Searching for Perfect (6 page)

Darkness stole over her features, seeming to capture her inner light momentarily. “Thanks.”

He could tell she didn’t believe it. Not one word. And there was something bigger there, underneath, buried so deep he wondered if anyone had ever discovered it. Like a physics equation, she begged for a solution, and he longed to be the one to find it. Of course, that’s why he sucked with people. He had no social filter and followed no rules. He dug until he hit dirt, by which point the person was usually so pissed at him he or she stalked off. Yep. He was a real winner.

“Do you ever let go and have something that’s bad for you?”

She pulled those luscious lips back and snarled. “Why don’t we move our attention from fries and concentrate on you? Now that you have the correct skin color again, we need to practice a bit on social conversation.”

“Nothing wrong with getting to the heart of a person. It doesn’t waste time.” His damp hair kept sliding in his face, so he pulled a rubber band from his pocket protector and tied it quickly back.

“Initial trust is built from the first dialogue. You’ll ruin it by mentioning sex, bodily parts, or making judgments on childbearing age, fear of commitment, or career choice.”

He frowned. “What do I have left to talk about?”

She smiled. A tiny piece of green lettuce stood out within her incisor. Her lipstick had rubbed off from the
napkin. A vibrant intensity beat from her figure in waves. Today she wore a black lace shirt, short red skirt, and red pumps. She’d shrugged off her red jacket and he spotted an upper arm bracelet. The gold cuff reminded him of something a slave girl would wear. He glimpsed the black matching lace of her bra peeking out. He’d read a story once where the hero sucked the heroine’s nipples for an hour and made her come. Nate wondered if any of her lovers had ever treated her to such attention. Wondered if she’d be greedy, noisy, active. If she were his, he’d concentrate on wiping out every word in the English language from her mind so that she only moaned and whimpered his name.

His pants tightened to a painful degree. Down, boy. Never gonna happen in this lifetime. He had better get used to it. And stop reading those damn books.

“There are a million other topics to pick from,” she said. “We’ll practice now. Pretend we just met and decided to have dinner. What would you say to me?”

“You have a piece of lettuce stuck in your teeth.”

She blanched, and then placed her tongue over her teeth and sucked hard. “Is it gone?”

Damn, she was hot. “Yes. Gone.”

“Okay, that’s what I mean. You definitely want to let a woman know if she has something on her that could embarrass her, but you need to learn subtlety. A touch of your napkin to your mouth. A gentle smile and a tap of your finger over your teeth.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. But if I had something in my teeth or toilet paper stuck somewhere, don’t waste my time. Tell me.”

“Noted. Aren’t you going to have the last few fries?”

“No, here.” He pushed the plate across the table. “There’s only three. Live a little.”

She squirmed in her seat as if about to make the biggest decision of her life. Then palmed the three fries and began to nibble. The salt seemed to make her happy. A hazy glow of satisfaction came over her. Surrendering to her desires seemed to please her. Nate had a dozen other ways he’d like to make that look appear on her features, but he stopped himself from thinking about them—after all, she had flat-out refused to go out with him. Why would sleeping with him invoke any other response?

“Thanks,” she said, gesturing toward the fries. “Back to role-play. We just sat down and ordered. Let’s talk.”

She sucked on the fry as if intent on getting every last taste of salt from the murdered potato. Unfortunately, the distraction of her pink tongue, crooked tooth, and long, tapered fingers slammed another type of image into his brain. What was up with him? He needed to get laid fast, or he was just going to humiliate himself with her for the long term. “Umm, do you live around here?”

“Manhattan. How about you?”

“Westchester. Umm, do you have any hobbies?”

She sucked harder. “Yeah, I go to the gym three times a week. How about you?”

“I enjoy golf.”

“Oh, I’ve never played golf.”

He straightened up in his chair. “The sport is the perfect combination of skill and challenge. The swing is the key to success in the game, but it can be fine-tuned and
changed to fit the individual. Tiger Woods actually spent more than a year completely redoing his swing in order to become a different type of golfer. Imagine the rush of watching the ball sail through the air and land perfectly on the green! Exciting, right?”

She finished the fries, and twirled her straw around in her glass. “Not really.”

Nate glared. “I don’t like this conversation. Let’s just admit we’re not suited for the long term.”

“Right there!” She jumped from her seat and pointed her index finger at him. “That’s where the breakdown occurs. You, Nate Dunkle, are a selfish conversationalist!”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “What? I asked questions. She had no interest in me! She was bored by my explanation of golf.”

“And so am I. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t be the perfect match. You just don’t want to take the time and effort to dig deeper. You need to get out of your own ego and focus on her.”

Irritation coursed through him. “You make me sound like an ass. I dig. I scored high on the surveys in
Cosmo
!”

She gave a snort. “Those surveys are fixed and give no helpful information. If a woman doesn’t agree with what you say in the first five minutes, you declare her incompetent for a long-term relationship. She doesn’t like golf. Big deal. How about asking what she does like and why? Don’t you enjoy figuring things out at your job? People are the same. They’re puzzles, made up of various pieces that need analyzing and understanding. You throw them away too easily if they don’t fit your idea of what you
want in a spouse, and you’re going to regret it.” Something flickered in her eyes. A memory? Was she talking about herself?

“Fine. Reset. But this time, just be you. Don’t pretend to be someone else.”

“I don’t think—”

“I do.” He studied her for a while. Took in her high forehead, the sweep of caramel-colored hair tumbling past her shoulders. Her face was a collection of interesting angles that fascinated him. Her pupils dilated as if his stare were an actual caress, and the color darkened to a deep whiskey. “What made you get into matchmaking?”

He waited her out. Finally, she gave up and took another sip of water. “Kate and Arilyn were my two best friends in college. After graduation, we went our separate ways for a while but ended up getting drunk one night and came up with the idea to start our own matchmaking agency. Kate is the overall director, Arilyn handles the computer stuff and counseling, and I do the recruitment and social events.”

“Most drunken ideas are forgotten come morning.”

The memory sparked a smile. “Not us. We nursed our hangovers and immediately began researching.”

“Smart. It’s hard to start a small business lately. Have you been successful?”

“Yep. Our marriage stats are increasing every day, and we’re finally seeing a steady profit.”

He smiled a bit at the raw pride in her voice. She had guts. Not many dove into the deep end, let alone swam without drowning. “Why Verily?”

“We didn’t want to compete with the big agencies in Manhattan. Verily is unique enough to be small-town but cosmopolitan, and we cater to a specific demographic. Only ages twenty-five to forty.”

“Interesting. That doesn’t limit your customer base?”

“No, it was a risky move, but we wanted a certain niche. We studied that market and became known for our elite clientele.”

“Millionaires only?”

She rolled her eyes. “You too? Has everyone seen that show? No, as long as you’re happy in your chosen work and heading toward a goal, it’s acceptable. Money isn’t the target. Love is.”

Nate loved the way she lit up when speaking about Kinnections. He adored confident women. Kennedy not only loved her job but she also served a higher purpose. She believed she was making the world a better place. Cliché, maybe. Sexy as hell, definitely.

“Have you taken on a client like me before? Worked with them so closely?”

“No, you’re my first.”

She stared back at him, and a crackle of awareness lit up the air. Her hand trembled around her glass, then steadied.

The anger he felt at her response took him by surprise. He sat across from a beautiful woman who was intelligent, funny, and out of his league. The words tumbled out of his mouth.

“Why? Because you feel sorry for me?”

Kennedy flinched as the thinly veiled accusation hit her
ears. She studied Nate closely—brown eyes lit with fire, hidden behind those ridiculous glasses. A mustard stain prominently displayed on his lapel. The pocket protector with two perfectly sharpened pencils, a tiny notepad, and calculator wedged inside, screaming
The Big Bang Theory
meets
Revenge of the Nerds
. He sat in complete stillness and waited for her response.

A strange surge of emotions roared up from her gut. How odd. The way he looked at her, his gaze probing, urged her to tell the truth. She could pull a lot of stock answers from her arsenal and never let him get closer. But something had changed, and with his question demanded honesty. She struggled and tried to keep it light. “No, of course not.”

“Bullshit.” He leaned in, a touch of masculine temper giving him an edge she hadn’t glimpsed before. “Am I just your little pet project to keep you from getting bored, Kennedy? A beauty-and-the-beast makeover special? Should I be grateful you picked me, shut my mouth, and just go with the program?”

“No!” Her blood heated at the attack, and she barely managed to stay in her chair. “I can’t believe you would think so little of this whole process.”

“I’m not a process.”

“I know!”

“Stop giving me your standardized answers and tell me the truth. Why me?”

“Because I needed someone to believe in!”

His mouth opened and his eyes flared, and suddenly she felt smothered, as if he had wrapped his energy around
her and squeezed. She tried to look away and break the intensity, but he didn’t allow her, just slid his hand across the table and interweaved his fingers with hers.

“Thank you for telling me.”

His thumb pressed into her palm. Her pulse picked up, yet her body felt sluggish. She shook her head and tried to figure out her reaction, but the waitress glided by, placed the check on the table, and mercifully, he released her hand.

“I gotta go,” she said.

“Yeah, me, too. I’ll walk you out.” He put cash on the table and cut off her protest before she even opened her mouth. She allowed him to pay again, and they stepped out the side door near the parking lot.

Torrents of rain whipped in a fury, and the dark sky lit up with jagged streaks of lightning. She looked down at her high heels and held back a groan. Great. Good-bye, designer shoes. They’d be a muddy mess by the time she got to her car.

He stood with her on the edge of the sidewalk covered by the awning. “Better wait it out a bit,” he shouted over the roar of the storm. “You’ll get drenched, and we don’t have an umbrella.”

A pool of water dripped from the gutter and sprayed her in the face. She jumped back and yelped, but Nate had already pulled her closer to the door and blocked the brunt of the storm with his body. Her back pressed against the brick wall. The rain pounded the awning and she shivered from the damp. He quickly shrugged off his lab coat and tucked it around her, grabbing the sleeves in the front and
dragging her close to his chest. The deliciousness of his body warmth enveloped her, and she softened against him.

“Better?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“I can’t see a damn thing. Stupid glasses.” He slid them off and stuck them in the pocket protector. “I’m sure it’ll ease off in a minute. It’s never this strong for too long.”

“Probably.”

He didn’t smell of pine or ocean today. Instead, his natural male scent rose to her nostrils and swarmed her senses. Clean soap, rain, and a hint of some spice. Cloves? She tipped her chin up to compliment him on getting rid of the cologne, then froze.

His eyes weren’t brown, as she had originally thought, but a deep moss green, with flecks of gold. With his hair pulled back, she noted the strong lines of his face, placed together in an almost beautiful symmetry she’d overlooked before. His lips were perfectly formed, the top a bit thinner and defined, the lower one generous and lush. His mouth looked soft. She wondered what his lips would feel like over hers.

“Ken?”

Her name ripped from those lips in a husky growl. She blinked and tried to find her footing, startled by his referring to her so intimately, but not entirely sure she minded. “Yeah?”

“What about us?”

Brain alert. She tried to break the weird spell, but he slid his hands up to cup her cheeks and thunder shook the ground, and somehow his body was pressed tight against
hers. He engulfed her with a quiet, intense presence that demanded her response. As though on cue, her body lit up and begged for more. She grew damp between her thighs, and her nipples hardened to tight little points, and within those few seconds, she was completely turned on by her geek rocket scientist.

“There is no us. I’m your matchmaker.”

Her victory of sane speech was short-lived. Those thumbs stroked under her jaw and began to trace the lines of her mouth. The fascinated, intense look on his face thrilled her. Had a man ever looked at her so . . . hungrily? As if he craved to feast on her for hours without end? A shiver bumped through her.

“Eliza and Professor Higgins hooked up at the end of the movie.”

What was he talking about? Her heart beat so loudly she heard it over the raging storm. Oh,
My Fair Lady
. “You saw that movie?”

His mouth quirked. “Of course. I watched a bunch of so-called chick flicks and classic musicals to study the female mind and what she may find romantic.”