Libby sighed. “Or she might insist that I step down for bringing scandal to her good name. It’s a toss-up.”
While Taylor made arrangements for Reagan to come into the o ce, Libby paced the conference room as she stared at the Mediterranean-style Freedom Tower on the horizon. Lit up against the night sky, the yellow building was the Ellis Island of Miami, the first stop her grandparents made after fleeing their home in Cuba to start over. With nothing but the clothes on her back and a notebook full of her own mother’s matchmaking secrets, her grandmother had started again from zero. Libby’s next steps could easily unravel it all. No pressure.
Libby was so lost in thought that when Taylor returned an hour later, she didn’t hear the glass door open.
“Ms. Cassanova, Ms. Soto is here,” she announced, causing Libby to turn toward the sound of her voice.
The woman standing just behind Taylor was much more attractive than in her pictures. Her sideswept dark hair was
short and framed her oval-shaped face perfectly. Her huge, brown eyes were absolute showstoppers. In a loose, white linen shirt and jeans, she oozed casual confidence. O the top of her head, Libby thought of a half dozen people who would love to match with her based on looks alone - not that it worked that way.
“Ms. Soto, nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on such short notice,” Libby said as she crossed the room, her hand extended.
“Call me Reagan,” she o ered, her full lips forming a broad smile framed by dimples at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m sorry my hands are a little dry. I was working all day,”
she added before slipping a warm palm against Libby’s outstretched hand.
“You feel great to me,” she replied, immediately cringing at her strange response. “And please, call me Libby.”
After sitting next to each other at the
table instead of across like with the rest of the candidates, Libby opened her mouth to ask Reagan the first in a series of eighteen questions designed to measure compatibility. She got no further than the first word before Reagan leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs.
“Tell me why you’re doing this,” she asked, her tone firm but not unpleasant. It was strong and sure, like her handshake. “You’re a successful, attractive woman. Why do you need to hire a stranger to pretend to be your partner?”
The question cut her to the bone. Libby shot Taylor a questioning glance before beginning to formulate an answer.
Taylor took her meaning immediately. “She’s already signed the nondisclosure agreement.”
Libby hesitated anyway. The stranger sitting across from her might not have qualms about getting sued,
eviscerating the NDA’s deterrent e ect. Nothing in her demeanor showed deceit, but she couldn’t be sure.
As the silence crept around them like a slow-moving river, Reagan’s lip twitched into the tiniest smile. “If I’m going to commit to this, I need to understand what you want.”
In her life, no one had ever so directly asked her that simple question. What do you want? It was disarming in its weight.
“To save my reputation,” she confessed, to her own surprise. “To save my family’s legacy.”
Reagan leaned back in her seat, taking a long, steady inhale without releasing Libby from her gaze. “And all of that hangs on whether or not someone is on your arm?”
Libby let out a bark of laughter to relieve the tension mounting in her gut. As insane as it sounded, it was true. At least to a lot of her clients and the public at large. “It does.
How can I find people love when I haven’t found it for myself?”
Her expressive brown eyes softened in sympathy. “That’s an incredible amount of pressure you’re under, Libby. I’m sorry you’re in this position.”
Heat flooded Libby’s chest and curled around her neck like a wool scarf in the Florida summer. “That’s sweet of you to say, but it’s okay—”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Reagan said before Libby could finish. “You don’t have to think something’s okay to endure it. There’s power in expressing what you’re feeling. In being overwhelmed, or scared, or unsure and in that not being okay but moving forward anyway.”
“You sound like a women’s empowerment retreat I went to once,” she replied despite a dry throat and quickening pulse. “Did you also spend a week in the Colorado mountains learning how to shed the chains of patriarchy?”
Reagan’s laugh was throaty and syrupy, forcing a smile on Libby’s lips. “I’ve been shocked by the injustice born of my feminine form since I was ten. That’s when my parents told me I couldn’t go on the field trip to the Seaquarium because they weren’t available to chaperone. You have no idea how much I wanted a picture with those dolphins. When I complained that my brothers went on the same field trip when they were in the fifth grade, my dad countered with the incomprehensible, pero ellos son barrones.” She shook her head. “As if telling me my male brothers were boys was some kind of explanation.”
Slipping unconsciously into Spanish, Libby replied with her own experience. “When I was sixteen, I was finally allowed to go on my first date. A big deal considering my dad didn’t think I should date until after I was married,” she chuckled. “At that age, my brother had already had like three girlfriends. When I protested that my grandpa not sit between my date and me at the movie theater, you’d think I’d asked to go to an orgy. I was promptly informed that I couldn’t be jeopardized like that. As if the poor guy would’ve tried something with my grandpa sitting next to him and dad behind.”