The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay by Kelly Harms Read Free Book Online

hoping for a piece of whatever’s left, then I think you’ve got a fight on your hands.”
    â€œRenee! Don’t be ridiculous. I just want to find him and get unmarried. No muss, no fuss.” But even as I am saying that, I am thinking, Wow. Not so much that I want this guy’s money, but that I want to make out with this guy a little. He was so, so hot in my dream last night. I remember how he made me feel in Vegas so long ago. Beautiful. Special. I was trying to have fun at that bachelorette party, but underneath it all I was miserable. I still loved Nic, or at least a part of me did. I was so angry at Renee for dating him in the first place, much less marrying him, much less making me be her maid of honor. And I was mad at Nic for proposing to her when he had told me only a year earlier that he wasn’t the marrying kind. I felt betrayed, and terribly alone, passed over, and then there was Ben Hutchinson, stroking the side of my face and saying nice things about me. Was it all wishful thinking then? Was he as cool as I remember, or was he any port in a storm?
    The problem is, it’s ten years later, and my life is not so different, stormwise. If anything, it’s worse. I’m ten years older, dating a man who doesn’t always take my calls, about to be evicted, and the friend I sacrificed so much for back then treats me like I’m a troublesome teenager now, not her oldest and closest confidant. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have someone stunningly gorgeous and stupid-rich caress the side of my face before sweeping me off my feet for a night.
    A knock at Renee’s office door wakes me from my daydream. It’s her paralegal. Renee stands up and gestures to her Aeron chair. “I’ve got to go bill some hours. Stay here and track this guy’s address down. When you find him, I can send him something formal on our letterhead telling him you need to renew the annulment filing. Easy as pie.”
    I nod. “That sounds perfect. Thank you. You are really saving my ass here.”
    â€œAs usual,” she says. She sounds incredibly bored with me. “I’ll be back in an hour. Try to find him by then, because my afternoon is booked solid. Oh, and if you have extra time, would you grab me my latte from downstairs? My assistant is out today, and I’m dragging already. The girls don’t sleep anymore unless they’re in bed with me—us. I have to be refueled every couple of hours or I fall asleep standing up.”
    â€œOf course. Thanks, hon. And sorry I’m so psychotic.”
    â€œYou’re not psychotic,” she says on a beleaguered sigh. “You’re just messy. Your apartment, your hair, your life. Just messy.”
    *   *   *
    At first I am obedient. I google and google and click and click, looking for some hint as to where Ben Hutchinson might have gone after “retiring” in his early thirties. There’s nothing. Then I start looking for the family mentioned in the Wikipedia entry. The family for which he retired. Might he be (illegally) married? But then there’d have to be a wedding announcement online somewhere. Weddings are a big deal. I don’t care how private a guy might be, someone in his life—his bride, his mother, even more likely his mother-in-law—is going to take out a wedding announcement.
    There’s nothing of the kind, and it’s a relief to be reassured that I’m not responsible for any bigamy-type issues. I look more closely at his bio. It says he went to MIT, so I search for his name plus “MIT” and find an archived piece about him in the student paper. Bingo. It has his hometown in the copy. Minnow Bay, Wisconsin. Never heard of it. Maybe I could find a family member in Minnow Bay and track him down that way.
    A few more clicks and I learn there are roughly four million Hutchinsons in Minnow Bay. They all have superbutch