Read ENCORE PERFORMANCE (THE MATCHMAKER TRILOGY) for Free Online

squared his shoulders and joined her on the porch.
    “Good morning. I thought you were a no-show.” She
smiled at him and her eyes seared him. She'd pulled her
long, dark hair back in a tail away from her face and her
eyes were larger, he swore it. She had full lips, the kind that
a man could find pleasure in for hours. He shook it off.
“I didn’t sleep too well,” he said and that wasn’t a lie.
    Any sleep he had had been filled with dreams of Carissa.
“Me either.” She reached for her sweatshirt that lay on
the chair next to her. She tied it around her waist and
looked into his eyes. “I kept thinking I should have kissed
you when I ran into you the other night. It’s sure made it
hard to sleep lately.” She winked and started down the
steps.
Thomas’s feet didn’t move. Was she kidding? His
heart was racing now and he hadn’t run a step. He wiped at
the sweat that formed on his brow.
“Are you coming?” she called back to him from the
street corner.
God, was she clueless as to what she’d just done? He
took his first step and then another. Dear Lord, he was in
trouble.
He never did run with her. It was much more like him
following her. When she stopped in front of a diner, he was
grateful. They hadn’t run far, but he was certainly not in as
good of shape as the woman he’d been chasing all the way
from the house.
She stood with her arms over her head, stretching from
side to side. Then she untied the sweatshirt from her hips
and slid it over her arms.
Thomas finally caught up to her and immediately bent
over with his hands on his knees.
Carissa laughed. “I thought you could run.”
“So did I. Sophia never ran that fast.”
“Then she was taking it easy on you.” She tightened
the tail of hair at the back of her head. “Stand up.”
“I can’t.” He panted as his vision went blurry and all
he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears.
She walked to him and pulled on his arms until she had
them cuffed at the wrists and lifted over his head. “There. It
lets in more air. You’re just cutting off your oxygen by
bending over.”
He couldn’t say anything. He just stood there staring at
her glistening face and trying his damndest to suck in
oxygen.
She was watching him carefully and when his
breathing began to settle she smiled at him.
“Feel better?” When he nodded, she tugged open the
door of the diner. “Good, I’m hungry.”
Thomas took in the atmosphere of the small diner. No
one there seemed out of place. Some people were in suits,
most of them were in relaxed casual Saturday wear. A few
looked like they hadn’t seen a pillow yet. Others waved to
the staff and other patrons as they headed out to a long,
hard day of manual labor. The air filled with their voices
and the smells of bacon and coffee. He’d missed such a
place. Carissa waved to the woman behind the counter and
found a booth for them to sit in. He followed, sitting across
from her.
“This place is great.”
“This was always one of my favorite places to come to
with my dad when I was growing up.” She tossed her head
from side to side and he watched as she worked the tension
from her neck.
“A hangout, huh?”
“Well it was one of his favorite places because he
always came here with Sophia. He didn’t tell me that until
after I fell in love with her myself or I would have protested
and never have wanted to come here again.”
She threw a menu his way and he opened it, glancing
at the options.
“Didn’t you always love Sophia? How could you not?
She’s amazing.”
“Because when you’re little and someone feeds you
lines of BS about why your dad left, you tend to hate the
person he’s living with.” She said it so matter-of-factly he
only nodded in agreement.
The waitress arrived at the table and Carissa looked up
at her with a smile.
“Good morning, Betsy.”
“Good mornin’, honey. Got a new beau?” Thomas
wiggled in his seat as she scanned her eyes over him.
“Kinda skinny.”
“You can fix that,