Page 49 of Failure to Match

He didn’t want to go on adatedate, he just wanted to prove me wrong and get out of the whole coaching thing. Yes. Okay. That made a lot more sense.

“The answer’s still no.”

“Why? Because you know I’m right?”

“Because the absolute last thing I want to do is go to dinner with you again.” We’d already established this.

His jaw tightened. “Tell you what, Miss Paquin. You allow me the opportunity to prove to you that I don’t need coaching, and if afterward you still believe otherwise, I’ll play as docile as you want while you torture me with unwanted advice for the next twenty-odd days. I’ll listen to whatever you say and stop arguing with you altogether.”

Huh.

Tempting.

“You really wanna skip the coaching that badly?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

He quirked a brow. “Wouldyouenjoy going on supervised dates?”

No. I imagine it would be kind of embarrassing.

I tapped my foot, considering him. “Tell me something first. Why did you agree to sign up with Charmed in the first place if you’re so against the idea of being in a relationship?”

“I didn’t agree to it.”

“What does that mean? How are you here if you didn’t agree to it?”

“Blackmail.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being serious. “Your aunt is blackmailing you?”

“That she is,” he said with another dry smile. “Very much so.”

“With what?”

“Company shares. When my father passed away last year, she became the majority shareholder.”

There it was. The golden carrot she’d been dangling in front of him.

My head tilted to one side. “Your father left his shares to your aunt?”

That didn’t add up with what I knew about him and his family. I was very much under the impression that Jackson had practically been bred to take over the company. He’d taken over as CEO well before his father passed.

“Not exactly, no.” He cocked his head. “Technically, he left them to her cat.”

Not for the first time during this interaction, my mouth popped open.

“It was to make a point,” Jackson said, answering my silent question. “Much like you, Miss Paquin, my father also found me to be… how did you put it? Ah, yes,abysmally inadequate.” He grinned, but it might as well have been a sneer. “The two of you would have gotten along splendidly. You despise me almost as much as he did.”

Well.

This was quite possibly the most awkward predicament I’d ever gotten myself into.

I cringed internally. “I didn’t… I never saidyouyourself were...” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Ignoring me, he tossed my pen onto the desk. “My original deal with Minerva was simple. All I had to do was sign up with Charmed and attend whatever blind date I was set up on, theonly caveat being that Itry. Her tarot reader claimed that I’d meet my wife through the service. One year of participation and the shares would have been mine, regardless of the outcome.” He rolled his lips, pausing. “Then you happened.”

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