Harte Strings: The Billionaire Matchmaker, Part Two
Page 12
“You can’t have ‘wants to get married’ as a deal breaker and you know it.” I opened my laptop and his file.
“This isn’t fair and you know it.” He leaned back on the sofa with his legs spread and his arms stretched out over the sofa back. “Why should you know exactly what I’m looking for, while your tastes remain secret from me?”
“Because I’m your matchmaker and you’re not mine.” I avoided looking at him.
“I could be,” he said. “I could match you up with one of my rich friends or acquaintances. If I run into one who’s available, knowing your tastes and deal breakers would help me to screen him for you. I might like being a matchmaker.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “And I’m not looking.” I threw him a bone. “Besides, I think you know pretty well what the physical attributes I like are.”
His eyes became round and dark. “Maybe I do.” He lowered his voice. “Why do you keep denying yourself? What do I have to do to get you back in bed?”
I met his gaze. “Want kids and be looking to get married in the next year.” I just blurted it out. “I’ve decided to go off one-night flings and hookups. One night with you and I decided I’m not that type of girl.”
He looked almost crestfallen. A hint of that geeky, insecure young guy cracked his polished façade.
“I didn’t mean it the way you think,” I said. “I realized I’m really not that kind of girl. I want something more than a night of fun. I want another romance. Another soul mate. Another husband, and children. The only way to get that is to follow my own advice and walk away from any man who doesn’t want those same things. No matter how funny, rich, intelligent, and hot he is.”
“I see.” He hesitated. “There really is no hope for us?”
“Not unless one of us changes our mind,” I said.
“You don’t feel even the slightest bit guilty that we’ll be sending me out there to pretend I’m exactly that guy who wants to get married?”
“No.” I shook my head, lying. “You’re not going to go on more than one date, two at the most, with any girl unless you decide you are ready or come clean with her about it. Then it’s on her if she continues to date you.”
He was silent.
He’d brought the worksheet I’d given him with him. It sat on the sofa next to him.
I held my hand out for it. “Let’s get started.”
He scooped it up and shook his head, a wry expression on his face as he stood. “What the hell do these matter? Why go through the pretense? Just match me with whoever gets us the most exposure and be done with it.”
Oh, I would. I definitely would. He could count on that.
* * *
Fortunately, my sessions with the other men went better. Much better. Why couldn’t I have had my romantic awakening and spotted one of them first? Why did I want the unobtainable?
Late in the afternoon, we had a team meeting for the guys to show us the latest on the app.
Cam presented. “After evaluating our business model, we’ve incorporated a salary calculator into the app. It wasn’t our original intention. But we decided that if, for some reason, we fail to get enough interest in the ‘find where the girls/boys are’ function, we hope that people will use the other functions.
“There are many apps that cater to the jobseeker. And, of course, many, many dating apps. But as far as we know, none that combine the two functions.” He brought up a presentation on his laptop and projected it for us all to see.
“For example, suppose you’re a female nurse looking for a college-educated male spouse and you’re living in a female-intensive area. You want to go where the men are and where you have the best chance of not only getting a job, but getting a good-paying job with a chance of career advancement. You plug all this into the app”—he demonstrated—“and it brings up a list of geographic locations that show you which cities you’d have the best chance of success achieving both objectives. And we’ve added a quality-of-life calculator as well. Now you can make an informed decision with all that information at your fingertips in one, easy, fast app.
“Once you have this information, you can visit the city of your choice and use the app function that shows you where the hotspots are for finding a large available pool of potential mates.”
The presentation was slick. We tried the app functions ourselves. I was impressed.
But I still had my concerns. “Walk through the singles-locating part of the app again? I’m still concerned about some of the features. Say I enable the app to show my location. I don’t want it to show me shopping at the grocery store. Or in the shower. Or walking down the street. Even if that’s all anonymous as to who’s in the shower. That’s creepy and dangerous. How do we protect against that?”
Austin answered. “Inside the app, you choose which locations you want to be identified as being in—as an anonymous single woman, of course. Suppose you’re a regular at Club A, and every time you go there, you want to be counted in the total of available women so that the men will come. Inside the app you identify that location as an ‘always show.’ From then until you disable that feature, you’ll always be part of the total. You can also enable ‘single occasion’ feature, which will show you in Club A until you leave. The next time you go to Club A, you’ll have to select it to be included.
“As a double protection, you can select some locations as a ‘never include’ spot. You might want to select your home, for example. Unless you’re having a party. Then you could disable that feature. The app is exceptionally powerful. Which is why it’s taking longer than we originally thought to get it up and running properly.”
Lottie raised her hand. “Couldn’t it be abused?”
Cam nodded. “It could. As with anything, it’s up to the individual user to use it responsibly.”
It was running late. We broke for dinner on the deck.
It was another clear, beautiful, warm evening. Dinner was a gourmet hamburger bar with a master chef grilling the burgers. Lazer grilled the first “ceremonial” burger and handed the job over to his chef.
Since our meeting, we’d been pleasant and cordial, but avoiding close contact. My nerves were raw and shot.
I found myself sitting at a table with Austin, looking off the edge of the cantilevered deck into the view of increasingly lighter mountains. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing mountains reflected forever.
“I’m enjoying your matchmaking process,” Austin told me.
“Are you?” I glanced at Lazer. “It seems to make some men uncomfortable.”
“Some ‘men’ have their head up their ass.” Austin laughed.
“Mmmmmm,” I said, embarrassed I’d been so obvious. “I have my work cut out for me.”
“That you do. Don’t beat yourself up. He signed up for this. The onus is on him. You’re only human.”
“Thanks. I think.” I ate a freshly made potato chip from the kitchen. “Lazer knows how to feed people.”
Austin nodded. “And yet he keeps his boyish figure.” He winked.
I laughed.
“What’s the next step? In the matchmaking process.”
I grinned slyly. “Makeovers!”
“Oh, jeez.” Austin muttered a few more choice words beneath his breath.
I was used to getting this reaction, especially from men. I shook my head playfully at his discomfort. “Tomorrow we’re taking a special jaunt into Seattle to turn all of you gentlemen into heartbreakers.”
“Good luck with that!”
“Don’t sell yourself short. With legs like yours…”
“Oh, shit.” He laughed and rolled his eyes. “Are you going to make me wear a kilt as part of it?”
“The rumor is you look great in one. From what I hear, utility kilts were all the rage in Seattle at one point several years ago. Maybe you can resurrect the fad.”
“My grandfather wore a kilt from time to time,” Austin said.
“He did?”
“Well, my
last name’s MacDougall. That’s a good, old Scottish Highlander name. My great grandfather immigrated here as a boy.” Austin spread a few more pickles on his burger from the pile on his plate.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. That’s where the red hair comes from. Scotland has the highest percentage of redheads in the world. And no amount of breeding with non-Scotties seems to make a difference. Red hair wins.” He paused to enjoy a bite of his burger. “I wore a kilt regularly in high school.”
“What?”
He nodded. “I played the bagpipes, at my grandpa’s insistence. And marched with a band of bagpipers in competitions for a year or two. Until I wiggled out of it. I wasn’t very good. My dad finally got tired of listening to me squawk and let me quit.”
“That’s interesting,” I said.
“More like embarrassing. At least they didn’t make me learn Scottish dance.”
“But you have the legs for it,” I teased. “How’s the app coming?”
“Great. You ladies were concerned about the location feature. We’ve worked a lot of the bugs out.” He pulled his phone out and brought the app up. “This is the latest version. Want to give it a try?”
I nodded enthusiastically. We sat, heads bent together, talking and smiling at each other intimately as we ran through some of the latest features.
“This is like playing a game of Clue or something—a ballet dancer, female, wants male mate, and a short commute,” I said. “And the answer is…”
We laughed at the answer and plugged in more combinations.
“Look. Female programmer looking for college-educated man in a city that scores high on the quality-of-living scale and has rampant job opportunities with strong chance of career advancement—ta da! Seattle!” Austin bumped me with his shoulder. “The app works. Impressive, huh?”
I grinned back. I liked Austin. Really liked him.
“Get out your phone,” he said. “Let’s try the single man/woman finder function.” He pulled it up on his while I grabbed mine.
“Look. I’m finding my location. Ah! Here it is, Lazer Lodge. I select it and choose one-time use.”
He walked me through doing the same on my app.
“Are you ready?” He was excited. It showed in his voice and on his face. “When I push this button, it should show me all the available women at Lazer Lodge—you! And you should see one, me.
“We won’t be specifically identified. We could be any of these people. If you were walking into this place, it would be your job to find me. You first.”
I hit a button and the display popped up with a blue silhouette of a man with the number one inside.
I clapped. “Good job! Now you.”
Austin did the same. We both watched the screen of his phone excitedly. A pink silhouette of woman popped up with the number two inside it.
We gave each other puzzled expressions.
“Maybe Lottie has her app on.” I texted her. She responded immediately that she didn’t.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Potential flaw. Can a guy set his app to show that he’s a woman? Is one of the other men playing with his app?”
Austin frowned. “Good point. You’re a great beta tester. We’ll have to make sure people can’t cheat and change their gender. That would make this app pointless.”
I felt Lazer watching us. When I glanced at him, he looked away.
“Let me text the guys and see if any of them are monkeying with it.” He frowned as the responses all came back negative.
As I looked around the deck, they shook their heads as they caught my eye. All of them but Lazer. He shook his head, but he had a devilish look, a smirk he was trying to hide.
Austin and I tried the app again. With the same result.
“What the—” Austin shook his phone like it was the culprit, grinning at me as he did.
Just then, the buzz of chatter on the deck ceased. All of the men turned toward the glass doors from the lodge to the deck.
A beautiful woman stood in the open doors, her hair flowing in the gentle breeze. She held her cell phone up, screen toward us, revealing the app. “Add another woman to the party.”
I could make out the pink and the number two.
She scanned the group. Her gaze landed on Lazer. “Hello, darling!” She waved and strolled to him, hips swaying.
He held his arms open to her. She stepped neatly into his embrace, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him on the lips.
My heart raced out of control. Who was this unwelcome interloper? And how did she know Lazer?
* * *
Thank You!
Thanks for reading Harte Strings. I hope you enjoyed it!
Lazer and Ashley’s story continues. You’ll want to pick up Pair Us, the third episode of the series, now! Grab your copy today!
Want to know when my next book will be out? Sign up for my VIP New Release List at ginarobinson.com If you’re on the list, you’ll always be the first to know about new releases, including when the next Jet City Billionaire romance will be available. And you’ll get the Gina Robinson Starter Library FREE just for signing up!
* * *
Liked it? Shout about it!
If you enjoyed Harte Strings please review it. Your reviews help others find this book and others in the series. Every review is very much appreciated!
* * *
Also by Gina Robinson
The Billionaire Matchmaker Series
Part 1—Lazer Focused
Part 2—Harte Strings
Part 3—Pair Us
The Billionaire Duke Series
Part 1—The Billionaire Duke
Part 2—The Duchess Contest
Part 3—The Temporary Duchess
Part 4—The American Heir
The Switched at Marriage Series
Part 1—A Wedding to Remember
Part 2—The Virgin Billionaire
Part 3—To Have and To Hold
Part 4—From This Day Forward
Part 5—For Richer, For Richest
Part 6—In Sickness and In Wealth
Part 7—To Love and To Cherish
The Billionaire’s Christmas Vows
Gina Robinson’s Contemporary New Adult Romance Series
The Rushed Series
Book 1—Rushed, Zach and Alexis’ story
Book 2—Crushed, Dakota and Morgan’s story
Book 3—Hushed, Seth and Maddie’s story
The Reckless Series
Book 1—Reckless Longing
Book 2—Reckless Secrets
Book 3—Reckless Together
About the Author
Gina Robinson is the bestselling and award-winning author of the popular Switched at Marriage and Billionaire Duke romantic comedy serials, featuring a billionaire in a surprising marriage of convenience and a billionaire who inherits a British dukedom, the Reckless and Rushed contemporary new adult romance series, and the Agent Ex series of humorous romantic suspense novels. Her books have delighted readers and received praise in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Romantic Times Book Reviews.
She writes romance and women's fiction across a wide variety of subgenres--romantic comedy, new adult, contemporary, historical, and romantic suspense. Her love stories are infused with a blend of romance, adventure, a bit of mystery, and humor. Readers are drawn to the light touch she gives even serious topics and the fast, fun, easy-to-read pace of her books.
You can get the Gina Robinson Starter Library by signing up for her mailing list at www.ginarobinson.com
@ginamrobinson
GinaRobinsonAuthor
www.ginarobinson.com
%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share