Oh, dear. Had he said that last thing out loud? “Excuse me?” Please don’t let that have been out loud.

“I was saying it would have been inappropriate for me to have informed your secretary about your date already, but you clearly don’t have many choices left if you plan on meeting anyone this week. Try and keep up.”

“Is Jamie a carnivore?” He picked up the woman’s picture and studied it more closely. She was a stunner. An apple-scented stunner. Wait—that was Drea’s shampoo again. Either way, it left him pleasantly dizzy while he drank in the dark-haired beauty on the page.

“It’s Jaylene, and I believe so.”

“Book Jamie and I a table at Del Frisco’s for Thursday. I’m suddenly in the mood for prime rib.” Blake was back in the B-Zone, confident as hell, stalking around the office and ticking off items on his fingers. “Deal with those shoes. They clash horribly with your skirt. You can have Friday off, since you came in Saturday. We can discuss the date Monday.” He paused. That would be a three-day weekend without seeing Andrea. “Plan to bring me another batch of candidates on Saturday, at my home.”

“Blake.” He faced her, the questioning look on his face a contrast with the stormy one on hers. “Her name is Jaylene. It doesn’t matter how good the steak is, how sweet and submissive the date, no woman will ever want to be with you if you can’t remember her name. Try to have a little respect. For you, a wife is an accessory, but you’re expecting to be someone’s whole life. Also, I forgot my heels, so.”

Even the confidence of the B-Zone couldn’t keep that from stinging. And now he’d have to look at those stupid orange shoes all day. He felt himself deflating. This was unacceptable. He’d have to find a way to gain his control back.

Chapter Eight

Andy awoke with a start when Lacy burst through her bedroom door at—she glanced at the clock—seven forty-three in the morning. Seven forty-three on her day off.

“What the hell, Lacy? I’m sleeping.” Andy pulled the covers up and started to snuggle back into her pillow.

“Your phone, which you left out on the coffee table last night, has been ringing nonstop for fifteen minutes.” Lacy was obviously none too happy about it, too. “When it wouldn’t stop, I answered it. Here—take it.”

Andy sat up and took her cell, wondering who on earth would call her at such a god-awful time of the day, and why her sister didn’t just silence the phone instead of answering it. She glanced at the number on the screen—it was one she didn’t recognize—before putting the cell up to her ear. “Hello?”

“She was gay,” the male voice barked into her ear.

“What?” Andy wasn’t awake enough to register who the caller was let alone the meaning of his words.

“Gay. As in lesbian. As in not fond of men. As in likes to get it on with other women.”

“Blake?” The high-pitched frenzy in his tone didn’t sound quite like her boss’s voice, but the words he was spewing could only belong to Mr. Donovan himself.

“I don’t understand why you would set me up with a gay woman,” he continued without verifying that it was indeed him.

But Andy was sure now. She should have expected this actually. Jaylene had stopped by last night after her date with Blake and already given Andy an earful. Turned out the couple weren’t a match made in heaven as Andy had hoped. They weren’t even a match made for the moment, the pairing had been so ridiculously awful.

Andy took a deep breath. “Jaylene wasn’t gay, Blake.”

“Ah, she had you fooled as well,” he muttered. “Then it was a purposeful snow job. Obviously she was after my money. Or at the very least, a free meal. No more first dates at expensive restaurants. Write that down.”

If she’d been more awake, she may have thought it was comical that Blake thought she carried a notebook around at all times, ready to jot down his latest candidate preferences. But she wasn’t awake. And it was her day off. A day that she’d meant to spend sleeping until noon.

“Blake, Jaylene isn’t gay. She’s a feminist.” It was a fact Andy hadn’t realized until the night before. Definitely not the right woman for Blake, but how the hell was she supposed to have figured that one out? None of the dedicated feminists she’d ever encountered had ever had such traditional women’s jobs—nor did they spend so much time on their makeup.

The fact that Andy had only known one die-hard feminist in her lifetime was beside the point.

“A feminist?” Blake said the word with equal exclamation, equal questioning. “God, that’s even worse.”

“How in the world is feminist worse than lesbian in terms of bride-finding? You know what—don’t answer that.” Andy rubbed at her sleep-crusted eyes. “This is my day off, Blake. Perhaps we can discuss this further on Monday.”

“She drank Sam Adams. She follows baseball. Drea, she had a bob.” Apparently the conversation couldn’t wait until Monday. “I thought in the pictures you showed me that her hair was just up. Nope. It was a full-on bob.”

Andy sifted through the comments lining up in her brain and picked the one least likely to get her fired. “You’ve never mentioned long hair as a prerequisite for your dates, Blake.”

“I would have expected that to be obvious. You did say you had a handle on my preferences.”

That was it. She was not having this conversation. Not on her day off, not without coffee. “Okay, Blake, I’m done now. I’ll talk to you more about this on Monday.”

“She owns a cat, Drea. A diabetic cat.” Blake spat the word cat as if pet-owning were the worst thing he could imagine about a person. “No cats. That’s a rule.”

“I’m jotting it down,” she lied. “And I’ll jot down more on Monday. Talk to you later.” She’d moved the phone away from her ear when she heard him call back to her.

“We’ll talk tomorrow. The new files you bring had better be more appropriately aligned to my tastes.”

“Got it. Have a great day, Blake.” She clicked END before he could say anything else. After saving the number to her contacts so she’d be warned the next time he called, Andy turned the phone off and fell back into her bed.

Dammit, she hated her job. No, scratch that, she hated her boss. Well, she hated her job and her boss. And she hated mornings. But, dammit again, she was awake now. Besides, she was suddenly worried that the files she had were not appropriately aligned to Blake’s tastes. Which meant she had work to do, namely finding more candidates before she stopped by his house the next day. Well, she’d show him she could find candidates, all right.

Within an hour, she’d showered, dressed, and laid out a plan of where to search for potential brides. Both the coffee shop in the Asian American Civic Association and the Italian Cultural Library seemed like good places to meet exotic women. But even if her scouting for suitable dates was successful, she still had one very huge problem: However would she make Blake Donovan suitable for dating?

Fortunately, she thought she just might have an idea to solve that as well.

*   *   *

“Your sister’s worried about you, you know.” Lacy’s boss glanced over at Andy from the driver’s seat of his van.

“Oh, my God, Darrin, I have told her over and over that I am not going to screw this one up. Will you please attest to what a great employee I am being?”

His glance traveled over her skeptically. “Well. You are definitely a dedicated employee. Unusual, even. Great…? Jury’s still out.” He chuckled. “I’m pulling for you, Andy.”

“Oh, shut up.” She glared out the window. Despite her words to the contrary, her confidence in the job was somewhat lacking at the moment. She had found some brilliant women on her scouting mission the day before, but she still feared that none of them would succeed in wowing Blake if she didn’t manage to soften him first.