A Perfectly Imperfect Match (Matchmaking Mamas) by Marie Ferrarella Read Free Book Online Page B

The store hours were printed right underneath it. “It is,” he announced.
    Where was he going with this? she wondered. “Is that good?”
    “Only if you want to drive home tonight,” he told her glibly.
    Taking a small notepad out of his other pocket, he jotted down the auto shop’s address and then stood looking thoughtfully at his phone for a moment.
    “Give me a minute,” he told her. Turning his back on her, he hit one of the thirty preprogrammed numbers in his phone as he walked away.
    Elizabeth watched him, wondering if he was calling a cab for her, or if the call even had anything to do with her dilemma.
    Well, aren’t you the swell-headed one?
    Why should his call have anything to do with me? Elizabeth asked herself. It wasn’t as if the man was obligated to help her. Her car would have gone dead whether or not he had shown up today to catch her on-air performance.
    She just hoped that this little mishap hadn’t cost her a job. After all she was definitely not at her best with this vehicle dead at her feet, and he might view her as a flighty female who wasn’t capable of staying on top of the simplest of things...like regular maintenance on her car.
    In her defense, finding work these days was a full-time job in itself. All the other details of her life—like buying food or getting her car serviced—just had to be fit around her search as best as she could manage. Keeping tabs on the life of her battery, she thought ruefully as she glared at her nonresponsive vehicle, had just fallen through the cracks.
    And now, she thought, taking out her own phone, she was paying for it.
    She was about to call one of her brothers to ask for a ride home when the handsome stranger sent her way by the mysterious Theresa Manetti walked back up to her.
    “All right,” he told her, “we’re all set.”
    “All set?” she echoed. Just how was being stranded in a parking lot forty miles from home anything close to that?
    He shot her a reassuring look. “The manager said he’d stay open for us, as long as we get there in the next twenty minutes.”
    “Manager?” She was beginning to feel as if she’d slipped into some parallel universe where she’d landed the role of the village idiot, destined to repeat words that made no sense to her in their present context. “Manager of what?” she wanted to know.
    “Manager of the vintage parts section in The Auto Mall,” he explained, then nodded toward his own car. “C’mon,” he urged. “Get in.”
    Rather than comply, she remained where she was, trying to process what he was saying. “Wait, you’re driving to The Auto Mall?”
    “Well, I left my helicopter in my other jacket,” he deadpanned, “so yes, I’m driving. The funny thing about batteries, they don’t come when you call them so we’re going to have to go and pick it up at the store.”
    Why was he doing this? He didn’t even know her. And then something else struck her. “Didn’t you say you had a schedule to keep, or an appointment to go to?”
    He’d just been on the phone, taking care of that little detail. The client was hooked on the campaign he’d pitched so there was little chance of losing him by temporarily postponing their meeting over drinks at McIntyre’s.
    “Not anymore,” he told her. “I rescheduled.”
    It still wasn’t making any sense to her. “But why?”
    He got in behind the wheel and gestured for her to get in on the passenger side. “Let’s just say I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress,” he told her. “Now, are you going to get in, or are we just going to stand here and talk until the store closes?” he wanted to know.
    “I’m getting in,” she answered, quickly doing just that.
    But he didn’t immediately take off the way she’d expected him to. Instead, Jared paused a moment longer to input the address of the auto parts store into his GPS. Offhand, since this part of town wasn’t his usual haunt, he had no idea where the store was in relation to the