Breaking the Bachelor (Entangled Lovestruck) (Smart Cupid) Read Online Free PDF

censure in her own voice. Grateful he’d agreed to the three dates, she was loathe to be too critical, but dragging a woman to do laundry at the Fluff ’N Fold—not likely to be high on a client’s list of non-negotiables.
    He cocked a dark eyebrow. “Hey, you’re the one who wants my intimate details for her criteria matrix. What’s more intimate than a guy’s premium Hanes?”
    “Maybe we should consider one of the more traditional methods? Like getting coffee?”
    “No. I’m good with the Fluff ’N Fold.” He opened the Laundromat’s silver and glass door and she walked in, crossing the gray-tiled floor to the oversized machines in the corner.
    Peering over the basket he’d made her carry, she took in the cramped space. The place was empty, but a few abandoned machines rattled enough that she needed to raise her voice so he’d hear her over the noise. “You really think this place will inspire you to create your perfect list of criteria?”
    “I do.” He walked past her, hefted his basket onto one of the long tables and started sorting his whites from his colors. “I like this place. It’s real. It’s personal.”
    “Too personal.” She eyed a pair of shorts she remembered from… Nope, not going there.
    “Who showed up on whose doorstep this morning?”
    She shrugged off her parka and focused on the issue-laden laundry basket. “The search for your perfect match should be an unforgettable, revelatory experience—and not just because it smells like laundry detergent.”
    “Let me see if I can get this straight,” he said. “Finding the ideal woman isn’t about chemistry, but it’s not about laundry either, right?”
    “Right. Kind of. No.” She picked up a pair of jeans from the basket and tossed them in with a blue sweater. “What I’m saying is that defining the kind of woman you want to spend your life with is serious business. It’s a jumping off point into eternity that could determine your life and your destiny.”
    “My destiny?”
    “Okay, maybe that’s going a little too far, but it’s certainly about more than laundry, or even intimacy, or passion. It’s about compatibility.” She tossed a few items into the machine.
    “Hey, you just put a few of my whites in with the reds. Watch it.”
    “Can we stick to the subject of matchmaking please?” She tossed a pair of shorts at his head, which he snatched out of the air before they hit her target. “Let’s agree for the sake of it, that creating a list of criteria is an important process, potentially leading to fifty years of matrimonial bliss or, conversely, to a relationship that ends after two hours of sheer, unadulterated torture. Everything depends on the criteria, so they need to be right.”
    Adding the shorts to the rest of his whites, he said, “Let’s get one detail straight, I committed to three dates, not matrimonial bliss. I’m a confirmed bachelor. Confirmed .”
    “Yes, but finding your true love will change all—”
    He held up a bottle of colorfast Tide and waved it in a circle. “And since we’re talking criteria, when did you turn into such a chemistry-free zone? Such an anti-romantic?”
    “What are you talking about?” She looked around the Laundromat as if someone there would vouch for her. “I’m not anti-romantic. I’m a matchmaker. Of course, I’m romantic.”
    He opened the bottle and tossed a cap and a half full of detergent into the industrial-sized washing machine. “About as romantic as a pit bull chewing through somebody’s ankle.”
    “Okay, fine, I admit it. If you’re talking about the hot and sexy, gaze-into-my-eyes-and-let-me-make-you-the-center-of-my-universe kind of romantic, then yes, maybe you have a point. But successful relationships are not about that hot and sexy stuff.”
    He turned the knob to start the wash cycle. “No?”
    “No. They’re about work and commitment. Relationships are about compatibility and predictability. If my mother taught me anything