Page 6 of Certified Heartthrob

She shook her head and stormed off back down the sidewalk. I found myself lingering in the doorway, watching her perfect butt as she walked away. I wondered if she was the hottest sister out of them and sending her was part of their tactic. Her sex appeal wasn’t enough to change my mind, but it was certainly enough to send me reeling.

I finally made it inside and did my best to shake off the remnants of our encounter. As I enjoyed my salmon dinner, cooked to perfection, I couldn’t stop thinking about how impressive it was that I’d had such a huge impact on their company—enough to bring Camille to my doorstep in person. I wondered if it was worth it to start trolling some other apps as well.

But targeting Heartstring had always been intentional. Other apps were developed long ago and were mostly experimental. Heartstring hadn’t been about seeing what would work. They knew it would work and be profitable when they began. And rather than ask themselves if it was ethical to prey on people’s desperation for love, they just went for it.

Yet somehow, the bigger question on my mind was...how the hell was Camille single? Sure, I had seen pictures of her before and knew she looked hot online. But damn...in person, she was a knockout through and through. And she seemed intelligent, driven, and determined. If a woman like her couldn’t find love...I was even more right in my theory than I’d originally thought. It simply must not exist.

I laughed at myself for dwelling on her so much, and still kept hearing her nagging words in my head...Wasshe just seeing someone in private? While I’d normally sit down at my computer in the evenings to schedule dates and respond to messages, that night I found myself doing more digging on Camille.

All I could find was the same info I had seen before. She’d put herself through business school to help with the launch of their company. She had a reputation for being cutthroat and was usually kept on the backburner to let her charismatic older brother, Lucas, handle the charming of clients and other partners when it was needed.

But outside of that? Nothing. No social media. No gossip or rumors. There were a bunch of honors, awards, and extracurricular activities covered in her impressive high school career. Head of the debate team and junior business league. She’d been president of a club specifically for budding career women. 4.0 GPA, graduated valedictorian. The list went on and on. Her college resume was even longer.

Her educational and professional backgrounds were beyond impressive, but there wasn’t a shred to be found on her personal life. I was more than just a little intrigued.

3

Camille

My brother, Joshua, was waiting for me in my office when I returned from Mark’s. By then it was dark outside, so I was more than a little surprised to see him.

“What are you doing here?” I scoffed. “Isn’t your usual clock-out time about noon? If you even bother showing up at all.”

“And you’re usually here grinding away well into the night,” he shot back. “So, I was just as surprised to find your office empty. I see I was right in thinking you’d be back before you called it a day. Where were you anyway?”

“What do you care?”

“Well, I got briefed by the tech team after I missed the meeting this morning, and I had a sneaking suspicion you might have been stupid enough to go see this internet troll guy.”

I threw my things down on my desk and crossed my arms. “So, what if I was? I was put in charge of handling this. Which you’d know if you’d bothered to show up this morning. I’m a grown woman. If I think meeting with this guy in person is what the situation calls for, then I think you should trust me.”

“My trust in you isn’t the problem,” he argued. “It’s this internet creep I don’t trust. Come on, Camille. Don’t play devil’s advocate with me on this. Is that where you were or not? You left Joe’s computer open with his address still on the screen. He reached out because he was worried that’s where you might have gone. He doesn’t think it’s smart either, for the record.”

“Yes,” I answered finally. “As a matter of fact, I did. This guy is costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our tech team hasn’t been able to stop him. I wanted to get a sense of who he is.”

“Who cares who he is!?” Joshua fumed. “It could have been dangerous! I know you like to pinch pennies and all, especially for the company, but it’s not worth putting your safety at risk!”

“Says the guy whose only mode of transportation is a motorcycle...and who runs off with Lucas on the weekends to jump out of airplanes and go cliff diving.”

“Rock climbing,” he scoffed. “And plenty of people do it. It’s perfectly safe with the right equipment. Anyway, don’t change the subject.”

“He’s harmless, Joshua.” I rolled my eyes. “Oddly enough, he just seems like an average guy...aside from his weird, obsessive internet trolling hobby. Which is good for us. It means we may stand a chance at reasoning with him.”

“And were you able to?” His eyebrows raised. “Reason with him?”

I kept my lips pursed defiantly. “Not yet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t.”

“You are under no circumstances to meet with him again,” he barked sternly. “The tech team already said they could block him from the app.”

“He’ll just keep making more profiles! He already has!”

“They can block his IP address.”

“And then he’ll just make a huge stink to the press and claim we’re discriminating against him!” I shouted, trying to avoid getting shrill. But it was hard not to. I really didn’t like being told what to do, especially not by my younger brother who was the wild, irresponsible one out of the four of us.

“It would be better for our image if we could convert him,” I suggested.

“Convert him?” He gaped.

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