Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
I received an email from Vantive late Monday afternoon asking for a couple of documents and inquiring how the process with Threadline was going.
I sat over the response to that last part for a good five minutes before settling on a vague reply about it going well.
You’d think I’d have some sense for the direction of the article Grant would write—positive, negative, explosive.
I had no clue.
Maybe he’d taken off yesterday to write it.
With Grant, I never knew.
Worse still was how much I wanted to know.
I had no sense for whether things were different than other times he’d done stories like this. Had he made friends with the CEOs at Taptrack? Were we actually friends, or was I reading into things?
Other similar, unwelcome thoughts followed me home from work and to the gym.
There was no question-and-answer text from Grant, and it took all my self-control not to send him one. Maybe he’d gotten too busy with his errands. Or maybe he’d learned everything he needed to know about me from the date with Tanner and the parking garage afterward.
He arrived at the office after nine the next morning, and I ignored the little flutter when I spotted him chatting with one of my engineers. Katie and Brooke really had gotten in my head.
I needed grounding. Stat. And there was one thing that always worked.
I pulled out my phone and opened my messages, scrolled all the way to the bottom, and tapped on the one from Chase.
It was silly, really. I didn’t need the physical text.
It may as well have been emblazoned on the back of my eyelids.
I could summon it as quickly as my times tables.
But seeing the black words staring at me on the white screen never failed to take me back to the moment I’d received the text and the feelings I’d felt on seeing those words.
You’re not lovable. That was the real message.
What hurt most was that things with Chase had started so well. He’d loved that I was a girl boss—a phrase I’d since come to hate—and had seemed head over heels for me.
Then he’d gotten to know me better, I guess.
“Someone die?”
“What?” My phone clattered to the floor, and I hurried to pick it up, emerging with a red face. I hoped Grant would assume it was from bending over. “No.”
Grant shut the office door behind him and shot me a quizzical look. “Why the long face?”
I put my phone aside and fixed my glasses. “This is my normal face, Grant.”
He seemed amused by that as he sat down. “I know your face by now, Vivian. You’re upset about something.” He surveyed me. “Or sad, maybe.”
I laughed. “I’m fine.”
His eyes searched my face for a second, as though he was deciding whether to push more. “Did I miss any excitement after brunch yesterday?”
You were the excitement, my head responded.
“Nope,” I replied. “Not a thing. You get all your errands done?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Of course he didn’t go into detail. Getting information out of Grant was like milking a steer.
I gathered up my things.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Lunch meeting,” I said, trying to match his information stinginess.
He watched me for a second, eyes narrowed. “You’re not sneaking in a second date, are you?”
My mouth spread into a grin as I headed for the door. “Maybe I am.” I totally wasn’t. But it was too tempting to see how he would react.
He stood.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Coming with you.”
He was calling my bluff.
But I wasn’t about to fold. “Great.” I grabbed the door handle. “Tanner will be over the moon to see you again.”
Grant had followed me to the door, but he paused. “You’re going out with Tanner again? Already?”
I propped the door open. “Is that a problem?”
“No. It’s just that, at this rate, I’ll need to carve out next weekend for the wedding.”
I patted his shoulder. “You won’t be invited.”
He clucked his tongue. “So quick to forget the people who supported you from the start.”
“I’m not sure if commandeering the first date qualifies as support.”
He smiled. After a second, his eyes grew more serious. “Are you really going out with him again?”
I hesitated. Yesterday, I’d taken the turn of events in good grace, happy enough to revel in Grant’s discomfort. But if I was being completely honest with myself, there was a part of me that felt dumb for being so easily overshadowed by Grant.
It might be nice to let him think Tanner had been into me enough to want a second date right away.
But it wasn’t the truth, and I had no doubt at all it would come back to bite me if I pretended.
“Your weekend plans are safe,” I said. “It’s a business meeting.” I walked away, hoping he had no idea how much it had cost me to admit that to him.
I hadn’t heard from Jeff or Tanner yet, and I was trying hard not to read into the silence too much. My date with Leo was set for Friday night, but I was waiting on him to give me the time and location.
The business meeting was oddly calming. With Grant not around and the focus completely on numbers and work topics, I felt more in control of myself by the time I got back to the office an hour and a half later.
I had just stepped into the office when Katie ran in behind me.
“Viv,” she said, slightly breathless. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
I set down my purse and refused to let her weird energy infect me. The number one rule as CEO was to keep calm no matter what. “Of course.” My gaze snagged on Grant, who was refilling his water bottle at our machine. His gaze was mildly curious as it met mine.
Katie led us around the corner of my office until we were tucked away.
“What’s up?” I asked.
She crossed her arms and studied me. In general, Katie was jarringly frank and unafraid of speaking her mind around people, so the pause after my question caused a flutter of panic.
“Did you run your profile against Grant’s?” she asked.
My pulse flickered. “What?”
“Did you run your profiles against each other in Matchify?” she repeated with a hint of impatience.
“No,” I said, horrified. “Of course not.”
Her frown deepened. “Did Grant do it?”
I turned my head toward my office as if I could see him through the frosted glass. Would he have done that? My pulse kicked into gear.
Had our little encounter in the parking garage made him wonder?
Then I remembered—his profile was full of fake information. It wouldn’t have made any sense for him to run it if he cared about accurate results.
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Someone ran them. I overheard some comments from my team.”
My stomach tightened. My employees were talking about Grant and me? About our compatibility numbers? The question burning a hole in my brain was What are the numbers? “Did you ask them about it?”
“No, I came straight to you. I thought about our conversation yesterday and wondered if you’d gotten curious.”
“No.” Curiosity was a mild way to frame how yesterday had affected me, but I hadn’t run the numbers. It was against company policy.
“You think Grant might’ve?”
I shook my head. “Only an employee who knows the product would be able to do that.”
Matchify wasn’t a search engine. When you pressed Matchify Me, the algorithm ran your profile against the ones currently opted in and showed you your top matches. You couldn’t just look up any person in the database and see your percentage match.
She didn’t look convinced. “Maybe he had an employee do it.” She turned away. “I’m going to ask him.”
I grabbed her by the arm like she was on her way to deploy a nuclear bomb. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Viv, don’t you want to know who did it?”
I absolutely did. “Are you even sure it happened? That whoever you heard wasn’t just…saying random stuff?”
“Why would they do that?”
She had me there. “I don’t know. Just don’t…do anything. Lemme think first.”
Katie let out a sigh. “Fine. But keep me in the loop.”
I nodded.
Grant was busy scribbling in his notebook when I stepped back into my office, and I couldn’t help giving him a bit of side-eye.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he’d run the numbers as part of his investigation or something? He could’ve asked someone to help him do it. That smile of his was way too powerful.
He glanced up at me. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said less convincingly than I’d hoped.
“You’re a bad liar, you know.”
“It’s not a lie,” I defended.
“But it’s not the truth, either, is it?”
I sat down at my desk and looked at him.
He met my gaze questioningly.
Could he have run our profiles for research purposes? I’d been so adamant to Katie that he couldn’t have, but Grant was an enigma. He was always surprising me, so why not with this? Maybe it was part of his research for his article. “Did you ask someone to run our profiles?”
His brows bunched together. “What?”
“Somebody ran our Matchify profiles. I wondered if you’d had someone do it for some reason.”
“What do you mean they ran them?”
Ugh. This was more awkward than I’d thought. “I mean somebody ran your profile against mine in Matchify to get our compatibility score.” That stupid heat was creeping up my neck again.
His gaze grew curious. “What was our score?”
“Grant!”
He lifted his shoulders. “What? It’s a natural follow-up question.”
It was the one pestering me too. “It’s beside the point. If I didn’t run it and you didn’t have someone run it, who did?”
He frowned, but he didn’t look overly concerned. “I don’t know. Who has access?”
“Just Matchify employees. Or a hacker.”
The side of Grant’s mouth slid upward. “You think a bad actor accessed Matchify’s system, promptly ignored the treasure trove of personal data at their fingertips, and ran your profile against mine to see our score?”
I shot him a flat look. “You asked who would have access; I answered.”
“Can’t you check who did it?” he asked. “There are logs for that, right? Or are you trying to solve this mystery the old-fashioned way?”
Of course I could check. I guess I was just scared to do it. Someone had done this, and I wasn’t sure why, but all the possible answers that flitted through my mind were uncomfortable ones.
I got up, and Grant did too, slipping his pencil through the wire binding of his notebook.
“I’m not going on a second date, Grant,” I said.
“You’re going to find out who ran our profiles, right?”
I nodded.
“Then I’m coming.”
I hesitated, but it was his data too. He had a right to know.
I could only imagine how this would feature in his article, but I couldn’t think about that right now.
I had no control over it, and Grant would write what Grant wanted to write.
If he needed fodder to rip Matchify apart, he’d manage to find it.
“So,” he said, walking at a brisk pace to keep up with me, “they ran our profiles and got our score. What else would they have seen?”
“Nothing, I hope,” I responded. “If you want more information than what’s on someone’s public profile, you have to send the person a request, and they have to accept it. Jackie!”
She was leaning over one of the other developers, their eyes on a computer screen, but her head whipped around.
I motioned her over.
During the minute it took to explain the situation, her brows drew close and the grey glimmer of injustice lit her eyes. She took the security of the system she’d built seriously.
“On it,” she said in a clipped voice.
Grant and I followed her to her chair, and chaotic keystrokes ensued.
Grant’s brows shot up, and he looked over at me.
I smiled like I was single-handedly responsible for Jackie’s genius.
Her fingers stopped suddenly, and she stared at the screen for a second.
Grant and I did too, but we might as well have been looking at the blueprints for the next spaceship.
“What is it?” My heart fluttered with impatience.
She turned her head, looked at me for a second as though she was still processing, then said in an under-voice, “It was Alex.”
I blinked.
“Who’s Alex?” Grant asked.
“Katie’s intern,” I said blankly.
Alex had only been with Matchify a few weeks now, but every employee and intern was heavily educated on what was and was not allowed when it came to user data.
I searched the room for him. He was two rows in front of us, so all I could see was the back of his head.
“There’s no way it was an accident, right?” Grant asked. “Slip of the mouse or something?”
Jackie shook her head. “He knew he was doing something wrong. He tried to cover his tracks—really amateur attempt, but an attempt all the same. He also ran the full matchup sequence on your profiles, not just the score.”
I forced my breath to come evenly as I stared at his curly brown hair. “But why?” What had made him interested enough in Grant and me to do something like that?
Jackie shrugged. “Katie mentioned he’s a whiz at his job, but he’s also super social.
I see him laughing a lot with the other employees.
Seems kind of off-task a lot of the time.
I think he’s been trying pretty hard to fit in with some of the more seasoned employees.
Maybe he thought this would be a cool flex?
” She looked at her screen again, and the frown deepened.
If I knew Jackie—and I did—she’d take this as a personal offense.
She wasn’t alone.
I felt violated.
Grant didn’t look terribly troubled, but then again, why would he? His information hadn’t even been real.
But it wasn’t only that making me angry. Alex had handed Grant a bad angle on a silver platter—and after I’d assured Grant about our data security.
Jackie looked at me for a second and grimaced. “You’ve got to fire him, Viv.”
I let out a sigh. “I know.”