Mr. Accidental Hero: Jet City Matchmaker Series: Jeremy

  "Except I don't have one." He indicated the order counter with a sweep of his arm. "Shall we?" He stepped aside and indicated I should go ahead of him to the counter. "Have you been to Jet City Coffee before?"

  "It's one of my favorite places."

  "Good." He sounded relieved and looked a little embarrassed. "Then I don't have to tell you how good the coffee is or sell you on the velvet foam."

  "Sell me?" I shook my head. "The velvet foam is why I come here."

  He insisted I order first. I ordered a latte. He ordered a Vienna coffee, which is coffee infused with whipped cream and, in Jet City's case, topped with foam. He offered me a pastry. I declined. To his credit, he whipped out his wallet and paid before I could make a move. It was one of the rules, but I appreciated the deft way he handled it.

  We moved to the far end of the counter to wait for our coffee.

  "Have you been doing this long?" I said, genuinely curious as well as making conversation. How long had he been in the marriage market seriously seeking a wife?

  He leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, "Meeting women in coffee shops?"

  I smiled. "Exactly that, I guess. But I meant, more specifically, doing the matchmaking thing."

  "About a year."

  My eyebrows flew up to my hairline before I could stop them. "A year." I hadn't expected such a long time. My timeline for finding a spouse and getting off the dating merry-go-round was a little more aggressive.

  "Don't like the sound of that? Does it make you think I have a fatal flaw?" His tone was teasing.

  The sound of coffee grinding temporarily brought our conversation to a halt.

  I waited until the grinding stopped before replying. I gave him a seductive smile. Let the games begin. If he had a fatal flaw, I was game to discover it. He was delicious. "I'm of two minds on the why of you still being in the game. Either you're extremely picky, in which case I will have to up my game, or the competition for women in this city really is as fierce as I've heard. In which case, you will have to up yours and I have the upper hand."

  "Maybe it's a bit of both."

  The barista called out our order. We grabbed our coffees and found a two-person table in the corner between a window and the merchandise shelves. He gave me the pick of seats. I put the tempting merchandise at my back and settled in while he sat.

  I took a sip of my coffee. "I'm new to the matchmaking game. I just signed with Ashley. This is my first time out on a date. Since you're the expert, you'll have to lead."

  He laughed. "My…my pleasure."

  A stutterer? Okay, some women might consider that a deal breaker. But as hot as he was, not many, I'd guess. It didn't explain why he was still single.

  I ignored the stutter. "I was actually hoping the process was a little quicker. I've been playing the dating game too long. I'm tired of the awkward small talk of first dates." I grinned at him conspiratorially. "This really is the worst part, isn't it?"

  I wrapped my cup in my hands and leaned across the table intimately toward him. "Let's dispense with it and put the awkwardness behind us."

  He studied me. "Sounds good to me. I still can't get over that you're…you." He paused. "Can I be honest? I was chasing you up that hill. I wanted your number, and hell, I didn't even get your name."

  "A skirt-chaser, are you?" I teased.

  "When you put it that way." He laughed. "Look. Don't let my matchmaking slowness scare you off. I'm serious about finding my match. When the right woman comes along…" He cleared his throat. "Part of it's my fault. I took some time off. Until recently, I was distracted with my app launch and career. I've been accused of being a workaholic." He made the admission with a sheepish look.

  "So am I," I said with first-date enthusiasm and that happy glow of having something in common. "I like men who work hard. I understand them, and they me. What kind of app?" I took another sip of coffee. The foam really was the best in the city.

  "Y-y-you won't believe this." He took a deep breath and slowed down, as if trying to gain control of his words. "A dating app. The dating app that helped launch the matchmaking firm we're using. That helped launch Pair Us."

  "Really? You're kidding."

  He shook his head.

  "I'm impressed. I'm hard to surprise." I paused. "I've used your app! It's great. A brilliant idea."

  He beamed and told me how he and his buddies had developed it and recently sold it.

  I listened raptly, even though I knew this story. Trends, remember? I knew most of what went on in the business world in this city. But half of being attractive is listening, really listening and paying attention to the other person.

  I had another reason for my avid attention—when a person talks, they reveal a great deal about themselves. In this case, Jeremy was intelligent, very intelligent. Check and check. He was a storyteller. He was humble—I knew this because I knew the details of the app and its success, and he was definitely downplaying them. He was passionate. He was funny, joking while he talked. All highly desirable things, at least in my book.

  And yes, of course, he revealed, just by saying he developed the app, mundane, factual, résumé-type things. For example, that he was a coder, a software engineer. That prior to the app, he had been a real geek, not much of a ladies' man. The app had started as he and his buddies' way of upping their odds of finding women.

  As he talked, recognition of another sort dawned on me. I didn't know why I hadn't recognized him that way before. Maybe it was because that while I knew a lot of facts about business and people in the city, unless I had a reason, I didn't need to know what they looked like. Jeremy's picture had been in the news and on social media a lot this year. I just hadn't paid close enough attention.

  "I don't know why I didn't recognize you before. I know who you are," I blurted. "You're Jeremy Marino. I've read about you in the Seattle business news. Ashley was your advisor for the app."

  7

  Crystal

  Jeremy nodded. "The app was how I met Ashley." He cleared his throat, looking slightly embarrassed. "Well, and when my buddy Lazer hired her to be my matchmaker. The two things happened simultaneously."

  "By Lazer, you mean Lazer Grayson, the billionaire?"

  Jeremy nodded again.

  I suppressed the urge to whistle. Jeremy was indeed a very good catch. He was well connected. Had powerful friends. The sale of that app had made him and each of his friends multi-multimillionaires. I'd followed and analyzed the trend line of it from the first days it was in beta. I have eyes everywhere. In fact, my recommendation was one of the reasons the big matchmaking company he'd recently sold it to had bought it, a fact that I hadn't told Ashley. A fact I couldn't admit to now. Nondisclosure agreement.

  So Jeremy was one of Ashley's friends, one of the guys billionaire Lazer Grayson had hired her to match. I still couldn't believe it.

  "I knew that app would explode in popularity the moment I heard about it," I said, conveniently leaving out anything more specific. "The signs were all there from the very beginning."

  He looked down at his cup. "That's very kind of you to say."

  "It's not kind. It's my professional opinion. Spotting trends early on is my job." I swirled my coffee. It was getting cold, but I didn't finish it off. I was stringing it out.

  His eyes narrowed as he studied me. "You study trends?" His face lit up.

  My heart did a little flip.

  "Tell me you aren't a unicorn hunter." He sounded eager and impressed.

  "Yes, I am, as a matter of fact." I pushed my hair back from my face. "I got into it sort of by accident."

  "Really?" His eyes went wide. "I'd love to hear stories."

  I told him one or two of my better stories, the few I could lay claim to publically.

  His smile grew. "So you're a data geek, too? And yet creative and intuitive."

  I nodded. "I like to think so. I hope those are good things?"

  "Oh yeah." He was definitely interested in me now.

&n
bsp; I supposed Jeremy was used to dating beautiful women. Bonding over rolling beer kegs and fire aside, I had a lot of competition. At least he liked my mind. I had that going for me.

  "We both love data and watching the business world for ideas and trends," I said. "Ashley's good." I lifted an eyebrow.

  He shook his head and laughed. "It may be one of the reasons."

  "There are others?" He'd piqued my curiosity.

  "My friends like to call me the accidental hero." He laughed. "I have a habit of stumbling onto the scene of accidents before anyone else and rushing in to help without thinking."

  There was that humility again. My pulse perked up. It had been a laggard, lounging as if nothing interesting was going on. Now it was off to the races.

  "Ashley said she saw you throw a glass of water on a flaming drunk in a steakhouse and knew you…knew she had to introduce us."

  I stared at him a second and burst out laughing. "My friends call me the accidental heroine. I saved my first life at four. A cat's life, but still."

  His eyes lit up. "Accidental hero, meet accidental heroine."

  We laughed together and began swapping stories, speaking so fast that we talked over each other. Laughing at the other's stories. Sharing in a way that felt like we'd known each other our whole lives.

  Our stories went from past to present, getting more and more recent. I waited for him to bring up our most recent accidental act of heroism, our one mutual act.

  He finally got to it. "And then there was our team effort near the Blackberry Bakery a little over a week ago."

  I nodded. "Yes. You offered me a drink as the beer kegs bounced around us. You were fearless—"

  He grinned. "Not so much."

  I reached out and took his hand. "True confession? I was sure I recognized you from the picture Ashley showed me of you before our date. It was a big selling point for this date in the first place. I wanted to see you, the hero from the accident, again. I still can't believe I walked away from the accident before getting your contact info." I drew a circle in the air around his face with my finger. "And then we met here and you didn't seem to recognize me at first. I thought I must have been mistaken. You would have known from the picture of me that Ashley showed you. I thought maybe the beard had thrown me off and you were just a guy who looked similar."

  He shook his head. "I'm sorry I was slow on the uptake. Ashley never showed me your picture. I asked her not to. I wanted to be surprised." His grin lit his face. "I certainly was."

  I nodded, smiling. "Ashley has good instincts."

  I glanced at my watch. It was getting late. I had a lunch date. Yeah, busy schedule, full calendar. I was a woman in demand. I should have scheduled my dates better. Spaced them out. But lunch had been the only time guy number two had available this week.

  "I should go." I tried to pull my hand free of Jeremy's.

  "No. Please don't. I was looking for you. I asked everyone, even Cody from the bakery. No one knew who you were. I'm kicking myself that I didn't recognize you the second you walked in the door today. If I'd only look at your picture when Ashley offered. I'm sorry."

  I was flattered and touched that he'd been trying to find me.

  "Let me buy you another cup of coffee." He leaned toward me. "Let me buy you lunch, dinner, breakfast tomorrow."

  I almost slumped with relief. I was tempted to take him up on it. Extremely tempted. Visions of spending an entire day and night with him played in my head, along with the thought of sex. Ashley had warned me not to succumb to sex too early in the relationship. When men were looking to marry, they were willing to wait, or so she said. If this guy turned out to be a keeper, I didn't want to blow my chances with him early on. But the restraint it took was exhausting.

  I tilted my head and teased him. "You are a fast operator. You know the rules—no sex…yet."

  My statement had the desired effect. His eyes went round and dark. "Sorry. I got carried away. I just want to spend time with you."

  I glanced at my watch again. "My turn to be sorry. It's been fun. But I really do have to go." I pulled my hands free from his and scooted my chair back.

  "I'd like to go out again." He scooted his chair back, too. "When can I see you again? Dinner? Tomorrow?"

  "I can't," I said. "I have plans." I grabbed my purse.

  He looked crestfallen and eager. "You mean you have other dates? More matches."

  I shrugged. "Maybe."

  "Be honest with me," he said. "I know the way this works."

  "Don't give up so easily. Text me. Maybe I'll see you again."

  "Hey. Wait," he said. "What's your last name?"

  "You want to be on a last name basis already? That's bold of you." I grinned.

  "Definitely. I think it's time."

  "Pruitt. Crystal Pruitt."

  "You have a lovely name, Crystal Pruitt."

  * * *

  Jeremy

  Maybe?

  I sat in my chair dumbfounded. That was the both the best and the worst first date I'd had since using a matchmaker.

  I'd blown it. Like the old me, the insecure, formerly geeky me. I'd just blown the most important date in my life. I'd just fucked up the first date with my future wife. Ashley had told me this girl was special, that this woman deserved more than coffee for a first date, but I hadn't listened. I'd been too wrapped up in my dreams of a woman I met at an accident scene. How could I have known it was the same woman?

  From my stunned position at the table, I watched through the window as Crystal got into her car. I could have run after her, but something kept me in my seat. Pride? Or a sense of futility?

  As soon as Crystal's car pulled out of the lot, I got on the phone to Ashley.

  She picked up immediately, as if she'd been waiting for my call. Well, hell. She knew what time my date with Crystal was. "Jeremy? Calling me so soon? How was your date? Was I right or was I right? She's perfect for you."

  Ashley's teasing voice was reassuring and calming. And damn irritating. She knew everything. I wondered if she had Crystal on another line. She didn't mention it. But damn it, I was insecure now. A first-timer like Crystal would call to check in right after.

  "All right," I said, trying to stay reasonably calm. "You were right and I was a douche."

  "A douche?" Ashley said. "Don't be so harsh on yourself. Just because I'm a damn good pro—"

  "That's not why I'm admitting to douchery," I said. "She's the one. Crystal is the woman from the accident scene. The woman who's going to bear my children and make me a happy man for the rest of my life. Or she was the one. Until I blew it by underwhelming her with coffee. And you sent her off on another date with some guy who will probably appreciate her for what she is."

  "Hold on." There was a laugh in Ashley's voice. "You're telling me Crystal is the blonde from the accident. Wow. I am good. It all makes sense, doesn't it? Her sense of adventure. Her change of hair color. I should have put two and two together."

  "She never mentioned it to you? Never indicated I looked familiar when you showed her my picture?" I was grasping, hoping I wasn't the only one with failure-to-recognize syndrome.

  "No," Ashley said. "I'm as surprised as you are. But then, beard. That can throw a person off."

  "Fine. Play favorites. Make excuses for her," I said. "What about me?"

  "I have no sympathy for you. You know I love you, but you were cocky about not wanting to see her picture beforehand. You wanted a surprise and you got it." She chuckled. "I assume you two just realized this amazing bit of fate on your date. Did your jaw drop when she walked in and you realized who she is?"

  I silently cursed myself and mentally growled. "No. It took me a few minutes. I'm kicking myself all over town. I blew it, Ash. I mean, I really fucked up."

  Ashley drew in a breath. "Take a deep breath. I'm sure it's not as bad as you think. Give me details and we'll see what we can do."

  I told her the whole story, enumerating my many heinous dating mistakes, while she lis
tened quietly and as sympathetically as a therapist.

  "Okay. I get it. Mistakes were made, but they sound small and easy enough to overcome," Ashley said. "Crystal hasn't checked in with me yet, so I don't have her side and impressions to go off. On the positive side, she didn't totally shut you down. She left the door open with her 'maybe.' She might just be playing the game. I tell all my clients not to appear too eager. The thrill of the chase plays into the game and feeds desire. I'll talk to her and get the straight scoop when I meet with her tomorrow. Sooner if she calls. I'll plead your case and tell her you weren't on your game. I'll feel her interest out. This can be salvaged."

  Ashley was always calm and reasonable. It made her good at her job, but it didn't make me any less miserable.

  "You sent her off on another date," I said. Why pussyfoot around? "With an inferior candidate, I hope? A real loser who makes me look good by comparison."

  Ashley laughed. "In your dreams, Jeremy, my friend. You know that's not the way it works. None of my clients are inferior. My professional reputation is on the line with every date I send clients on. You also know I value my clients' privacy. I can neither deny nor confirm that Crystal is on another date."

  "Like hell you can't."

  Ashley laughed again. "But you can assume she'll be dating other men. She's a brand-new client, as I told you. Clients get lots of matches. The friendship between you and me doesn't factor in. Other than giving you first crack at her, I'm not stacking the deck in your favor. You're going to have to work for this woman. But if you win her, you'll know you deserve her."

  "When," I said. "When I win her."

  "Exactly. That's the spirit," Ashley said. "If I may offer you some advice as your matchmaker? If I were you, I'd begin planning a wonderfully romantic second date right away."

  "It's going to have to be some date to make up for stupid low commitment coffee." I slumped back in my chair.

  "And for your other obvious sin—not thinking she's quite as beautiful now that she's not a blonde."

  "I didn't say that—"

  "You didn't need to. It was pretty obvious from your attitude and the way you told the story. It had to be plain to her, too."