Kindle Edition
A Matchless Romance
Text © 2020 by Christi Barth
All rights reserved.
A MATCHLESS ROMANCE
by
Christi Barth
No matter how fast Drew Weston ran down the tree-lined Chicago street, he couldn’t escape his problem. Even if he managed to strap turbo thrusters to his shoes, it wouldn’t make a difference. Aside from looking kick-ass cool, that is. Huh. The row of old brownstones behind black wrought-iron fences faded out of focus as his mind clicked into designer mode. Turbo sneakers. Interesting idea to work into his next video game. That is, if his boss-from-hell gave him the chance to come up with a new game. Thinking about Keiko fueled his frustration, and he put on a burst of speed.
Which plowed him right into the soft curves of a woman. Moving solely on reflex, Drew grabbed what he could. It happened to be her lush ass. He spun to slow his momentum and keep them both from crashing to the ground. They ended up plastered against a glass storefront. Late afternoon April sunlight haloed around her deep red hair. The sensual hits didn’t stop there. Her thighs tight to his, breasts crushed to his chest, and glossy peach lips parted in surprise. Wow.
This was the closest he’d been to a woman in ninety-four days. Ninety-four endless days—and endlessly frustrating nights—since he’d last had sex. Cause yeah, he’d been counting. They might be vertical right now, but the position definitely put Drew in mind of horizontal hijinks. Made him wonder if the thick black lashes on those green eyes of hers would flutter shut if he pressed his mouth to hers.
“Did you run into me just to cop a feel?” she asked in a husky voice. One that sounded like the beautiful redhead had rolled out of bed after screaming her pleasure to the rafters for three rounds.
“No.” What kind of creep did she take him for? For God’s sake, this wasn’t some sleazy alley at midnight. Sure, he’d gotten off of the El at the wrong stop, so Drew couldn’t pinpoint his location. But this street was only a block away from what the bumper-to-bumper traffic he’d seen lurching below the train indicated was a main drag. He’d jogged by a couple of boutiques and art galleries as he tried to run off his irritation. All he’d really done was feel stupid for running in jeans.
Her eyes narrowed. “Then is this your lame, signature move? Did you figure that once we sidewalk snuggled, I’d be putty in your hands?”
“No.” Drew knew just enough about women to know it was never that easy. “I figured running into you was better than making you fall down. Lesser of two evils. But I’ve gotta say, the result doesn’t suck.” After all, the hot mystery woman still hadn’t pulled out of his loose embrace.
“Thanks.” High, arched eyebrows gave her a look of being in on a joke with the rest of the world. “Now do you maybe want to let go of my ass?”
“Wouldn’t be my first choice. It’s a pretty terrific ass.” Nevertheless, Drew dropped his arms to his sides. He didn’t want to scare the pretty woman Fate had dropped into his path. Maybe she was a karmic present to balance out the barely five feet of nasty-tempered, impossible-to-please female back at his office? Which of the three Greek Fates would’ve been responsible for creating that balance, he wondered. Huh. They’d be good to work into a game, too. Or maybe the Norns of Norse mythology. Then Drew wondered why he was thinking about game design at-freaking-all when the most beautiful woman he’d ever been lucky enough to hold still touched him from shins to shoulders?
A smile flitted across her lips. “You do say whatever crosses your mind, don’t you? That’s both unexpected and refreshing. I think I’ll give it a try.” To his surprise, she still didn’t step back. Instead, she slid a hand between his hoodie and his T-shirt, fingers splayed across his heart, then stood on tiptoe to whisper into his ear. “Next time, cutie, just ask first.”
Could she feel his heartbeat kick up about a zillion notches? The statement, though full of potential, demanded clarification. Drew didn’t want to risk screwing up. “Next time I accidentally cop a feel, or next time I see you?”
With a laugh, she finally put some breathing room between them. Just enough for Drew to notice the color slicking her lips matched her fitted jacket. It nipped in at a waist he could probably span with his hands. And damn if he didn’t want to try. Beneath it, a cream, lacy thing dipped across the swells of her breasts. Not that he was looking or anything.
“I’m surprised you’ve got time to flirt.” She made a big show of looking down both ends of the street. “The way you were running, I figured there was a hoard of zombies after you.”
Talk about a fantasy come true. Or at least a really great sequence from his best-selling video game, Trolls Under Tribeca. A sexy, gorgeous woman who could also talk zombies? Willingly? Drew’s inner nerd took over his brain’s joystick. “You know about zombies?”
She crossed her arms. Took another step away from him. “No more than anyone else with a love of schlocky horror movies. Why? You’re not going to try and convince me they’re real, are you?”
Uh oh. He’d lost her. Now she thought he was one of those lunatics who couldn’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. The ones who put the crazy candy coating around the all-natural fun of gaming conventions. Drew scrambled to regroup. “Of course not. I wouldn’t have moved to Chicago if it had a zombie problem.”
The twinkle in her emerald eyes faded. Shit. Lame joke. Big mistake. A minute ago, he’d had his hands all over her, and now the possibility of that ever happening again seemed all but impossible. Drew decided to go with the truth. It couldn’t make the situation any worse. He shuffled his scuffed sneakers and jammed his hands in his pockets.
“Seriously, I don’t believe in zombies. But I spend a lot of time thinking about them. For my work. And in my experience, most women don’t think about zombies at all.”
Her posture didn’t relax, but the corners of her mouth tugged upwards. “Color me intrigued. What on earth do you do for a living? Dig graves? Embalm people?”
“Something far worse. According to my parents, anyway.” The degree from MIT he’d worked so hard for was just another piece of paper to them. At least if he dug graves, he’d be doing something physical. Something they could understand and respect. “I design video games. One, in particular, that’s chock-full of zombies. And trolls.”
“Oh. My. God.” To his utter disbelief, the redhead reached out to wrap her small, soft hands around his. God, what else was that incredibly soft? Vanilla pudding, maybe? Or a drop of liquid mercury? “Don’t tell me that Trolls Under Tribeca is your game?”
“Yeah,” Drew spun the word out cautiously. Cause suddenly this whole thing felt like a setup. A prank. Some new-guy hazing by his team back at Game Domain. Because women who looked like her never cared about the fantasy-filled video games he designed.
“I love it,” she said in an excited rush. “It scares me silly, but also makes me feel like a badass warrior. Whenever I have a bad day, I come home and kill zombies for an hour to smooth out the mental kinks.” She shook her head, smiling. “Talk about a stroke of luck. I mean, at first, I thought you were just another good-looking guy, but now I realize you’re brilliant, too. Lucky me.”
Now Drew was certain it was a prank. Women looked at him and saw a nerd, not a jock. Brains, not brawn. Out of a nervous habit that wouldn’t quit, he started to push up the glasses he’d discarded only a month ago after laser surgery freed him from a lifetime of frames.
“Who are you?” he asked. If his team was behind this little encounter, she’d say something like Mona Lott. It took no time to discover he headed up a group of creative geniuses. Geniuses, however, with a sense of humor firmly lodged in the eighth grade. Drew’s first day he discovered toilet paper stamped with a photo of the current president. In a bi-partisan spirit, the next roll was stamped with a picture of the former president. On day three, his office chair was replaced with a replica made out of carefully stacked toilet paper rolls. But Drew rolled with it. He’d expe
cted to take some licks as their new boss.
“Tabitha Bell.” She pulled back her hands to criss-cross them over the cleavage he was not, repeat, not staring at. Drew felt like he’d diverted every single synapse not responsible for cardiopulmonary support to the job of keeping his eyes off her chest. “Huge fan. I’m on level thirty-seven of Trolls. Having a hell of time stopping those sea monsters trying to batter a hole in the Lincoln Tunnel. A friend gave me An Eye in the Shadows for my birthday, but I won’t let myself get sucked in until I hit level fifty of Trolls.”
Dropping specific game detail meant she might be for real. If so, her love of gaming, combined with a body that put Jessica Rabbit to shame, made her the most perfect woman in the world for a nerd like him. Drew still found it hard to believe, though. The tantalizing Tabitha belonged out at swanky wine bars, chasing troubles away with champagne bubbles. Or dancing them off in a classy club. Not working her way towards carpal tunnel with a controller alone in her apartment.
“Drew Weston.” He gave a short nod. “It’s, um, great to hear from a fan.”
“The pleasure’s all mine.” Tabitha wrinkled her nose. It connected her freckles into a straight line. One that Drew wanted to lick. See if they tasted like cinnamon. “Well, sort of. Selfishly, I want to picture your days spent locked in a BatCave. Hunched in the darkness, the only light a glow from your three monitors while you mastermind the next game in the Trolls series.”
He bit back a laugh. “You’re not too far off.”
From day one, it had been drilled into Drew that Game Domain had different floors for a reason. Executives on the top floor, sales and marketing below them, then an entire floor for player testing. Drew hadn’t even seen any of those floors yet. He and the rest of the creative/design team were kept in lockdown in the basement. The ground floor, with the mailroom and cafeteria, acted as a buffer zone to keep the creatives away from the rest of the staff.
Did it make him feel like a mutant, a genetic experiment gone wrong? One hidden away not for its own protection, but to protect the world from knowledge of its very existence? Oh, yeah. Which Drew kind of got off on, honest to God. Made him feel in sync with the creatures in his best-selling games.
“So what’s a brilliant game designer doing in my neighborhood?”
“Your neighborhood?” He looked past her at the elegant buildings, most converted to shops. “You live here?”
“Nope. You’re at my work. Or should I say, you’re on it.” She tapped the glass behind him with a long orange-tipped nail.
“Oh.” Drew moved to the edge of the sidewalk to take in the storefront. Tabitha stretched her arms wide, like a game show hostess.
“Can you guess what I do?”
Wide picture windows were draped in silky fabric that matched the barely budding tree leaves. A kimono, a couple of shades deeper green, had two fantastically detailed golden dragons snarling on each lapel. Since Drew had never heard of a bathrobe store, he kept looking. Puddled next to it was a much smaller sheer kimono, with pale pink flowers vining from top to bottom. They both lay on top of a heart-shaped blanket next to a pair of overturned champagne glasses.
It didn’t take Drew’s overzealous imagination to picture a sexed-up couple shucking those robes after the bubbles went straight to their heads and getting busy. Unfortunately, the Asian tone of the scene also shot his brain straight back to the cause of his current problem; his boss, Keiko Nakamura. Jerking his eyes away—cause who wanted to think about sex and their boss at the same time?—Drew flicked his gaze up. Bright red script across the top of the door read A Fine Romance.
Logic, which Drew pretty much lived and died by, said the name tied in to their products. Not that he had any clue what those would be. “You sell…romance type stuff,” he guessed.
She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Too vague. No points for you. But yes, this is a romance store.”
“Seriously?” Perfect. Problem solved. In his aimless wander after getting off the El, he’d literally jogged straight to the solution. Romance and women were practically synonymous. So maybe Tabitha could help him figure out how to deal better with women. Especially since Tabitha gave every appearance of being the perfect woman in every single way. Drew put a hand at the small of her back. “Can we go inside? I need your help.”
“Of course.” As he opened the door, she looked back over her shoulder at him, sending her hair rippling down her back. “I’m surprised a guy as hot as you is lacking in the romance department.”
Drew big back a snort. Riiiight. Because the prettiest girls always lined up to date computer nerds. And Al Gore really invented the Internet. Sure, his sense memory would undoubtedly wake him up in the middle of the night, remembering the softness of her skin and the way she fit just beneath his chin. But no way was Tabitha actually flirting with him. She must work on commission. Figured that buttering him up would lead to a big sale.
“How can I help fill your life with romance?” she asked, leading him past tall glass display cases in a blur of jewelry, painted bottles and—God, Drew didn’t know what to call them. Tchotchkes? That’s the word his grandmother would use. Shiny, sparkly dust catchers.
“I don’t need romance. But I do need advice on women. I didn’t know where to turn for it, until I saw you.”
“Ah. So you’re not here to shop.” She waved off the tall guy manning the cash register. “Don’t worry, I’m exactly the right person for the job. Why don’t we continue this consultation upstairs?”
No complaints there. Leading the way, Tabitha gave Drew a great view of long, shapely legs balanced atop high heels narrow enough to pin a butterfly specimen to a mounting board. The sight of her heart-shaped ass swaying side to side as she climbed the wooden stairs took Drew’s breath away. It took him a moment to recover and scramble up after her.
The staircase ended in a big, open room. Exposed brick gave it a casual vibe, along with tables and high-backed stools with deep red cushions. Drew picked the table with an iPad on it. Technology made him comfortable. At least, as much as he could be with a wet dream of a woman within arm’s reach. He sat and hooked his toes beneath the rung.
Tabitha sat down across from him. “Do you need advice on how to find a woman? I mean, aside from your preferred method of running them over?” A sly smile accompanied the teasing words. “Or help figuring out what type of woman is right for you?”
Weird question. “I’m not here for dating advice.”
“Then it’s too bad you’re consulting with a matchmaker.”
Drew snorted his appreciation at her joke. “Like that’s really still a profession. Why would anyone pay good money to a person when a computer could execute a compatibility matched spreadsheet with more speed and accuracy?”
Heat flared in those emerald eyes. “Because computers have no heart to sniff out the spark between two people. Love is about feelings, not about mathematically correct computer code.”
Shit. He’d done it again. Inserted his size twelve sneakers straight into his mouth. How come Drew’s self-awareness only kicked in after he pissed someone off? “You’re a matchmaker? For real? You pair up strangers here?”
“A Matchless Romance—this is where all the magic happens.” She spread her arms wide to indicate the whole room. “It doesn’t look like much now, but when you come to one of our Match-n-Mingle events, you’ll see this place hopping. People from wall to wall. Jittering with nerves. Expectant. Hopeful. Ready to leap, headlong, into a committed relationship. It’s a great time. And you’re such a cutie, you’ll have women lined up to talk to you.”
There she went again with the overkill. Drew may have packed on some muscles from training, but he knew he still gave off a computer-nerd vibe. Far more likely he’d have to stand in line to talk to her. Not that it mattered. He needed to focus all his attention on his job, not on hooking up. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Tabitha flipped back the cover of the iPad and began to type. Then she patted his hand.
“Don’t be scared. If you prefer, we can keep things strictly one-on-one.”
That sounded good to Drew. One-on-one time with Tabitha sounded like freaking heaven. But still improbable, if not impossible for him. Amazing he’d gotten this far into the conversation without accidentally insulting her. Or so his boss would say. Keiko was convinced he couldn’t string two sentences together without screwing them up somehow, if women were involved. So instead of bothering to even try to fly that close to the sun, he dove into his problem. “I just got a new job. I started four days ago.”
“Great.” Tabitha beamed at him. A smile so full of pride and congratulations it made Drew want to pat himself on the back. “Does this mean I get the next installment of Trolls faster?”
“Maybe. I’m the new head of the creative team at Game Domain.” It still surprised him a little to say the words. When he started designing games in college, he’d never planned to join a big firm, let alone be in charge of such a large team. So far, the experience was about as comfortable as running in wet swim trunks.
She tapped a note on the iPad. “A new job’s the perfect excuse to upgrade your wardrobe.” Another quick brush of her fingers along his forearm. He tried really, really hard to ignore the softness of her touch. “I can help you with that, too.”
As a video game designer, Drew’s bar for business attire was pretty much anything other than sweats. He looked down. Clean red tee—a cartoon showing the evolution from ape to man to robot—layered over a white Henley. Jeans with no holes—at least not that he could see. His most recently retired pair of running shoes. Well, retired from serious running, which meant wearing them to work. And a black hoodie to protect him from the crappy April weather. Drew stopped just short of lifting an arm to sniff his pits. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
Friends To Lovers (Aisle Bound Book 3) Page 31
