Page 59 of Failure to Match

“I see.” And then, “What is it about my physical appearance that doesn’t appeal to you, exactly?”

Spoken well and truly like a man who was too attractive to have experienced a healthy amount of rejection in his life.

“My preferences aren’t relevant to the evaluation or the job I’m here to perform,” I said.

“Are you exclusively into women, then?”

I had to bite my cheeks to stop myself from laughing. Imagine the level of confidence you’d need to automatically zipline to that conclusion instead of just accepting that someone simply wasn’t attracted to you.

Wasconfidencethe right word?

“Again,” I said, “my preferences don’t matter. Only yours do.”

He frowned as he sipped his drink. “And what about Adrien? Does he meet your preferred list of physical attributes?”

It was my turn to frown. That was kind of unexpected.

“Adrien,” he repeated, misinterpreting my confusion. “The one Cat likes.”

“His name is Toebeans.”

“No, I definitely remember you saying it was Adrien.”

My eyes slimmed. “And I definitely remember you saying you didn’t have a sense of humor.”

“That is correct,” he said flatly. “I don’t need one. I have a lot of money.”

He almost got me with that one. I almost laughed. But I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so I swallowed it back with a large sip of golden bubbles.

I’d add it to his file later—the dry sense of humor thing. Some people were into that.

You’re into that.

Thankfully, before I could spiral into an internal argument with myself, we began to dip into a slow and smooth descent. I leaned closer to the window, trying to see where we were landing.

Another rooftop from the looks of it.

I didn’t get it. The helicopter ride had been really cool and all, but Jackson was well aware that the evaluation was on his mannerisms and behavior. With the limited amount of time allotted, he would have been better off choosing his apartment as the setting. Especially since we were just doing dinner.

I didn’t get it... until I did.

Until we took the elevator down to the twenty-sixth floor and I saw what—or ratherwho—he had planned.

I stopped dead in my tracks when the scene registered, my mouth falling open. I gaped up at Jackson with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Shut up,” I hissed as his grin grew increasingly more triumphant. “Shut.Up.”

He’d won.

Motherfucker had won the whole night, and I was way too shocked and excited to be mad about it.

16

My borderlineunhealthy obsession with the seventh season ofChef Wars Internationalstarted exactly four and a half years ago, and it was all Ria’s fault.

I’d been on day three of the godawful stomach bug that had reduced me to a useless, couch-ridden blob of vomit and cold sweat, watching Ria dick around on her phone when it happened. She clicked a video of fresh, still-squirming octopus tentacles being served raw on Yet Another Cooking Show. (Seriously, how many of them did there need to be?)

Under normal circumstances, I’d have been intrigued. But these were not normal circumstances. I was at the cruel mercy of a microscopic bug that considered raw, wiggling tentacles to be about as appetizing as moldy foot cheese.

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