Page 77 of Daddy's Little Matchmaker

Connor scanned the room for Tessica, but didn’t see her. “Is Tessica here?”

“Sure, she’s in the restroom.”

“Great.” He stepped closer and held his hand out to the woman. “I’m Connor, Tessica’s boyfriend. You must be Kelly, the new employee.”

Kelly nodded and shook his hand. “That’s me. Nice to meet you.”

Tessica came out from the back and grinned when she saw Connor. “You made it.” She went over and leaned across the front counter to give him a quick kiss.

“Finally,” Connor agreed. He checked the clock on the wall. “Just in time to help close up.”

“Actually, I’d like to have Kelly do that by herself while I supervise, so she can do it alone for the first time tomorrow. But you should go check upstairs. Erin had some movers here yesterday, and it looks like they took it all.”

“Ah, wonderful. I’m glad my sister finally got that done,” Connor said. “I’ll go check while you guys close up.”

He went upstairs and walked through each of his mother’s rooms. He opened the bedroom closet, and several of the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen. It appeared as though they’d taken everything. On the one hand he was glad the task had finally been taken care of, but when he stood in the middle of the living room, a sense of loneliness pervaded his thoughts. His mother’s home was now nothing more than a few empty rooms.

Not wanting to dwell in his morose thoughts, he turned off the lights, and walked downstairs. He found Tessica holding the front door open and saying goodnight to Kelly as the young woman walked down the porch steps.

She closed the door and turned to Connor.

“How’s the new employee coming along?” Connor asked.

Tessica walked over to him and gave him a tight hug, resting her head on his shoulder. “Kelly is great. Thank you again for suggesting that I get an employee. Having her here has taken so much off my plate that I feel like I’ve got mountains of time, and it’s only been four days.”

Having Tessica in his arms helped alleviate his bad mood. He reluctantly admitted to himself that he’d missed her terribly.“Mountains of time, huh? And what have you been doing with your windfall?”

She picked her head up and made eye contact. “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you until after dinner, but I’m too excited.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm, and wondered what she’d been up to. But he’d learned long ago to temper his own enthusiasm when a Little was excited about something, because half the time they were excited to do something they absolutely shouldn’t be doing, and he had to firmly say no to their plans.

She pulled him over to her laptop, and opened a folder labeledMatchmaking for Littles.

Connor’s smile faded.

Tessica said, “Last week, when I was finishing up the adoption paperwork for Butch, Gwen made an offhanded comment about wishing a forever Daddy would take her home, and the idea of merging those two things suddenly popped into my brain. I’ve been matching and adopting out animals for years, and Ilovematching people up in real life. So, why not combine those things? Honestly, I haven’t been able to think of much else in my spare time, and I’ve been working on creating paperwork to put my plan in action.”

She clicked on the Matchmaking folder to open it, and Connor sawsixdocuments in there.

She opened the first one. “This is a compatibility test. At first I had two versions of the test, one for Littles and the other for Daddies or Mommies, but eventually I realized they were the same questions, just worded differently. So I reworded all the questions to reflect both options and put it in one.”

Connor noticed the form was sixteen pages long, and his eyebrows furrowed. She’d been working on this behind his back for almost a week. She hadn’t mentioned one word about this in any of their text exchanges. Had she known he wouldn’t approve? Was that why she’d kept it to herself on purpose untilit was all intricately planned out? He glanced at her profile, but didn’t see the usual guilt in her expression that most Littles had when they knew they’d done something wrong. If anything, she appeared to be excited and pleased.

Tessica closed that document and then hovered her curser over each of the next five documents as she explained them. “This one is an essay section that goes with the multiple- choice questionnaire so that people can give more in depth answers. This one is a standard waiver. This one is a list of dating rules. I think that’s essential to the process so that everyone involved knows what they should be expecting from the process. This one is an after-date summary so I can see how things are progressing. And the last form is kind of like an adoption certificate to signify that a Caregiver and Little are ready to make that commitment. I figured I could put up a flyer about my service at Connections once I finalize everything.”

As she spoke, Connor became more and more upset. She had puthoursinto this plan without once asking his opinion. They were just starting their own relationship, and she wanted to spend her free time matching other people up instead of spending it with him?

She clicked on the certificate and then turned to him with a grin. “What do you think?”

Connor crossed his arms, glared at her, and kept his voice as level as he could. “I think you’ve been doing this behind my back all week.”

Her grin fell, and her eyes opened wide with shock. She shook her head.

“I think you’ve purposely kept it from me, because you knew I wouldn’t approve, and you didn’t want me to shut it down before it had even gotten off the ground.”

“No,” she disagreed with a glare of her own. “I wasn’t hiding it from you. I just wanted to tell you about it in person, and this was my first opportunity.”

Connor shook his head. “I don’t buy that, Tessica. We’ve been texting every day, and you’ve puthoursof time into this. It should have come up at some point.”

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