Page 30 of The Match Faker

That would give me time to plan things carefully. I could prepare a questionnaire that he could complete and I’d do the same.

‘Whatever. At least by that point it’ll be about a month since I’d been seen out with a woman, which will be good for my rep.’

‘Fine. Then after that date, we can start revising, so you’re prepared for the interview.’

‘Revising?’ He grimaced.

‘We need to know everything about each other. In case they ask in the interview. And we’ll need to agree on a story of how we met.’

‘That’s easy. You kissed my arse,’ he laughed.

‘I did not! I always hated the way you told that story.’

‘But it’s true!’

‘Is not! I think what you meant to say was that I had the unfortunate task of playing the back end of a donkey in a school play when we were seven and you were at the front and our coordination wasn’t always great, so my mouth may have accidentally skimmed your bum once!’

‘It was more than once.’ He grinned.

The teacher said we should practise and when we discovered we lived on the same street, we started hanging out after school. Then after the play, whenever his parents were working late, Liam used to stay at my house and we became good friends all the way up until we were sixteen, which was when we started drifting apart. Then a year later, he upped and left.

‘Whatever. Anyway, I didn’t mean how we met as kids, I meant how we met like now. Recently. Like, how did we start dating?’

‘Unless you’ve had a personality transplant since I last saw you, you’re a shitty liar. So we should just stick to the facts: we bumped into each other backstage at a play and sparks flew.’

‘The meeting backstage thing is true, but the sparks thing isn’t,’ I clarified.

‘I’m hurt!’ He clutched his chest and smiled. It was annoying when he did that. It showed his dimples and they weren’t horrible.

‘Let me guess: you’d prefer me to make up some bull about me realising the reason I went off the rails in LA was because I was missing someone to love. So I flew to London, decided to use a matchmaking agency called Soulmate Connections. I had a match that was ninety-nine point nine per cent compatible and when I went to meet the lucky lady, I discovered it was you: the girl I’d loved and lost when I was seventeen…’

‘That’s actually not a bad idea…’ I went off into my own little world.

If people heard that someone as high-profile as Liam found a match using my company, sign-ups would rocket. And there’d be the added bonus of showing that I was good at my job.

Plus, that story was so romantic. People would lap it up. Especially my family. No idea why, but my parents had always had a soft spot for Liam.

‘It’s a terrible idea!’ Liam shook his head. ‘Too many opportunities for mistakes. That kind of shit would end up getting us in trouble.’

‘Yeah.’ Annoyingly, he was right. And as cool as it sounded, it was unethical to date clients.

‘Like I said, stick to the facts: we met backstage, got talking about old times, and the rest is history.’

‘Sounds kind of boring, though.’ I knew it was better to stick to the truth, but I couldn’t help but feel like if I was going to go through all this, the story should be a bit more romantic. Something to make the judges swoon.

‘KISS,’ Liam said.

‘What?’ My jaw dropped. ‘No! I will not kiss you!’

‘You really haven’t changed.’ Liam laughed. ‘I wasn’t asking for a kiss. I said KISS as in the acronym for keep it simple, stupid.’

Oh.

‘Anyway, how did you know the name of my company?’

‘Google.’

‘You googled me?’ My jaw dropped.

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