Dating by Design Series - Box Set

by Jennifer Peel

  As I walked to our scheduling meeting my phone vibrated. It was odd. Lana was in school and butthead had barely left my office; they were the only ones to ever text me. I looked at my phone and did a double take.

  Thanks for breakfast this morning. The pie tasted even better today.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I stopped in the middle of the hall and stared at my phone screen like I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. Should I respond? Why would he text me? I took a deep breath and texted back, You’re welcome. That unsettled feeling landed in the pit of my stomach. I tried to shake it off as I walked to the conference room, but my phone went off again.

  Have a good day.

  Uh, okay. I didn’t respond. I walked to the meeting in my own little fog. I don’t know why it bothered me that he texted me. Maybe it was because it forced me to act like a real person. I sat in my chair and decided to be a human. You, too.

  See you later.

  I suppose we probably would, but I left it at that.

  Zander settled in next to me. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You look agitated.”

  “Do I?”

  “When don’t you?”

  “Stop it. I’m not that bad.”

  He reached up and touched one of my curls and let it slip through his fingers. “I dig your hair, and the new wardrobe.”

  I smacked his hand away. “Thanks. We’re at work.”

  “Work, schmurk.”

  Right on cue, the rest of our team joined us.

  Zander sat up and got all professional.

  We both pulled out our tablets and pulled up the weekly schedule.

  Cara, Eva, and Will, our other relationship managers, did the same.

  “Good morning,” I greeted everyone in a business-like manner.

  Everyone murmured their greetings back. It wasn’t very enthusiastic. It was Monday, after all, but I wondered if it was me. I think I was a fair boss, but not very personable. My inner self sighed.

  “How was everyone’s weekend?” I tried to act more human.

  They all looked up, stunned, except Zander, who grinned liked a fool.

  When no one responded right away, Zander took it upon himself to break the uncomfortable silence. “As you know, mine was spent like all my weekends—hot women were involved.”

  Everyone snickered. They were all used to him.

  “Are you speaking about my momma?”

  At first the laughter was muffled, but as I was relaxed, it seemed to give permission for the laughter to become more pronounced.

  Zander raised his eyebrow at me. “Very good.”

  “Let’s go over the schedule for the week.” I refocused us.

  They all looked down at their tablets.

  “We have a big week ahead of us. Lunch and dinner dates will need to be scheduled so we can squeeze everyone in before Friday’s meeting. We have thirty on the schedule.”

  “Make that thirty-one,” Zander interrupted.

  I turned to him with raised eyebrows. “Who’s the extra person?”

  “Jason,” he said like it was obvious.

  “No way. He hasn’t even filled out the paperwork or met with Kate for a psych evaluation.”

  “He submitted his paperwork last night, he should be in the queue. And Kate is squeezing him in today. It’s all been worked out.”

  “What’s the rush?” Normally it was at least two to three weeks before anyone got to the test date stage.

  “He’s anxious to get started.”

  I knew better than to argue with him, especially in front of everyone else. I directed my attention back to the group and tried to keep my annoyance out of my voice. “Eva, will you add Jason Hadley to your schedule? I didn’t realize we had someone waiting in our queue, so I didn’t look at his preference for restaurants, but if I had to guess,” I looked at Zander, “I would say casual.”

  Zander grinned wide and nodded. He was an idiot.

  “I’ll add him,” Eva responded.

  “Pencil him in. He still has to go through the psych eval and we need to aggregate his data.”

  Zander cleared his throat rather loudly. “You can write that in blood, there won’t be any issues.”

  I ignored him and went on. I didn’t think there would be either, but I didn’t want the staff to think we were lowering our standards because we knew him, and I still felt uneasy about it.

  The rest of our meeting was like most Monday morning meetings, short and to the point. I tried to keep them that way. I probably should have been a better boss and thought to bring coffee and pastries in for everyone on Monday mornings. I had to admit, I thought a lot about myself most of the time. It was all in self-defense, or maybe offense. Maybe for our Friday meeting I could have lunch brought in. It was a thought.

  Zander caught me as we walked down the hall back to our offices. “Can we skip lunch today?” He stared down at his shoes. We usually had lunch together on Mondays.

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Just an appointment.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “What’s going on with you? You’ve been behaving strangely lately.”

  “Why are you always so suspicious?”

  I stopped and stared at him. His icy tone was throwing me off. “I thought we were friends.”

  His features softened, he kissed my cheek, and whispered, “Best,” before he walked off.

  I had that foreboding feeling again like things were changing, though I couldn’t understand why. To cope, I did the only thing I could. I went to work. I could always count on work. I decided to run some tests against the new data in our development environment before I released it in our live version. I closed my door and locked it before I sat down. I wanted privacy when I ran the tests. I used my own profile to run the test against.

  No one but me knew I had filled out our survey. I wanted it that way. That survey revealed how I truly felt and what I would really want in a partner, if I was amenable to that sort of thing. It took me forever to fill it out. Being honest with yourself is much more difficult than you might think, especially when you have to unearth deeply buried feelings. I only did it so I would have a reliable base point.

  While I prepared to run my test, I stewed over Zander. What was going on with him? I felt like he was hiding something from me. I thought about his out-of-character behavior toward me and remembered he had acted this way once before, right about the time I got engaged. His excuse then was that he was going to take a year to study abroad and he would miss my wedding. I was severely disappointed; we had never spent that much time apart. But it was all for the best because he missed my most humiliating moment. He flew back home almost immediately after the disaster to comfort me. I still remember calling him in London, it was the middle of the night for him, but we talked for several hours. Largest phone bill I ever had, but worth every penny.

  I hoped Zander wasn’t leaving the country again. I didn’t think that was it, but I knew something wasn’t right.

  I left that thought alone as I pulled up my profile. I skimmed through it to make sure it was still in order and correct. Nothing had changed, and I mean nothing. I searched our database for a couple of male candidates to run my profile against to see if my new data points were functioning correctly. Jason Hadley’s name caught my eye. What the heck? I thought. He was as good as anyone. I typed in the command for the two profiles to be run against each other and waited for the results. It didn’t take long.

  I clicked the results page and skimmed the data to the bottom where the compatibility percentage was. I had to do a double take. Eighty-eight percent? There was no way. We had never had such a high result. I was sure it was human error, my error. As much as I liked coding, I wasn’t looking forward to going through the thousands of lines of code to find my mistake. Before I pulled up the code, I took a look at Jason’s profile to see perhaps why the error occurred.

 
I put his profile up on one screen and mine on the other for cross reference. I loved having dual monitors. As a computer geek, it was the only way to go. I began to scroll down his survey, which I almost felt guilty for. It was one thing to look at a complete stranger’s information, but looking at Jason’s, even though I didn’t know him well, felt like I was intruding where I shouldn’t. I rationalized that I had to find the error.

  The first portion was all normal stuff, name, age, income, title, formality-type things. He was two years older than me, he fell within my preferred age range. Our incomes were compatible, he made a tad more than I did. We had the same level of education, two bachelor’s degrees, we even shared one in computer science.

  I started to get a little worried, or maybe full-blown panicked, as I kept reading his profile and I realized maybe I hadn’t made a mistake. We had matching views on children, marriage, sex, and religion. We even had the same music preferences—we both liked a variety. His ideal number of children was three, and he was willing to date those that had children, just like me. He rated family as his number one priority - again, just like me. The only major area we differed in, and what caused most of the twelve percent difference was he was looking for casual relationships, nothing long-term. Like I told Zander that surprised me. His whole profile went against that choice.

  My profile stated I wanted a long-term relationship, seeking marriage. No one knew that but me. I did my best to hide it from myself. I had gotten really good at it.

  I sat there and stared at Jason’s profile picture. What were the odds? He even said he preferred dark blondes with brown eyes. I liked to say I had sable eyes, because it sounded more alluring, but anybody who met me would say I had brown eyes. I ran my fingers nervously through my dark blonde hair.

  The whole thing unnerved me. I quickly closed out his profile. I pulled up two other profiles and ran them against mine. One was a twenty-two percent match and the other twenty-eight. As I looked over their profiles, it seemed to validate that the new code was working properly. I was hoping something would explain away the weird anomaly with Jason and me. I knew it wouldn’t; I had read his profile for myself. I don’t even know why it bothered me. It’s not like anyone would ever know and just because we were practically perfect for each other it didn’t mean anything. I would never allow it to.

  My stomach growled, bringing me back to my senses. I securely hid my profile and password protected it. I uploaded the new lines of code and decided I needed to get out of the office for a while. My world still felt off-kilter.

  I ran into Zander in the hall on my way out. “Where are you headed?”

  “I’m meeting someone for lunch.”

  “A client?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  He kissed my cheek. “I’m going to be late. I’ll see you later.” He walked off in a rush, leaving me in the dust with no answers and lingering questions.

  What was going on?

  I walked past Meg who cheerily said, “Enjoy your lunch.”

  I think I may have nodded as I walked out in my fog. I wasn’t even sure where I was going. Zander and I always went to the same bistro on Mondays, but I didn’t feel like going there without him. I walked aimlessly to my car and got in. I felt like I needed to talk to someone, but my best friend was out of the question, as was Momma. I thought about Rick, but what would I say? “Zander’s acting strange and Jason and I are a perfect match, well almost.” I couldn’t get Jason’s answers out of my head. Rick would tell me it was a bunch of bull anyway. He didn’t believe in relationships by design.

  He believed in doing it the old-fashioned way, which was all well and good, and sure, it worked for some. It’s not like people weren’t attracted to those we set them up with. If there wasn’t a physical and an emotional attraction, they could ask for someone else, but there usually was. We were careful with our pairings and took their preferences into account.

  It made me think, as I sat there in my car not knowing what to do, was I attracted to Jason? I never let myself think of such things, and I wasn’t even sure why I was opening that dangerous door now. The door slowly crept open and all I could see were aqua eyes and a smile that made me feel like all was right in the world. I felt a faint stirring in the pit of my stomach, and it wasn’t hunger pains. I think it was safe to say, I could be attracted to Jason.

  I shook my head and slammed the door. No matter how much I believed in what I did for a living, I knew I could never go down that road.

  I found myself at my favorite bookstore, sipping a fat-filled latte and perusing the romance section. Book and movie boyfriends were allowed. I could always guarantee a happy ending that way. As I flipped through a few possibilities, my mind wandered back to Jason’s profile. Just like me, he stated he enjoyed action movies, romantic comedies, and reading. Those were only a few of the many similarities we shared. It was uncanny, and downright unnatural. The romantic comedy choice surprised me. I’m sure it would surprise people that I enjoyed them, too. It was one more aspect of my personality I kept hidden.

  More and more I was beginning to realize how many layers I had added to the walls that I hid behind. I had even added a moat and some alligators. Nothing was getting through. So why did I feel like the impenetrable fortress was suddenly being infiltrated?

  I tried to keep the rest of my day business as usual. I responded to emails and talked to my accountant. My lawyer called, too. We had filed the paperwork to trademark Binary Search and patent the software almost a year ago. I didn’t realize what a long, drawn-out process it was. No wonder lawyers made such good money. After Brian, I had tried to stay away from them, but I suppose they had their uses.

  I was feeling somewhat normal as the day ended. That was, until I had visitors. I looked up and there stood Zander and Jason. I could tell Zander was off by his darkened eyes, but he was putting on a good show. Jason looked … well … good. He was in dark slacks and a handsome striped button up that looked made to fit him. Why was I noticing that? It was that stupid profile of his. I wish I could say I didn’t put stock in it, but I did. It was my business and brainchild, so of course I believed it.

  “Jason finished his psych evaluation. We are going to head out to dinner now. Come with us.”

  Jason smiled brightly and nodded.

  I tried to ignore him. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m tired. I’m going to head home as soon as I finish up here.”

  “Are you sure?” Jason asked. “I promise I won’t try to pay for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a smile, “but I’m in need of some down time.”

  “Come on, Kenz.”

  “Not tonight.” Or ever, if I could help it. I needed to stay away from Jason Hadley. I was placing the blame on him for the unsettled feelings I was having. I had major regret for letting Zander talk me into letting him use our services.

  Zander shrugged his shoulders. I was surprised there was no push back from him. To be honest, it bothered me that there wasn’t.

  “Have a nice evening,” Jason said, disappointed.

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  “Bye, darlin’.”

  I waved to them both before turning off my laptop and calling it a night. I went home with that odd sensation in the pit of my stomach warning me that my world was about to come undone.

  Chapter Nine

  By the time Thursday rolled around, I had been lulled into a false sense of security. Tuesday and Wednesday had been like normal days; even Zander was acting like himself. The only odd thing that had happened was a couple of friendly texts from Jason. I responded quickly to each, and he never went past the one exchange each day. He was apparently getting a lot of mileage out of that pie. I figured our texts would end on Wednesday when he finished off the pie and I told him he could give the pan back to Zander. He never responded to that text.

  All was well and good until about four in the afternoon. There I was, finishing up our marketing piece for a technology expo the foll
owing month when Zander came in with urgency written all over his face.

  “What’s up?”

  He blew out a large breath. “Eva has an emergency she needs to attend to.”

  “Did she call you? Is everything all right?”

  “I just got off the phone with her. I don’t think it’s anything life or death.” He avoided my gaze.

  “Okay?”

  “She had a date with Jason tonight.”

  “No big deal, he can go on next week’s schedule.”

  “That won’t work.”

  “Why?”

  “Tomorrow is match day.”

  “Again, he’ll have to wait.”

  “He’s anxious to get started.”

  I shrugged. “Well, these things happen. Maybe he can ask someone out the old-fashioned way this weekend.”

  “Or … you could take Eva’s place.”

  I was so shocked at the suggestion, I sat there staring at him for an uncomfortably long moment. “Are you for real? That’s not in my job description.”

  He came around, perched himself on my desk, and faced me. “I think it would be a good experience for you. Shouldn’t the owner know her business inside and out?”

  “I do, thank you very much.”

  “I’m going to have to disagree with you.”

  “You can disagree all you want, but that doesn’t make you right.”

  He took my hands, pulled me up, and hugged me.

  “We are on the clock.”

  “Get over it. Everyone here knows our relationship is anything but business.”

  I sighed. “Is Cara available?”

  “Nope, she has two dates scheduled tonight.”

  That didn’t surprise me. I could see Cara being like that in real life.

  “You could take him out,” I teased.

  He laughed in my ear. “Not my type and I have a date lined up already.”

  “Zander, I’m not doing this.”