The Matchmaker's Replacement - Rachel Van Dyken Page 0,4
I had to fight not to smile or even laugh. That would make her think I at least liked her as a friend—which I didn’t.
She was completely off-limits, meaning the minute I’d walked away from her four years ago, she’d become nothing to me—i.e., androgynous, sexless, a really ugly dude, a brother, a goat.
And girls and guys as friends? Yeah, that worked, like, never. Ergo, the goat theory. If I think of her as an animal or some sort of sexless human, I won’t fall prey to her charms and decide to be her friend and then long for more, sleep with her, ruin everything, and end up truly hating her almost as much as myself.
Vicious cycle.
I wanted no part of it.
Gabs sucked on a tip of her hair, which was a gross habit, then started pulling out sheets of paper. “Okay, so I went ahead and plugged in all of the new male applicants and cross-referenced them with the female clients already in the database. They’ve all been imported into the new program, but with your and Ian’s schedules I just don’t know how it’s going to work.”
“Cute. You say that in bed too?”
“Lex,” she growled, sliding the papers over to me. Numbers, numbers, and more numbers. They were my addiction—my drug—and I loved them. The first thing I noticed was that she hadn’t messed up the data, which meant I had no excuse to fire her from Wingmen Inc. Ian had hired her so she could pay for school. He knew she needed the money, but she was too proud to take it as a gift from either of us—not that I’d ever offer.
So instead he gave her a job.
At my company.
Okay fine, we both owned the company, but it still pissed me off. She’d completely ignored all the McDonald’s and Starbucks applications I’d left on her kitchen counter. I’d even called in a favor at Microsoft, where I’d interned over the summer, and she’d declined the offer!
Ian and I had one semester of school left.
One semester where I was cursed to put up with her shit, not only because she was Ian’s best friend but also because Ian and Blake had hooked up a few weeks earlier, and he’d been unable to keep up his schedule.
I groaned as the numbers all blurred together. Wingmen Inc. was exactly what it sounded like. A simple service Ian came up with after getting injured during his first season with the Seahawks. We, as wingmen, help girls—the good girls, not the ones who grope me in the freaking bookstore—find their happily ever afters.
We keep them from settling for complete idiots.
And in doing so help them achieve self-confidence.
I know, I know, I really do deserve a Purple Heart. Maybe that’s why my nights are filled with so much . . . ass. My soul can only handle so much goodness before I explode with glitter and butterflies, and that shit isn’t cool.
It was Ian and Blake’s idea to start accepting male clients, and as much as I wanted to say no to the workload, they were right. My major alone was filled with so many dudes who’d never even gone on a date that I knew we’d be doing society a favor.
I’d quickly altered our computer software so that we’d have a database, or dating pool, of available men and women, and then I started scheduling the most desperate cases, something my program also figured out for me.
“Lex?” Gabi snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Are you even listening?”
“No.” I pushed her hand away. “I was reading. And as much as I hate to utter these words . . .”
“I’m right?” She beamed, biting down on her lower lip.
With a grunt, I mumbled, “You’re right. Which also means we either need to hire someone else or you’re going to have to step up your game.”
“My game?” Her dark eyebrows drew together as she twirled her long dark-brown hair in her fingers. “Um, that wasn’t part of the deal.”
“The deal’s changed.” I stood, crumpled up the paper, and tossed it in the trash. “If I take on more clients, I’m going to fail my classes.” Okay, that was a lie, but I didn’t want to book my days with clients back to back only to be too tired for extracurricular activities. “So that means you’re going to have to take some of the dudes.”
“No!” Gabi jumped to her feet. “You know I can’t do that!”