AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He rolled from the bed and scouted around until he found his pants, and then jerked them on, but stood staring at the wall, fists clenched until he thought he could speak rationally.
“Why tell me now? Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?”
The wager. She’d been trying to win and altered the results in order to do so. It was the only explanation. That’s why she’d asked if she’d won earlier. Rage boiled up again, clouding his vision.
“It wasn’t a secret,” she said defensively. “I thought you’d laugh and make some smarmy joke about how I couldn’t possibly resist you. Plus, I wanted you to have a shot at finding your real soul mate.”
“Who isn’t you.”
She couldn’t be. His real soul mate wouldn’t have let him believe all this time that he was the problem. That he was the broken one and that’s why Elise’s algorithm couldn’t find his perfect match.
He’d trusted her. In vain, apparently.
If she’d just told him the truth, everything might be different. But she’d stolen that chance and thoroughly destroyed his fledgling belief in the possibility of happily ever after.
“I am,” she corrected softly. “My match process just realized it before I did.”
“Pardon me for questioning the results when it seems your process is a little, shall we say, subjective. In fact, I’d say this whole wager was slanted from the beginning. So save the sales pitch, babe.”
Oh, he’d been so blind. From the very first moment, all she’d cared about was proving to everyone that she could change his mind about relationships. She didn’t want true love, or at least not with him. It had all been an act to gain the upper hand. If Dax had one talent, it was recognizing a good show when he saw one.
“Slanted? What are you talking about?”
“Admit it. This was all an attempt to bring me to my knees, wasn’t it? You planned for it to happen this way.” He shook his head and laughed contemptuously. “You’re far, far better at this than I ever dreamed. To think I almost fell for it.”
She’d dug into his psyche with no other intent than to uncover his deepest longings and use them against him. It was unforgivable.
The only bright spot in this nightmare was that he no longer had to worry about how to push her away or whether he’d eventually walk out the door. She’d destroyed their relationship all on her own.
Thankfully, he’d found out the truth before it was too late.
His mistake had been starting to trust her, even a little.
* * *
“Fell for what? Dax, you’re not making any sense.”
Pulse hammering, Elise sorted through the conversation to figure out where this had gotten so mixed up. What had she missed? Up until now, she’d always been able to sort his fact from fiction, especially when he tried to throw up smoke screens, but that ability had disappeared long about midnight yesterday.
She was losing him, losing all the ground she’d gained—or imagined she’d gained. Clearly, he’d done some kind of about-face but apparently not in her direction. That couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be this close to getting a man like Dax for her own and not figure out how to get her happily ever after.
He shook his head and laughed again without any humor. “All this time I thought you were looking for a relationship and I wasn’t. You sat right there on that park bench and told me exactly what you wanted. I ignored it.” He crossed the room and poked a rigid finger in her face. “‘I want to beat you at your own game,’ you said. And you know what, you almost did.”
She flinched automatically. Oh, God. She had said that. But the way he’d twisted it around...unbelievable. As if she’d cold-bloodedly planned this to hurt him, playing dirty, fast and loose.
“Listen, this wasn’t the game I was trying to win.”
Except she’d been pretty focused on winning. From the beginning. Maybe she’d been more compromised than she’d assumed. She’d developed feelings for him without really understanding how to love him.
Maybe she didn’t really understand male/female dynamics unless they were other people’s.
“What game were you trying to win, then? Why is this a game at all?” A dangerous glint in his eye warned her to let him finish before she leaped on the defensive again. “Tread carefully, Elise. You clearly have no idea what you’re playing around with here.”
“This isn’t a game,” she cried. “When my name came up as your match, I wanted it to be true. I wanted you for myself and I thought those feelings compromised my integrity.”
