Page 86 of Fierce-Zander

He wasn’t sure how he accumulated so much over the years but realized that a lot of it had to do with work and since he didn’t have an office in his apartment, that made it hard with it all landing on the table off his kitchen or boxes on the floor next to it.

“You need a bigger place,” his mother said.

“Why? So I can mess that up too?”

“If you had a home office you could keep all your stuff in there and shut the door.”

Which he’d thought of, but it was too daunting to even consider moving at this point. He was way too busy.

“I could, but it’s not on my radar right now. I wanted to tell you about Regan. I thought maybe you’d like to meet her if there is room at the table for Thanksgiving.”

“You don’t need to ask,” his mother said. “I’d love to meet her. She has no family around here? Tell me more about her.”

“Her parents are divorced and remarried and both live in the area. She’s not super close with either of them. She has a younger brother, but he recently moved a few hours away for a new job. He won’t be coming home for the holiday and I have a feeling she’d love to not have to choose between her parents.”

It wasn’t a conversation they’d had yet and he was going to call her when he hung up with his mother.

Maybe Chloe was right and they were finishing each other’s sentences or thoughts last night.

In the past he’d be the one to notice those things, not have someone else point out his actions.

“If she has the office next to you, how is it your father hasn’t gotten wind of anything?”

“Regan doesn’t come over when Dad is there. She’s busy. We normally see each other at the end of the day when our employees are gone.”

“So no one knows in her office?” his mother asked.

“No. And there is more to that too. Remember how Royce and Chloe met?”

“They’d worked together for years,” his mother said.

“Yes, but the Fierces and Richard had this little scheme that Royce would make a great match with Chloe.”

“Oh yeah. You did tell me that. I guess it slipped my mind because you’d said they’d worked together for years.”

He hadn’t pushed the Fierce agenda on the meeting because, to him, it was as Royce said. Chloe and his buddy did it on their own.

“Well, the Fierces enjoy setting people up. That’s the story I was going to tell you. They’ve made no secret that they’d like to find me a nice young woman.”

“And did they find Regan for you?”

“No,” he said firmly. “She moved next to me over the summer. We’d had some conversations. Betsy and her assistant, Miles, talk all the time, but it wasn’t much more than that.”

“Until it was,” his mother said.

“Exactly. Then after our first dinner together in the office when my food was delivered to her place instead of mine and she brought it over, I started to suspect who they had in mind to pair me with.”

“You’d had no clue at all before?” his mother asked. “None?”

“No,” he said. “I was looking too, but they were careful about not bringing her name up. Only once and it was sneaky and, looking back, that was their first step of slipping it in. But it was sly enough during them asking me for something for work.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I feel like I can find my own woman and I did.”

His mother laughed on her end. “I think I have what I need to know.”

“I figured as much. You’ll tell Dad but ask him to keep quiet about it. At least in the office for now.”