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For some reason, that made Elise laugh and muscles he hadn’t realized were tense relaxed.
“Yeah, I do want that report. I guess we never really laid down the ground rules of how this deal was going to go. Do we need an unbiased third party to verify the results?”
A judge? Suddenly, he felt like a bug pinned to cork. “The fewer people involved in this, the better. I’ll call you afterward and we’ll go from there. How’s that?”
“Uncomplicated. I can get on board with that. Have a good time with Candy. Talk to you later.”
The line went dead for the second time and Dax immediately saved Elise’s number to his contacts. It gave him a dark little kick to have the matchmaker’s phone number when she’d been so adamantly against giving it to him.
Then he dialed Candy’s number, which Elise had included with the picture. His perverse gene wanted to find out if Candy was on the up-and-up. If Elise had hired someone to date him, he’d cry foul so fast it would make her head spin. And he’d never admit it was exactly what he’d have done.
* * *
Dax handed the valet his Audi’s key fob and strolled into the wine bar Candy had selected for their first meet. She wasn’t difficult to find—every eye in the room was on the sultry blonde perched on a bar stool.
Then every eye in the room turned to fixate on him as he moved forward to buss Candy on the cheek. “Hi. Nice place.”
They’d conversed on the phone a couple of times. She had a pleasant voice and seemed sane, so here they were.
She peered up at him out of china doll–blue eyes that were a little less electric in person than they’d been on his laptop screen. No big deal. Her sensual vibe definitely worked for his Pleasure Principle—she’d feel good, all right, and better the second time.
“You look exactly like your picture,” she said, her voice a touch breathier than it had been on the phone. “I thought you’d swiped it from a magazine and you’d turn out to be average-looking. I’m glad I was wrong.”
Dax knew what reflected back at him in the mirror; he wasn’t blind, and time had been kind to his features. It was stupid to be disappointed that she’d commented on his looks first. But why did his cheekbones have to be the first thing women noticed about him?
Most women. He could have been wearing a paper bag over his head for all the notice Elise had taken of his outward appearance. One of the first things she’d said to him was that he was lonely.
And as Candy blinked at him with a hint of coquettishness, he experienced an odd sense of what Elise meant. Until a woman ripped that curtain back and saw the man underneath the skin, it was all just going through the motions. And Dax dated women incapable of penetrating his cynical hide.
How had he just realized that?
And how dare Elise make him question his dating philosophy? If she was so smart, why hadn’t she figured out he was dating the wrong women?
Besides, he wasn’t. The women he dated were fine. Ms. Arundel was not ruining this date with her psychobabble.
He slid into the vacant bar stool next to Candy, swiveled it toward her and gave her his best, most practiced smile. It always knocked ’em dead. “You look like your picture, too. Have you ever modeled?”
Dax signaled to the bartender to bring a wine menu and tapped the Chilean red without glancing at it for more than a moment. Ordering wine was a necessary skill and he’d had plenty of opportunity to develop it. Regardless of whether this woman was his soul mate or Elise’s accomplice, she’d appreciate his taste.
She nodded. “Since I was fourteen. Regional print mostly, department stores, catalogs, that kind of thing. Celebrities took over cosmetics so I never had a chance there, but eventually all the offers stopped. My mom made me get a job with benefits when I turned twenty-five.”
It had been a throwaway question, one you asked a woman as a compliment, but she’d taken it seriously, reeking of sincerity as she’d talked. “So you’re a paralegal now?”
She wrinkled her nose and laughed. The combination was cute. Not perky cheerleader let-me-make-you-a-cupcake cute. Actually, it wasn’t so cute at all, in retrospect.
“Yes, I research legal briefs all day,” she said. “It’s not what I imagined myself doing, but it was so hard to find a job. If a woman interviewed me, I got shown the door immediately. Men were worse. You can bet they made it clear the job was mine if I agreed to ‘after hours’ work.”
Candy shuddered delicately and Dax had no problem interpreting what “after hours” meant. “Discrimination at its finest.”
