Page 43 of Certified Heartthrob

“It’s beautiful out here today,” she said, taking in a deep breath of the spring air.

“You’re beautiful today. And every day,” I shot back, squeezing her hand.

She followed me onto the gazebo’s platform and walked over to the edge to look out across the field where people were exercising and playing with their dogs. But I hung back a few steps, then cleared my throat to get her attention.

She spun around, wide-eyed when she saw me kneeling there in front of her, offering up the black velvet box I had acquired weeks ago...just waiting for the perfect moment to surprise her.

“What are you doing?” she gasped in shock.

“I’m giving those gossip columnists something better to talk about,” I quipped. “Camille Meadows...when I first started terrorizing the Heartstring app, I never expected it to bring me true love. But then you showed up on my doorstep and nothing has been the same since. I had given up, and then you brought me back to life. And now that I have this big hopeful life full of love stretching out in front of me, I know more than ever that I need you by my side for the rest of it. So...what do you say? Will you marry me?”

Her hands flew up to her face as her eyes teared up with happiness. “Yes!” she shrieked. “Of course I will! I thought you’d never ask!”

“It’s barely been a year since we met,” I scoffed, and then chuckled as she threw her arms around me.

“And that was long enough,” she cooed, brushing her lips against mine.

I dipped her back into a deeper kiss, ignoring the people passing by who had stopped to stare at my proposal, some of them even taking videos with their phones. That should take the heat off of Joshua for a moment at least.

But neither of us cared about any of that anymore, not as long as we had each other. When the company’s PR consultant Victoria got her hands on us in the coming weeks, she gave our story a promotional tagline:They may not have expected Heartstring to find them true love, but that’s exactly what they got.

It couldn’t have been more true. We were two cynics turned romantics, but only for each other. No one else could have ever persuaded me to think twice about my opinions on love, but she had shown me how wrong I was. She was exactly the right woman for me.

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His Perfect Woman Sneak Peak

Heartstring Dating Agency Series

1

Lucas

Ileaned 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.

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