Failure to Match: Chapter 13

Client’s sense of humor: no signs of improvement.

Jackson Sinclair was looking at me like he was trying his damnedest to Jedi mind murder me. You know what he wasn’t doing? Pointing to the clitoris in my very well-drawn and anatomically correct illustration.

Client’s ability to bring sexual partner to orgasm: likely needs work and⁠—

“You really should stop doing that,” I said when he snatched the pen out of my hand. “A short fuse is a red flag for a romantic partner.”

“The fact that you believe yourself to be anywhere near qualified to give anyone advice on how to conduct themselves is astounding to me.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

“Utterly astounding.”

I bristled. “Mr. Sinclair, with zero due respect, the fact that any of your previous matches willingly wanted a second date with you is utterly astounding to me. You are surly, rude, beyond arrogant, and the most unpleasant and unreasonable client I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with.”

He inched closer, giant shoulders hunching as he crowded me. “Why is it that the pot always insists on calling the kettle black?”

Little patches of anger blotted my cheeks. I bit down on my bottom lip to stop from hurling another string of highly unprofessional insults at him. What was it about this man that got me so fucking riled up? I was so annoyed it was making the inside of my skin itch.

That wasn’t normal.

His eyes lowered to where my lip was wedged tightly between my teeth, and when they eventually resurfaced, you could barely see the ring of blue ice circling his pupils.

“Go on a date with me.”

Wait.

My lip sprang free.

“What?”

“Go on a date with me,” he repeated evenly.

He couldn’t be serious.

“Absolutely fucking not.” The itch was spreading, crawling up my chest, over my throat, into my ears.

“Why not?”

There wasn’t a spot left on my body that wasn’t either blotted in patchy pink or pleading to be scratched. He was fucking with me. He had to be.

“Jamie.”

My heart skipped three full beats before it hurled into my ribs. His accent did… a not entirely unpleasant thing with my name.

“I didn’t realize we were on a first-name basis.”

“Go to dinner with me.”

I swallowed, refusing to break eye contact even though I had no idea what the fuck was going on with my insides. “More coaching advice: when someone turns you down, you shouldn’t take it as an invitation to keep asking them out.”

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I know I don’t need a dating coach, and you’re under the false impression I do. I can’t think of a better way to settle this.”

Oh.

He didn’t want to go on a date date, he just wanted to prove me wrong and get out of the whole coaching thing. Yes. Okay. That made a lot more sense.

“The answer’s still no.”

“Why? Because you know I’m right?”

“Because the absolute last thing I want to do is go to dinner with you again.” We’d already established this.

His jaw tightened. “Tell you what, Miss Paquin. You allow me the opportunity to prove to you that I don’t need coaching, and if afterward you still believe otherwise, I’ll play as docile as you want while you torture me with unwanted advice for the next twenty-odd days. I’ll listen to whatever you say and stop arguing with you altogether.”

Huh.

Tempting.

“You really wanna skip the coaching that badly?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

He quirked a brow. “Would you enjoy going on supervised dates?”

No. I imagine it would be kind of embarrassing.

I tapped my foot, considering him. “Tell me something first. Why did you agree to sign up with Charmed in the first place if you’re so against the idea of being in a relationship?”

“I didn’t agree to it.”

“What does that mean? How are you here if you didn’t agree to it?”

“Blackmail.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being serious. “Your aunt is blackmailing you?”

“That she is,” he said with another dry smile. “Very much so.”

“With what?”

“Company shares. When my father passed away last year, she became the majority shareholder.”

There it was. The golden carrot she’d been dangling in front of him.

My head tilted to one side. “Your father left his shares to your aunt?”

That didn’t add up with what I knew about him and his family. I was very much under the impression that Jackson had practically been bred to take over the company. He’d taken over as CEO well before his father passed.

“Not exactly, no.” He cocked his head. “Technically, he left them to her cat.”

Not for the first time during this interaction, my mouth popped open.

“It was to make a point,” Jackson said, answering my silent question. “Much like you, Miss Paquin, my father also found me to be… how did you put it? Ah, yes, abysmally inadequate.” He grinned, but it might as well have been a sneer. “The two of you would have gotten along splendidly. You despise me almost as much as he did.”

Well.

This was quite possibly the most awkward predicament I’d ever gotten myself into.

I cringed internally. “I didn’t… I never said you yourself were…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Ignoring me, he tossed my pen onto the desk. “My original deal with Minerva was simple. All I had to do was sign up with Charmed and attend whatever blind date I was set up on, the only caveat being that I try. Her tarot reader claimed that I’d meet my wife through the service. One year of participation and the shares would have been mine, regardless of the outcome.” He rolled his lips, pausing. “Then you happened.”

I had so many questions. “And now…”

“And now I have to get married.”

But why?

Jackson got up, straightening his tie. “Be ready by seven. I’ll take care of everything else.”

My stomach swooped. “I haven’t agreed to anything yet. I’ve got more questions⁠—”

“Which I’ll be happy to answer on our date.”

Was the AC still running? Because it was starting to feel uncomfortably warm in here.

“We’re going to need something to talk about, right?” he insisted just as I opened my mouth.

He maybe had a point there. It wasn’t like we had anything in common. The potential for painfully long stretches of awkward silences was quite high, so saving the questions was probably a good idea.

I crossed my arms as Jackson sat back down at his desk. He regarded me with a conflicting mixture of amusement and mild annoyance as he waited for another round of my objections.

“If I were to agree, where would we go?”

“To dinner.”

“Where?”

“A restaurant of my choosing.”

“You’d expect someone to go on a first date with you blind? They’re going to want to know the location ahead of time, for safety purposes if nothing else.”

“This wouldn’t be our first date,” he said. “It would be our second.”

Seriously, it was insanely warm in here all of a sudden. My knees were sweating.

“That’s a technicality,” I said.

He shrugged like that made no difference.

“At the very least, I need to know what to wear. What’s the dress code?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that either.”

What was he talking about? Had he ever met a human woman?

“This is already going terribly,” I informed him.

He rubbed a knuckle across his lips, almost like he was trying to hide an incoming smile. “Humor me, would you?” he said. “It’s one night.”

“I’ll give you one hour,” I decided. That was the amount of time he’d allocated to all his dates, so it seemed karmically fair.

His mouth twitched. “Sure. Let’s start with that. I’ll come get you at seven.”

My pulse tripped again, which was odd. There was no reason for it to be skipping any beats.

“Fine. I’m wearing jeans.”

I was half-hoping that would goad him into giving me a hint about the dress code, but it only made things worse.

“Wear whatever you want,” he said dismissively. “You’re not going to be keeping it on for very long anyway.”

And if his mouth hadn’t twitched again, indicating that he was, in fact, attempting to make a joke, I’d have noped right out of the deal and told him to go shove it.