He sat and slid a cup across her desk. “Hot date last night? It’s not one of your regular date nights.”
Was she imagining the edge to his voice? “No date last night. No dates for the past several nights, actually. I’m taking a short break.”
“Really?” His surprise was clear. “What about our bet?”
She wrapped her hands around the warm paper cup and leaned forward to smell the coffee. The aroma was enough to wake her up a bit. “Even with our bet, I canceled a third date with a guy. We didn’t have...”
“Spark?” he finished for her, a pleased smile lighting up his face. “So you believe in spark, now, do ya?”
“No. Not exactly.” She sipped her coffee. “But I recognize that my algorithm wasn’t perfect. So I’ve been spending the past couple of nights running tests on it.”
And she’d been doing so with Jason’s profile as the standard. But she wasn’t going to tell him that part. He didn’t need to know. After all, he didn’t think they had spark, and she knew he didn’t have the basics of what she wanted in a man. She was certain of it. She’d manipulated the numbers and the weighting several times to see if he would pass. He hadn’t. Not once.
That had been last night. When she’d finally realized that he wouldn’t ever pass and that she was disappointed about it, she went to bed.
And then she hadn’t slept.
“Test, huh?” Amusement flickered in his eyes. “I’d be curious to see that.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’d find it boring.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I never find you boring.”
“I find the algorithms boring.” She wrinkled her nose. “No, not boring. Right now, it’s frustrating me. Measuring people with numbers is tricky business. Even the Census people would like to do it differently than they are allowed.”
“So...” She could feel what he was going to ask in his pause and raised eyebrow, and she braced herself against it. “You were looking at my dating profile.”
Despite practicing what she would say when he asked, despite fortifying herself against the question, despite all her preparation, she still blushed. And given the burn up along her hairline, she’d turned a bright red. No cute flush for her.
“You looked at mine.” She heard the accusation in her voice and knew that it, combined with her blush, only made her look guilty. She didn’t even know what she had to feel guilty about.
Rating your friend, her conscience said.
“I did,” he said with a nod. “But only after I saw that you looked at mine.”
“It came through my matches. I was curious. You would be, too.” Lame, lame, lame.
“Of course. That’s why I looked at yours in return.” He smiled at her, his glorious smile that lit up his face and brightened his eyes and brushed the difficulties of life away. She noticed the broken nose now and wasn’t sure how she had missed it all this time. The imperfection made his face more interesting and somehow made his smile brighter.
“Do you want my comments?” he asked, both brows raised.
“Um...” The scientist in her said yes. She wouldn’t get better feedback from anyone else, not even Beck. The woman in her who liked his smile was horrified by what he would say. “Only if I can give you feedback on yours.”
Though she didn’t know what she would say. His profile had been completely charming.
“Okay.” His voice was light and easy and friendly, like he didn’t think he had anything to worry about. Which he probably didn’t. He didn’t overthink like she did.
“You can go first,” he said as he leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other.
“I didn’t know you liked hockey. Or that you couldn’t skate.”
“I’m a Southern boy. None of us can ice skate. But that’s not really a comment on my profile, so much as about what we talk about.”
They were friends. She could just be honest. It’s not like it would cost her anything, even if it felt like she was opening up her chest to him so that he could critique on her heart. “Your profile was cute. I didn’t see anything about it that I would change.”
“Oh.” She’d clearly surprised him again. “Thanks. That’s nice to hear.”
“What?” she asked. Something lingered behind this quick thanks.
“I thought you would have suggestions. Because I think you probably always have suggestions.”
She searched his face to see if he meant that as a possible insult, but she didn’t see anything other than flat honesty. “I’m not very good at this. Maybe the fact that I have no suggestions is a bad thing, and you should do the opposite.”
“Like opposite day at school,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting.
She smiled back in return. It was so easy to do around him. “Yes. Just like that.”
She waited, but he didn’t say anything more...and he didn’t launch into talking about hers. Which meant he had something to say, and it probably wasn’t an easy thing. “So, my profile?” she prompted.
“Right.” His mouth twitched.
She’d spent so much time thinking about every word in her profile, and his mouth twitched with humor when he thought about it. Clearly, she hadn’t spent enough time.
“Here’s the thing.” God, those were horrible words. No sentence should ever start with a man saying that, especially not when he feels like he has to lean closer to you and put his elbow on his knee. “You’re interesting. You used to make money playing poker online, which is cool. You study ways to make people healthier by actually getting them the health care they need when they need it. You’re funny and sharp, and none of that comes out in your profile. It’s clinical. Like you put too much thought into it.”
He looked at her, and her face must have given away the reality, because he sucked his breath in and said, “Oh. You did put too much thought into it. Of course you did.”
“So it’s bad.” Maybe that’s why she wasn’t attracted to the men who were responding to her profile. Maybe it wasn’t her algorithm at all. Maybe she’d turned off the right man from the start.
But she’d A/B tested it. On men like the ones she wanted to settle down with.
Spark. That stupid word of Jason’s again. She didn’t have spark with any of the men she’d tested her profile with. Of course, she didn’t have spark with Jason, either—he’d said so—so why should she listen to him?
“No, no, no.” He set his coffee cup on her desk and waved his hands in the air. “Nothing about it was bad. And maybe I’m biased, because I know you. So I know all the stuff about you that’s not in your profile. And that’s all stuff that the right guy will spend the time to get to know. But to me, your profile represented a fake you.”
“It’s online. Isn’t everything online a fake version of reality?” Except that his profile description wasn’t. She learned things about him that she hadn’t known, and it had caught every last charming part of him.
“Yeah. Probably. The mysterious they say that social media is messing with us, because people only post the dramas and highs of life, but not the mundanity and hard work that all of us experience. I guess that’s a fake version of reality.” He was shaking his head as he grabbed his coffee cup back. “I don’t like all that stuff.”
He laughed. “My friends were surprised that I did online dating, but it was efficient in a way that social media has never seemed to be. Even if you’re right and it probably is fake.”
“Jason, what should I do about my profile?” He was just one guy commenting on her profile. An n of one, in statistics talk, but her sample size wasn’t big to begin with.
“Nothing. Don’t listen to me. What do I know?”
“Me,” she said, her four fingers pressing on her sternum. “You know me.”
Her words seemed to silence them both
. Marsie wondered if he also felt the pressure of the truth of what she said. But when he smiled, the tension between them dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. “I should give some lucky guy a chance to get to know you.”
Will they know me like you do?
Friends. They were just friends. Devastating smile aside, Jason had failed her algorithm. Hell, she couldn’t even force him to pass. He just didn’t have what she wanted in a life partner.
Except himself, that same stupid, know-it-all voice in the back of her head said. She dismissed it, like you do with know-it-alls and had been done to her all through her childhood, even when she had been right.
He slapped a hand on the armrest. “Speaking of getting to know you, you should come with me tonight to a poker game.”
“What?” That came out of left field. And made her nervous. It had been years since she’d played poker on a regular basis.
“Yeah. I was thinking about it when I was looking at your profile and wondering what was missing. Mostly I noticed that it was missing the poker thing—which I, at least, think is really interesting. And I have a monthly poker game that I play with friends. I think you’d like them.”
“I haven’t played poker in...in years. And even then I played online. It’s different online.”
He leaned forward, an elbow on his knee and a mischievous glint in his eyes that made her heart flutter, even though he wasn’t the man for her. “Here’s what I’m thinking. I play with a group of men. I’ll bring you in, say you work in my office. You wear that.”
He nodded at her, and she looked down at her outfit to see what that was. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” She was wearing a black silk tee—fitted, because she knew she had a nice figure—and a plain black-and-gray-check pencil skirt with nice black detail. Black heels. No that.
“Nothing is wrong with what you’re wearing. You always look amazing. You look like a woman at the front of a boardroom who commands the attention of people with money. Which you are. But you don’t look like a woman who will beat the pants off the men playing poker.”
You always look amazing. Her mind hooked on those words, and it took her a moment to comprehend the rest of what Jason had said. “Are you saying that you want me to hustle your friends?”
“Hustle, no,” he said, but the glint in his eyes gave away that that’s exactly what he was thinking. She didn’t notice that he moved, but he seemed closer to her.
Then she realized that she’d leaned closer in to him.
“My friends will take one look at you and underestimate you. It will be awesome when you take all their money. We don’t play for high stakes, but you’ll make money. And then you can take me out to dinner with it.”
Yes. She wanted that.
Poker sounded like fun, but she wanted dinner with Jason. She wanted to get dressed up in date clothes—something sparkly and feminine—wear heels and know how it felt to kiss a man suddenly shorter than she was. She’d heard that sex standing up was easier if the woman was a little taller. Better angles. She’d keep her heels on for that, no matter how badly her feet hurt.
No. No. No. If she did that, it was because Jason was a fling. A man she went out and had fun with, not a man she was going to settle down with. He wasn’t everything she wanted. And she didn’t want to settle for less than everything.
“I might not be as good at poker as you think I am. I’m good at math and probability, but lots of people are good at that and bad at poker.” She could just do the poker part. And the dinner part, if it came to that. She didn’t have to do the sex part that her brain was leading her to.
He stayed leaning forward, evaluating her. She stayed leaning forward, her hulking desk between them. They wouldn’t get any closer in her office. But if she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself slipping into his arms and curling up. He had such nice arms. And those T-shirts he wore to work only made her think about them more.
She kept her eyes open and let him evaluate her. She couldn’t even imagine her life going that way, wrapped up in his arms. It wasn’t part of her plans.
“I think you’re better than I think you are. I think you’re better than I think you are at everything.”
Her resistance melted like snow in Florida. Jason gave the best compliments. She wouldn’t let herself imagine what he would be like as a life partner. That was a dream for another—a different kind of—woman. But Marsie was sure as hell going to go out and play poker. It wasn’t that Jason thought she was going to be better, but—for Jason—she wanted to be better. At everything.
“What time? And where am I going?”
“Seven thirty. And we can go together if you want. I’ll pick you up. That way you don’t have to walk into a house you don’t know alone.”
“Oh. Yes. That would be good. Thanks.”
“Where do you live?”
She gave him her address and he nodded. “Okay. That’s about twenty minutes from my friend’s. So I’ll pick you up around seven ten.”
The fact that they had plans made her suddenly nervous. “You’re telling them that I’m coming, right? You’re not just springing me on some private party that I really have no business being at.”
He held up one hand. “Scout’s honor. We’re allowed, encouraged even, to bring someone else to play. They’ve all brought idiots who bragged about how awesome they were at poker and lost their shirts.”
His smile was still playful, but there was a tinge of wickedness under it. “If I do clean everyone out, you’re going to enjoy it, aren’t you?”
“Oh yeah. I’m not going to collude with you to help you win. In fact, I’m going to play as hard and smart as I’ve ever played. Make you work for it.” When his playful smile went wide, the wickedness disappeared and all that was left was pure joy. “And I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it. For months.”
He stood, brushing at unseen dirt on his pants. “So we’re good then?”
“We’re good. I’ll see you a little after seven. And I’ll head home a little early to remind myself of the poker rules.”
He waved her off. “Don’t sweat it. You’ll kill us all.”
As he walked out of her office, she watched his butt and wondered what she was going to wear.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MARSIE’S HOUSE WAS exactly what he had expected, big and in perfect order. Not a single one of the bushes lining the front walk dared to have a leaf out of place. Before he had met Marsie, he would have passed a house like this and thought the person living in it had to be straitlaced and boring. After having coffee with Marsie a couple times a week for almost a year, he had realized straight lines were interesting, with depth and detail that he hadn’t noticed before. Like he’d learned at a woodworking class he’d taken at the local community college a couple years ago—there was art and skill in the perfect straight line.
Her doorbell was a little white button in an ornate black holder with a flower design. The little bit of interest and surprise he knew he would find under the perfectly trimmed bushes and grass that never got a chance to be overgrown. He would discover more Easter eggs like that, hidden around the house, if he ever got the chance to poke around.
He pressed the doorbell and, to his shock, she answered right away. And as soon as the door opened wide enough that he could see her well, he laughed. “You look like a librarian.” He barely managed to get the words out past his laughter.
She was wearing a pleated skirt in a dark blue plaid that hit her shins just under her knees and one of her plain white button-downs, only instead of being unbuttoned a couple buttons—enough so that he always wanted to peek down her shirt—it was done up all the way to her chin. She had a green scarf tied loosely around her neck and a gray cardigan draped around her shoulders. He’d seen her wear the brown boots before, on a casual Friday when she was wea
ring skinny jeans and looked as sexy as hell, but with her skirt and her cardigan, the brown heeled boots that came up to her knees looked prim and proper.
“Hey, I know several librarians. They are not all cardigan-and-sensible-shoe-wearing women,” she retorted, but she was smiling, so he knew she was pleased to have caught him so off guard.
“Wait? Are you wearing glasses?” He’d been so distracted by the rest of her outfit that he hadn’t noticed the thin gold wire rims perched on the tip of her nose. “Do you need glasses?”
“Normally I wear contacts. These things are like fifteen years old and give me a headache. But they go with the outfit. I’m trying to look nonthreatening.”
“I’m not sure you pulled that off. I keep expecting you to shush me.”
“Hey, now,” she said with a laugh. “What did I say about librarians?”
He held up his hands in innocence. “I know what you said. I also know what the stereotype is. And librarians aren’t nonthreatening. They know stuff.”
Her brows came together and she cocked her head. “Should I change?”
“Hell no. I love your outfit. You are full of surprises, is all.” He expected her to dress for the occasion. Except for the one time he’d seen her at the office in date clothes, Marsie was always perfectly dressed. But he hadn’t expected her to look so prim.
She turned to grab her purse, and her skirt twirled around her legs. He also hadn’t expected to get that brief glimpse of her knees and have his heart stop because he wanted to see more.
We don’t have spark, he reminded himself as she locked her front door and then followed him down the walk to his truck. They had never had spark before, and spark was a thing that was there or not. It wasn’t something that developed.
He knew that love developed over time, but love and spark weren’t the same things. So why are you looking for one and not the other, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his father’s asked.
His truck door clicked as he pressed the unlock symbol on the key chain in his pocket. He opened the passenger door for her and watched as she grabbed on to the handle above her head and lifted herself into the seat.
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