Matched to Her Rival

Down, boy.

Elise hated him. He didn’t like her or anything she stood for. He was here to be matched with a woman who would be the next in a long line of ex-girlfriends and then declare EA International fraudulent. Because there was no way he’d lose this wager.

“Usually when someone is late, it’s psychological,” she said with a small tilt of her head, as if she’d found a puzzle to solve but couldn’t quite get the right angle to view it.

“Are you trying to analyze me?”

She scowled. “It’s not bargain-basement analysis. I have a degree in psychology.”

“Yeah? Me, too.”

They stared at each other for a moment, long enough for the intense spike in his abdomen to kick-start his perverse gene.

What was it about a smart woman that never failed to intrigue the hell out of him?

She broke eye contact and scribbled furiously in her notebook, color in her cheeks heightened.

She’d been affected by the heat, too.

He wanted to know more about Elise Arundel without divulging anything about himself that wasn’t surface-level inanity.

“The information about my major was a freebie,” he said. “Anything else personal you want to know is going to cost you.”

If they were talking about Elise—and didn’t every woman on the planet prefer to talk about herself?—Dax wouldn’t inadvertently reveal privileged information. That curtain was closed, and no one got to see backstage.

* * *

Elise was almost afraid to ask. “Cost me what?”

When Dax’s smoke-colored eyes zeroed in on her, she was positive she should be both afraid and sorry. His irises weren’t the black smoke of an angry forest fire, but the wispy gray of a late November hearth fire that had just begun to blaze. The kind of fire that promised many delicious, warm things to come. And could easily burn down the entire block if left unchecked.

“It’ll cost you a response in kind. Whatever you ask me, you have to answer, too.”

“That’s not how this works. I’m not trying to match myself.”

Though she’d been in the system for seven years.

She’d entered her profile first, building the code around the questions and answers. On the off chance a match came through, well, there was nothing wrong with finding her soul mate with her own process, was there?

“Come on. Be a sport. It’ll help me be more comfortable with baring my soul to you.”

She shook her head hard enough to flip the ends of her hair into her mouth. “The questions are not all that soul-baring.”

Scrambling wasn’t her forte any more than thinking on her feet, because that was a total misrepresentation. The questions were designed to strip away surface-level BS and find the real person underneath. If that wasn’t soul-baring, she didn’t know what was. How else could the algorithm find a perfect match? The devil was in the details, and she had a feeling Dax’s details could upstage Satan himself.

“Let’s find out,” he said easily. “What’s the first one?”

“Name,” she croaked.

“Daxton Ryan Wakefield. Daxton is my grandmother’s maiden name. Ryan is my father’s name.” He shuddered in mock terror. “I feel exposed sharing my history with a virtual stranger. Help a guy out. Your turn.”

This was so not a good idea. But he’d threatened her business, her livelihood. To prove her skills, his profile had to be right. Otherwise, he might be matched with an almost–soul mate or worse, someone completely incompatible. Dax wasn’t a typical paying client, and she couldn’t treat him like one. What was the harm in throwing him one bone? It wasn’t as if she had to answer all of the questions, just enough to get him talking.

“Shannon Elise Arundel.”

How in the world had that slipped out? She hadn’t told anyone that her real first name was Shannon in years. Her shudder of terror wasn’t faked.

Shannon, put down that cake. Shannon, have you weighed yourself today? Shannon, you might be vertically challenged but you don’t have to be horizontally challenged too.

The words were always delivered with the disapproving frown her mother saved for occasions of great disappointment. Frowning caused wrinkles and Brenna Burke hated wrinkles more than photographers.

Dax circled his finger in a get-on-with-the-rest motion. “No comment about how your father was Irish and wanted to make sure you had a bit of the old country in your name?”

“Nope. My name is very boring.”