by Lauren Wood
His Perfect Woman
Heartstring Dating Agency Book 1
Lauren Wood
Contents
Prologue
1. Victoria
2. Lucas
3. Victoria
4. Lucas
5. Victoria
6. Lucas
7. Victoria
8. Lucas
9. Victoria
10. Lucas
11. Victoria
12. Lucas
13. Victoria
14. Lucas
15. Victoria
16. Lucas
17. Victoria
18. Lucas
19. Victoria
20. Lucas
21. Victoria
Epilogue
The Billionaire’s Frenemy Sneak Peak
Prologue
Also by Lauren Wood
About the Author
Exclusive Offer
Prologue
Lucas
I leaned back in my office chair with a smug, contented smile, lacing my fingers together behind my head. My old buddy, investor, and advisor—Jack Landson—was due in my office any minute, and I was expecting it to be a celebratory meeting. I had a very expensive, top shelf bottle of imported bourbon just waiting to be uncorked for the occasion.
Staring across the framed mementos and photographs on the wall across from my desk, I felt proud for bringing my family this far. The past five years hadn’t been easy by any means, but it all had led to this moment when I could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Checking my watch and noting that Jack was late—which was unusual for him—I stood and walked over to admire the photograph of my siblings and me at the ribbon cutting for our new headquarters. The very building I stood in right then, still standing and thriving.
There were four of us—each born just a couple of years apart—which would have seemed like a lot had we not grown up in a sprawling mansion. Our father dabbled in a little bit of everything—investment banking, stocks, real estate, business, law...you name it. Any profession that carried a potentially large pay-out, he had a hand in it. I used to think he was a genius.
That was until he passed away from a heart attack and we quickly learned that his many endeavors were little more than a mad scramble to keep his head above water with all of his debts. He’d spend, then borrow money and try to make a quick million to pay it off, but would spend that, too, then borrow more to pay the original debt, which would land him right back where he started from. It was like a game of musical chairs with our financial security on the line. No wonder he had a heart attack so suddenly.
You can imagine our surprise when we sat down to hear the terms of our trust funds and inheritances only to find that his many lenders were seizing everything, practically leaving us penniless. Us. The Meadows family. Completely broke. We thought our mother would have a heart attack, too, right there in front of the family lawyer.
We had a lavish lifestyle and none of us knew a damn thing about working in any area outside of our father’s many realms of expertise. Unfortunately, once word got out about his poorly managed funds, no one wanted to work with us. We were blacklisted and shunned by everyone we knew.
I, along with my brother Joshua and our two sisters, Camille and Jada, buckled down and made a plan. We couldn’t accept defeat, and we couldn’t bear to flip burgers or bag groceries, just barely scraping by. No, we were accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and we decided we would do everything it took to work our way back up to it.
After many brainstorming sessions, I decided the fate of our family. There was one thing in this world that there was an endless market for: love. Every single person wants it, most would do anything to obtain it, and yet, for just as many, it felt like an impossible thing to get their hands on. I developed a formula that would fix that: a matchmaking app with a unique algorithm to bring people together who had the greatest potential of staying together. That’s how Heartstring was born.
Jack Landson had used his funds and expertise to help with the start-up, and now here we were...three years after the launch date and business was booming. Heartstring was considered to be one of the top ten dating sites and matchmaking services in the country.
We weren’t quite billionaires again...not yet. But we were well on our way, and with our big three-year anniversary coming up, I knew Jack had scheduled this meeting so we could pat ourselves on the back and plan how to market the celebration of our ongoing success.
Finally, my secretary chimed in over the intercom to say she was sending Jack in. I was surprised when I turned and saw the look on his face. He greeted me with pursed lips and a stiff nod. Not exactly the big, cocky smile I was expecting under the circumstances.
“Hey. Please, come in. Have a seat.” I returned to the chair behind my desk to face him. “Rough morning?”
“You could say that.” He cleared his throat and unbuttoned his suit jacket, adjusting his tie.
I wrinkled my brows, but let his brooding disposition roll right off my back. I had been waiting for this far too long to let his personal moodiness drag me down.
“Well, the three-year anniversary is coming up,” I began, hoping to shift his mood back to what it should have been. “We’ll need to start discussing the big party and our plan to make our customers in the digital realm feel included. But first...you know what I want to hear. What are the numbers looking like?”
“You know the numbers are good,” he answered tightly. “Profits are still rising. We’ve nearly paid off all the start-up funds. The company just keeps going up, up, and up.”
I nodded, smiling, but he seemed unmoved. Unimpressed. “Something wrong?” I finally ventured to ask.
“Yeah,” he shot back incredulously, pulling out his phone.
“What could be wrong with everything you just said?”
“Because none of that matters if something happens to bring the whole operation down.” He pressed a button on his phone, prompting a ding on my computer screen. A link he had sent. “Don’t you follow your own press?”
“I pay people to do that for me, but I skipped my morning briefing to make space for this meeting,” I explained as I scrolled through the article before me.
Bachelor playboy Lucas Meadows of the Heartstring dating app touts guaranteed formula for love, yet can’t find it for himself. Is he selling false hope to millions of customers?
“What the fuck,” I muttered under my breath as I continued reading.
“There are at least fifty more just like that one plastered all over the internet,” he huffed in frustration. “Not to mention all the social media posts from past, current, and possibly future customers. Or at least they would have been future customers if not for this. It was a bad morning to skip that briefing.”
“Surely there are other CEOs with similar businesses who aren’t married off,” I scoffed, exiting the browser window. I couldn’t stand to read anymore.
“Don’t act like you don’t know how things work, Lucas. Your father and his world should have taught you the basics, this included. People don’t like a CEO of anything who isn’t a happily married man. If you can’t keep up with a relationship or a family, even if only for appearances, then how the hell can you manage a multi-million-dollar corporation?”
I raked my hands down my face. It was something Dad had lectured me about a time or two, but I’d assumed it was an outdated standard that would be long gone by the time it could matter to me.
“What brought all of this on, anyway?” I groaned. “Why now?”
“I guess a number of your pissed off flings and ex-gi
rlfriends all got together and started blabbing to the media.” He shook his head. “You know better. You should have been spending that time and energy securing a future wife, not getting laid. You don’t have to want it, you just need to appease the public...and potential clients and partners...and your mother. Well, really—everyone.”
I stood and paced in front of the large view of the city that spread out behind my desk. What I should have done didn’t make much of a difference now. The press was having a field day with this, and short of a mail-order bride, I didn’t know where to even begin with the damage control to fix it all.
But what Jack didn’t know was that I had a very big reason for not nailing down the picture-perfect marriage. I think part of me always wanted to remain available...just in case she ever wanted to be more than friends.
The one that got away. The only woman I had ever thought of as anything more than a fling or a one-night stand. My high school crush. My “perfect woman.”
It wasn’t just Jack who was clueless about how I’d felt about her back then. How I still felt about her, even though I had been keeping my distance ever since we launched Heartstring. My siblings didn’t know either. More importantly, she had no idea how I felt. I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t have the balls to tell her how I felt, back then or now.
“I’ll fix this,” I decided out loud, knowing that dwelling on that old, hopeless scenario wasn’t going to help me now.
I hadn’t talked to her in months and I hadn’t seen her in two years...maybe longer. Even if we still talked every day, I was no more willing to confess my feelings for her now than I was back in high school or college.
“How?” He gaped, joining me on his feet. He marched over to the bar cart and helped himself to the bourbon I had set out, although the tone and mood for uncorking it was now, suddenly, nothing like what I had anticipated.
“In today’s market, this is the kind of thing that brings a company down,” he fretted, pouring two glasses. “Everything can be great on paper, but one viral social media scandal and it’s all over. And this one is especially ripe for disaster. People are already looking for any excuse to be skeptical about love and relationships, anything to talk them out of spending the extra money on our service. This is the only push they need to help them make up their minds, and not in our favor.”
“I get it. I said I’ll fix it. I don’t know how yet, but I will. We’ve come too far to let this drag us under.”
He didn’t seem convinced. We sat and sipped our drinks in silence while I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I had run out of time. I couldn’t keep waiting around for her anymore. I had to find a woman to marry to save my business or let my family down—just like my dad had. And for what? So I could pine over some woman it was never going to happen with?
I had humiliated myself enough by falling for someone who didn’t feel the same, and even if she did...I was too much of a coward to find out. I wasn’t going to make things worse by clinging to it, disappointing everyone around me and letting our company go up in flames in sacrifice.
It was time for me to find a wife, and it wasn’t going to be her. The end. My new mantra—to be repeated however many times it took to get it through my thick skull.
1
Victoria
“After you,” Trent said, stepping gallantly aside to wave me into the revolving doors of the building.
I smiled back at him standing there—tall, proud, and confident with his perfectly styled golden hair and green eyes. I wondered if he was nervous on the inside, or if he really was as certain as he appeared to be on the outside.
This was basically a job interview for him, if the meeting went well. I knew I’d be a wreck internally if I was in his shoes, but maybe that was just part of being a professional woman. Men were so used to landing everything they wanted, or at least walking into it with a certain naive arrogance that made them think they would.
“Why thank you.” I humored him, but we both knew that it was me paving his way into that building. I didn’t know if his need to still be the one in charge was defensive, or if I was just paranoid about how men viewed me and my position of power. Maybe I just didn’t like it when men held the door for me—especially when it was a revolving one that opened itself.
I had never been to the headquarters before, though I’d heard about it through the news and mutual acquaintances. We made our way to the elevator and up to the main floor, where I let the secretary know we had arrived for our morning appointment.
She nodded, motioning for us to sit. “Camille will be right with you.”
But we didn’t have time to take our seats before Camille’s familiar face appeared around the corner. She flashed us a tight smile. I’d always had a sneaking suspicion that she didn’t like me ever since high school.
“It’s so good to see you,” I offered.
She looked me up and down, smirking at my stilettos. She wore much more comfortable kitten heels, but still looked chic and fashionable. “I hear you’ve been doing well for yourself, Victoria.”
“It looks like you have, too,” I replied, looking around the lavish lobby and rows of offices sitting just beyond the glass doors she came in through.
“You do what you have to do,” she murmured, turning her gaze to Trent—the reason we were standing in front of each other again. “Is this the guy you’ve been raving about?”
“Trent Maddox, this is Camille.”
They smiled and shook hands before she spun on her heels and took off towards the workroom floor, waving for us to follow along. She was exactly how I remembered her—uptight, shrewd, and the type of serious that wasted no time. Most things seemed frivolous to her, including small talk and a lot of other various social niceties. If it wasn’t for her family’s money and her frighteningly good looks, she wouldn’t have been very popular, or even tolerable to most, in high school.
“So, you’ve got a lot of experience with investors?” she asked Trent as we walked.
He started rattling off his impressive business resume, which I had already gone over with Camille when I called to set up our meeting. I was impressed with the staff and the modern aesthetic of the offices that I took in as I followed behind them. The black and white color schemes with touches of marble and gold...it was charming, looked expensive, and reminded me an awful lot of his tastes…
“Victoria,” he called out from behind us.
I knew his voice instantly and had kind of been dreading the likelihood of him spotting me while I was here. Perfect timing—we all stopped in a huddle in front of Camille’s door and turned to watch Lucas walking towards us.
His brow was slightly wrinkled and his mouth was still gaping. He was surprised to see me, and I was surprised to see how good he looked. He was aging well. His tall, muscular body marched toward us like he was in search of answers.
“What are you doing here?”
“She’s here to see me,” Camille snipped.
“Actually, Trent’s here to see her,” I explained. “I’m just the middle-woman.”
I brushed Trent’s arm, working my way up to an official introduction. I couldn’t help but notice the way his piercing gray eyes paused on my hand on the arm of Trent’s suit. Lucas always had been ridiculously overprotective of me and way too intrusive about my dating life. He wanted to be my protective big brother, or at least that’s how it felt. But I never wanted to submit to being protected by anyone—not even in a brotherly sort of way.
Lucas recovered from his obvious distaste for me being friendly and affectionate with this guy he didn’t know, and immediately shot out his hand for a firm, assertive shake.
“Lucas Meadows. CEO of Heartstring.”
“Trent Maddox,” he answered, slightly wrinkling his face in a way that told me Lucas’s grip was too hard. “Currently working on Wall Street, but hopefully soon to be the newest team member of your finance department.”
“Ah-ha.” Lucas darted his eyes over t
o Camille as if she should have asked permission.
“Right, well...Trent and I have things to discuss,” she told him firmly, ushering Trent into her office and slamming the door shut behind them.
I stood there awkwardly, avoiding Lucas’s studious gaze. He was looking me up and down—examining me with an expression that asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”—even though that had obviously just been explained.
“I guess I should have told you I was coming by,” I guessed out loud, but truthfully, I didn’t see any reason to. He had flaked out at the last minute the past few times I reached out to make plans to catch up. After a while, I’d just assumed he didn’t have any interest in maintaining our friendship. It was a shame, considering how close we used to be, but those things happened. People drifted apart.
“Yeah...It’s funny...I was, uh...I was just thinking about you.” He laughed under his breath. “So it was weird to come out and see you standing here all of a sudden.”
He was thrown, which wasn’t a state you could easily catch Lucas in. He was cool and calm in almost any situation. Why was he so different with me now? Had I done something wrong?
“I think about you a lot, too. I’ve been wanting to invite you to lunch or coffee or something, but…” I trailed off, blushing. I didn’t need to point out his obvious avoidance of me. It had been over a year since I had seen him last. “But I figured you were busy with everything around here. I’ve been following the company and all. You’ve done very well for yourself. Congratulations.”
