Page 33 of The Matchmaker Club

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Three days had gone by, and Lucas and I had barely spoken. We kept things incredibly dull, polite, and civil. He had the same routine, and he stuck to it like clockwork.

9 a.m.: coffee at the kitchen table, along with replies to work emails.

10 a.m.: Nature Valley peanut butter granola bar.

Noon: An alarm would go off to tell him it was time to eat, because why eat when you’re hungry?

1 p.m. - 4 p.m.: phone meetings in the music room—which had become his temporary office. The only time he came out was to deal with the people he had hired to do repairs.

4 p.m.: into town for errands or shopping. Sometimes he didn’t come back with any bags. Not sure where he went.

5:30 p.m.: thirty-minute workout followed by a ten-minute shower. I timed it twice. It waspreciselyten minutes!

6:30 p.m.: dinner, which he ate in the dining room. My grandmother insisted we follow his 6:30 dinner routine, so he wouldn’t feel awkward. I had skipped a couple.

7:30 p.m.: a small glass of Scotch out on the patio with his Kindle in hand. Probably books about finance and business. Nothing that would help him remove the stick from his ass.

8:30 p.m.: off to his room. Whether he fell right to sleep, I didn’t know. I imagined he was the type to go to bed early. Never even heard the TV when I walked by, and no snoring either.

It was now 8:45 p.m. on a Friday night. Since I was going out tomorrow, I had decided to stay in.

Lainey was busy in her chair, carving a small piece of wood.

“What are you making?” I asked.

“A butterfly.” She sighed and dropped the knife in her lap. “I’m still trying to get the hang of it.”

“I’m sure it will turn out just fine,” Grandma said. She was always supportive of Lainey trying to find herself. She had once told me that Lainey envied my mother. My mom knew she wanted to be a painter since she could talk, while Lainey experimented and tried to find the one thing that spoke to her. My grandmother said Lainey was a “jack of all trades, but master of none.” Who knows, maybe that was her calling.

I slipped off my shoes and curled up into the side chair. The windows were open and the crickets were going full force under a clear night sky.

“Have you looked into any houses yet?” My grandmother pulled a needle through fabric meant to add to her collection of bed pillows.

“No,” I said.

“Have you changed your mind about what we talked about?”

“The man lives and breathes rules and routine. I couldn’t get through to him if I tried.”

“He’s been through a lot recently. Sometimes routine can be a comforting way to deal with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know he was engaged not so long ago?”

Probably a business merger.

She pulled the needle up and through the fabric again. “Beautiful woman. Vibrant. She’s a fashion buyer who travels all over the world.”

That didnotsound like someone Lucas would end up with.

“What happened? Did he call it off?”

“From what the tabloids said, she did, and not long after he proposed.”

“She probably realized how uptight he is and decided to save herself a lifetime of misery.”