"When I was in the city this past summer, I didn't have any trouble attracting the male eye," I said. "And picking up men."
"Picking up men, boss?" she said, with enough suspicion to sink a ship. "That doesn't sound like you. Unless you mean picking up a specific man."
I smiled mysteriously.
Lottie gave me a skeptical look. "I'm glad your heart has reawakened. I really am. I just wish it had set its sights on someone more attainable."
"Don't worry about me," I said. "I'm a big girl."
Our car dropped us in front of a popular local bar known for its happy hour sushi. It was also where three of our women were supposedly hanging out. Lottie and I were doing dual duty—checking the accuracy of the app and seeing how our women were faring in the wild west of Seattle's dating scene.
"Who do you think we'll find in here?" I asked Lottie, full of hope and optimism. Not to mention excitement.
"A drink, I hope." She followed me in.
I paused just inside. "Let's sneak in and watch them unobserved for a while. See how our New Yorkers are adapting to the Seattle scene."
"Good idea. I'm good at sneaking." Lottie mugged and pulled the collar up on her cardigan sweater, waggling her eyebrows.
"Yeah, that disguise will fool them." I laughed and wound my way through the crowd to a dark, empty booth with a good view of the bar from the shadows.
We spotted our three women together at the bar. I wasn't surprised to see those three hanging out. They'd formed their own little, tight-knit clique. I had a momentary vision of them happily married to the three men I had in mind to match them with, and shuddered. I could imagine them hanging out and hashing out their relationships with each other.
But, for any faults, they were still like three dazzling unicorns dressed in New York chic. Elegant. Beautiful. And totally unapproachable.
"This is no good. They're travelling in herds," Lottie whispered to me across the table. "How are the men supposed to approach them?"
I nodded, in one hundred percent agreement with her. A waitress set a bowl of popcorn in front of us. We ordered a small plate of appetizers and an afternoon cocktail. The beta test took a back seat as Lottie and I became absorbed in watching our women in their attempts to connect with men.
There were plenty of men in the bar. Plenty of them. Wonderfully attractive, single Seattle men. In shape. Nicely dressed in Seattle style. Techies and professionals. Well-paid men who spilled out of the high-tech corridor offices and were relaxing with a microbrew after work. They had obviously noticed the women. You could almost read their thoughts. This is something new. Where did these beautiful women come from? How do we approach them?
But it was as apparent to Lottie and me as it was to them that these women were out-of-towners. Alien creatures. Sophisticated women. Intimidating females. Women who looked around with desperation and man-hungry eyes. Women who looked like they were at an all-you-can-eat buffet and were deciding which entree to sample first.
The few Seattle women in the bar were leery of our ladies. And almost openly hostile to them, if the dark looks they shot them were any indication. The Seattle women were typical—underdressed, little makeup, not trying overly hard to impress because they weren't used to having to. My girls were unwelcome competition, and changing the rules in ways the locals didn't appreciate.
I turned to Lottie, desperate. "Do you see what I see?"
"Oh, I'm right with you, boss."
"Cultural disconnect," I said.
"What are we going to do?" Lottie spoke to me, but she was watching the women.
"At least they're staying put." This was like watching a show. I reached out and reflexively took a handful of popcorn without thinking. It needed butter, but I munched on it anyway.
"This is like watching a horror movie." Lottie grabbed a handful, too.
"At least we have popcorn." I gave our bowl of it a shake of salt. "And the ladies are staying put, as I instructed, and waiting for the men to approach them."
As if to make me eat my words, a new group of men entered the bar. One of the newcomers was stunningly hot in that vibey Seattle way. He caught the eye of just about every single woman in the place.
His arrival was not lost on our women. Elizabeth spotted him and very obviously liked the look of him. Her eyes lit up. Eat. Prey. Love. You could almost see her licking her chops.
He had the lean, athletic look of a runner. I was willing him to run before Elizabeth did something stupid with him. But do you think he'd listen to my cosmic signals?
Across from me, Lottie watched with similar horror.
Elizabeth grabbed her drink and slid off her barstool.
"She's reacting like a New Yorker. She's going to get to him and spit on him before anyone else does. What are we going to do?" Lottie's look of alarm was almost comical in its exaggeration. And yet she made a good point.
"She'll eat him alive." Lottie picked up her purse. "We have to stop her before she blows it. Need we remind her she's supposed to be on duty testing the app?" She made a move to slide out of the booth.
I held a hand up to stop her. "Let's see how Elizabeth handles herself. Experience is the best teacher."
This was pure morbid curiosity on my part. I had a terrible feeling I knew how this was going to turn out. Badly was the only word that came to mind.
In true Manhattan fashion, Elizabeth strolled directly to her mark, breaking into his group of friends to introduce herself with startling directness, and making it clear to other women that this was her territory.
Oh, boy.
If this was Manhattan, the men might have continued to ignore her, waiting for someone better and younger to come along. But this was Seattle, where the men were used to being ignored. You could almost see their chests puff out. This guy had just won the prize.
"Elizabeth knows it's against the rules to sleep with a guy right away." Lottie sounded desperately hopeful and in denial about what was about to happen. "I could stop her."
"You can't stop them all," I said with a surprising amount of fatalism.
Right before our eyes, and those of her two friends, Elizabeth flirted with Mr. Tall, if that's what you could call it. I would have described it as the dating equivalent of eating him whole. She attached herself to him, wound her arm through his, rubbed against him, and purred in his ear. Within ten minutes, she left the bar with him. The poor guy looked deliriously happy. And like he didn't know what hit him.
Elizabeth just looked smug and delighted with herself. I knew what was going to happen now that she'd reverted to Manhattan behavior. She was going to show him the time of his life in the bedroom. Give him everything he fantasized about, thinking it would solidify her hold on him.
But she didn't know him well enough yet to decide whether he was worth having. In this case, it didn't matter. Her wounded vanity needed the validation of a man's attention. She needed to be a winner tonight, not realizing she could have had so much more. That a Seattle man was willing to give quite a lot if she only had the willpower to hold out for it.
Lottie scowled. "That's no way to catch a man."
"Not a spouse, no." A deafening sense of dread was filling me.
This was a complication I hadn't anticipated. I'd carefully screened these women. They'd all claimed to want husbands and to settle down. They'd sworn they'd do anything to achieve their goal. But the temptation of being a hot commodity had proven too much for Elizabeth at the very first opportunity. She'd seen a man she liked and he'd fallen into her lap like a sugarplum.
Buoyed by Elizabeth's success, the two other women clapped their eyes on a pair of men they wanted. They weren't deterred in the slightest by the local women who were hanging with the men. Within minutes, they were repeating Elizabeth's move. They wingmanned for each other and effectively shoved the Seattle women out of the picture.
The local women were stunned. Their expressions were clear: Are these women crazy? You're supposed to make the men work for it.
But our women were used to being aggressive and playing huntress. To taking no prisoners and elbowing other women out of the way.
"What have we done?" I said to Lottie. "Why do I feel like we've introduced a deadly virus into a native population that has no immunities to it?"
"I have no words," Lottie said.
Within minutes, our two women left the bar on the arms of the men they'd picked up. Behind their backs, the Seattle women shot them daggers and whispered, outraged, among themselves. If looks could kill…
"Maybe they're just going out to dinner?" Lottie said with a kind of naïve hopefulness that was uncharacteristic.
"And pigs can fly," I said.
Lottie looked at me. "What do we do now?"
"Continue testing the app and checking on the other women," I said. "And cross our fingers that the rest of the women don't go rogue on us."
An hour and two bars later, as we watched another pair of our ladies in action, I got a text from Dylan. Three of the ladies disappeared from the grid separately over an hour ago and haven't reappeared. They were in a bar with two others, any chance that was you? Do you know what happened to them? They haven't signed out. Has the app failed or should we be worried about them?
I showed the text to Lottie, who sighed resignedly.
"Don't those women realize they're on the clock?"
"Apparently not." I texted Dylan back, telling him it wasn't the app, nor were the women in apparent danger. That the women had left willingly. Even aggressively, I thought.
"I hope we don't lose many more women to poaching." Lottie frowned. She knew the deserters as well as I did. We'd both spent hours with them during the selection process. Lottie and I genuinely liked them. Other than Danika, we hadn't brought anyone we didn't like. Danika was a special case of keeping your enemy close.
"I can't believe of it of those three." Lottie sounded hurt and personally affronted. "Where did we go wrong?"
I laughed hollowly. "I'm not sure we did go wrong. With them, anyway. We aren't their mothers. We didn't raise them." I paused. "We underestimated the pull and exhilaration of suddenly being doted on, fawned over, and being found attractive and desirable after years of rejection and indifference. That's all."
"That's all?" Lottie scoffed. "After all we did for them." She shook her head and made an expression of complete disgust. "Took a chance on them and offered them a chance of a lifetime." She paused. "Do you think they saw us?"
I shook my head. "They wouldn't have left like that if they had."
She agreed. "Are they out of the pool now and off the experiment? Do you think they're foolish enough to think they still have a shot at Lazer?"
My turn to shrug. "It's too bad, really, for them."
Lottie nodded. "Elizabeth was a match for Lazer. I hope her little tumble in the hay was worth losing out on a chance with a sweet billionaire."
I nodded back. "Yeah. No way I'll set her up with him now. Not now that I know how easily she falls into temptation. I'm having a hard enough time trusting Lazer."
"Exactly." Lottie looked at me knowingly.
I ignored her and laughed. "She's a little too much like Lazer in the way she likes to play the field. I'll give you that." I shook my head and feigned regret. "Another match that apparently wasn't made in heaven."
"You're so right. I think we dodged a bullet with that one." Lottie nodded as if agreeing with herself. "What do we do with them now? Do we give them another chance? Or do we send them packing back to Manhattan?"
"I'll check with Lazer."
Lottie raised an eyebrow. "Don't play dainty, subservient female on us now. This is your realm. You make the decisions in this part of the business, last I heard."
"Just playing the politics," I said. "It doesn't hurt to get my partner's buy-in."
"What do you think he's going to say? Elizabeth and the others walked off the job. Lazer treats us amazingly well. Because of you, mostly, I suspect. But his tolerance only goes so far. I've heard rumors he's a hard-ass when it comes to dealing with employees and suppliers who don't measure up. He doesn't believe in dead weight. Startups can't survive unless everyone does their part and plays their role."
"I've heard those rumors, too." I matched her thoughtful mood. "I'd fire them."
Lottie looked at me and smiled. "Sure."
"Don't sound so skeptical," I said. "I'm tough. When I need to be. Look at all the guff I've taken over turning down clients and cutting undesirable clients loose." I took a breath. "I'm not making any judgments about their behavior, other than they were in the middle of a work session. Walking off the job like that is a fire-able offense almost anywhere.
"And, as clients, unless I'm wrong, which I'm almost certainly not, they've ignored my matchmaking advice." I shrugged. "That's their right. On their own nickel. But not when the success of our new venture is at stake and they're essentially being paid to follow it.
"All the girls knew the rules and terms of engagement. I can't find them husbands if they won't cooperate." I paused. "And it's beginning to look like they're not serious in their quest."
Lottie looked at me. "Are you going to tell Lazer that?"
Lazer
It was late. I was in the middle of working through some details of one of my latest deals when my phone rang. Ashley. Seeing her number made me too damn happy.
"I hope you're calling to give me the details of the first day of our beta field test," I said.
"You read my mind."
I smiled at the tired tone of her voice. Despite it, she sounded upbeat and almost amused. Glad to talk to me. I liked amusement in a woman. A woman who could see the humor in any situation was a turn-on. "Did the app pass muster?"
"The app worked like a charm," she said. "The women, not so much. They behaved like they were in Manhattan."
"In other words, they were man-eaters," I said, amused at the idea. "I bet the Seattle guys were stunned. And pleased."
"Shut up," Ashley said. "I called because it's not funny. It's a problem. We need to coach the women on how to behave in the Seattle scene."
"Whatever you need," I said.
"I was thinking some time with Milia at the spy school…"
"You got it."
She hesitated. "And maybe add some local women to our mix to show them the ropes. The two groups could learn from each other."
"I agree," I said. "We should have thought of that earlier." I shrugged. "Live and learn. That's the rule of startups."
She sighed. "Three of the women walked off the job in the middle of the beta."
I frowned as she told the story, making light of it, and telling it in a way that made it sound like a comedy.
"I told Lottie that the men of Seattle don't know what's hit them. It's like we released a dangerous mutant species on them. One that will eat them alive and spit them out," she said. "Opinions? What do you think we should do with our little temptresses?"
I clenched my jaw. Despite Ashley's charming retelling of the story, and the way she made light of these new complications, I was pissed. "Fire their asses."
"That's it?" Ashley said. "No discussion? No sympathy for the offenders? No second chances?"
"Startups like Pair Us are too fragile to carry the weight of anyone who doesn't pull theirs. They're out." I grinned. Maybe I'd lucked out. "Was Vanessa one of them? If so, you'd better let me know. I'll have to cancel my dinner reservations at the Space Needle."
Ashley laughed. "Nice try. Vanessa is not one of the deserters. One of them was a match I had in mind for you if Vanessa doesn't work out, though."
Vanessa wasn't going to work out. I was just going through the motions with her.
"Does that change your mind?" Ashley asked.
"On the contrary. It reinforces my decision," I said. "You can cross all three off as not being my perfect match. I must have a woman driven by ambition. Any woman who would do the female equivalent of thinking with her dick and walk off the job in the middle of the workday
is not the woman for me."
"All right, then," Ashley said. "Ambition is a must-have." She paused. "And, by the way, none of the three was your perfect match. Not according to your compatibility surveys, anyway. Elizabeth was a strong candidate—"
"Elizabeth? Damn," I said, trying to get a rise out of Ashley. "She was hot."
"You can always reconsider."
"No way," I said. "As the King of Hearts, I say off with her head."
She laughed. "I believe that's the Queen of Hearts who offs people's heads. The king was an old softie."
I grinned. "The king should have grown a spine." I paused. "Speaking of Vanessa, I'm taking her out tomorrow evening."
"Wonderful," Ashley said.
Did I detect a note of jealousy in her too-bright tone?
"What do you have planned? Besides dinner at the Space Needle."
"That's pretty much it. Dinner and a show," I said. "You know, the standard date."
"Hmmmm," Ashley said. "After the way you've spoiled the women with the apartments and the roses on arrival, I think she might be disappointed with merely standard."
"We'll see, won't we?" In truth, as I'd promised myself, I was treating Vanessa as I'd love to treat Ashley. The Space Needle was a must-see spot for tourists and people from out of town. Ashley would love it.
Chapter 9
Ashley
The next morning, I caught Elizabeth sneaking into the lobby after obviously being out all night. Yes, I was lying in wait for her and the others.
"Elizabeth!"
She paled.
"I need a word." I strolled over to her with two cups of coffee in hand. I handed a paper cup with a sleeve to her. "You look like you need this. Follow me."
"I'd like a minute to freshen up—"
"You'll have plenty of time after." I began walking to a community room that we rented to hold meetings.
She reluctantly followed me in.
Our lawyer was waiting for us there. I introduced them. That was when I think it really sank in that she was in trouble.
I closed the door behind me and took a chair, offering her one next to me and Harriet, our legal counsel.
Dating Lazer: The Billionaire Matchmaker, Part Four Page 9
