Fathom: Intergalactic Dating Agency (Mermaids of Montana Book 3) Page 27

  The shop was even more eclectic beyond its windows. Lit by a dozen different fixtures standing, hanging, or affixed to the walls, the visual chaos made her blink again. Less easily shut out were the equally overwhelming scents of dust, mustiness, patchouli, and buttered popcorn. To her embarrassment, her stomach growled.

  Evens halted. “I should’ve offered to get you settled first: a meal, a nap, a landline…”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m good. I’d really like to hear more about the work.” No point getting settled if this was all about to go sideways. If it did… She couldn’t bear to think of slinking back to the Bay with less than nothing to show for herself. And she really didn’t want to return any of those zeroes in her bank account.

  “Can I get you a drink, at least? Sunset Falls has an excellent mineral water from local springs. You must try it.” Evens hustled behind the counter, ducked down for an instant, and returned with a clear glass bottle. He popped the cap with a soft hiss.

  Reaching for the bottle almost made her hesitate again. What was wrong with her? She’d already taken his money. Just because no one knew where she was, in a town she’d barely found on a map, with no phone service was no reason to get paranoid.

  She clutched the bottle. “Uh. Thank you.” She looked around. “So, am I designing a way to manage all these, ah, treasures? I could start with basic museum collection management, get this squared away in no time.”

  “You could?” He looked too, eyebrows rising as if surprised at the chaos. “Interesting. But no, that’s not the reason I brought you all this way.” He returned his attention to her, his dark eyes probing in a way that made her shift her grip on the bottle.

  If she needed a weapon…

  Abruptly, he said, “Tell me about your last project.”

  “I can’t. I signed an NDA.” Also, beyond signing the non-disclosure agreement, she didn’t want to even think about the last seven years. She took a long swallow from the water to wash down the swearing that tried to bubble up. “If you need me to sign something like that…” She twisted the bottle again to look at the label: Sunset Springs Mineral Water: Like a Happy Comet in Your Mouth. “This is so good—which is weird to say about water—but um, worst tagline ever? Not only are they ripping off Bob Ross, I’m pretty sure comets are just dust and frozen gas. And comets don’t even have feelings.”

  Evens tilted his head. “Do you know any comets?”

  She opened her mouth then pursed her lips. “Know any… Like, personally? No, I guess not. I saw a shooting star 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 as he settled into parade rest.

  But even set in neutral, he had the sort of face and stature that might set a vulnerable pulse racing: preternaturally symmetrical features honed to austere planes and sleek edges, enough bulk around his shoulders and thighs and, er, elsewhere to signal strength and virility, a graceful balance to his stance that promised a ready response to any call to action.

  She straightened her glasses. Good thing she wasn’t vulnerable to such primal responses. After all, she’d tripped before she’d seen him.

  Mentally, she revised her dataset. If she had been inclined to formulate a matchmaking algorithm, this guy would be an outlier, a unit of observation too far beyond the decision boundary to provide practical real-world metrics.

  Except Evens hadn’t said matchmaking, had he? He’d said…matchmating.

  Well, that might demand a different criterion.

  The bubbles in the spring water seemed to fizz out through her blood…and obviously shortcircuited her brain. She cleared her throat.
>
  "It's not doubt," she corrected. "It's disinterest. The world has enough hookup apps." When Evens opened his mouth, she added quickly, "Fine, the universe has enough hookup apps."

  The man in black, Cross, inclined his head. "She's right. She shouldn't be involved in this project."

  And right then, her contrariness—which she had to admit would definitely be coded as a potential relationship problem—kicked in. "That's not really your call though."

  "It’s my call,” Evens reminded them. “I hired you, Cross, to be the brawn, and you, Tyler, to be the brain, while I am the unifying heart." Evens linked his hands together in front of his chest with a beatific smile. “And I have a feeling this is going to be perfect.”

  Tyler rolled her eyes and inadvertently caught Cross doing the same thing.

  He really did have the most beautiful eyes, a unusual mutable brown, shifting from dark gold to hammered bronze and other metals forged in hidden fires.

  Wait, she only cared about data points, not poetry.

  Cross gave Evens a look as hard and unyielding as the antique chair cushion. "I’m here for defenses and fortifications, not feelings. So if you’re sincere about the security of this project and this place, you should listen to me."

  Tyler glowered at him over the top of her glasses. Was he questioning her ability or her integrity? While she understood the need for security around proprietary developments, Sunset Falls didn't exactly seem like a hotbed of industrial espionage. Maybe that was part of Evens' reasons for choosing the location; not having a digital connection to the outside world definitely cut down on the likelihood for those sorts of problems.

  And maybe having muscle like Cross (whyyyyy had she thought about hotbeds?!?) was extra protection.

  The memory of being perp-walked out of her own office, cut out of the success that she'd made possible, erased from the history of her own making, made her bristle. She wasn't just being contrary now. She'd grasped at the chance to recover some of what she lost over the last seven years: not just her job and work history, but her belief in herself. She wasn't going to give that up again or let anyone else tell her what she could do with her life.

  "I love feelings,” she lied through her very definitely gritted teeth. The throbbing in her jaw was going to need extra massaging tonight. As for throbbing and massaging elsewhere… Yikes, control-alt-delete, hard reboot that right out the door. “When do I start?”

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elsa Jade, author of sexy shapeshifting romances, also writes paranormal romance, urban fantasy romance, and science fiction romance as Jessa Slade and sexy contemporary romance as Jenna Dales. In all her incarnations, she believes in the transformational power of love and is thrilled to share her stories with like-minded readers.

  More from Elsa Jade

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  (Bear shifters)

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  (Sexy aliens and Earther girls!)

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  The Intergalactic Duke's Inconvenient Engagement

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  Maelstrom

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  Fathom

  Other Science Fiction Romance from Elsa Jade

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