Page 3 of Perfect (mis)Match

“Good morning, Vincent,” she said as she fell in step beside me. “The R&D team is waiting for you in the main conference room. I have a few revisions to your schedule today I’d like to go over, the most important being?—”

My phone rang, and I grabbed it out of my pocket, holding up a finger to Linda.

“Gimme two minutes,” I muttered as I stepped into an empty conference room to take the call. “Please,” I added as I shut the door.

During an internal review, a few of my employees had been brave enough to say—anonymously, of course—that I can be “abrupt.” Yeah, that was my approach to life since time is money, but if I wanted to retain my staff, I had to at least try to play nice. So I was working on that…when I remembered.

The phone call was from Paul, my college roommate and another one of the “Lost Boys” Nana Dee had adopted.

I skipped the pleasantries. “Did you get the text from Trent?”

“Hi to you too,” Paul laughed. “I did. Such great news. Now we’ll have another reason to toast tonight, even if she can’t be with us.”

I paused, trying to remember what he was talking about.

“Please tell me you didn’t forget about my engagement party.”

Fuck. Yeah, it’d slipped my mind, but I wasn’t about to let on. “Of course not. I’ve got way too much on my plate at the moment. Someone hit my new car just now.”

“The McLaren?”

I half smiled—I purchased cars like other people bought gallons of milk. “No, the Bugatti.”

“D’oh! That’s brand-brand new.”

“Exactly, like as of yesterday,” I sighed as the shitty driver’s stunning face resurfaced in my mind.

My tastes usually leaned toward glamazon, but something about the petite beauty took my breath away. The combination of her bright blonde hair, dark eyes and freckles was downright adorable. And when she’d turned away to look at her damaged car, I’d stolen a few seconds to check out the rest of her. Adorable with a body that was sexy asfuck. A lethal combination.

“Well, throw some money at the damage, make the problem disappear, and you’ll be good to go,” Paul laughed.

“I wish that was the only problem on my plate. I still can’t find enough heliotrope forEvermore.”

Our new fragrance was my passion project, and my attempt to do something no other perfumer had achieved—distilling heliotrope into an oil I could infuse inEvermore, the final fragrance in our Trio of Time collection. The two prior fragrances,ThenandNow, had set new company records, and our customers were clamoring for the final fragrance in the set. AndEvermorewas going to be special: I wasn’t satisfied using a lab-created version of heliotrope like the rest of the fragrance world. I wanted the real thing.

But first, I needed a source for it. A blossom blight across the country had led to a shortage, so finding enough was nearly impossible. Thanks to the cover story in theNew York TimesMagazine, I’d already publicly committed to being the first perfumer to distill heliotrope, and I was confident our chemists could do it. I just needed to find enough of the damn plant first.

“Well, the rest of the guys are coming…Maybe you can drink your troubles away tonight,” Paul said. “You bringing Maya?”

I could hear reluctance in his voice. I knew he wasn’t a fan of my supermodel girlfriend. Neither was I, anymore—which was why she was now myex-girlfriend. “We broke up a while back. I thought I told you that?”

“My dude, we haven’t had a real conversation in ages.”

“Hey, don’t blame me, you’re all wrapped up in wedding planning,” I grumbled.

“True, true.” Paul sighed. “It’s…alot.”

“Well, tonight I hope we can all focus on being happy for you and Chloe.”

I could fake it for the night. Pretend life was good and that I believed true love was real.

Even though I knew better.

The call wrapped up not long after that, and Linda was still waiting for me when I left the conference room. She walked me through what amounted to a punishing schedule.

“I need two more things, Linda,” I said as we paused outside my first meeting of the day. “First, call Adrienne at Bastille Flowers and order the Grande Soleil arrangement for Nana Dee. Pinks, creams, and peaches only. She’s at Northpoint Hospital.”

She nodded but refrained from asking questions.

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