Page 69 of Failure to Match

I shrugged, a little distracted by all the strange sensations swirling in my chest as he picked out another little shard, carefully placing it on the coffee table to his right.

“You need to wait until tomorrow for the evaluation results.” I fiddled with my skirt as Jackson continued to delicately remove the glass from my loose updo. “How did you think it went?”

I wasn’t asking forme, obviously. It didn’t matter what he thought of me as a date. But he was a client, and client feedback was, um, important.

Ah, yes, because you’ve been soooo professional during this whole Immersive process. And you’ve tried soooo hard to listen to his feedback.

I had to stop myself from visibly cringing. There was a slight chance some of my behavior was starting to catch up with me.

Jackson’s gaze snagged on mine, his mouth twisting into a wry smirk. “Like I said, I miscalculated.”

“I really don’t know what that means.”

His lips—okay, you know what, I really needed to stop paying so much attention to his mouth before it made things weird.

“It means, Miss Paquin, that I’m not exactly accustomed to competing for my date’s attention.” Another small piece of the shattered mirror was discarded onto the table. “It didn’t even occur to me that you may be more interested in conversing with Damien than me. Not until we got there, at least.”

“His name is Daniel.” My throat was starting to dry up.

Another twitch of his lips. I was looking at them a lot. It was super inappropriate.

“Right.”

His fingers found one of the pins holding my updo in place, lingered there for a moment, then pulled. A small batch of my curls tumbled free, falling over my shoulder. I watched his gaze trace them, his hand frozen in the air.

I shifted on the couch, feeling oddly warm. “If you’re unhappy with the level of engagement we had during the evaluation, I’ll take that into consideration.”

Not that I needed to. He’d definitely passed.

“Or…” Another section of my hair fell loose, and I swear his pupils briefly flared. “We could try it again.”

I blinked. “You want to do another evaluation?”

Again with the mouth twitch. “A third date, yes.”

My pulse kicked.Evaluationwas the more correct term; he didn’t need to keep sayingdate.

They weren’t dates. Charmed had a very strict, zero-tolerance policy againstdateswith clients. It was a huge conflict of interest.

“Something a little more intimate this time,” Jackson went on. “So we can actually talk. That way, you’ll have even more accurate data to work with.”

The last pin was discarded. All of my hair tumbled free.

His lips parted, his eyelids lowering ever-so-slightly. I reached up self-consciously, wanting to soothe and fluff them into proper shape, but he grabbed a hold of my wrist before I could touch even a strand. His grip wasn’t hard or rough, but it was definitely... authoritative.

“Let me get all the glass out first. I don’t want you cutting yourself.”

“Since when do you care if I’m hurt?”

He could probably feel my pulse thundering through my wrist. Maybe that’s why he was frowning.

“I’m an asshole, not a monster.” He said it softly, no venom in his tone. Then he placed my hand on my lap and returned his attention to the task at hand.

Jackson Sinclair was tenderly running his fingers through my hair so I wouldn’t cut myself on broken glass. What was going on? The date was over. There was no need for him to keep up the act.

“Jamie.” My eyes accidentally darted down to his lips again. “Have a drink with me tomorrow night. After work.”

The oxygen levels in this room had reduced significantly since we’d walked in.

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