LITMIR.BIZ

       8

      STACY WAS GOING TO LOSE her mind if Marissa didn’t answer her phone soon. She’d started calling her early in the afternoon but hadn’t left a message. Once she started talking about her encounter with Isaac, she was afraid she wouldn’t stop. And the two-minute window to leave her message on voice mail wouldn’t be nearly enough.

      What could Marissa possibly be doing that would keep her away from her business line for so long?

      Now, ten calls and two hours later, Stacy prowled restlessly around her house as she cradled the phone against her ear. Her ankle still hurt from last night, so she hobbled more than prowled, but she hated the idea of sitting still.

      She’d sat still in life for too long already.

      “Hello?” Marissa’s voice came through the line.

      “Thank goodness you’re there.”

      “I’ve been … in a meeting. But I took a break and saw you’d called a few times. What’s up?” Her voice sounded soft. And sort of happy, too. Her meeting must be going well.

      Unlike Stacy’s day.

      “My life is a disaster,” she began without preamble. But she needed to get this out in the open before she lost her mind. “I’ve allowed my father to pull the strings for too long and I don’t know how to make him stop. I don’t really care about meeting Kyle Murphy.”

      “Wait. What—”

      “It was a dumb idea to say I wanted to meet him, but I thought it would buy me time to meet other guys.” She’d always tried to work around her dad passively, taking the path of least resistance since her father could be so very formidable.

      No more.

      “I thought you had a big crush on him,” Marissa protested, not understanding Stacy’s plan.

      “My dad was gung-ho about the matchmaking, and I figured a big hockey star like Kyle would never agree to meet me. Ideally, while you tried to make that happen, you would have also found other dates for me. Realistic ones.” She sighed, hating that she’d gone about everything so ass-backward. But she really had thought a matchmaker could help her sift through guys who might not be good for her. Meeting Isaac made her realize she didn’t want help figuring out her romantic life. “Little did I know my father would think me snagging a hockey player would be a brilliant idea.”

      Stacy paused in pacing around the living room. She had two Chihuahua mixes following her and both of her little dogs seemed dizzy from running in circles. She scratched the smaller one—Tink—under the chin.

      “You have to talk to your father.” Marissa didn’t sound as happy now. She sounded vaguely irritated, but mostly insistent. “He’s got every matchmaker on the east coast vying to set you up with Kyle.”

      “I will. Soon. But I didn’t call about that. I met someone else. Someone I wish wanted to get to know me better …” Her heart squeezed at the thought of Isaac being completely unmoved by her suggestion that they get together. He’d thought she’d made a clever joke. “But meeting him made me realize that I need to get out from under my father’s thumb if I’m ever going to connect with guys who see me and not my dad’s money.”

      Isaac hadn’t known she was an heiress. She got the feeling he wouldn’t be impressed by money, anyway. When she’d checked him out online, she’d learned he was a big-deal CEO of a technology company, so he had no need to chase her father’s dollars. Besides, Isaac had said he lived in his head. She wondered what it was like in there and what ideas could occupy so much of his time that he didn’t notice his eyebrows were overgrown or that he needed a shave. Wouldn’t it be nice to be thinking so hard she didn’t care how she looked or what other people thought about her?

      “I’m overwhelmed,” Marissa said after a long moment. “I’m sorry, Stacy. It’s taking me a minute to process this. Would you like my help with this new guy you’ve met?”

      “I don’t know. No.” She didn’t want to subject Isaac to the kind of hell that Kyle Murphy would undoubtedly go through trying to escape a bunch of greedy dating gurus. Plus, if there was any hope of seeing Isaac again, she wanted to figure that out on her own.

      She had already gathered that he was a bit of a philanthropist from the articles she’d read online. Undoubtedly his trip to the Phantoms’ fundraiser had been in the same vein. Maybe she would run into him again at another local charity function. Her style features for the paper certainly warranted her presence at that sort of thing.

      “Well, I can do a preliminary screen for you at least, to make sure he’s legit. Email me his name and I’ll take care of that.”

      “Thank you. I’ll email you what I’ve found so far, but that’s not why I called.”

      “So how can I help?” Marissa sounded confused and possibly a little exasperated.

      Which was just how Stacy felt so much of the time dealing with her father. But no more. She was done trying to figure out how to make him listen without offending him. Done letting him make her think she wouldn’t succeed on her own.

      Last night she’d seen herself through Isaac Reynolds’s eyes and she hadn’t liked the view.

      “I need a new direction. A total life overhaul.” Looking around her glitzy home, financed by her father, her expensive lifestyle that she could do without, Stacy felt a new sense of purpose. “I’m going to be writing some new things. Blogging some pieces that will be very different from what I do for the paper.”

      Her writing voice was big and offbeat. And since she only felt comfortable exercising it in print, she owed it to herself to start using it.

      “That’s great, but—”

      “I hoped you would read them for me before I put them online.” She trusted Marissa. She’d met her years ago at a Brandy Collins concert after Stacy’s dad had finagled a VIP pass for the show.

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