Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) (25 page)

She just hoped he knew about this new development. She hoped he knew she had at least attempted to make things right.

And she really hoped Jacob had done what he’d said he would do, and that it would actually work.

“I mean,” Jeremy, the male co-host, was saying, “I’m sorry, but that other guy has absolutely nothing on Mister Match. Not one single thing. Look, I know we have his face blurred out. We have to do that to protect his privacy. But I’ve seen the un-retouched photo, and you can take it from me. No one would cheat on Adam Match with that poor guy.”

Chelsea shrugged. “I don’t know, he’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad!” Jeremy shrieked, in a comically high voice. “Can we please be honest, here?”

“Okay, okay,” Chelsea laughed, “moving on. So that was the first photo that showed up, and the story was that Adam Match’s fiancée—her name is Lisa DeLuca—the story was that she’d cheated on him. Right?”

“Hel-lo,” Lisa burst out. “Put my whole name out there, why don’t you? They care so much about Reese’s privacy, what about mine?” But Clare and Willow were both transfixed by the show, and didn’t answer.

“Right,” Jeremy confirmed. The photograph above their shoulders switched again, to a new one, of Jacob.

Lisa felt her stomach drop. The photo looked like a professional headshot, one an aspiring actor might use when auditioning for roles. It was an element Clare had zeroed in on about Jacob, and exploited—his desire not just for money, but for fame.

“Talk about pretty boy,” Jeremy was saying. “Look at those green eyes! God, I wish I could eat him up. Now, if the story had been that Mister Match’s fiancée had cheated with
this
guy—now, that I would believe.”

“Let’s try to stick to the point, here,” Chelsea said, laughing. “So all the celebrity gossip bloggers have been going wild for the past two weeks, accusing Lisa of cheating on Adam—”

“They have?” Lisa asked, mystified.

“Lisa,” Clare said, still staring up at the screen, “I can hardly tell you how glad I’ve been, during the past week or so, that you don’t have a computer or a Smartphone. And I can’t even express my happiness that you don’t have a Twitter account.”

Lisa’s eyes widened. “Has it been that bad?”

“Worse,” Clare said bluntly.

“Hush,” Willow shushed them, gently, pointing up at the screen.

“So yesterday, this guy,” Jeremy said, pointing up at the photograph of Jacob, “shows up out of the blue, claiming it’s all a big mistake.”

“Well, not a mistake,” Chelsea corrected. “I mean, can you really call it a mistake if you’re the one who spread the rumors in the first place? Like, ‘Oopsie, sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have told lies about you to the press!’”

“Too true,” Jeremy said. “Whatever you call it, apparently, Lisa DeLuca never cheated on her man in the first place. Which I could have told you. I mean, seriously, did you see that other guy? I’m telling you, no one would cheat on someone as hot as Mister Match with someone as
not
hot as that poor man.”

Lisa winced. She wished they would stop picking on Reese. His face had been blurred out, so no one knew who the man in the photograph was—except Lisa knew, and Reese himself knew. She hated to think he might be watching this show right now, seeing the hosts go on and on in their chatty, breezy style about how much he paled in comparison to Adam Match.

“So who’s the guy in the photo, the guy with Mister Match’s fiancée?” Chelsea asked.

Jeremy shrugged. “Who knows? Just some guy. You can see in the picture, they’re just having coffee. It’s not like they’re making out or anything.”

Lisa felt gratified that someone had finally noticed that fact.

“But why isn’t she wearing her engagement ring?” Chelsea was asking. “This is a recent photo, right? I mean, okay, maybe she’s not cheating on Mister Match, but who is this guy, and where’s her ring?”

“Who knows?” Jeremy shrugged. “Maybe he’s a colleague, or just a friend. Women can have male friends, you know, even after they get engaged! And Lisa DeLuca is a massage therapist.” He shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t wear rings because of her work.”

“Very perceptive,” Lisa muttered, though she hated the fact that not only was her whole name out there, now they’d announced what she did for a living, too.

“Then why did he do it?” Chelsea asked. “Mr. Green Eyes. Why did he spread the rumors? What’s the deal?”

“Apparently,” Jeremy said, winking into the camera, “good old Mr. Green Eyes, here—his name is actually Jacob, and yes, ladies, he is straight and available—” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “—apparently, he has a vendetta against Mister-Match.com, because he’s been a user on the site for three years, he’s been matched up with hundreds of women, and he’s gone on over a hundred dates, but he’s never—get this—” He paused for dramatic effect. “He has never been on a second date with any of them.”

Lisa blinked. “Oh, no.”

Clare was giggling—cackling, really.

“Oh, no, the poor guy,” Chelsea was saying. “Whatever he might have done, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. So what went wrong? I mean, is Mister-Match.com some kind of sham? Is there something wrong with the way the site matches people up? I’ve heard it’s kind of a unique system, not at all like other dating sites.”

“I’ve always heard good things about Mister-Match,” Jeremy said, “but to hear this guy tell it, the system is broken. I mean, a hundred first dates and zero second ones? That’s a really terrible average...”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Lisa said, standing up, heedless of the fact that she’d already peeled off her top and yoga pants and now stood there in her sports bra and underwear.

She hadn’t helped Adam at all. She hadn’t fixed anything, or improved the situation in any way. This was just one celebrity gossip show among many. Its hosts were probably saying the same things as every other news show host and talk show host and journalist and celebrity blogger out there—that Adam’s matchmaker methods didn’t work, and his dating site was a sham.

Chapter
29

____________________________________

O
n Friday afternoon, Adam flew to New Orleans to meet up with the next Dream Date couple.

It had been a hell of a week. He felt as if he’d been on a roller coaster ride ever since Dan’s panicked call last Sunday about the email from Jacob the idiot.

Adam had flown to New Jersey that night, where Dan lived, to hammer out a plan. Dan, of course, had wanted to go the litigation route, but Adam hadn’t been so certain. Especially not once he’d gotten Clare Fox’s call, the next evening, explaining her plan for dealing with Jacob.

He’d wished Lisa had been the one to call, but she hadn’t. And he had to admit, Clare’s idea had been inspired. It had worked—well enough, anyway. Maybe because Jacob was a decent actor, or maybe because he was actually afraid of the pile of baloney Clare had fed him—she’d texted the audio file of their confrontation to Adam, and he hadn’t been able to stop laughing in spite of himself as he’d listened to her claims that the poor schmuck might go to jail for twenty years because “the Feds owned the Internet”—either way, Jacob had played his role perfectly.

Of course, his supposed “personal vendetta” against the Mister-Match system had called its legitimacy into question once again in the press. And Dan, of course, had freaked out once again. But Adam was starting to get used to both of those things.

He was starting to realize the old saying really was true—there truly was no such thing as bad publicity. New user registrations had continued to rise steadily over the past several weeks, despite the back-and-forth in the press about Adam’s supposed love life. He was even beginning to wonder if his and Dan’s knee-jerk reactions last Valentine’s Day, back when they’d faced the very first negative press about Adam, his relationship status and the website, had been just that: a hasty and ultimately unnecessary response to a situation that would have faded away on its own, if they’d simply waited long enough.

After leaving Austin last Sunday, he’d stayed the entire week in New Jersey, except for a quick trip to Philadelphia for another talk show appearance. He’d told himself it made sense—he didn’t have anyplace else to go, after all, and he and Dan worked best when they were in the same place—but really, he’d stayed far away from Austin because of Lisa.

He still didn’t know what to think about the fact that she’d gone out with not one, but two other men since he’d met her, and at least one of them after she’d already been intimate with Adam.

More to the point, he didn’t know what to think about his own reaction to that news. He was shocked at how much it hurt. How much of a dent it had put in his trust in Lisa, and in his enthusiasm about their budding relationship.

Correction: What he’d thought was their relationship. According to her, it had all been fake from the start.

Recalling the moment she’d said that still made his stomach sink. But he wasn’t going to think about that now. The latest Mister-Match crisis had passed, and he had a job to do.

He’d called Lisa’s home number earlier, when he’d known she would be at work. He’d taken the coward’s way out, he knew, in letting her know via voicemail that it was probably better if she skipped this weekend’s New Orleans Dream Date. “Just to give everything a little more time to die down,” he’d explained lamely in his message.

The truth was, he wanted to see her more than anything. He craved it the way a man walking through the desert craved water. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. But she hadn’t contacted him all week. She’d made it clear she didn’t want to speak with him. And he couldn’t risk any more potential problems cropping up, or any distractions.

At least, that was what he was telling himself. The truth was, he just didn’t feel strong enough yet to face the simple truth that Lisa didn’t feel the same way about him as he felt about her.

And so, he would do what he did best, and throw himself into his work.

He’d decided to meet with Theo and Nina, this weekend’s Dream Date couple, this evening, to forestall any issues arising like what had happened with Orlando and Valeria. The couple’s actual date would begin tomorrow.

When they had arrived at the Congress Hotel coffee shop for a brief late-afternoon meeting, Adam had learned they were both in graduate programs at New Orleans universities, he at Loyola, she at Tulane. Academic types, Adam mused now, running through the notes he’d made about the weekend’s plans. He found himself wishing he could call Lisa and describe them to her—Theo’s stiff, choked little cough of a laugh, Nina’s oddly asymmetrical haircut and her thin little wrists, the hands of a natural-born historian. Both wore crisp, buttoned, long-sleeved clothing, though it was June and New Orleans was humid as a sauna.

“I hope you’ll just enjoy yourselves this evening,” he’d told them. “I’ll meet up with you at noon tomorrow for the start of your date.”

The couple had chosen to take a horse-and-carriage ride around the Quarter before enjoying an early dinner at one of the city’s well-known French restaurants. Their choices were a little obvious, Adam thought, even prosaic, but appealingly quaint and sweet. This date would go well, he thought—he could feel it.

A historian and a finance MBA. Now, there was a match made in heaven. If they ended up together, he imagined they might have a humdrum home life, limited in excitement by the dry subject matter of their interests and their chosen careers. But they would undoubtedly make a solid union.

“Mister Match strikes again,” he muttered under his breath as he made his way back up to his room.

If he were being perfectly honest with himself, he might admit he was getting a bit, just a very little bit, tired of the whole thing. He’d been flying out to different cities for nearly two months now, doing spots on television and radio, hosting dates for couples across the country. And, of course, putting out fires as they arose—with increasing frequency, lately.

Before Lisa had shown up in his life, he’d done it all mindlessly. He’d followed the path he’d laid out for himself with little thought. He hadn’t even noticed how lonely he’d been, until he’d met her. He’d never even thought about the lack of female companionship in his life, romantic or platonic, until Lisa had come along.

As it turned out, his contentment, his focus on his work, had all been an illusion. Knowing Lisa had opened a whole new set of needs and desires within him. Desire for a woman, full and lush and curvy, pliant and strong under his fingertips, yes—but even more than that, the need for true intimacy and companionship.

The need to blend his life with someone else’s, to take on part of someone else’s burdens while lessening his own.

He let himself into his hotel room and pocketed the key card, wondering at himself. At which point had he begun thinking of Lisa in a long-term kind of way? He couldn’t pinpoint a particular moment or experience. It seemed as if he’d felt that way about her since the very beginning.

If only she felt even a little bit the same way about him.

“S
he did
what
?”

Two hours later, Adam was scrubbing at his face and scowling as he held his cell phone to his ear and switched on the bedside lamp.

On the other end of the line, Ellen, from the Mister-Match video crew, repeated what she’d just told him. “Nina is currently on top of the piano in the bar downstairs—”

“Wait, downstairs, here? At the Congress?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “And she’s dancing with no shirt on. She is still wearing her bra, though.”

Adam rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Well, that’s good, at least.” To be awakened out of sleep to this ludicrousness was—well, it was ludicrous.

“The manager and the bartender have both been trying to get her to come down for the past ten minutes, and she just keeps dancing away from them.”

“Are you absolutely positive it’s her?”

“I am,” Ellen said, apologetically. “Adam, you sound—were you asleep, already?”

“Of course not,” he lied. Ellen was younger, still in her twenties. She would probably think he was nuts for being in bed before ten p.m. on a Friday night in New Orleans.

He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’ll be right down, all right?”

“You might want to hurry. The manager is threatening to call the cops.”

“There’s no need for that,” Adam said hurriedly. “Tell him I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

“Good thing this is The Big Easy, right?” Ellen pointed out. “This kind of thing probably happens all the time.”

“Right. See you in a sec.” He stabbed at the phone’s screen to end the call, and then fell back against the pillows and shook his head at his luck.

Seriously, was the universe against him? The Dream Date weekend hadn’t even officially begun, and he already had a Girls Gone Wild situation on his hands.

H
e didn’t get back to his hotel room until close to midnight.

He’d been busy for two hours with Nina, Theo and the hotel manager, who hadn’t considered the situation very funny, though Adam had tried to get him to see the comical side of it.

“We are hosting you and your guests,” the manager, a large-gutted man in a waistcoat, had hissed. “We will be on national TV, in magazines, because of these people, and not in the favorable light we had hoped.”

“Of course any coverage will be favorable,” Adam said smoothly. “I’ll personally make sure of it. I’ll also be perfectly happy to talk up the Congress Hotel on my future radio and television spots. I can even make a statement to the press tomorrow, if you’d like. Just say the word.”

“Please, don’t bother,” the manager had said in a cold and final tone. “You’ve done enough already.”

Man, had Adam been glad when he’d finally convinced Nina to go quietly up to her room, and Theo had agreed to make sure she didn’t dip into the mini-bar.

At least those two seemed to be getting along like a house afire. Adam still wasn’t sure why Nina had chosen to get hammered and flash her bra at the piano man, but Theo didn’t seem to mind. He actually seemed pleased that he had such a firecracker on his hands.

As long as they made it through the weekend with no more incidents, Adam thought as he let himself back into his room, they’d be all right.

He left the lights off as he moved into the room and used his cell to light the way to the bed. When he reached it, he kicked off his shoes and then fell across it, gratefully.

What he wouldn’t give to have Lisa here with him right now. To be with her the way they’d been last weekend, easy and natural, as if they were meant for each other. As if they’d been together their whole lives.

He grabbed a pillow and hugged it, and instantly found it to be a poor substitute for the woman herself. A glance at the orange light on the telephone beside the bed elicited a peculiar sense of disappointment when he saw that it was solid. No new messages. Apparently, some part of him had been hoping she would call, even though he hadn’t asked her to call back when he’d left her the voicemail.

He fell asleep lying horizontally across the bed, fully clothed, and dreamed of Lisa.

A
dam had left her a message, at the last possible minute, to tell her not to bother to come to New Orleans.

The jerk.

Lisa couldn’t stop thinking about it. She hadn’t heard from him all week, so it wasn’t as if she’d really thought she would still be attending this weekend’s Dream Date. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew Adam was probably in a pickle with his business partner, Dan, and she knew it was mostly—all right, entirely—her fault. Still, she’d held out hope, until she got home from work Friday afternoon and heard the voicemail he’d left her during the day.

“It’s probably better this way,” he’d said. He’d sounded apologetic, and Lisa had wanted to throw the phone against the wall.

“Better this way,” she grumbled, stabbing the button on her phone receiver to delete the message. Why did people always say that about situations that were so clearly all-around crappy? It was even worse than the old “It’s not you, it’s me” breakup line.

And that was the worst part of the whole thing: She wasn’t even sure whether or not she and Adam had actually broken up yet. Was she still on retainer for any upcoming weekend Dream Dates? Was she on some kind of probation? Or had they effectively staged their exit strategy for the gossip columnists? It wasn’t hard for Lisa to avoid television and the Internet. If there had been any articles about Adam all week, or more photos of her pictured with random men she was supposedly banging on the side, she hadn’t seen them.

On impulse, she crossed to the little drawer to the left of the stove, where she kept the plastic wrap and sandwich baggies. She’d tossed Adam’s engagement ring in there, after the last time she’d seen him in person, when she’d decided it was prudent to face the fact that their relationship was most likely over.

It was still in there, small and forlorn in the front corner of the drawer. It was also still pretty, and delicate, still just the kind of ring she would have wanted if their engagement had been real.

She slid it onto her finger. Why did it have to fit so perfectly?