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“The women who go through my makeover program stay here, yes.” Elise flopped on the sofa, clearly unconcerned about appearing graceful.
She had no pretense. It was almost as if she didn’t care whether he found her attractive. She wasn’t even wearing lipstick. The only time he’d ever seen a woman without lipstick was after he’d kissed it off. Women of his acquaintance always put their best face forward.
But Elise hadn’t invited him in for any sort of behind-closed-doors activities. She wanted the lowdown on his date with another woman. This was like sailing through uncharted waters during a hurricane.
Slightly off stride, he sank into the plush armchair near the couch.
“Tell me what happened with Candy,” she instructed without preamble. “Every last detail. I have to know precisely what didn’t work, if anything did work, more abou—”
“Whoa. Why do you have to know all that?” That bug-on-cork feeling was back and on a Friday night in the company of an interesting woman, no variation of this conversation sounded like it would lead to the kind of fun he’d rather be having.
Her stare was nothing short of withering. “So I can get it right the second time.”
“What second time?”
“I promised to match you with the love of your life. Admittedly, I like to get it right the first time, but I’m okay with one mistake. Two is unacceptable. So I need details.”
Another date? He almost groaned. Somehow he’d thought they could let that lie, at least for a blessed hour or two. The wager was over. She’d lost. Didn’t she realize that?
“Elise...”
She gazed across the coffee table separating them, and he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t denounce her as a fraud, couldn’t tell her flat out that she wasn’t the fairy godmother she seemed to think she was, couldn’t stand the thought of hurting her feelings again.
Then there was the whole problem of this strange draw he felt every time he thought about Elise. Without this mission of hers to match him with his mythical soul mate, he’d have no excuse to see her again, and the thought made him twitchy.
She held up her hand in protest. “I know what you’re going to say. You don’t kiss and tell. I’m not asking you to.”
“I didn’t kiss Candy. And that wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“You didn’t kiss her?” Elise looked a little shocked. “Why not?”
“Because I didn’t like her. I only kiss women I like.”
“But the other day at the bistro, you almost kissed me. I know you were about to. Don’t bother to deny it.”
As Dax did actually know the value of silence on occasion, he crossed his arms and waited until all the columns in her head added up. A blush rose on her cheeks. Really, he shouldn’t enjoy that so much.
And he probably shouldn’t have admitted he liked her. Not even to himself, but definitely not to her. Too late now.
“Stop being ridiculous,” she said. “All this talk about how I’m sexy because I wrote a computer program and trying to throw me off balance with cryptic comments designed to make me believe you like me—it’s not going to work.”
She thought he was lying. Better yet, she thought he’d told her those things for nefarious purposes, as a way to manipulate her, and she wanted to be clear there was no chance of her falling for it. If he hadn’t liked her already, that alone would have clinched it, and hell if he knew why.
Thoroughly intrigued, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What exactly am I working here?”
“The same thing you’ve been working since moment one. Distraction. If I’m all flustered and thinking about you kissing me, I’ll mess up and match you with the wrong woman. Then I lose. It’s brilliant, actually.”
And instantly, he hit his stride. The wager, the full report he’d come to deliver, soul mates and matches—all of it got shoved to the back burner in favor of the gem buried in Elise’s statement.
He zeroed right in on the kicker. “You’re thinking about kissing me?”
* * *
Kissing Dax was, in fact, all Elise had been thinking about.
Did they make human muzzles? Because she needed one. “I said you were trying to get me to think about it. So I’d be distracted. It doesn’t work.”
Because she didn’t need to think about kissing him to be distracted. That had happened the moment she’d opened the door to all that solid masculinity encased in a well-cut body. She didn’t know for sure that he still had the washboard abs. But it was a safe bet. And it was easy to fantasize about when she already had a handy image emblazoned across her mind’s eye of him half-naked.
