Nothing left to fight for.
Earlier tonight he’d felt hopeful that they could salvage something from the wreckage of the past six months, even if it was only their friendship. Now, he stood there ready to walk out—all because of some crazy idea he’d had about payback.
Part of him wanted to confess the whole damned scheme, convince her that chemistry or no chemistry, there was so much between them. Part of him wanted to take her back in his arms and kiss her and show her—okay, yes, prove to her—that statistics and logic were nothing when compared with a person’s emotions. But mostly, he wanted to end the crazy ache in his heart, the one that started when he’d picked up a damned cocktail napkin.
“Call me when you grow up and decide you can handle a real relationship instead of some perfect-on-paper, passionless dead-zone.”
He released his death grip on the door, and finally did the one thing he thought he’d never do. Not to Jane.
He walked away—and he didn’t look back.
Chapter Nine
@smartCupid Dating is a test of long-term compatibility. Chemistry, not included.
@AdamDatesRUS Need any help finding true love, Cupid? #runthenumbers
@KathieLeeandHoda Is NYC’s sexiest bartender still a confirmed bachelor? Or is Charlie Goodman ready for a new lease on love?#thelovegamble #today
Jane sat in the middle of her bed and made an indentation in the covers for her phone and a short stack of breakfast bars. Cranberry and Almond. Peanut Butter Crunch. Chocolate Chip. Every flavor sounded like a good alternative to starting the day. The clock was ticking on her bet, and unfortunately, the knock-down drag-out she’d had with Charlie last night made her want to pull the covers over her head and sleep until spring. She kicked at the tangled sheets. Prove his point? He’d always played his cards close to his vest, but not everything was about the zing.
Chemistry was chemistry. Love was love, and love needed to make sense. Her Ultimate Man List made sense. Her straightforward dating app made sense. Her out-of-control need for Charlie—zero sense. More like diving into hell buck-naked, knowing the dive meant an agonizingly slow burn, but craving it enough to deal with the heat. She pushed aside the breakfast bars without taking a single bite and clicked up the volume on the television.
Day Three of The Love Gamble. Will Cupid be crying in her heart-shaped box of Russell Stovers, or will Adam Walters be passing out candy hearts that say, ‘Date Me, I’m with Cupid?’
Jane fell back against her pillows. Finally, some good news.
I don’t know about you, Kathie Lee, but if I were Cupid, I’d have that bachelor on a twenty-four hour date cycle. She’s got a lot on the wagerline and as far as…
She pressed mute, but kept staring at the screen. Hoda was right. There was a lot to lose. A hell of a lot.
From this day forward, her relationship with Charlie Goodman was one hundred percent professional with no margin for error. She’d worked hard to get out of Brooklyn, to build her company from nothing. Smart Cupid was the one thing she’d done right in her life, offering real choices about real love to people whose hearts had been crushed, and she wasn’t about to let her company go.
And what about Marianne? Her friend had trusted her with her job, her livelihood, and last night, she’d failed to live up to that trust. Failed. But not again.
Time to go to the mattresses. A sudden rush of heat flooded her system. Definitely not to the mattresses. An involuntary storm of memories hijacked her brain, sinful, enticing, Class A felony kinds of memories of watching island sunrises together in bed…no, definitely not time to go to bed. Or to the mattress or…to bed…damn. She threw back the comforter.
No. All she needed was a better plan. Strike that. She needed more than a better plan. She needed backup. And some serious willpower. And probably candy.
…
An hour later, dressed in a pair of sleek jeans and a pink cashmere sweater, Jane met the world’s greatest backup girl in front of Ray’s Candy Store in the East Village. A twenty-four hour, neighborhood eats emporium, Ray’s was perfection. Jane would consider marrying Ray, simply for the fact that his beignets were always steadfast and dependable, sweet and yummy, always good, always reliable. Like her Ultimate Man.
Marianne warmed her hands on a cup of hot chocolate. “Okay, so, you corralled me into supplying your weekly Ray’s fix. Can you please tell me what happened last night?”
“Last night?”
“Yes, last night. The bet. Charlie’s date.”
“Last night.” Jane bit down hard on the inside of her mouth. She needed to tread carefully here. Take her time. Make M.A. understand about the whole experimental chemistry situation and the possibility that she’d been narcotized by Charlie’s heavenly kisses.
“Last night, I had, um, almost-sex, with Charlie.” Jane shoved a beignet in her mouth to muffle her confession. “Well, there was kissing. Lots and lots of kissing.”
Shit. Not exactly treading lightly, but if she needed to backtrack, she could always chew and pretend she hadn’t said anything.
There was a moment of stunned silence or shock or maybe a Full Metal Jacket effect of some kind before Marianne turned mid-stride and said, “You had ‘almost-sex’ with Charlie?”
“Mostly, it was kissing, but I wanted to dive into the whole enchilada. I really, really wanted to dive.” Jane kept walking, but the guilt quickly overtook her. “And yes, before you ask, it was wonderful, but it was just chemistry, which as you know, I don’t believe in.”
“Wait a minute. Chemistry?” Pulling herself together, Marianne lengthened her step to catch up. “What happened to finding his true love? His criteria? His matrix?”
“I’m still looking.”
“And are you going to keep kissing him?”
“No. No more kissing.” Jane dusted the powdery sugar off her fingers. “It was unprofessional, even borderline unethical, and yes, the heat between us could power a backup generator and light up Chelsea like a Christmas tree, but there will be no more kissing. I am re-committed to finding Charlie’s one and only true love. In three days.”
Marianne’s expression conveyed her total disbelief. “And you’re sure you don’t want to dive into the enchilada? If you do, it’s okay. Just tell me, so I can start looking for a new job.”
“He only wanted to prove a point to me about the significance of chemistry in a relationship. Point taken, and now I’m more determined than ever to make this work.” She shoveled in another beignet. “In fact, we need to choose his second date this morning.”
“This morning? While you’re power-eating sugared doughnuts?”
“Yes, this morning. I assume you have Cupid’s database on your tablet.” Even to her own ears, her voice held a note of irritation. Needing some distance from the argument, she crossed against the light on Seventh and headed toward the swanky New Age bookstore on the corner. Normally, she wasn’t a fan of New Age philosophy…astrology, tarot, fortune telling, Dr. Phil. She found it all…suspect. Instead, she believed a person made her own way in life, settled her own scores, and found her own safety zones. But Marianne had seen a photo of the shop that sold tarot cards and love spells on NY Singles and wanted to check it out.
Marianne caught up with her on the corner. “Was he as good as you remember?”
Avoiding a few scattered snowflakes, Jane ducked beneath the collection of elm trees lining the sidewalk. “As good as I remember?”
Sipping the steaming hot chocolate, Marianne looked meaningfully over the top of the red paper cup. “Ignoring the fact that your ex is an amazing kisser won’t make him go away.”
And didn’t she know it. “He’s not my ex.”
But if last night was any indication, Charlie’s ex-factor would haunt her morning, noon, and night, or at least until she found him the right match, a prospect that grew more difficult every time he looked at her with those crinkly eyes. And even though she’d kicked him out of her apartment last night…even though she kn
ew he’d always hold back, and never commit one hundred percent for the long-term, a part of her had wanted him to stay and work it out. The stupid part.
“So?” Marianne lowered her voice to the frequency of female secrets. “Was it good?”
Jane felt as guilty as a Catholic in confession. “Good? No, not good. Great? Fantastic? Run screaming-like-a-lovestruck-loon-through-Manhattan wonderful?” She shoved her hands into her leather gloves a little more violently than necessary. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Unfortunately?” Marianne fanned herself with a stack of paper napkins.
“Yes, unfortunately. Everything from the way he delivers his heart-stopping kisses to the way he looks at me with his warm, crinkly eyes, everything is better than I remembered, and frankly, every minute I spend with him makes me want to jump his bones.”
“So maybe you should.”
“I cannot jump his bones.” She crumpled up the Ray’s bag and shoved it into her coat pocket. “Why do you think I ran from him in the first place?”
“Because you need therapy?” Marianne opened the door of the sexy little shop and a soft welcome bell chimed in agreement.
Jane pulled up the UML on her phone and waved it in the space between them. “I do not need therapy. All I need is a reliable, intelligent, rule-abiding—”
M.A. ushered her through the door. “Following the rules tends to be stifling.”
“I just need somebody safe.” She shoved her phone back into her pocket as the aggressively mystical aroma of ylang ylang and musk assaulted her senses.
“Safe?” M.A. picked up a set of flavored massage oils. “We screen all of our match candidates, and they consent to background checks. We would never—”
“No, not like safe from serial killers.” She let go a sigh and continued. “Safe as in not reckless, as in not kissing-me-senseless-on-top-of-a-vibrating-Maytag.”
Hot chocolate spilled over the edge of M.A.’s cup. “You and Charlie? On a Maytag?”
Jane shrugged. “He has a thing for laundry dating. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Marianne put down the massage oils and removed the tablet from her bag. “Statistics show almost thirty percent of adults enjoy sex in unusual places, so just because the idea of you and Charlie on a washing machine lights you up like a candle…”
“I can’t be with Charlie—anywhere—because he’s hotter than the burning fires of hell.” Jane’s voice echoed through the hushed, intimate store, loud enough that the woman behind the counter shot her a nasty look. “Shit.”
Marianne bit back a smile. “Try not to get us thrown out of here.”
She stalked over to a private corner of the store and kept her voice quiet. “We’re not here to discuss my love life.”
“Why not?” she asked, her gaze drifting to a collection of wish fulfillment candles. “You’re only dating the sexiest mixologist in town.”
Jane ignored the candles. “We are not dating. Trust me, we run the right combination of criteria through the matrix, Charlie’s perfect woman will show up, and if I give in to all this chemistry now…later, when I find him the right match, I’ll be standing on the sidewalk in the freezing cold, gluing together the pieces of my shattered heart.”
“You don’t know that.”
She tore open the buttons of her coat. “I do, Marianne, I really do.” Her friend tried to object, but she barreled ahead. “I’ve known Charlie forever, and I’ve seen him date tons of women and none of them last more than a couple of months. He’s like a revolving door.”
M.A. shot her a pointed look. “Maybe he had a reason to date a lot of different women.”
“Exactly, like a short attention span.”
“No, not a short attention span.” Marianne’s gentle tone made Jane felt like a chastised preschooler. “Maybe he’s been waiting for the right woman to come to her senses.”
Jane ignored the sharp pain in her chest. “Marianne, I’m his matchmaker.” If only she’d saved a beignet to help her to stuff down the truth—that every time she imagined Charlie with another woman, holding her, kissing her, touching her with those criminally sexy hands, she felt like the Coney Island Cyclone was coasting through her stomach. “I believe in the matrix.”
“So do I,” she said, tapping her fingers on her tablet for emphasis. “But in this one case, maybe trusting passion is better than calculating probabilities. Maybe you need to trust Charlie.”
Jane pressed the heels of both palms against her eyes to hold back tears. Her emotions were spilling out of every pore lately like she was the Bethesda fountain without a shut-off valve, and she wanted her usual emotional sense of control back—the sooner, the better. “I can’t trust Charlie. He’s too…too…”
“Too what? Too heartbreakingly passionate?”
“Yes.” She picked up a few romance novels and pressed them defensively against her chest. “Too heartbreakingly passionate for my long-term piece of mind.”
Marianne stared at her for what felt like a solid seventy seconds. “You need some Dr. Phil. To recalibrate your love strategy.”
“There’s no love to strategize. Charlie and I were friends. Maybe there was one kiss a million years ago, but we’ve always managed to stay friends without a serious hookup up because he doesn’t believe in love, and I don’t believe in chemistry, so in some reverse way, we fit. But after all that sex in the Caymans…” Her gaze drifted to the passion candles in the front window. “If we were ever going to make a run at it after that kind of passion, we needed rules, clearly defined terms…and Charlie Goodman does not play by the rules.” She hugged the books closer. “So, clearly, I do not need to recalibrate my love strategy.”
“No, you do. You really do.” Marianne walked over to the self-help section and built a small stack of books. “Life Strategies comes first, then, move on to Relationship Rescue.”
“I refuse to read one word.”
“Next is The Relationship Rescue Workbook.”
“Not one single —wait a minute—there’s a workbook?”
Another book hit the stack. “Better toss in a copy of Emotional Intelligence, too. The updated version. You definitely need the updated version.”
“Hey—”
“Maybe it’ll save you.”
“From what?” Jane asked.
“From yourself.” Marianne set her tablet on top of the books, and with a few keystrokes, opened up the Cupid database. Two photographs scrolled across the screen. “In the meantime, since you seem committed to matching your sort-of-ex, the chemically-irresistible guy you can’t help fooling around with, here are our best two options, based on the updated criteria. Trish, a surgeon for Doctors Without Borders. Originally from Jersey City, she loves hockey and a great burger. Needs a non-smoker and a flexible schedule.”
“Next?”
“Marisa, an accountant. Loves movies, classic rock, and long walks in Central Park. A Sagittarius.”
“Any significant turn-offs?”
“Not really, except—well, except Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn is a turn-off?” Jane asked, tapping her fingers against the novels she still held against her chest. “Let’s go with the Sagittarian accountant. Definitely a better match for him than Summer.”
“But—”
“Did you re-match Summer with that wonderful single dad from Gramercy Park?”
“Yes, I did, but I’m worried about Charlie and the Sagittarian accountant.” Marianne touched her hand. “Isn’t he from Brooklyn?”
“No, he is not from Brooklyn.”
Her friend’s brows snapped together in confusion. “But he mentioned Brooklyn in his profile for New York.”
“Charlie is definitely not from Brooklyn. He’s uptown, not Bed-Stuy. An accountant with an appreciation for Central Park West might be exactly what he needs.” The idea made her queasy. She needed to book this date and get out of here—pronto. Before she changed her mind. “Make a reservation at that new hipster place in Tribeca, and send h
im the date details, but don’t worry about couriering him a decent outfit. He’ll only wear the damned Rangers T-shirt anyway.”
“You’re the boss.” Marianne said, disappearing with her tablet and the stack of Dr. Phil.
Alone in the self-help section, Jane considered her friend’s future if she failed to win this bet. Marianne had built the matrix. Jane owed her. Maybe it was time to start calling her contacts to try to find her a new job, with a new dating company, but she wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.
Maybe she really did need therapy. Or a daily regimen of cold showers and self-medication with beignets. She looked over at the overstuffed shelves full of advice, and her sidelong glance caught the Texas-sized smile on Dr. Phil’s face. He winked at her as if to say, “Still sure you want to stay on the safe side of passion?”
She yanked hard on her ear. Yes. The thought echoed through her brain. Followed too quickly by the memory of six wonderful, passion-filled days.
She picked up a second copy of the workbook.
Then again, a little therapy never hurt anyone.
Chapter Ten
@Goodman Anybody else think the Mets are going to be good this year? ‘Cause the Rangers are killing me.
@KathieLeeandHoda Our eyes on Charlie, getting all the news, the intimate details. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. #bachelorsightings
“Think maybe the Mets hat is overkill?” Nick asked, and gave him a sardonic look as he opened the glass door of Third Avenue Sports Center and headed toward the fast pitch cages.
Charlie glared at his friend’s back and adjusted the ball cap lower on his forehead. “Don’t judge the hat. If the female half of Manhattan was camped outside your condo every day, you’d be wearing a Mets cap, too.”
“Actually, I’d be celebrating.” Nick folded a Sports Illustrated and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. “Don’t forget, you’re the one who put his face on a magazine and signed onto the Love Gamble.”
Breaking the Bachelor (Entangled Lovestruck) (Smart Cupid) Page 8