Page 1 of His Perfect Woman

Prologue

Lucas

I leaned back in my office chair with a smug, contented smile, lacing my fingers together behind my head. My old buddy, investor, and advisor—Jack Landson—was due in my office any minute, and I was expecting it to be a celebratory meeting. I had a very expensive, top shelf bottle of imported bourbon just waiting to be uncorked for the occasion.

Staring across the framed mementos and photographs on the wall across from my desk, I felt proud for bringing my family this far. The past five years hadn’t been easy by any means, but it all had led to this moment when I could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Checking my watch and noting that Jack was late—which was unusual for him—I stood and walked over to admire the photograph of my siblings and me at the ribbon cutting for our new headquarters. The very building I stood in right then, still standing and thriving.

There were four of us—each born just a couple of years apart—which would have seemed like a lot had we not grown up in a sprawling mansion. Our father dabbled in a little bit of everything—investment banking, stocks, real estate, business, law...you name it. Any profession that carried a potentially large pay-out, he had a hand in it. I used to think he was a genius.

That was until he passed away from a heart attack and we quickly learned that his many endeavors were little more than a mad scramble to keep his head above water with all of his debts. He’d spend, then borrow money and try to make a quick million to pay it off, but would spend that, too, then borrow more to pay the original debt, which would land him right back where he started from. It was like a game of musical chairs with our financial security on the line. No wonder he had a heart attack so suddenly.

You can imagine our surprise when we sat down to hear the terms of our trust funds and inheritances only to find that his many lenders were seizing everything, practically leaving us penniless. Us. The Meadows family. Completely broke. We thought our mother would have a heart attack, too, right there in front of the family lawyer.

We had a lavish lifestyle and none of us knew a damn thing about working in any area outside of our father’s many realms of expertise. Unfortunately, once word got out about his poorly managed funds, no one wanted to work with us. We were blacklisted and shunned by everyone we knew.

I, along with my brother Joshua and our two sisters, Camille and Jada, buckled down and made a plan. We couldn’t accept defeat, and we couldn’t bear to flip burgers or bag groceries, just barely scraping by. No, we were accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and we decided we would do everything it took to work our way back up to it.

After many brainstorming sessions, I decided the fate of our family. There was one thing in this world that there was an endless market for: love. Every single person wants it, most would do anything to obtain it, and yet, for just as many, it felt like an impossible thing to get their hands on. I developed a formula that would fix that: a matchmaking app with a unique algorithm to bring people together who had the greatest potential of staying together. That’s how Heartstring was born.

Jack Landson had used his funds and expertise to help with the start-up, and now here we were...three years after the launch date and business was booming. Heartstring was considered to be one of the top ten dating sites and matchmaking services in the country.

We weren’t quite billionaires again...not yet. But we were well on our way, and with our big three-year anniversary coming up, I knew Jack had scheduled this meeting so we could pat ourselves on the back and plan how to market the celebration of our ongoing success.

Finally, my secretary chimed in over the intercom to say she was sending Jack in. I was surprised when I turned and saw the look on his face. He greeted me with pursed lips and a stiff nod. Not exactly the big, cocky smile I was expecting under the circumstances.

“Hey. Please, come in. Have a seat.” I returned to the chair behind my desk to face him. “Rough morning?”

“You could say that.” He cleared his throat and unbuttoned his suit jacket, adjusting his tie.

I wrinkled my brows, but let his brooding disposition roll right off my back. I had been waiting for this far too long to let his personal moodiness drag me down.

“Well, the three-year anniversary is coming up,” I began, hoping to shift his mood back to what it should have been. “We’ll need to start discussing the big party and our plan to make our customers in the digital realm feel included. But first...you know what I want to hear. What are the numbers looking like?”

“You know the numbers are good,” he answered tightly. “Profits are still rising. We’ve nearly paid off all the start-up funds. The company just keeps going up, up, and up.”

I nodded, smiling, but he seemed unmoved. Unimpressed. “Something wrong?” I finally ventured to ask.

“Yeah,” he shot back incredulously, pulling out his phone.

“What could be wrong with everything you just said?”

“Because none of that matters if something happens to bring the whole operation down.” He pressed a button on his phone, prompting a ding on my computer screen. A link he had sent. “Don’t you follow your own press?”

“I pay people to do that for me, but I skipped my morning briefing to make space for this meeting,” I explained as I scrolled through the article before me.

Bachelor playboy Lucas Meadows of the Heartstring dating app touts guaranteed formula for love, yet can’t find it for himself. Is he selling false hope to millions of customers?

“What the fuck,” I muttered under my breath as I continued reading.

“There are at least fifty more just like that one plastered all over the internet,” he huffed in frustration. “Not to mention all the social media posts from past, current, and possibly future customers. Or at least they would have been future customers if not for this. It was a bad morning to skip that briefing.”

“Surely there are other CEOs with similar businesses who aren’t married off,” I scoffed, exiting the browser window. I couldn’t stand to read anymore.

“Don’t act like you don’t know how things work, Lucas. Your father and his world should have taught you the basics, this included. People don’t like a CEO of anything who isn’t a happily married man. If you can’t keep up with a relationship or a family, even if only for appearances, then how the hell can you manage a multi-million-dollar corporation?”

I raked my hands down my face. It was something Dad had lectured me about a time or two, but I’d assumed it was an outdated standard that would be long gone by the time it could matter to me.

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