A Matchless Romance

by Christi Barth

  “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 bitback 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?”

  Tabitha shushed him with a single finger against his lips. Wow, this woman put touchy-feely in the dictionary. And everywhere she touched, she left behind almost a tingly shadow of sensation. Then she stood. Circled around him once, then back again. “Separating you from your hoodie isn’t like cutting off Samson’s hair. It’s more like putting a gilt frame around an original Michelangelo. Trust me, spiffing you up a little to attract a woman won’t diminish your ability to create good video games.”

  “Look, I don’t need you to help me attract women.” Because that was as unlikely as suddenly acquiring a superpower, say, teleportation. “I just want to learn how to deal with them.” Time to snatch back the reins of this conversation. “My new boss is a woman. So far we’re about as compatible as two protons.”

  A throaty laugh rolled out of her. “Sorry, it’s been a long time since I took a science class. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  Nice that Tabitha asked the question, instead of just nodding and pretending to get his joke. “Protons naturally repel each other, so it’s a very bad thing. Keiko’s as corporate as they come. Raised in Japan, got her MBA at Harvard Business School, and then made a name for herself transitioning companies successfully through expansions.” Drew could recite the details by rote. The woman had found an excuse to repeat the details to him every day so far.

  Her background was probably why Drew didn’t like her from the get-go. Keiko didn’t live and breathe gaming like most of the staff at Game Domain. In fact, she looked down her nose at gamers, and didn’t bother to hide her derision, except around clients.

  “I’m confused,” said Tabitha. She tapped one long, slender finger against her cheek. “Why’d you accept the job if you knew you didn’t get along with your boss?”

  “I never met her until this week. As part of this expansion, Randall Lewis, the president of the company, ‘courted’ me.” He made air quotes with his fingers, still embarrassed by the recollection of all the un-asked-for attention. “It was kind of a big deal when he signed me. Different companies had been trying to lock me down for months.”

  They’d all offered stupid perks on top of the base salary, like a once-a-week massage, or someone to drop off his dry cleaning. As if he needed to dry clean any of his clothes. All Drew really wanted was to work with imaginative people who loved coding and gaming and fantasy as much as he did.

  “So they sucked you in, and then stuck you under Keiko. Sounds like a bait and switch, if you ask me.” She patted his arm. �
��You must’ve been irritated.”

  The compassion in her eyes was both a surprise and a relief. Drew knew enough about office politics and hierarchies that he couldn’t complain to his team about Keiko. And he certainly couldn’t bitch to any of his gaming buddies about his amazing-on-paper new job. So after four days of wondering to himself if he’d made a gigantic mistake, it was nice to have someone on his side. Especially someone who inexplicably kept touching him. Not that Drew was complaining. “Yeah.”

  To Keiko, every decision came down to the bottom line, and ROI, and a bunch of other acronyms she constantly spewed at him. Not once did she consider what would be best for the development of his game. Keiko had been hired just a few weeks before him to grow the company. Probably the only thing she and Drew had in common. Unless he discovered that Keiko also bore a deep and abiding love for chili cheese hamburgers with guacamole.

  Tabitha pushed back her stool and stood, tossing her hair behind her shoulders. “You don’t need a matchmaker to fix a rocky relationship with a supervisor. About all I can do is point you to the nearest bar and wish you luck.”

  So much for sympathy. But he did appreciate her candor. It made it easier for him to spill the rest. “The problem’s not just with my boss,” Drew admitted.

  “I’m intrigued. By the story,” she sank back down with a slow and sultry smile, “and by a man sure enough of himself to be able to admit his weakness.”

  Okay. Then she’d freaking love him after he dropped this bombshell. Drew fisted his hands on the table and looked her dead in the eyes. “Today I apparently cost my company a huge potential investor. Seven million dollars’ worth.”

  “Apparently?” Her eyebrows winged upward like flames licking up to the sky.

  “The seven million is a fact. As to why it got withdrawn, well, I’m told—in no uncertain terms—that I insulted the fifth-richest woman in Chicago.”

  “Really?” Tabitha didn’t look the least bit put off. She leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “That’s quite an accomplishment. Do tell.”

  “The corporate execs upstairs buzzed for me this morning. They were meeting with Fran Lehman and her entire entourage.” Two lawyers, an assistant, a financial advisor and her second in command. Drew didn’t understand why it took six people to sign papers that they’d obviously already examined under a microscope. “They’ve been courting her for months as a shadow investor, to fund a large expansion we’ve got in the works.”

  “I’ve read stories about Fran. She can be…” Tabitha pursed her lips, as if searching for something other than the words Drew used to describe her—a rich, bored nutcase. “…oddly demanding,” she finished politely.

  “Well, one of her odd demands was about me. Apparently Fran’s a fan. So her last amendment to the contract was that she meet me, and be written into my next game.”

  “Oh, I don’t like where this is going,” murmured Tabitha.

  “No, you’ll love hearing about the new game. Quest to the Gods.” It was the sole reason Drew put up with Keiko’s endless sniping about cost trumping his artistic vision. He’d grit his teeth through anything, as long as he could go in every morning and check the progress his team had made on Quest. The idea for it had lapped around in his brain for years, like a frog stuck in a swimming pool. It had always been too big, too epic for Drew to tackle by himself. But he’d had so many files of notes and ideas stored up on it that they’d hit the ground running, and the crazy-fast deadline of a Black Friday release actually looked possible.

  “Dark fantasy. You can choose to go the role-playing route, or stick with straight war craft. It’ll have something for everyone.”

  She bit her lip and shook her finger at him. “Don’t get me excited for something that won’t hit stores until…when exactly?”

  “Hopefully in time for the big Black Friday sales after Thanksgiving. I’m telling you, everyone will like this game. Gentle exploration or blood-and-guts-soaked violence. It’s brilliant. Little kids to old codgers will all clamor for it.”

  Tabitha laid a hand back on his arm. “Why don’t you finish explaining how you cost your company seven million dollars, and then you can tell me all about your new game later?”

  Later? There was going to be a later? Like, going out for drinks later? Could it be that she really was flirting with him? Playing it cool, he nodded. And noticed that she left her fingers on his forearm this time. The soft, warm pressure reminded Drew that he hadn’t had sex in ninety-four days. Exactly.

  “Fran asked me to make her into a character in Quest. I took a minute to size her up—kind of like you did with me,” he remarked with a nod to Tabitha. “Then I stated that given her age and figure, I could either make her a pregnant troll or an aging dragon.”

  Her hand lifted off his arm to cover her mouth. But it didn’t come close to hiding the snort laugh that escaped. “Well. Aren’t you just as smooth as a prickly pear cactus?”

  “She walked out,” he said with an up and down jerk of his shoulder. “Left the papers on the conference table, unsigned, and walked out.” The sickening swirl in Drew’s gut as Fran walked away without handing over the promised check—the one that would underwrite the creation, launch and marketing blitz of Quest in its entirety—told him he’d screwed up. But in case there was any doubt, Keiko had proceeded to ream him a new one for twenty minutes straight.

  “Did you insult her on purpose?”

  “Of course not. It was just nerves. The whole reason I joined Game Domain was to get Quest made. The scope’s too big for me to do on my own, unless I dropped everything for three years. This is the game I’ve been dreaming of creating for years. Do you see why I need your help?”

  “Not entirely, no.” Those long, peach nails fluttered over Tabitha’s heart. Conveniently located right behind the perfection of her creamy cleavage. Drew’s eyes kept dragging back to that deep, perfect vee of smooth skin as if he was stuck in an infinite loop. “I’m a matchmaker, not an etiquette teacher.”

  “I think I need to learn how to interact with women better. Or prove I tried to, anyway.” There. Drew threw out the only explanation he’d come up with as he stared blindly out the windows of the El. “Keiko went to Human Resources as soon as she finished my orientation. I don’t know—some concerns about my lack of a verbal filter. Awkwardness around women in general, she said.” Didn’t they all realize he was the walking definition of a computer geek? Awkwardness around women pretty much came with the package. “She made it quite clear that behavior won’t cut it in today’s business world.”

  “True.” Another stroke down his arm, with a slow, teasing grin. “But you’re talking to me just fine.”

  Drew couldn’t explain it. Something about her made him comfortable. Yet the off-the-charts sexual attraction kept him off-balance at the same time. “Let’s call you an anomaly.”

  She crossed her legs to the side of the table, momentarily distracting him with their length and shapeliness. “So what if you need a little spit polish? You’re handsome. I can tell that you’re passionate and smart. I can’t see why you wouldn’t get along with women. I mean, geez, you’ve got great hands. Big. Strong.” Her voice tapered off as she stared down at his hands, interlaced on top of the table.

  Drew had no idea what his hands had to do with anything. “We’re scheduled to visit New York in a few weeks for a media blitz. I’m stuck doing a ton of interviews. And I can’t blow it. Not again.” He considered New York to be a final exam to prove to Keiko he’d work out at Game Domain. It wasn’t a concrete thing to study for, like memorizing the periodic table or diagramming a Newtonian equation. But Drew had never met a test he didn’t ace. “I need something tangible to show HR and Keiko that I’ve made an effort to turn around my behavior. Hiring you will prove that, and get them off my back. I’ll pay your standard matchmaking fee.”

  Clearing her throat, Tabitha snapped her green eyes back up to him. “This isn’t what I do. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

&n
bsp; “If you match up men and women, that must mean that you understand them. It’s gotta be the same basic principles at work.” Crap. Keiko had threatened to take away control of his game if he didn’t “iron out his rough edges.” Drew didn’t have a single other idea of how to do it. Desperation pushed him forward, leaning halfway across the table. “I won’t get my signing bonus for thirty days,” he said slowly. “You know, to keep people from taking a job, taking the chunk of cash and bolting. But once it comes through, I could give you a bonus on top of your fee.”

  Shit. Drew needed that money. It was the other reason why he’d given up the peace and quiet of working for himself. But losing control of Quest wasn’t an option. Not after years of planning for it, and dreaming about it. He was the only one who could bring it to reality.

  At first, she didn’t say anything. The pause lengthened into a silent chasm. “It would need to be a considerable bonus,” she said slowly.

  Huh? What happened to the compliments and the almost flirting? Did Tabitha really look at him and see a man that she basically needed to be bribed into dealing with? Sure, he knew she was way out of his league. But it’s not like he was trying to get a date with the hot redhead. Her request for a considerable bonus burned. Like fire ants burrowing into his psyche.

  “How about you work with me for two days, assess if you can get me the results I need by New York, and then we’ll negotiate the bonus?” Drew could be savvy. Real life wasn’t so different than the games he lived and breathed. He’d negotiated his way through plenty of trade disputes in virtual realms. After haggling with a three-headed dragon and a cranky Vengeance dwarf, Tabitha was almost easy.

  She gave him a knowing smile and walked through a small door at the far end of the room. Moments later she was back. Tabitha tossed a lined pad and pen onto the table in front of him. “Lesson number one—” then she paused until he dutifully picked up the pen, “—it often pays for someone who is willing to go to great lengths to get what they want.”