and for a moment, just watch him breathe—the rise and fall of his chest is hypnotic. There’s a peace to it that I can’t seem to find anywhere else in my life. His second half-eaten pizza slice on the coffee table tells me Operation Dinner was a success, and I give myself a mental pat on the back that he even ate the entire small bowl of salad I gave him, too. Now, as he sleeps, I’m struck by how much this little guy means to me.

I thought I knew what love was when I met his mother.But I had no idea. I had no idea the capacity for love a human could have until Duke entered my life…and his mother left this world.

“All right, buddy,” I whisper, sliding an arm under his knees and another around his shoulders. He stirs but doesn’t wake, mumbling something about robbing from the rich before settling again, nestling against my chest.

The weight of him against me is grounding and reminds me why I hung up my uniform for good. No medal or commendation could ever match the honor of being Duke’s dad, especially after we lost Jenna. She’d have wanted me here, and hell, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

In fact, if I left on another tour, I’m sure she would have kicked my ass to next Tuesday.

Tiptoeing up the stairs, I carry him to his room, which still smells faintly of the dried lavender Jenna always kept in our drawers. It’s one of those small details I kept doing, even after she passed away. My own little nod to keeping a small part of her in his life and memory. Even if he could never remember that she always smelled like lavender, maybe he can still find a way to associate it with her, just like I do.

Tucking him into bed feels like a sacred ritual, each motion deliberate, from straightening the covers to brushing back the curls from his forehead. “Night, champ,” I murmur, even though I know he’s already deep in dreamland.

There’s paperwork in my office calling my name—the mystery of where Drakon has been hiding won’t solve itself—but instead, I open my laptop and pull up Allie’s questionnaire that she emailed over an hour ago.

I skim through her answers, my eyes snagging on the section about her ideal man.

Educated. A job he loves. She would love someone to play tennis with.

My eyes latch onto the sentence. Tennis? Allie doesn’t strike me as a club-going tennis player.

But suddenly, a picture of the man she wants forms in my mind. An Ivy League suit during the work week. Polo shirts, boat shoes, and a country club membership card burning a hole in his wallet on the weekends. A guy who knows his Bordeaux from his Beaujolais and probably orders foie gras before every meal.

“Good luck with that,” I chuckle to myself, trying to imagine goofy Allie at some stuffy gala, sipping champagne and making small talk over canapés. It’s a world away from my life, filled with kindergarten parent teacher conferences and action figure landmines. But hey, that’s what she wants, and my job isn’t to judge. My job is to find it for her.

Although part of my job is sometimes helping to guide people into realizing who might be the best match for them, even if it doesn’t fit the white picket fence picture they have in their heads.

Like a runner. My eyes swing to my own running shoes that always sit near the front door and my stomach sours. Something tells me that the challenge with Allie will be finding her the right match…and not simply the right match onpaper.

I click out of the questionnaire and open our search engine database of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes.

We don’t run our service in the standard way most matchmaking services do. Most businesses have people consent to being part of their database. We, on the other hand, use our resources to search all over the city for people who might fit the bill. Even if they haven’tsigned up or given us consent. One of the perks of having been trained in intel gathering.

It’s not exactly ethical, but no one needs to know how we arrange these meet cutes; not even our clients. All they know is that we show up to a location and the perfect cookie cutter man is there waiting… No harm, no foul.

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