A whiff of Ashley’s perfume—exotic, floral, and highly sensual—sealed the deal. I balled my fists. Ruck had been a lucky bastard to have found her first. Fortunately, he knew it.
“You look nice today,” she said, pulling away and stepping back in front of her chair. “Important meeting?”
“With my matchmaker, hell yeah.” I helped scoot her chair in. I was an officer and a gentleman. “And I always look nice.”
“Did I hurt your feelings?” She grinned.
She was teasing me, like always. Flirting, I would say.
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’re full of it.” There was something different about her today. Her eyes were full of fire and determination. “Your feelings are made of iron. Impenetrable.”
“I have a good poker face.” I flagged a waitress. “Coffee. Blonde. Black.”
“Blonde black coffee sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?” Ashley had a folder and tablet in front of her. She was wearing her four-inch heels, her business heels, and a formfitting dress in a color that always flattered her. Any guy would be happy to be seen with her. She was hot. Yeah, she was Seattle’s hottest matchmaker in so many ways.
I shrugged as the waitress returned with a cup and saucer and a fresh pot of coffee. I waited while she poured me a cup. Usually at the Blackberry you had to stand in line at the counter and order. They’d give you a number and bring your order to your table. But Ashley and I were regulars. They broke the rules for us and took our order at the table.
“Your usual?” our waitress asked us.
“That would be lovely,” Ashley said.
I nodded. “And a cinnamon roll for me.”
“Excellent choice. They’re fresh from the oven and going fast.” The waitress hurried off.
“How was your ferry trip from the island?” Ashley asked, a little too nonchalantly.
“Great. Calm sailing all the way across the sound.” I set my cup down. “We might as well get on with things—my date on Saturday was—”
“Bland. All right. No one special.” Ashley shrugged. “I don’t need to hear about it. I can tell from your posture, tone, and expression. There was nothing wrong with her and nothing thrilling. I think we can skip the details this time. We’ve worked together at this long enough that I don’t need another rendition of your no-chemistry story. Unless you have specific feedback for her? Something she could improve on for future dates?”
I shook my head and tried not to look sheepish. I was a dog. The least I could have done was helped my failed date out with a little feedback. But I had nothing bad to say about her. She was a little boring, but that was no crime. Some other guy might find her thrilling.
Ashley sighed. “That’s too bad. She liked you. Would like to see you again. But it’s clear that’s not going to happen. I’ll make up a polite excuse for you and let her down easy. Like I always do.”
“I always appreciate it.”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t open her folder like I expected. “It doesn’t matter.”
It was the time in the process for her to open the folder and show me the next bevy of beauties she’d found to tempt me away from her.
After all the defeats we’d had, she should have been discouraged. But she seemed serene enough. I expected her weekly speech about how she’d keep looking. We wouldn’t give up. The usual.
“You know how I have gut feelings about certain matches and how perfect they are?”
Our waitress appeared, carrying my hot cinnamon roll.
I leaned back while she set it in front of me. “You’re infamous for your gut feelings, yes. I know.”
“They’re never wrong.” Ashley’s smile was sweet, but almost sad. Still sexy as hell, though. What was up with her this week? “I didn’t have one about you this week.”
I was staring at my cinnamon roll in anticipation. “No?” I looked up to meet her eyes, surprised at the resignation I saw there.
She shrugged and shook her head. “No.” She took a sip of her coffee.
I almost got the feeling she was stalling. Or lying. “Sorry. Next week.”
“You are not sorry,” she said, sounding like she was barely controlling her sadness and quiet fury at me.
I was disconcerted. I hadn’t seen her like this before.
“I console myself that I found one perfect bride this week. She walked right into my office.” Ashley’s smile was almost sad, and yet her expression was eager. She was looking for something from me, but I had no idea what. “The minute I saw her, I had a hunch. After interviewing her, I knew she was the one.”
“A bride for who? Me?” I frowned and cut into my cinnamon roll to keep her from seeing my scowl.
“A bride for Pair Us and Flashionista.” Her tone was even, but frustration simmered beneath it. “We’re doing a joint promo. Now that Lazer’s friends are all matched, Pair Us needs a new spokesmodel. Flash is using her to launch their new series of wedding events. She’s beautiful. We’re excited to work with her. I’ll be taking her on as my pet project.” Ashley frowned slightly.
I looked up from my cinnamon roll. “Now I’m disappointed. Why didn’t you ask me to be your spokesman?”
I expected her to laugh or roll her eyes. But her expression remained serious.
“I wish you’d get serious about being a groom, Knox.” Her voice was flat. “Flash is doing an open call for regular guys to model wedding wear.” Her eyes got a little light in them. The idea excited her. “Apply. If you’re serious about representing Pair Us, we might be able to make something of it in our joint campaign. It would be a great way to showcase you and draw more matches into the pool. Jus would be game if we asked him.”
I froze.
“You’re photogenic,” she said. “Role-playing a groom on camera could be good for you, too. Inspire you to get serious about looking for a bride. I could put in a word with Lazer and you’d be in.”
At the mention of Lazer’s name, I scowled and grunted. “I’m not a model.”
“You’re not serious about finding a wife, either.” She paused to study me, looking suddenly sad and uncomfortable. I knew that look. It didn’t portend anything good. “I don’t have any matches for you this week.”
“What?” I sat back in my chair, I was so stunned. It was one thing for her not to have one of her gut hunches. Those were rare. “No matches? What am I paying you for?” I forced a grin, but my heart raced. I had a bad feeling.
“You’ve been too picky,” she said. Her voice and her eyes were suddenly hard. She raised her chin, looking at me almost defiantly. “You’re depleting my pool.”
I took a bite of cinnamon roll and shrugged. “You can’t be too picky about a soul mate.”
She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. I got the feeling it was more to keep from slapping me than anything else.
“This is serious, Knox.” She paused, studying me. Her expression changed to resignation. “It’s time to take a break.” Her tone wasn’t its usual soft and understanding. Something hard and determined glittered beneath the calm of her demeanor. “Give finding a match a rest for a while. I can’t keep taking your money and disappointing women in my match pool. It’s not fair to them or you. And it’s not good for my reputation.”
I froze mid-chew. She was serious. “You’re cutting me loose? Dropping me as a client?”
She shrugged. “Not dropping. Taking a hiatus. Putting things on pause. Giving us both time to think and regroup. We both know what’s holding you back. Until you let go of your infatuation with me and the stupid promise you made Ruck, this…this matchmaking charade is just a farce.”
I met her eyes, expecting her to be pulling my chain despite her frustrated tone. But she was still serious. I reached for her hands. “Ashley, please. Come on.”
She pulled her hands back, out of my reach. “I’m sorry.”
“Ash, we’ve been friends for so long—”
She nodded. “Which is why I haven’t cut you loose sooner.
Why I’m only putting things on hold now, not terminating our contract.”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “No.”
She held my gaze, but didn’t speak.
“There must be something I can do,” I said, trying to be reasonable. “Some way I can make it up to you.”
“There is. Take care of yourself. And give your future serious thought.”
“Ash.” I took a deep breath. “How long for this hiatus? A month? Two?”
“As long as it takes. As long as we both need.”
I swallowed hard. The cinnamon roll stuck in my throat.
5
Lazer
Ashley burst into my office at Pair Us from her weekly breakfast meeting date postmortem obviously upset and agitated. I’m not generally a jealous guy, but I hated those meetings, especially knowing Knox was after Ashley. Seeing Ashley upset, I wanted, for the millionth time, to punch that bastard out.
Physical violence wasn’t my style. My form of punching was different. I knew how to get even. With my money and connections, I had a certain amount of power and knew how to wield it effectively. Sometimes I dreamed about using it to destroy Knox. I could ruin him. Only Ashley’s loyalty and affection for him, and my own sense of honor, stopped me. She’d never forgive me.
My office at Pair Us wasn’t my main office. That one was on a different floor in a suite for my main business. But I made sure to be at Pair Us when Ashley got back from meeting Knox as often as I was able.
I got to my feet and went to her, ready to take her in my arms.
She held a hand up to stop me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly developing a guilty conscience for conspiring with the guys behind her back. “What did I do?”
“You?” She squinted at me. “Nothing. Did you?”
I relaxed. “Automatic response. Sometimes I screw things up without knowing I did it.”
The corners of her mouth fought a smile. “Not you. Knox. I’ve had it up to here.” She gestured over her head. “I put him on hiatus until further notice. No matchmaking for him. None. Not until he gets his act together. If he ever gets his act together. If it wasn’t for our years of friendship and my promise to Ruck, I would have cut Knox loose completely.”
I was damned glad her anger wasn’t directed at me.
And, for the millionth time, I cursed Ruck for extracting all these damned after-death promises from everyone. There were times I had half a mind to stipulate to Ashley who she would marry if I ever left her widowed. First I had to actually get her to the altar. But making those kinds of demands was way too damned manipulative for my tastes. I had more faith in Ashley’s ability to find someone who suited her.
I might add that I had much better grounds to make demands and husband selections than Ruck. I was in the matchmaking business. I could find her a hell of a good match. I now knew how to search the world for one and had the team to do it.
I wisely kept all that to myself and silently rejoiced. Ding-dong, the wicked buddy of the late husband was out of my hair. If I’d still been sitting, I would have sat on my hands to keep from clapping. Instead, I balled my fists.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” I walked to the mini fridge and grabbed Ashley her favorite vitamin water. I handed it to her.
Her eyes were dry, but she had what I called the dry tears. In my experience, she’d get the same crying headache as if the taps had flowed. Hydrating was key to preventing the headache.
She collapsed onto the sofa and unscrewed the bottle lid. “He laughed off modeling for the Flash bridal photoshoot. He refused to even apply. It was the last straw. I’d had it.” She took a drink.
I sat down next to her, leaning forward so I could see her eyes as she slumped forward. “I’m confused. A lot of guys, most guys, would do the same. Most men aren’t models.” I hated myself for defending Knox. But I couldn’t hold back the truth. And the more reasonable I sounded, the more she’d talk to me and listen to me.
“It wasn’t that he wouldn’t model. It was that he scoffed at trying to get his head right to seriously think about marriage.” The whole story tumbled out.
I listened patiently, making the appropriate sympathetic noises at what I hoped were the appropriate times. Sometimes it was hard to tell. I nodded my agreement to Knox’s treachery, mentally dusting my hands of him.
“I just can’t stand it anymore.” She took the final sip of her water and slammed the bottle on the coffee table in front of us. “I feel like such a failure. Like a fraud. I have matched and matched and matched him with women who were better matches for him than I am. Much better matches. They should have peeled him off me. He should have taken one look at them, had one dinner with them, one conversation, and been immediately smitten.”
I nodded and murmured sympathetically.
“My plan was to peel him off me.”
“And it was a damn good plan, too,” I said.
“Keep my promise to Ruck while showing Knox the folly of his. Dangle a woman so tantalizing in front of Knox that he would have been miserable with me by comparison and make it so obvious that even he could see it.” She inhaled deeply.
I recognized her attempt to calm herself. “Yep. Brilliant. I can’t see any flaw with your plan—”
“I’ve coached him. Coddled him. Coaxed him. I coached the women. Gave them so many inside secrets about what he likes that he couldn’t fail to like them. I’ve used every trick in the book. But he hasn’t given a single one of them a fourth date.”
Her plan sounded almost exactly like mine. Was it any wonder we were so well suited? I loved her. I had to fight down my devious, pleased smile and resist the urge to share my machinations with her.
“And I’ve failed.”
I put my arm around her. “You haven’t failed. Knox has. You know what they say about leading a horse to water.”
She sat up straighter. Her eyes lit with fire. “And then, then, we interview Callie. And I get this feeling.” She tapped her chest gently with her fist right over her heart. “Here, right here. Callie’s the one. She’s perfect for Knox. I know it. I know it. I can feel it. My instinct kicked in.”
I froze.
“But it’s pointless, pointless.” She took another huge breath.
I was unsure, at this point, whether nodding in agreement would be taken wrong or was expected. I remained neutral. But I could just as easily get hammered for that, too.
“Callie’s so nice. She’s an inspiration, a total inspiration. Suddenly, I saw what I’ve been doing from the perspective of the women. How wrong what I’ve been doing to them for Knox’s sake is. I reached the turning point. I lost all hope.
“I couldn’t. I could not dangle a perfect—the perfect—match in front of Callie. Get her hopes up. Only to frustrate and disappoint her. To potentially turn her cynical about love and our matchmaking services. To turn a perfect endorsement model into an unhappy customer and person.”
“I’m sorry, Ash.” She had no idea. But if Knox was finally out of my hair, I wouldn’t even have to implement my plan. We had a pretty new spokesmodel. I could set a date for the wedding—
“It’s not your fault.” She turned to me, looking more uncertain and insecure than I’d seen her. “You know what the worst of it is?”
I waited for her to tell me.
“I ran Callie’s dating profile against Knox’s. They were barely a match. Barely. On the raw edge of being compatible. Suddenly I doubted everything. Was my instinct wrong? My metrics? The personality tests?”
I silently cursed Knox again. His damned manipulated profile. Maybe I should ruin him. The guys and I had decided it served our purposes to leave his original, incorrect profile in Ashley’s database. I couldn’t very well come clean about that now. But I had it in my back pocket in case I ever needed to use it. Someday.
I pulled Ashley close. “Don’t let the imposter phenomenon get to you. Think of all the happy, successful matches you’ve made. All the happ
y couples that are still together after years.”
I gestured to the pictures of some of them around my office. “Knox is an outlier. Every field has them. He’s the one piece of data that doesn’t fit the graph. The guy way out on the far right side of the bell graph. A guy who statistically should have found his match by now. A reverse unicorn. Who the hell knows why? But it’s not your fault. Outliers are…outliers. They’ve either caught an inexplicable updraft or downdraft. Sometimes all you can do is ignore them and move on.”
“Most of my clients are outliers—talented, successful people who are inept at love,” she said. “I should be able to find matches even for outliers. I do. Every day.”
I murmured sympathetic, encouraging words again.
She sighed. “And then there’s the fact that neither of them has a full left hand.” Her sense of humor was returning. She rolled her eyes comically and smiled. “If I matched them, it would look like one of my elements of compatibility is how many hands you have.”
Yeah, we’d thought of that too. I laughed softly and kissed the top of her head. “Ash, you are the best, and hottest, matchmaker in the world. You are. Trust me. I’d never partner with second best.”
“That’s true. You wouldn’t. Thank you.”
“I love you,” I said, desperate to make her happy. “Is there anything I can do? What will make you feel better?”
“I love you too. Just by being here, you make things better.”
I tipped her face up to kiss her.
“There is one thing you could do.”
I froze. “Anything.”
“I won’t rest until Knox is in a happily committed relationship.”
Fuck. I knew this was too good to be true.
Knox
Ashley had blindsided me. How had I not seen this coming? What kind of an idiot was I that I thought I could keep stringing her along forever? Part of what I loved about her was her strength and intelligence.
I’d blown it. Blown it, blown it, blown it up, sir. I had to fix this. Now.
My mind was elsewhere all through my business meeting. I gave my presentation on autopilot. As soon as I got out of the meeting, I knew what I had to do.
Mr. Accidental Groom Page 5