The Right Swipe

by Alisha Rai

  “On it. Peace.” Lakshmi hung up.

  Katrina crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t like that look on your face one bit.”

  Rhiannon opened her eyes very wide, giving her best impression of what innocence might look like. “What? You wanted me to talk to him.”

  “Not to use him, Rhi,” Katrina snapped. “Why are you so obsessed with buying Matchmaker anyway? I mean, I know buying your competitor and shutting them down is a time-honored technique to grab market share, but is it really necessary?”

  “It’s necessary.”

  “Explain.”

  Filled with restless energy, Rhiannon got up to pace the room. “What happens whenever there’s progress? Backlash. It is progress that you can find someone to have a drink with from your phone. That’s true. And it’s also true that people long for what they thought they had before. I heard it at that conference, the rumblings getting louder. If we buy Matchmaker, we don’t just buy their data and their infrastructure. We buy their name. Their respect. We modernize it a little, make it more mobile friendly, and then keep it as another option for our users. Crush for now. Matchmaker for forever.”

  “Damn.” Katrina narrowed her eyes. “That’s a slogan.”

  “It is.” Rhiannon grinned, a little reckless. But most importantly, she felt strong again. Yes, finally. She had a good reason, a strong reason to see Samson again, one that had nothing to do with her feelings or their history.

  Phew. A girl could only deal with her emotions so much.

  “Matchmaker is our insurance against a backlash. We can stay on top, even if everyone decides to delete Crush tomorrow and try a method for love that doesn’t include their phones. Sure, maybe they’ll go to the bar or the grocery store. But more likely, they’ll go back to their computers.”

  Katrina steepled her hands under her chin. “Does this have something to do with Peter?”

  Ouch. Couldn’t hide anything from her best friend. “This has to do with success.” If that success was also about revenge, well. Rhiannon couldn’t help that. “I’ll talk to Samson. Listen to him, talk to him, get my closure.” Rhiannon shrugged. “And then, I’ll ask him for a favor.” When he was feeling bad.

  Katrina looked straight-up worried now. “This feels manipulative. It’s not the reason I thought you should see him.”

  “I’ll only ask. Nothing more. It’ll be a nice, direct, closure-heavy conversation. And then I’m done with him.” What she didn’t say, what she was thinking, was that yeah, Samson fucking owed her. If he was as nice as she’d originally thought he was, then he’d feel the same way.

  And if it was manipulative to introduce a request when a person felt like they owed a person, well then, yes, she was being manipulative. Sue her.

  “Well, you don’t have to be done—”

  There was that hope again, that malicious hope. Actively seeking out someone who had ghosted her was already borderline foolish, only acceptable because she had hard evidence to back up the excuse he’d inevitably give her. Getting back into bed with a zombie? That was inexcusable, given all that she knew about the dating world. Rhiannon slashed her hand across her throat. “Then I’m done.”

  Chapter Seven

  SAMSON?”

  Samson shook his head and refocused on the young blonde sitting at his dining table. Tina was a sweet girl and had been his aunt Belle’s admin since she’d graduated from college a few years ago. Her bubbly and cheerful personality was the last thing he needed right now. “Sorry. What’s that?”

  “No need to apologize!” She gestured at the open laptop screen in front of her. “I know you have company coming over soon, but I thought we could go through your next batch of matches while we have a minute.”

  He put down the knife he was using to slice salami and rinsed his hands. “Ah, sure. Are you certain you don’t want a snack, though?”

  Tina blew her bangs out of her face. Wearing her casual uniform of jeans and a loose T-shirt, with her legs curled under her on the padded dining table chair, her shoes kicked off under the table, she looked about eighteen. “You’re so cute. No, thanks, I’m fine.”

  He wasn’t cute. Samson just wanted to delay this as much as possible. Also, he was his mother’s son. He may be out of practice having people in his house, but he didn’t know how to have someone over and not feed them.

  Even if it wasn’t really his home. The downtown L.A. apartment was filled with afternoon sunlight from the indulgently large windows that looked out over the city. He’d told Annabelle he could handle his own accommodations when he needed to be in L.A., but she’d insisted he stay in this corporate apartment owned by Matchmaker. It had a perfect view of the skyline and tasteful, impersonal furnishings, all leather and metal accents and modern shapes.

  He sat down at the glass table, next to Tina. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

  Tina gave him a sympathetic look. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

  He’d been putting this off, but they had a small crew on standby to film the first date aka commercial/webisode. He was trying not to think about it too hard. “It is what it is.” Samson shifted and did his best to shrink into his chair. Limas were born big, and he had always been supremely conscious of his size, especially when he was seated next to a much smaller woman. Tina didn’t seem intimidated by him, but he knew sometimes women hid their fear well.

  He’d been comfortable around Rhiannon. She wasn’t that big, but her no-nonsense personality made her seem as large as him. At one point during that perfect, sweaty, lust-hazed night, she’d flipped him over onto his back with her strong legs and straddled him, using her palms against his to hold him down.

  You have to protect your heart. No one will do it for you.

  “I told you, I could pick someone for you.”

  He refocused, trying to tamp down his guilt spiral. In the week since the interview, Samson had managed to find breaks from thinking about Rhiannon, but she crept back in at the oddest of times.

  You did all you could do. By the time he’d finished talking to Helena’s dad and taking selfies with the crew and made his way offstage, Rhiannon had been gone. Someone had pointed out her assistant, and so he’d taken a chance and slipped the woman his card. Going by the arch look the intimidating woman had given him, Samson didn’t hold out much hope on that front.

  Still, he’d checked his phone eight hundred times in the past few days. At some point he’d have to accept Rhiannon wasn’t going to get in touch with him. He’d left the conference the day after the interview, but even if he had stayed, he wouldn’t have tried to find her. She’d made it clear she was furious with him. A next step, if there ever was one, would have to come from her. He wasn’t about to stalk the woman.

  In the meantime . . . “No, I’ll vet my own dates.” He ought to do something to justify the salary Matchmaker was paying him.

  Reluctantly, Samson perused the faces of all the women smiling back at him from Tina’s laptop. There were selfies and group shots and full-length photos. The group was diverse in body type and ethnicity. And not one of them looked like the woman who had occupied his mind for the last week.

  He shifted, hating that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Hating that he had a job to do, and he couldn’t shelve her enough to do it. Hating that the job he was doing felt far too much like window-shopping for a woman. “This is a lot.”

  He meant everything, in general, but Tina misunderstood him. “No, this is about right. You usually get about ten matches at a time,” Tina explained.

  “Can I see their profiles?”

  “Which ones?” Tina hovered the mouse over the first girl.

  “Uh. All of them? Since I don’t know anything about them?”

  Tina blinked at him. “You don’t want to knock any of them out on appearance alone?”

  He looked at the women again and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d barely known what Rhiannon looked like before he’d met her on the basis of a sentence and a few
messages, and they’d had an immediate connection. What if he got rid of someone based on her dimples or lack thereof and missed out on a good thing?

  Uh, a good thing for the camera, that is. Not for him, personally. “They’re all pretty in their own ways. I’d rather see what they have to say.”

  Tina beamed at him, though he wasn’t sure what he’d said or done to get that response. They started going through the matches. A kindergarten teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, a receptionist. All perfectly normal women who didn’t deserve to be used by him for a gimmicky photo op.

  When Annabelle had come to him with this idea, he’d proposed doing the whole thing with hired actresses, but she’d nixed that. He’d still been deep in his grief over Uncle Joe and hadn’t protested too hard. He’d been happy to have some project forced upon him so the endless future hadn’t seemed so endless.

  He should have protested harder. Meeting real women hadn’t felt so distasteful when it had been conceptual, but now that he was faced with a buffet of individuals, he couldn’t get the sour taste out of his mouth.

  “Can you filter based on profession?” he asked abruptly, when they were about halfway through.

  “Sure,” Tina said. “What are you looking for? Fellow athletes?”

  “I haven’t been an athlete in a long time.” His main method of getting out of the house for the past five years in Cayucos had been twice daily runs on the beach, but that wasn’t anywhere near his fitness regimen when he’d been a professional football player. “Filter it down to entertainment. Actresses, models, singers.” This was L.A., and it wouldn’t be hard to find at least one woman who was in the business. Being an actress didn’t mean that his potential date’s heart wouldn’t be soft, but at the very least, she might get something out of a contrived hour that was more entertainment than a meeting of hearts. “Someone who will be good on camera and fine with this being a business thing.”

  Tina’s gaze turned knowing. “Gotcha.” She typed something, and all but two of the matches vanished. She leaned forward. “We got an actress and a model. Let me contact them and see if either of them are interested in our project, vet them a little to see which of them would be the most natural on film.”

  “Fantastic.” He was so glad he wasn’t actually emailing back and forth with them like he might if he really was looking for love on Matchmaker.

  Tina gathered up the laptop and Samson shoved back his seat. “Have you heard from Annabelle?” His aunt had been pretty silent for the past week, though she’d sent him a quick text reply in response to his check-in.

  “Yeah, a little, for some necessary business stuff. I keep her updated daily via email. She doesn’t always respond. That’s normal when she goes on the run like this. She gets overwhelmed, disappears for a while, but she always comes back.” Tina wrinkled her nose. “I should have gone with you two to the conference. I told her the crowds might overwhelm her, but she was so dead set on trying to be Jennifer, she didn’t listen.”

  Samson grimaced. He hadn’t been very close to Jennifer, but the older sister had been protective of Annabelle and had kept her little sister out of the spotlight. “Yeah. Luckily, everything worked out for the best.”

  “Good thing you were there. You handled that interview with Crush like a champ. I hear Helena might even have you on her talk show? Good deal.”

  Oh, that was right. On her talk show with Rhiannon.

  Hope at the thought of seeing Rhiannon again filled him. Pathetic.

  The timer went off on the oven and he glanced at it. Tina waved him away. “You take care of that, I’ll see myself out.”

  He was pulling mini pizzas out of the oven when he heard the door open and a deep male voice say, “Damn, I know we haven’t seen Samson in a long time, but when did he turn into a small blond woman?”

  Tina’s reply was muffled, but the tartness of her response was clear from her tone. Samson grinned and dropped the pan on the counter and came out to the foyer.

  Harris and Dean Miller both smiled when they saw Samson. For a second, none of them spoke, but then Dean erupted into a whoop and they closed in on him, engulfing him in a big hug.

  His two closest friends were both settled in L.A. Getting together over the past few years had been a challenge, what with their lives taking them on different paths.

  Harris slapped his back and stepped back. “Look at you. How long has it been, a couple years?”

  “At least,” Dean said. The two of them were cousins and were both tall, African American, and handsome, with some similarities in their eyes and the shapes of their face. Dean was way bigger, but he’d been a linebacker, like Samson. Harris was leaner, and still a quarterback. The three of them had played college ball together, but Samson and Dean had also been on the Brewers.

  “What are you talking about? It’s only been a month since I last saw Miley,” Samson protested. He smiled at the gurgling baby in the carrier Dean held.

  Dean picked up the bulging baby bag he’d dropped to greet Samson. “That was an obligatory drive-by greeting of your goddaughter. Staying with us for a single night doesn’t count.”

  Harris glanced curiously inside the apartment. “Couldn’t believe that you’d come to the big city.”

  “I like it here. It’s nice.” He might have grown up in a sleepy beach town, technically, but they’d traveled a lot when his father had played ball, and then Samson’s own professional career had taken him to Chicago and Portland. The big city life wasn’t totally foreign to him.

  He led the two men into the apartment. Dean placed the carrier on the dining table and unsnapped his daughter. “Want to hold her?” he asked.

  Samson may have only seen the child once, but he knew the answer to that question had to be an eager yes or Dean would be mortally offended. “Can’t wait.”

  Without ceremony, Dean deposited the baby into Samson’s arms.

  Samson jiggled the child, who felt too squishy and bloblike for his comfort. He had nothing against kids, but babies weren’t his wheelhouse. “I’m holding her right, right?”

  Harris had made a beeline for the food Samson had spread out on the island and already had crackers and meat headed toward his mouth. “Oh, yeah, hold the princess right or her daddy will kick your ass.”

  Dean shot his cousin a quelling look. “That’s because you hold her like you’re about to throw her. She’s not a ball. Samson knows what’s up.” He gently adjusted Samson’s hand on her butt. “Or at least, now he does. There.”

  Samson glanced down at the baby and couldn’t help but smile. Her thick black hair stuck straight up, like she’d been shocked. Dean and his neuroscientist wife had adopted Miley from Korea, and the retired player’s life had quickly devolved to answering only to the baby. She blew a bubble with her tiny rosebud mouth and returned Samson’s stare with fascination. “How old is she now?”

  “Almost eight months.”

  “Jesus.” Samson shook his head. “Time flies.”

  “The days are long but the years are short.” Dean hesitated, then moved Samson’s other hand a tiny degree. Samson met Harris’s gaze above Dean’s head, and the other man rolled his eyes.

  “How are you liking being a stay-at-home dad, Dean?” Samson asked.

  “It’s great.” Dean beamed. “Miley’s an angel. So smart too. She can roll over now and should be crawling in about a minute.”

  Samson made an appropriately impressed noise.

  “Here, eat.”

  Dean accepted the plate full of food that Harris nudged him with. He folded a quesadilla into a square, ate it in two bites, and then flushed when the two of them stared at him. “Sorry. Since Miley arrived, I’ve been hoovering my food whenever I get a second.”

  “That sounds hectic.” Samson allowed Dean to adjust his grip. Again. Miley kicked her legs against his stomach.

  Harris swallowed his bite of food. “If you trusted anyone but you or Josie to take care of your baby, you could have a free hand. Damn, man, get a nan
ny. You guys got the cash.”

  “I’m not outsourcing my child,” Dean said with some affront. He accepted the beer from Harris and took a sip in a more moderated manner than he had eaten. “Besides, I need this. You have no idea how lost I felt after I retired a couple years ago. Miley’s given me a purpose again.”

  Samson knew exactly what Dean was referring to. It was weird to go from playing professional football, that intense life in a tightly knit group, to nothing, your days no longer regimented and controlled by an outside force. About a year after he’d retired, though, Uncle Joe had started showing signs of illness. After that, Samson had had his hands and his head full with his uncle’s care. He hadn’t had time to dwell on anything else.

  “You’ll understand when you go through it next year,” Dean added.

  Samson raised his eyebrows in surprise. Football had always been Harris’s life. “You’re retiring?”

  “I’m almost thirty-eight.” Harris braced his elbows on the counter and leaned back. “My knees aren’t what they used to be. I’d rather go out on top than wait any longer.”

  “Dean’s not wrong about how you’ll feel after.” Samson turned his head so Miley’s little exploring fingers didn’t go right into his mouth. His arm was falling asleep, but he was conscious of Dean’s eagle eye on him. “Try to line up some work or projects or something.”

  “I’ve been talking to a couple of people. Charities, mostly. And there’ll be endorsements.”

  “Though we could all be so lucky to get this spokesman gig of Samson’s,” Dean interjected. “Get paid to date hot girls and live in a swanky apartment.”

  “Seriously.” Harris took a sip of his beer. “You go on any dates yet?”

  Rhiannon popped into his head. Harris had been the one to gently badger him into downloading Crush all those months ago, but he’d never told his friends about That Night. It had felt too private, and he’d been ashamed of how it had ended.