by Lauren Wood
Certified Heartthrob
Heartstring Dating Agency Series
Lauren Wood
Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Wood
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Prologue
1. Camille
2. Mark
3. Camille
4. Mark
5. Camille
6. Mark
7. Camille
8. Mark
9. Camille
10. Mark
11. Camille
12. Mark
13. Camille
14. Mark
15. Camille
16. Mark
17. Camille
18. Mark
19. Camille
20. Mark
21. Camille
Epilogue
His Perfect Woman Sneak Peak
Chapter 1
Also by Lauren Wood
About the Author
Exclusive Offer
Prologue
Mark
First dates. They make everyone nervous. Usually. But I sat waiting at the bar, sipping my drink and snacking on some nuts, cool as a cucumber. Because I already knew how it would end.
“Mark?”
I spun around on my stool to see a thin, timid-looking blonde I recognized from her profile pictures.
“That’s me. And...I’m sorry...what was your name again?”
Her face instantly dropped. “You don’t remember my name?” She frowned.
“Online dating.” I shrugged. “You know how it goes.”
She tried to muster up another polite smile and shake it off. But still, I knew it was strike one.
“Daphne,” she said, reaching out to shake my hand. She pivoted as our hands met, awkwardly trying to decide if one of us should go in for a hug instead.
“I’m sorry.” She laughed, blushing. “I never know what’s better...to hug or to shake hands.”
“You kidding me? Definitely to shake hands,” I scoffed condescendingly. “I don’t know why dating makes us think we should be cool with hugging total strangers...which would be absurd in any other scenario. Anyway, should we head to the table?”
She seemed reluctant, since my last remark was teetering on strike two. But it was amazing what people could talk themselves into looking past on their quest for “true love.”
“Sure,” she decided finally, rekindling her smile a second time.
As we settled into our seats, I waited for the obligatory interview portion of the evening to begin. While passively scanning the menu, she asked, “So, Mark. What is it that you do?”
“Well...I do lots of things, to tell you the truth. But mostly...a lot of this,” I told her.
Her brow furrowed. “This? You mean...eating out?”
“With women, on dates, yes.” I nodded.
She cringed for a moment, but then laughed. “I know what you mean. Dating can be so time consuming. Sometimes it feels like it’s all I do, too.”
The waitress, our saving grace, came by at just the perfect moment. It was time to go in for the kill. My record time for sabotaging a date was ten minutes, and if I hurried...I might stand a chance at just barely beating it.
I leaned in too close, eyeing the waitress's name tag which was conveniently placed over her right breast. “Sandra, is it?”
She smiled wide. “Yes, Sandra.”
“Honey, could you bring me a glass of your top-shelf bourbon? The most expensive thing you’ve got. And a water for my friend here...uh, what was it again?”
Daphne’s face went into full-on demon mode. If a person could murder you with their eyes, I would have been dead right then and there. But just as her lips parted, I called out to Sandra again.
“Oh, and, hon...why don’t you go ahead and scribble your number down on the napkin you bring back with my drink? Thanks.” I winked.
Sandra giggled and ran off, leaving me to face Daphne’s death glare. She threw her napkin down over the menu and started to stand up. “Un-fucking-believable. You still can’t remember my name...and you just asked the waitress for her number!”
“Oh, boy. Here we go,” I murmured. “Yes, and I can see how, if you were hoping to find ‘the one’ or whatever here tonight, that would all be in bad taste. But...let’s just be honest with each other. I’m not the one. No one is the one. Dating is the biggest time and money suck ever created by our capitalist system. Marriage and kids, too, for that matter. It’s all a part of the American Dream scam that just doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Are you fucking crazy!?” she shrieked, drawing the attention of other nearby patrons. Which was fine. It probably gave all the bored couples sitting around the most excitement they’d get out of tonight. For the first time in who knows how long, they’d actually have something to talk about.
“No, quite sane actually. More so now that I’ve accepted the truth about all of this. And if you’d care to sit back down and let me regale you with the same truth...you’ll feel a lot better when you do go storming out of here.”
Her bottom lip pursed, but finally she plopped back down into the seat. A male waiter returned this time, with a stern look on his face, delivering two glasses of bourbon instead of one.
“I thought you could use this,” he told Daphne. “And as for you, I don’t allow my staff to date customers. Especially not ones who are already on a date. I’ll be your waiter for the rest of the evening. What can I get you to eat?”
I scanned Daphne’s seething expression. “Uh, nothing yet. Thanks.” I waved him off.
“I’m only still sitting here so I can hear whatever crazy ‘truth’ you have to ramble on about,” Daphne huffed. “The least I can get out of this dud of a night is another bad date story to tell my girlfriends when I leave.”
“Oh, yes. I know the female post-bad-date routine all too well. You’ll pick up a pint of ice cream on the way home and eat the whole thing while whining on the phone to your friends. Then, you’ll wash it down with a bottle of wine and a rom com and cry yourself to sleep.”
“You’re such a pig.”
“Am I wrong?”
She crossed her arms and looked away.
“Look, Daphne. I swear I’m not as big of an asshole as you think. My only purpose here tonight is to tell you what no one else has the balls to say.”
She cut her eyes over to me, waiting while stewing with resentment.
“You go through that whole pathetic scenario I just described because you’re disappointed the night didn’t end with a fairytale. Am I right?”
Without answering, her eyes burned into me...secretly begging me to keep going.
“What if you just did yourself a favor and accepted from the get-go that there is no fairytale ending? Take the dress and the jewelry you’re wearing, for example. They look nice. And your hair and makeup! You’re drop-dead gorgeous. Your skin is even glowing...Did you go to the spa today?”
“Yeah. So?”
“How much money did you spend getting ready for tonight?” I asked.
“More than you apparently planned on spending on me...ordering me a glass of water.” She reached for the bourbon the waiter had brought against my wishes and took a long sip.
“Exactly. Now t
ake all the money you spend on dating in the course of a month. Save it up for something else instead. Just think of what you could do,” I proposed. “What is it you do for a living?”
She rolled her eyes. “We discussed that when we chatted on the app, remember? No, I guess you wouldn’t. Since you couldn’t even remember my name. I’m a teacher.”
“Phew. A teacher. That’s hard work. Cheers to you.” I lifted my glass, but she left hers firmly planted on the table. I lowered my drink to hers and clinked them together anyway. “Someone who deals with those bratty kids year-round deserves a no-expense spared vacation over the summer. Which you could afford if you’d stop wasting your time on dating.”
“Wait, so let me get this straight.” She leaned across the table. “Your whole motivation in dating...is to try and convince women they shouldn’t date. And then...let me guess, you spin the whole thing to make the girl think she should really just let loose and go sleep with you instead, no strings attached.”
“Oh, no. Of course not. I told you, I’m not the asshole you think I am. I never try to convince women to sleep with me. Usually it’s the other way around, because you all think you can change my mind if I have one night in bed with you. I’ll save you the heartache and tell you right now...That never happens.”
Her face twisted with a new level of disgust. She threw back the rest of her drink and snatched up her purse and coat before stomping off to the door in a huff, leaving me alone.
I sat back and sighed. “Ah, well. I tried.”
After finishing my own bourbon and calling for the check, I started my walk home. I passed couples holding hands and kissing on corners. I played a game with myself where I tried to imagine what would be their downfall and when it might happen.
The shy, giggling pair on the other side of the street were on their first date, maybe second. I could tell by the way he kept his hand on his phone in his pocket that he was either a workaholic or still hung up on his ex—either way, not willing to miss a call. She looked desperate and too hopeful, and would probably cling to him until whoever he was waiting on finally rang...Then she’d be furious at all the time she’d wasted when he stopped returning her calls.
Those guys were the real assholes. Not me. I was just doing my best to warn as many women as possible about their illusions with love. It may not have worked with Daphne, but I had tons of other matches waiting for me on the online dating app when I got home. Maybe one of them would actually listen.
And even if they didn’t, one thing I could count on was Daphne running home to post a scathing review of our date on the app. Other women would read it and comment. They’d commiserate, and maybe some of them would finally come to their senses.
I’d accepted the truth a long time ago, after I caught my ex cheating on me. When my friends suggested I try online dating, I don’t think they intended for me to use it for the purposes I was. But it had become one of the more thrilling hobbies in my life. I was like a love vigilante—freeing countless women from their hopes for true love one bad date at a time. And with every bad date came another bad review. With any luck, I’d have the whole city turned bitter against love, dating, and romance by the time the dreaded holiday and cuffing season arrived.
Coming home to my big, empty place outside the city, I threw down my things and sat back at the computer. Daphne had already blocked me on the app, but there were plenty more waiting behind her. I stalked their profiles...searching for the next lucky woman I would attempt to save. A few had listened to me so far and a couple even agreed with me. There had to be more. Either way, I was well on my way to bringing down lying matchmaking companies like Heartstring.
1
Camille
Review from Daphne—0 stars—As a single woman in her thirties, it is hard enough to put yourself out there and go on dates. But it makes it even harder when Heartstring neglects to vet their users well enough to remove them from the service when it’s obvious there’s someone purposefully treating women to bad dates. I was recommended to and matched with one Mark Silver, who ended up being the biggest asshole I have ever met in my life. And this was no accident. He was determined to “teach me a lesson” and turn me off love forever. However, he did succeed in turning me off of Heartstring. It’s poorly run and a waste of time. I will never be using your service again.
Re: Review from Daphne—0 stars—Daphne, apologies that our date was not what you were hoping it would be. Get used to that feeling, because that is a good summary of love and dating in general. If matchmaking companies like Heartstring were honest about that, I wouldn’t feel compelled to use dating as a method for telling women the hard truth. You all should thank me, really. But at least the one thing we can agree on is that Heartstring is inadequate to say the least, and it should stop preying on people’s lonely desperation just to make money...when they know all too well themselves that love is a waste of time. Look up their CEOs and admins. Interesting stuff.
Jack Landson, one of our main advisors, stopped reading and slammed his laptop shut. He slid his glasses from his face and tossed those down as well, massaging his brow and the bridge of his nose. He groaned. “We’ve got to put a stop to this.”
Jack had recently alerted us to this troll, who was hell-bent on sabotaging every date he went on just to generate bad reviews. It was some kind of oddly obsessive attempt at tearing our company down.
“What does he mean...look at the CEOs and admins?” my sister Jada asked.
He looked even more exasperated. “What do you think it means? We’re all single! And up until recently, Lucas was, too.”
“But he ended up with a fairytale romance,” I reminded him. “A very public one at that. I thought we weren’t under fire for that anymore.”
“As long as we’re still losing hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly over this guy...we’re most definitely still under fire. It doesn’t matter what Lucas’s relationship status is anymore. Now, they’re looking at the rest of us.”
In our original briefing, Jack had explained that the monthly paid memberships to our family’s matchmaking and internet dating service were down three percent thanks to our newest troll. Which equated to ninety thousand customers and over three hundred thousand dollars lost each month. It was no laughing matter.
“So, then maybe you should pay someone to be your wife next,” Lucas quipped at Jack. “I’ve already done my part.”
I squirmed in my seat a little, hoping no one would redirect their expectations towards Jada and me. I knew my little sister was a hopeless romantic, and secretly very sad and insecure about being single, while I felt strangely in agreement with this Mark Silver.
Going into the business of matchmaking had not been my idea. When our wealthy father passed away, it turned out that instead of receiving inheritances and trust funds, we were to be stripped of every penny and asset to our names, thanks to his bad business deals and debts. We’d had to think of something to rebuild our family name...and bank accounts.
Lucas, as the oldest, teamed up with his buddy, Jack, and decided that love was something everyone longed for, but lots of people didn’t have...and they were willing to spend money to change that. With a lot of hard work, careful strategizing, and a few PR nightmares that were spun to work in our favor, we ended up with one of the leading dating apps in the country and in many other parts of the world.
But truthfully, I hated the idea of capitalizing on something that was nothing more than a social construct. Why did we put so much pressure on people to be in relationships and get married? I certainly wanted nothing to do with any of it. But our membership numbers proved that there were more than enough people out there who strongly disagreed with me.
“What about Joshua?” Jada suggested. “He does the least amount of work and he’s single, too. Make him get married next. He’s not even here today!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “There’s a reason Joshua’s not married, and no amount of money is going to convince a woman t
o walk down the aisle with him.”
“No arranged marriages,” Jack snapped, standing up to pace the front of the conference room. “The press always finds out they’re arranged and that damn near killed us with Lucas. It doesn’t matter which of us are single or married, anyway. We need to put a stop to this guy.”
“I told you I’d handle it,” I assured him. “I already have a meeting scheduled with the IT department to get some more details on what we can do.”
“Perfect. Please keep us updated. We need to get this guy off the site, but also do damage control so he doesn’t find some other platform to roast us on,” Lucas stated, already shooting up from his seat to gather his things.
The meeting was hastily adjourned as each of my siblings, along with Jack, filed out of the room to rush off onto their own business for the day. I was left standing there with the file Jack had handed over to me, filled with printed reports of many of the reviews associated with this Mark Silver. I got sucked into reading them longer than I meant to.
I had to agree with him...love and dating in general usually proved to be disappointing for most people. I could remember how when Lucas presented the idea for our company to me, I laughed at him. There were plenty of other dating apps out there—surely there wasn’t room on the market for another one. But I was quickly proved wrong. Apparently, there was no limit to what people were willing to go through to find “the one.”
But something about Mark’s reviews left me feeling guilty. It struck a nerve with me. He wasn’t just down on love, he was down on us for promoting it. He was hitting on an insecurity I’d already felt long before his reviews started popping up. I realized it might be hard to motivate myself to put a stop to someone I secretly agreed with, but then again...what kind of creep dedicates so much time to coaxing women out onto dates just so he can try to make them as jaded and cynical as himself?
