Matched to Her Rival

Once Dax grilled Candy for all her personal history and figured out what she’d like, what kind of Christmas gift would he buy her?

Yeah, the ad copy wasn’t working as a distraction either.

She grabbed her phone and texted Dax back: That’s it? Great? Do you like her?

In agony, she stared at the phone waiting for the reply. Nothing.

Dax was ignoring her. On purpose. Not sending a message was as pointed a message as actually sending one.

Butt out, her blank screen said.

Now she really had to stop obsessing. She pushed the button to power off the phone and tossed it on the couch where she couldn’t see it.

Maybe she should comb through some applications for her makeover program. Juliet had been such a challenge and then such a triumph, Elise hadn’t taken on a new project yet. There were so many deserving applicants, from the one who’d been caring for her three younger brothers after the death of their parents, to another who’d been in the foster care system her whole life and just wanted to find someone who would love her forever.

Decision made, Elise sat down in her home office to contact them both. These two women had stayed on her mind for a reason, and she could handle two houseguests at the same time. Dannie would help out with the hair and makeup sessions, and after the infusion of cash from Prince Alain’s match fee, Elise could afford to feed and clothe two women for a couple of months.

She never charged for her makeover services, instead choosing to gift these destitute women with new lives. Elise’s magic wand might be the only opportunity they would have to succeed.

Done. She glanced at the time as she saved the women’s information to EA International’s database using a remote connection. Eight whole minutes had passed.

Why was she so antsy?

Because she’d butchered Dax’s profile questions the first time. What if she’d messed it up the second time and Candy wasn’t really his soul mate?

Armed with a bowl of grapes and a tall glass of ice water, she opened the algorithm code, grimly determined to sort through how it had arrived at the original match so she could reasonably conclude if it had completed the second match correctly.

After fifteen minutes of wishing the grapes were chocolate and staring at code until her eyes crossed, she couldn’t stand it. Retrieving her phone from its place of banishment, she powered it on. And powered it off before it fully booted up.

What was she doing? She might as well drive to the restaurant and peer through the window like a stalker. And worse, she had a feeling she might have done exactly that if she had a clue where Dax and Candy had met.

Ridiculous. She’d check for text messages once and then find a movie or something to watch.

She powered on the phone. Nothing.

That...man. She couldn’t think of a bad enough word to encapsulate how infuriating Dax Wakefield was. He knew how much this meant to her. Knew she was on pins and needles. How hard would it have been to type, “She’s beautiful and fun. I like her a lot”?

Not hard. He wasn’t doing it because ignoring Elise was part of the game, to make her think the date was going from bad to worse, so she’d sit here and stew about losing.

In reality, he was laughing it up with Candy, having an awesome time drinking red wine and talking about their similar interests. Right now, he was probably watching her over his wineglass with those smoky bedroom eyes and somehow getting Candy to admit things she’d never told anyone before.

Maybe they’d moved to the parking lot and Dax had Candy cornered against her car, breathless and...that was going too far for a first date. They should be taking things slowly, not jumping right into something physical, the way Dax most assuredly did with all his previous women.

Immediately, Elise pulled up the text app: Candy doesn’t go all the way on a first date.

She groaned. Dax had officially fried her brain. She hit the delete button.

Oh, God, had she just hit Send? Please, please, please, she prayed, hoping against hope she’d deleted the message as she’d meant to, and scoured her phone’s folders for the answer.

Which she instead got in the form of a message from Dax: Speaking from personal experience?

Her stomach flopped at the same time she laughed, quite against her will. He’d made the faux pas okay and comical in one shot. How did he do that?

At least she’d gotten him to respond. She replied: You specified no one-night stands. She’s in it for the long haul.

Dax: I wouldn’t have called her otherwise.

That flopped her stomach in a different way. If this worked, Dax and Candy might very well get married. Most of the couples she matched did. She was in the business of introducing soul mates, after all.