“Hey man, is someone there?”
“Don’t you wish you knew,” he joked.
“I’ve got some news about Dakota and Emma I need to tell you. Can you talk?” I asked as I tried to be as vague as possible.
“Man, I’m busy tonight. Let’s talk at the investment club tomorrow. I’ll be there; I promise,” Merrick said as he hung up the phone.
I didn’t sleep that night. My brain kept seeing Dakota’s face and how sweet her smile was. She didn’t look like a con artist to me, not that I was one hundred percent sure what a con artist should look like. But she certainly didn’t look like what I thought one would appear to be.
She was sweet and seemed so genuine. My internal gut was normally right about people much more than it was wrong, and I couldn’t reconcile the text message I had seen with the feelings I had when I was around her.
My mind didn’t rest at all that night, and I was tired and agitated by the whole situation by the time morning came. How dare Dakota and her friend try to scam us! Sure, we were wealthy, and we were men, but we hadn’t done a thing to them at all to deserve such a heartless scam.
As I prepared to go to the investment club, I tried to calm my agitation and anger, but my efforts were fruitless. I just needed to talk with Merrick and warn him of what I had seen. He had to know that he was also a target, and we couldn’t just sit back and let these women manipulate.
I also really wanted to talk with Ren about his app. It was obviously corrupted if Dakota and her friend had figured it out, but as the thought entered my head, I realized that Dakota could have set herself up as my perfect match. Perhaps Ren’s algorithms weren’t wrong, and the one hundred percent match wasn’t some weird fluke. If a scam artist wanted to match up, she wasn’t going to risk a less than perfect match.
“Ren, I’ve got to talk to you,” I said urgently as I arrived for our investment club before everyone else.
“Sure, how’d your date go?”
“It was a mess. I think she rigged the system to be my match.”
Ren laughed at first. I could tell he was thinking that I was joking or something like that, but I definitely wasn’t joking.
“No one’s been in the coding. I would know since I’ve been messing with it trying to fix the errors.”
“Seriously Ren, she didn’t match with me. I saw a text from her friend asking if I fell for it; if she had seduced me with her lies. She’s gaming your game, Ren. You’ve got to look into it.
“It’s not really a program like that Wyatt. Even someone who knows programming in and out can’t tell this app what to do. It’s artificial intelligence, remember. The game is analyzing dating and making its own decisions.”
I had to reassess. If Dakota were messing with me, then she would have had to get information about my answers and pick hers to match. Maybe she hadn’t been after me, specifically. Maybe any chump that she matched with would have been good enough for her. I had no idea.
“What’s up; what’s up,” Dean and Luke said as they walked into the room full of energy.
Their energy quickly dissipated as they realized Ren and I were in the midst of a deep conversation. We both glanced at the men somberly as we all sat down for the meeting.
“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Luke asked in his usual upbeat tone.
“Nothing, let’s just get started,” I said in defeat.
I couldn’t figure out the whole Dakota mess at that moment. Instead, I decided we should just continue our meeting and finish up the decisions we had to make on our investments so I could get back to figuring out my own life.
“Aren’t you going to wait for me?” Merrick said loudly as he and Emma walked into the meeting. “Hey guys, this is my lady friend Emma. She’s going to hang out for a minute while we do our meeting.”
“Hi guys,” Emma said, smiling.
She didn’t look like a cold-hearted scam artist, but then again neither did Dakota. That was probably why they were so damn good at what they did.
“Merrick, I need to talk to you,” I demanded.
He saw the serious look in my eye and whispered something to Emma before following me into the other room. I didn’t know where to start or what to say next, but I knew he was my friend, and I needed to get him away from this woman who was scamming him.
“She’s a scam artist,” I said as I pointed to Emma in the other room. “She and her friend Dakota have been lying and setting this whole thing up.”
He didn’t respond like I had thought he would. I expected he would be angry or concerned at least, but instead, he just looked out into the other room and smiled at Emma.
“She’s not a scam artist. I know that for a fact.”
“How do you know? You can’t know that for a fact. We hardly know them at all. I saw a text from Emma to Dakota that asked if I had fallen for it and if she had seduced me with her lies. They are scammers, Merrick.”
I expected an argument. Some sort of fight from Merrick, but he just walked out of the room. I watched as he gently grabbed Emma by the hand and brought her into the room to talk to me.
“Tell him about the text,” he said with a smile.
She looked confused and then laughed a little. Merrick was right; she didn’t seem like a scam artist at all.
“I was telling Merrick about how nervous Dakota was to meet you and have our date. I had told her she needed to lie to herself and pretend she was seductive. If she believed she was sexy, you would. So this morning, Merrick and I typed a message to her to tease her about it. It wasn’t about lying to you. It was about her and her own insecurities.”
“You knew about this?” I asked Merrick.
“It was my idea to see how you two had gotten along.”
“Why didn’t you answer my calls all day or tell me this last night?” I asked angrily.
“Emma’s phone died, and I decided to turn mine off too so we could enjoy the day together. We were getting to know one another, and I didn’t want to take away from that. I didn’t think there was anything wrong, but clearly you’re worked up about all this.”
“Yeah, he’s taking it worse than Dakota.” Emma laughed.
“What did Dakota say?” I asked.
“Oh, this morning she said something about you were a lying jerk and exactly why she didn’t trust men.”
Her words hit me hard. Had I really just used my own suspicious nature to turn a sweet girl against me? What about the app and all the meetings? Were they actually set up because we were the perfect match for one another? I felt sick.
“So basically, I just had the best date and evening with a woman and I up and left her lying there this morning without a word.”
“Sounds like you’ve made yourself quite the mess.” Merrick gave a laugh.
“She’s visiting her grandma in New Jersey, and I think she’s going to be there all day. Do you want to go talk to her?” Emma asked.
“I better. Where’s grandma at? St. Mary’s?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“I’ve volunteered helping with investments and such out there. Great place; I’ll head right out. Should I call her first?” I asked.
“No use. Just go talk to her. It will be best.”
“I’ll go after the investment club.”
“No, you’ll go now. I can handle this,” Dean said as he butted in. “You need a little love in your life.”
“Thanks, man,” I said as I turned to leave. “I’m sorry I thought you were a scam artist, Emma. You’re a nice girl.”
“Oh, I’m not a nice girl.” She laughed as she reached over and grabbed Merrick’s cock.
The surprised look on his face was priceless.
On my way to New Jersey, I tried to think about how on earth I could apologize for the level of jerk I had been. I felt justified in my feelings after I had read that text message and really couldn’t imagine any logical reason for Emma to have said what she did; right up until Emma explained the situation.
I walked into the nursing home and didn’t see Dakota at all. There were dozens of men and women sitting at tables throughout the main room, but I couldn’t see Dakota anywhere. I did see my good friend Luanne who I had helped with her investments the previous fall. So I sat down to talk to her for a minute while I waited to see if Dakota showed up.
“Grandma Lou, how are you?” I said as I hugged her.
She wouldn’t accept any other greeting than a giant hug. It wasn’t normally how I greeted people, but she was a kind woman, and I was happy to oblige her request.
“I’m doing wonderfully. Your investment advice helped me a lot you know. I’m almost a rich woman.”
We both laughed. Luanne wasn’t rich by any means, but I hoped that my investment help had stabilized her retirement. Her goal was to earn enough interest to pay for her day to day living and have a little bit of a return that could be compounded for her family. We were able to accomplish that, and she had been very happy with the changes we made.
“Pretty soon I’ll be coming to you for investment advice,” I teased.
“I know a little building downtown that needs a new buyer. You should buy it and make it into something fabulous.”
“Sounds like a good option. Where’s it at?”
“What are you doing here!” I heard a woman say.
Slowly I turned around and it took me a moment to realize that it was Dakota standing over Luanne.
“Hi, Dakota,” I managed to say.
“Grandma Lou, do you know him?”
“Yes dear, this is my friend, Wyatt Edwards from Stanley and Associates. He’s been helping me with my investments,” Luanne said with a big smile. “He’s making me rich so I can give you all my money when I die.”
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but you need to leave,” Dakota said as tears started to well up. “This is my grandma; don’t play games with her. She’s all I have.”
I saw the emotion in her eyes, and I wanted to push her to listen to me, but I also didn’t want to hurt her. I had clearly already done enough to hurt Dakota, and the last thing I wanted was to make it worse.
“I’ll leave,” I said as I hugged Luanne and stood up to leave.
Chapter 16
Dakota
Raw emotion was about to explode from me as I tried to make sense of how Wyatt had known where I was. Why was he sitting with my Grandma Lou? No one messed with my grandma, and I wasn’t in the mood for whatever game he was trying to play.
“Yes, leave,” I managed to say before my voice started to crack.
He was just about to leave when he turned and looked at me, and I knew I couldn’t hide the hurt that was in my eyes. What had I done wrong? It didn’t matter now. He had shown me who he was, and as much as it hurt my heart, I couldn’t figure out what had happened.
“You better talk to him before he leaves,” Grandma Lou said.
“Grandma, he’s a jerk. You don’t even know what happened.”
“Talking won’t hurt. It’s better to end with a clear understanding of what happened.”
Wyatt smiled at her words, and I could see that she liked him. Had he really helped her with her investments? I remembered her talking about a nice young man who had come to work with her the previous fall; his help had been very useful for her in figuring out what to do with the money she still had in her savings account.
“Fine.”
His green eyes melted me as I looked at him. They were bright and soft all at the same time, and I wanted to hate him. I wanted to run and scream and never have to feel the hurt like I had felt that morning ever again.
“Just let me tell you what happened, and then we can go our separate ways if you’d like.”
“You mean what happened that made you leave my house without even saying a word to me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, please explain what life altering emergency took place that made this all alright. I’d love to hear it.”
“No emergency. I saw a text from Emma come through on your phone. It said something about me falling for it and you seducing me with your lies. I was hurt so I left.”
“What? Oh, my God. That was an inside joke between us. It wasn’t really me lying to you. Is that seriously why you left? You could have just asked me about it, and I would have explained.”
“To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have been able to listen. My mind was in a bad place with that dating app and running into you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Emma,” he said with a large smile.
“Did she threaten you?” I joked.
Luckily, he got the joke and laughed. Emma wasn’t the kind of person that you messed around with. If you were on her bad side, you better hope that you figured out how to get on her good side before she decided to take care of you. Emma was a sweet, vibrant, artsy woman that would cut off a finger if she had to prove her point and was angry enough.
“Sort of. She came with Merrick to our investment club meeting this morning and explained what the text had been about.”
I was mortified. Had she really told Wyatt how insecure I was? How I needed to make believe I was someone else in order to feel sexy. My face flushed red with the idea that he actually knew the truth about my seductive walk with him the night before.
“Oh,” I mumbled as I looked down at my feet.
“You’re the sexiest woman I’ve met in a very long time. Just so you know; I don’t think you’ve got to pretend to be anyone else but yourself.”
I liked the words he was saying, but my mind just couldn’t get wrapped around them. I still felt so jilted from the morning. When I woke up and realized he had just left without a single word, it had been devastating and had really affected my thoughts.
Guys usually bothered to make some sort of excuse up if they were just there for a one-night stand. They didn’t just up and leave. And I had never actually had a man come to my home and leave. Typically, I went to their home and listened to their trumped up excuses about having to leave right away in the morning because they had work. It was such a turn-off, but then again, it was expected in those situations.
That morning had hurt me because I genuinely hadn’t expected it. I hadn’t thought at all about him just leaving me like that. I had not considered the idea that he was just in my bed to get laid and then was going to leave as early as possible without even waking me. And because I had not mentally prepared myself, I wasn’t ready at all for the emotions that I felt from that morning.
But now here he was, and he was apologizing for this big miscommunication. I felt his apology was real. I saw the reality of it in his eyes, yet I still felt such pain running through my veins from the morning.
A girl never likes to be rejected. It’s not a good feeling and not something that you can just forget because a man apologizes. As much as I wanted to believe his apology and just move on from it, I had the reality of my own mind weighing me down.
“Kiss her already,” Grandma Lou yelled from her table only a few feet away from us.
She wasn’t helping me at all. I did want to kiss him. I wanted to be back in my bed naked with him and forget this whole day had even happened. But I couldn’t go back in time, and that meant I had to figure out what happened and how I could possibly forget about waking up alone after one of the best nights of my life.
“So Emma told me you were here, and I came out to see you. I think we should stick with this; I mean we are a one hundred percent match.” He laughed. “I am sorry. So truly sorry for leaving this morning, but I am very happy that the dating app brought us together.”
“Speaking of that dating app. Did it tell you to come here
?” I asked.
“I haven’t looked at it since we talked on there. It was Emma who told me where you were.”
The dating app had been such an enigma in this whole situation. I really wasn’t sure what part of our meeting the app had played and what part Wyatt and I had played. But I was happy that we were there standing with each other, and I was willing to give him a second chance for sure.
I pulled my phone out of my purse to see what my app said, and he did the same. We both stood there looking at our Date Tonight app, and a smile crossed our faces.
“What does yours say?” Wyatt asked.
“What does yours say?” I asked him back.
“Happily Ever After,” we both said as we turned our apps around and showed each other. I had to laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing.
***
“Wyatt! Come here; Brandon’s on television!” I screamed as I turned on the morning news.
“What’s going on?”
“He just sold another app.” I laughed.
“What’s this one do? Marry people? Feed them breakfast in bed?” He raised a laugh.
We both sat and watched as the newscaster introduced Brandon, or Ren as Wyatt liked to refer to him. Ren was dressed in a dark blue suit and actually looked very professional as the camera panned over to him.
“So one million dollar app wasn’t enough for you, and you’ve gone and developed another?” the host asked him.
“Yes, Donna, as much as I love the Date Tonight app, and I’ve had friends who have been very successfully matched on there, I still was full of ideas and decided to try my hand at an investing app.”
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