Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,105
once. Does that count?”
With a negligent wave of his hand, Evens boosted himself up onto a stool behind the counter and then turned the finger-flick into a gesture at the chair nearest her. “I don’t need you to sign anything. I trust you.” He waited until she sat to add, “Although seeing one star would not be a challenge to any counting systems.”
“Gotta start somewhere to be best in the universe,” she said blandly.
He chuckled. “True, true. But I didn’t say best in the universe; I said most unique.”
She angled from one butt cheek to the other on the antique chair that managed to be overstuffed and yet hard as a rock. “You’ve not really said much of anything yet,” she noted. After the seventeen-hour trip, the numbness in her ass was matched only by her fading interest in playing around. She’d had enough of that from her last boss.
Not that she’d ever get involved with a colleague ever again. She didn’t need a complex decision matrix to figure that out twice.
Evens sobered. “I didn’t want to get into the details until I was sure you were someone who could bring my vision to life.”
Her heart sank like an obsolete hard drive through mineral water gone flat. Not a visionary, noooo. They were the absolute worst. Hadn’t she left those behind in Silicon Valley? But here was one lurking in Big Sky But No Cell Towers Country. She held the cool bottle against the ache in her clenched jaw where the pain in the butt had apparently migrated. “Visions won’t hold up without the numbers to back them,” she said though only partly gritted teeth. “I’ll need actual input to build the structures you want.”
The visionary beamed at her. “Exactly why you’re here.”
“Why. Am. I. Here.” She put each word into its own query box to make it simple for him.
“To launch my universal matchmating algorithm.”
The fizzy water—which really was weirdly good for just two of the most basic atomic elements bonded together—frothed in her stomach. “You want a dating app?”
“Not at all. This is something unique, a matchmating that’s completely out of this world—”
“Stop.” She pushed to her feet. “Sorry. I’m not the right developer for a project like—”
A low voice interrupted her from behind. “Everything under control out here, Mr. Evens?”
She let out a little eep of surprise and took a sideways step. Unfortunately, the heel of her Vans snagged on the chair—the carved lion foot grabbing her like a cat’s paw snagging a mouse—and she stumbled, losing her grip on the water bottle. She steeled herself for a real pain in the ass.
But an even more steely hand gripped her upper arm, holding her in place at an acute angle. She gazed up into dark amber eyes. Dare she say a meet-cute angle…
No. No no no. She knew how rom-coms worked and they did not work on her. But wow, he didn’t even strain to hold her. He had one of those ruggedly masculine faces that wouldn’t look out of place on a movie poster and would look even better on her pillow, and there was a quirk to his wide-set mouth that made her world tilt a little more…
Oh shoot, probably she was the one who needed to get her feet underneath her.
Scrambling, she put her traitorous sneakers back on solid if scuffed linoleum. But even standing straight put her head below his chin, perfect for resting her head on his chest…
Nooooo! She had to sleep alone and aligned straight on her bed now. That was better for her stress-induced nighttime teeth-grinding.
And absolutely vital for her broken heart.
But if she was going to create a dating app, just like starting a universe with one shooting star, she’d begin with this dreamy guy.
“No problems here, Cross. Ms. Lang was telling me about her doubts regarding my proposal.”
She was not doing proposals of any sort. Especially not ones that happened in rom-coms. Most especially definitely not any of those indecent type proposals…
Apparently satisfied that she was upright and not about to sprawl at his feet (a size 12 boot, she’d guess, matte black and unbranded, which matched the unadorned black of his half-sleeved shirt and trousers that clothed his six-foot, one-eighty-ish bod—damn it, why was she cataloguing his stats?) the newcomer handed her the water bottle she’d dropped. Wow, she hadn’t even realized he’d snagged it out of mid-air before it fell.
He took a step back, his expression blanking, those big hands tucking out of sight behind him