Lisa heaved a sigh. “I didn’t even want to start dating again, and I definitely didn’t want to go the whole online-dating route again. No offense, but it hasn’t worked out very well for me in the past. But Clare and Willow, I guess they think I’ve been single long enough, and they kind of took me on as their little project, and appointed themselves my Fairy God-Cupids...” She shook her head. “It’s stupid. The whole thing is just dumb.”
“Well.” Adam was sitting back again, looking at his hands bemusedly. “On the one hand, I’m tempted to encourage you to give the Mister Match system a try. I mean, especially if other dating sites haven’t worked for you in the past. And, like I already said, you can date whoever you want.” He frowned. “I mean, of course you can. It’s not even my place to say that—to give you permission.” He shook his head, as if annoyed with himself.
Then, slowly, he raised his gaze to hers. “But I’d be lying if I said I liked the idea of you going out with other men.”
A beat of silence stretched out between them, pregnant with all he’d left unsaid. Suddenly, Lisa’s heart was bumping in her throat, fast and insistent.
Had Adam just made a declaration of his feelings for her?
A beat later, the moment had passed.
“Anyway,” Adam was saying, and he was no longer looking at her in that intense, intimate way. “Maybe this will turn out to be a good thing.”
“A good thing? How?”
He stood, and shrugged a shoulder. “You said, yourself, last night, we need an exit strategy. Maybe the reason for our fake-breakup has just fallen into our laps.”
Lisa blinked, trying to pretend her stomach hadn’t just turned into concrete. Soon, she and Adam were going to break up in the eyes of the world, and she was going to be the cheater who’d made it happen.
At least Adam couldn’t be held responsible for the breakup. Maybe, she thought bitterly, he could even spin it further in his company’s favor. He could tell the media he’d met Lisa when he’d gone to her for a massage, but from now on he’d be relying on the Mister-Match system to meet women.
“I need to get going,” Adam said, breaking into her roiling thoughts. “We can talk more about it all later. What are your plans today? I mean, until this afternoon. We’ll need you in the massage room by four-thirty, to set things up for the couple’s massages.”
“Of course,” she said automatically. “I’m not sure what I’ll be doing until then. I haven’t decided.”
“Well, try to have some fun, all right? Relax. You deserve it.” He smiled at her again, from where he stood by the door. “I’ll see you in a while.”
“See you.”
They were in such a strange space together, she reflected, as she watched the door swing slowly and silently shut behind him. Their newfound intimacy had seemed so enormous last night, and so secure. But apparently the balance had been fragile at best. It had been completely thrown off by the celebrity gossip bombshell, and Dan’s phone call.
“What should I do now?” she asked aloud, a carryover from her habit, back home, of talking aloud to her cat as if Mr. Monkey could actually understand her, or actually cared.
She’d known she would have the bulk of the day to herself. She liked Houston, and she’d welcomed the idea of a free day simply to walk around, visit bookstores, maybe hit a museum or an art gallery. In Austin, whenever she had free time, she filled it up with errands or housecleaning or any of the million other chores that were always on her plate. She hardly ever allowed herself just to relax and be aimless. Today, she’d decided her goal would be complete and total aimlessness.
Of course, she was beginning to learn that things rarely went exactly as she planned.
After a quick shower, she took a leisurely stroll around the streets near the hotel. But when she returned to the Water Lily an hour later to change shoes—her sandals were rubbing a hole in her pinky toe—she saw that the red light on the phone by the bed was blinking furiously at her.
There were three messages, all from Adam.
“So, change of plans,” he said in the first. “Big change. The Dream Date is off.” He took a deep, audible breath and blew it out gustily. “Yep. Apparently Orlando and Valeria took one look at each other and decided they had less than nothing in common. Guess we were totally off about the whole Shakespearean name-bond thing.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “So this weekend’s a wash.”
The second and third messages were similar, except with increasing discouragement and distress apparent in Adam’s tone.
By the end of the third message, Lisa was grimacing in sympathy. Poor Adam. He must be feeling terrible. She knew he took his job seriously, and the site, and these so-called dream dates. If she knew him at all, he was feeling responsible for the whole thing.
“I just can’t believe it.” Adam scrubbed a hand through his hair as he paced the length of the hotel room he had reserved for the couple’s massages that were no longer going to happen. “I don’t understand why the Mister-Match system didn’t work for them.”
“Who knows, man,” Dan said flatly, on the other end of the phone line. “Look, I really hate to say this, but...”
Adam’s stomach clenched. “What?”
“I just keep thinking it has something to do with this Lisa DeLuca person.”
The way Dan said her name, his tone laced with distrust, made Adam scowl into the phone. “What are you talking about? Lisa wasn’t even around earlier, when the Dream Date couple had their run-in—”
“I mean,” Dan interrupted, “maybe Lisa’s having a Yoko effect. On you, and on the website by extension.”
“A Yoko effect?” Adam repeated. He felt like his head might explode with all the thoughts and emotions currently bouncing around inside—anxiety, disbelief, disappointment, and now pure incredulity.
“You know, the Yoko effect. Like when John Lennon got together with Yoko Ono, and the Beatles completely fell apart—”
“I know about John and Yoko and the Beatles,” Adam ground out. He dropped heavily into a chair by the window that overlooked the hotel’s lush garden, several stories below. “What I don’t know is how they relate in any possible way to Lisa, or to Orlando and Valeria getting into a fight at the hotel check-in desk this morning.”
“Look,” Dan said grumpily, “all I know is, as soon as Lisa entered the picture, everything to do with Mister-Match.com started going bad.”
For a second, Adam didn’t react. He couldn’t. He felt as if he’d been sucker-punched. His friend’s comment stung, a lot. He was surprised how much, and how quickly.
After a beat, he felt capable of speaking, or possibly shouting, but Dan was talking again.
“What happened, anyway? I mean, what the hell went wrong?”
Adam closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His partner might have gotten it all wrong when it came to Lisa, but he deserved to know what had happened to make the Dream Date implode.
“Earlier today,” he began, “I got a call from Ellen, from the video team. She was going to shoot some interview footage of the Dream Date couple’s first meeting. Valeria and Orlando were supposed to check into the hotel at noon, but I guess they both checked in a little early, and Ellen saw the whole thing.” He shook his head. “She even got video footage of it.”
“Of what, exactly?” Dan demanded.
Adam took a deep breath. “Somehow they happened to come into the lobby at the very same time, and I guess they didn’t recognize each other—”
“Didn’t recognize each other?” Dan repeated. “Didn’t they know who they were looking for? I mean, they’d been in touch through Mister-Match before today, hadn’t they?”
“Obviously, they’d been in touch before. That’s how they won the Dream Date.” Adam shrugged, feeling defeated. “I don’t know, maybe they’d both used old profile pictures, or something.”
“Don’t you make sure things like that won’t happen?” Dan blustered. “There’s got to be a way—”
>
“Yeah,” Adam shot back, “right. I make it a point to personally check every one of our three million users’ profiles to make sure they’re using a profile picture that’s accurate and current.” He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, for whatever reason, they didn’t recognize each other. Do you want me to tell you how everything went down, or not?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dan said, and shut up and listened.
“So they both showed up at the registration desk,” Adam continued. “According to Ellen, Orlando cut in front of Valeria and managed to check in first, which upset her, and they ended up having words. James told me she called him an inconsiderate jackass, and he called her dumber than a stump, and then she called him a douche canoe—”
“Douche canoe?” Dan interrupted. “What—is that even a thing?”
Adam’s snort of a laugh burbled out of nowhere. “I have no idea. I think we’re getting old, man.”
“I’ll say,” Dan grumbled. “Douche canoe? Seriously? Whatever happened to just calling someone an asshole?”
“Well, get this one—I guess at some point Orlando ended up saying Valeria was a line Nazi, and then apparently he called her Adolf Titler.”
“Adolf Titler?” Dan hooted. “I’m totally using that next time Rachel’s getting on my ass about how I fold the towels wrong.”
Adam snorted again. “Anyway, that’s basically it. They met, hated each other at first sight, traded some choice insults, and the Dream Date crashed and burned before it ever got off the ground.”
“And it was all captured on video,” Dan added glumly. “Better make sure that footage never gets out.”
A creepy sense of foreboding slid up Adam’s spine. “Good point,” he said. “I’ll see to it.”
Chapter 24
____________________________________
Lisa reached out and patted Adam’s arm lamely. She just wished there were more she could do. She didn’t know much about the Mister-Match system—except that, so far, it hadn’t worked for this weekend’s Dream Date couple, or for her, either—and she hadn’t met Orlando and Valeria. She hadn’t even gotten the whole story yet about what had gone wrong. All she’d accomplished since hearing Adam’s voicemails was locating him in the hotel bar, where he was sitting and nursing a beer.
She’d taken the barstool next to his. “Look,” she said now, “there are probably plenty of couples that the Mister-Match thing doesn’t work for. It can’t work for everyone.”
He shot her a dreary look.
“What I mean is,” she hurried on, “there is no perfect system, Adam. Not even yours. No matter how good it is, it’s not going to work for everybody. You’ve just had the bad luck of having it fall flat for a Dream Date couple, so you’re personally invested.” Literally, she thought, thinking of the camera crew he’d brought along, the hotel rooms he’d reserved, not to mention herself—the in-house massage therapist, meant to relax the happy couple into their blissful new relationship, while conveniently providing independent interview time for each half of the couple.
Now, none of the above were needed. This would be an expensive weekend for Adam Match, to say the least. It could also lead to further bad press for the site, Lisa knew, if word got out to the right sources.
Adam was eyeing her with baleful blue eyes. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
She squeezed his arm. “I’m trying to say, don’t beat yourself up about it. Crap happens. Maybe—” She shrugged, casting around for something, anything. “Maybe Valeria thought Orlando had bad breath. Maybe he didn’t like her clothes. You know? People can react against other people based on the tiniest little things.” She glanced at Adam’s half-empty pint glass. “If you don’t mind my asking, how many of those have you had so far?”
He eyed it with mild distaste. “Just this one. I’m not even going to finish it. I thought getting a buzz on might help, but I don’t think it really has.”
Why did she find that adorable—that he’d tried to drown his sorrows, and failed?
“Hey, you’ve had a crummy day so far,” she said. “I think you’re entitled to an early drunk if you want one. And you know what they say about drinking alone.” Adjusting herself on the barstool to get more comfortable, she raised a hand to signal the bartender.
Adam squinted for a moment. “If you drink alone, it means you’re an alcoholic?”
“Close, but no. If you’re going to drink alone, it’s always more fun to do it with a friend.” She flashed him a grin as she fished a ten-dollar bill out of her bag and ordered her own pint.
“Wait.” Adam put out a hand to still hers. “This is my treat. Put that on my tab, please,” he said to the bartender.
The man nodded and, a moment later, brought Lisa a tall, frosty glass of amber-colored beer.
“Cheers.” Adam tapped his glass against hers and took another gulp. “Drinking alone, with a friend. Makes sense to me. So.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “You come here often?”
The joke was silly and overused, but it made Lisa laugh anyway. “This is my first time.”
“Count yourself lucky, then, running into the likes of me. I’m a successful entrepreneur with my own dating site. Maybe you’ve heard of it. We match up couples who despise each other at first sight.” He flashed her a big, fake smile, making her laugh again.
Then she glanced around. “Yikes. Speaking of running into people, I hope we don’t see my ex again today. That would just be the icing on the cake.”
“Yeah,” Adam agreed with feeling. “Although maybe I should thank him.”
“For what?”
He shrugged, and the look he gave her was both heated and intimate. “For last night.”
She felt his hand run down her thigh beneath the bar counter, sending warmth through the thin fabric of her pants. He lowered his voice. “It was really amazing for me. I hope it was for you, too.”
Her cheeks heated as she ducked her head. She wasn’t sure how to answer. Not knowing the parameters of their new connection made her uncomfortable. It was hard to tell, moment to moment, whether Adam was treating her with such solicitous intimacy because of their false engagement, or because there was truly something developing between them—something real.
And even more than any of that, what he’d just said rankled—the insinuation that what had happened between them last night had had anything at all to do with their run-in with Rodney. As if she’d been in a vulnerable state that had made her more susceptible to his attentions.
Which was completely untrue. Wasn’t it?
Whether it was or wasn’t, addressing it could wait. Instead, she changed the subject. “Tell me what happened with the Dream Date couple.”
He did. At the “Adolf Titler” part of the story, Lisa couldn’t stop herself from hooting with laughter.
Adam dropped his head into his palms. “I can’t laugh at any of it. I’m too depressed.”
“It’s okay, I’ll laugh for the both of us.” She wiped her eyes. “So there they are, calling each other ridiculous names, and they don’t even know they’re supposed to go on a date thirty minutes later?”
“You got it. And then the hotel manager got involved, and he was apparently on the verge of kicking them both out, when they finally put it together that they were, in fact, here to meet each other and fall in love. And Ellen, from the video crew, caught the whole thing on camera.” He let out a long breath and shook his head. “It’s like a bad MTV reality show.”
“Yeah,” Lisa agreed. She took a sip of her beer. “So, I guess this means no AstroWorld.”
“Nope,” Adam confirmed, glumly.
There went her first Dream Date weekend. She felt strangely disappointed that she wouldn’t be giving any massages or offering advice, as she had to Deb Wayson last weekend, on how to handle a blind date.
After a few moments of sitting quietly while Adam stared broodingly into space, she sat up straighter. “I guess I should go pack up my things.”
He look
ed at her and blinked. “No. Why?”
“The Dream Date’s over.”
“Sure, but we still have another night booked in the room.”
Lisa blinked. “We can’t stay in this expensive hotel if there’s no reason to be here.”
Adam raised a dark eyebrow, just the slightest bit suggestively. “Are you saying you don’t want to be here with me?”
She felt heat rise up her cheeks again. “I—it’s—I mean, do you think staying another night would be best for the company, as far as our relationship goes?” She cleared her throat. “I mean, we’re supposedly on the outs right now. I supposedly cheated on you. And you said maybe we could use that to segue into...into our breakup.”
Even mentioning their fake-breakup made her strangely unhappy.
Apparently, Adam felt the same way. He briefly closed his eyes, as if the whole thing made him tired. “You know, if I had it to do again,” he said meditatively, “I wouldn’t be Mister Match. I’d hire some good-looking guy to do a photo shoot, make him be Mister Match, so I could be anonymous. Then we wouldn’t have to do any of this crap—fake-engagement, fake-breakup, none of it.”
“But if you weren’t the face of Mister-Match.com,” Lisa said slowly, “you couldn’t do all the marketing stuff. All the talk shows and interviews. You couldn’t travel around doing this whole Dream Date marketing plan.” As she put it into words, she understood the conundrum even better than she already had.
“That’s right. I could do radio spots and print interviews. But that’s about it.” He sighed. “Anyway, no use wishing things were different now.”
There was a moment of silence as they both sat there, rather gloomily.
Then Adam straightened, turned to her and shook his head. “No. This is ridiculous.” He raised a finger. “And you were absolutely right.”
Lisa sat up straighter, too. “I was? About what?”
“About the fact that crap happens. And the fact that we don’t need to stay in this expensive hotel, now that the Dream Date’s off. This was Orlando and Valeria’s dream date, not ours.” He pushed his beer glass away, though it wasn’t yet empty. “And we aren’t letting this weekend go to waste.”
Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) Page 21
