Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) (10 page)

“What? No. What are you talking about? Why would they?”

He released a breath, as if he’d been holding it. “Good. That’s—that’s good. I’m really glad to hear that. Although, it could just mean they haven’t figured out your home address yet, or your number.” He looked pensive.

“Will you please tell me what you’re talking about?” Lisa said. “Because you seem kind of weird right now.” She raised her eyebrows. “Kind of paranoid, honestly.”

Adam laughed. “I guess it would seem that way, wouldn’t it. Look, please, come sit down. I’m sorry—I should have offered sooner—can I get you something to drink?” He went to the chest of drawers and opened what looked like two drawers, but turned out to be the door of a mini-refrigerator. “Let’s see, I have regular water, sparkling water, um, looks like there’s some champagne, whiskey—”

“I’m fine,” Lisa said. She moved farther into the room. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

Adam closed the door to the mini-fridge and straightened, and then tapped his hands on his thighs.

He just looked so nervous.

“Did something bad happen?”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “No, it’s nothing bad, it’s just...” He broke off, and frowned, and chewed his lower lip.

“Look,” Lisa said, suddenly wanting to do whatever he needed to help him relax. “Just tell me. Whatever it is, it can’t be that terrible, right?”

He watched her for a moment, and then he smiled, those blue eyes of his lighting up with relief. “Right,” he said, and Lisa found herself smiling back.

“Okay,” Adam said, and took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll just—I mean, this is such a weird situation, there’s no easy way to—” He laughed, ran a hand through his hair, and then gestured toward the foot of the bed. “Will you at least sit? What I need to talk to you about, it’s unusual. Maybe you should be sitting.”

“All right.” She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m ready. Let’s hear it.”

“All right.” He spread his arms, dropped them to his sides. “Um, well. There’s no great way to say this, so I’ll just—” He cleared his throat, gave her a dazzling smile, and said, “How would you like to be my fiancée?”

Chapter
10

____________________________________

“W
ait, what? You want— I don’t—” Lisa stopped, blinked, and worked to produce a coherent sentence. “I don’t understand,” she finally said.

Adam heaved a sigh and came to sit next to her on the bed. “I know. It’s kind of complicated.” He frowned, as if he were as confused as she was.

“Just tell me the whole story,” Lisa said. “Whatever it is. From the beginning.”

“Okay.” He took another breath. “Remember yesterday, the paparazzi photographers at the sushi place?”

“Of course.”

“And they took a bunch of pictures of us, together,” Adam said.

“Right.”

“Right. And by the time I met with Kiki James—”

“Who?”

“The interviewer at
Access Austin
,” he clarified. “Kiki James. The interview was at three yesterday afternoon, and when I got there, it turned out Kiki had already—the photos were already online.”

Lisa frowned. “The photos of us? Online, where?”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t actually know. Any of a dozen or more tabloid sites, I’m guessing. Those guys work so fast. They shoot some pictures, and an hour later they’re up on TMZ or Perez Hilton or whatever Hollywood gossip site—”

“But we’re not in Hollywood,” Lisa pointed out. “We’re in Austin. And I’m just...nobody.”

Adam frowned. “You aren’t nobody.”

“You know what I mean. I’m not famous. There’s no reason I should ever show up on any celebrity sites.” She laughed at the sheer preposterousness of it.

“I know.” He shook his head. “I know. It’s ridiculous. But for whatever reason, they’ve picked up on me in the last few months, so I’ve got these guys following me around, photographing everything I do, and as soon as the pictures are up, people are sharing them to Instagram and Facebook, and minutes later, they’re all over the—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Lisa said, holding up her hands. “The IRS repo’ed my computer a year ago, and I don’t have a Smartphone. I’ve heard of Twittering, and I used to have a Facebook account, but I never really used it.”

“The IRS took your stuff?” Adam sounded startled.

“Yeah. Long story. My point is, I’m not really Internet-literate. So everything you’re saying is kind of...” She waved a hand above her head, to indicate that his Web-speak was beyond her.

“You called it Twittering.” Adam grinned. “That’s adorable. Do you know that?”

The way he was looking at her made her blush. “Look, just give me the lo-fi translation, okay? The Luddite version.”

“The Luddite version.” He laughed. “All right. Well, to make a long story short... Basically, the entire Internet thinks you and I are engaged to be married.”

“What?” Lisa shook her head. “I just don’t— How’d you get from point A, our lunch date, to point B, we’re engaged?”

“It’s kind of my fault.” He passed a hand over his face, scrubbing with his palm at his eyes. “And by ‘kind of,’ I mean completely.”

Lisa shook her head again, uncomprehending.

Adam stood and began pacing the room. “It was just that Kiki James was grilling me, really putting me on the spot, and she already had the photos of us—you and me—from lunch, and she’d also gotten her hands on some pictures from a couple months ago, of my stepsister and her son and me.”

“I think I saw those,” Lisa said, “in some magazine my coworker had.”

“Yeah. Then you probably saw that they wrote in the magazine that Jess, my stepsister, was my wife. Which, of course, she’s absolutely not. I mean, we grew up together.” He made a face. “And I’m not married. I mean, anymore. I was. Years ago. And Kiki James had pictures of her, too.”

“Of your wife?”

He blew out a breath. “My ex-wife,” he corrected. “Ivana.”

Something inside Lisa twisted at the name
Ivana
. Instantly, she had a mental picture of an exotic, Eastern European beauty.

“The photos she had of us must’ve been almost ten years old,” Adam was saying. “I have no idea how she got her hands on them. Well, I mean, I do. Ivana must’ve sold them to her. Or to someone, and somehow Kiki James got her hands on them.” He shook his head. “Ivana always was money hungry.”

Lisa really didn’t want to talk about Adam’s ex-wife. “I guess I still don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

“Well,” he said, “it’s just that... When Kiki James was grilling me, and she had all these photos, and she was claiming all three were pictures of my quote-unquote ‘mystery women,’ as if I have girlfriends all over the country, which I don’t—I mean, God,” he sputtered, “I should
be
so lucky—”

Lisa stood. She definitely didn’t want to hear about him yearning for multiple girlfriends. “I’m just going to—” she started, but he held up his hands.

“Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, how it sounded. And I’m trying to get to the point, I really am. It’s just hard to admit, because I screwed up.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.” He dropped his hands. “Kiki was dredging up my past and making me out to be some kind of playboy, and that interviewer back in February made me look like a complete failure at relationships—which, I guess, I am, but that doesn’t mean my matchmaking ideas aren’t solid, and I don’t want my company to suffer because I couldn’t manage to stay married to a woman who cheated on me.” He held up a finger. “More than once, if you want to get technical about it—”

“Adam,” Lisa said, and he stopped talking, and took her hand, and smiled into her eyes.

“So I lied,” he told her, simply. “I just blurted out this lie, without even meaning to. I didn’t even know I was going to say it until it was out of my mouth.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you were beautiful and intelligent and successful.” That little dimple came out as his smile deepened. “That wasn’t the lie, of course. That part was the truth. The lie was when I said you were going to be my wife.”

Suddenly, Lisa needed to sit down again. This was all just a little much. She let herself sit back down on the edge of the bed.

“And now,” Adam said, and kneeled on one knee in front of her. He took her hands in his again and held them, and looked hopefully up into her face. “Now, I want to know if you maybe, might possibly be willing to play along. To pretend it’s not a lie, for a little while. Lisa, I’m hoping you’ll pretend to be my fiancée.”

“A
dam Match asked you to fake-marry him?” Clare shrieked delightedly, and hooted at the top of her lungs.

“Hush,” Lisa hissed, glancing around. “Seriously, keep it down.” She’d called an emergency meeting with Willow and Clare at Diego’s, and now they were seated at their regular booth. It was Friday night, so the bar was crowded and noisy, as this was many people’s first stop of the evening. No one seemed to be listening in, but you never knew.

“So you’re going to be his fake fiancée,” Clare went on, warming to her jokes. “Fake-ancée. No—faux-ancée! That’s way better.”

“Clare,” Lisa pleaded, “this is serious. I don’t know what to do. I need you guys’ help.”

“Well,” Willow said, her tone measured. “Tell me again what, exactly, he asked you to do.”

Lisa sighed. “He wants me to pretend to be his fiancée for the next month. He said the website is hosting these Dream Date weekend things—that’s why he’s in town this weekend, because they’re doing one here—and he wants me to come along as the in-house massage therapist. I guess it’s these couples who win dates from Mister-Match.com, and they get to do whatever they want—all kinds of pampering and VIP treatment.”

“The couple this weekend gets to see Willie Nelson in concert,” Clare said. “Private concert.”

“How did you know that?” Lisa demanded. “Adam just told me that, earlier. But it still just says ‘To Be Announced’ on the website.”

“I have my ways,” Clare said, with an enigmatic wink.

“Willie Nelson?” Willow breathed. “I love him!”

“I know,” Lisa said. “They’re so lucky. Anyway, I guess couples’ massages will fit right into the whole pampering theme. And Adam thinks it’ll be a good cover, a good way for us to spend time together for the next few weeks, to support our fake engagement.”

“How much is he going to pay you?” Clare asked. “For the weekend gigs?”

“He told me to name my salary,” Lisa said. “So I did. I told him an amount I thought was ridiculously high.” She paused. “And he doubled it.”

“He doubled it!” Clare hooted again and slapped the tabletop.

Willow’s response was more measured. “How would these Dream Date weekends work, for you? You’re on call at Indulgence every other Saturday, you know.”

“I can shift her hours around,” Clare protested. “It’s just for a month, right?”

“He said he’ll fly me to each city—”

“First-class, right?” Clare asked.

“Well,” Lisa said, “actually, yes.” The very idea of it embarrassed her—even as it excited her.

“You are so lucky,” Clare sang to the ceiling. She pulled out her phone and started tapping at its screen.

“Yeah, right,” Lisa said flatly. After the past three years, punctuated by a crappy, emotionally damaging relationship with the Rod, a failed business, and an IRS audit that had led to financial devastation and the repossessing of everything she’d owned of value, she was about the last person in the world she would call lucky.

On the other hand, after all that spectacularly bad luck, maybe she was due for some of the good variety.

“I just don’t understand why he lied to the interviewer,” Willow was saying, “and why he wants you to play along with it.”

“I guess a different interviewer called him out a couple months ago for being a single guy who founded a dating site, and the company took a real hit. So he’s been trying ever since to build it back up again and just keep quiet about his personal life. But then these photographs of him with his sister and his nephew showed up in the tabloids—”

Clare looked up from her phone. “Wait, the woman in those pictures in
Rag
was his sister? That’s hilarious! They always say incest is best.”

“Gross!” Willow said, looking truly offended.

Lisa scowled. “Incest? What? No.”

“I’m kidding,” Clare said, rolling her eyes. “Obviously.”

“She’s actually his stepsister, not his sister. But he said they grew up together.” Lisa shook her head. “Anyway, the point is, the media keeps getting the wrong idea about him, and publishing all these photos of him with different women, and speculating about whether he’s either some kind of loser at relationships, which of course calls the legitimacy of Mister-Match.com into question, or he’s some kind of player, with women waiting for him all over the country.”

“And now you’re supposedly one of the poor dupes,” Clare said, still looking at her phone. “Since the paparazzi published shots of you with Adam, too.”

“Right,” Lisa confirmed. “So I guess he just did the first thing that came to mind during his interview yesterday, and told the woman that he’s engaged.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, that we’re engaged.”

“So, how does it all end?” Willow asked.

Lisa blinked.

“Sheesh,” Clare said. “Buzzkill.”

“I’m serious,” Willow said. “So you and Adam pretend to be engaged for a month, and you work a few Dream Date weekends with him. Travel a bit, make some money, have some fun. Then what? How does it all end?”

Lisa shifted uncomfortably. “He said we would stage a breakup in a few weeks. Call off the engagement.”

“Sweetie, are you sure you’re going to be able to handle that?” Willow asked gently. “What if you end up getting attached?”

“Oh my God,” Clare interrupted. “You’re famous!” She held out her phone for Lisa and Willow to see.

“What?” Lisa frowned and leaned in.

“Wow!” Willow gave Lisa’s shoulder a light squeeze. “That’s you! You look really pretty, too. This is so amazing!”

It was one of the shots from yesterday, of Lisa and Adam at the sushi restaurant. In the photograph, Adam was holding the door for Lisa, and she was looking up at him with goofy, syrupy adoration all over her face.

Lisa could see why the tabloids had assumed there was something going on between her and Adam Match, and why Willow was worried she might get overly attached. It was clear from the photograph that she was completely smitten with the man.

“Let me see that.” She took the phone from Clare.

“You can swipe side-to-side to see the others,” Clare said. “There are four or five more. I can’t believe this! You’re actually famous. So where’s the ring?” She pointed at Lisa’s bare hand. “If this guy is serious, I expect to see a big, fat rock on that finger before the weekend’s out.”

“Oh, stop,” Lisa protested. She was feeling more dispirited by the second. This was a ridiculous scheme Adam had set in motion, and she was caught right in the middle of it.

“Seriously, if he wants to pull this off, he needs to give you a ring. A giant one.”