Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
“Don’t do it, Viv.”
I yanked my gaze from Grant and Jenna, who were chatting at the front desk, and found Katie watching me with wary amusement.
I grabbed my copies from the copy machine. “Do what?” I asked and headed for my office.
Katie walked with me. “You look like you have it out for Jenna, and I need to remind you how hard it was to find a receptionist.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I love Jenna.”
“Loved her—past tense—until she started flirting with Grant five minutes ago.”
I pushed open the door of my office. “Do you have some work you’d like to discuss, Katie? Or do I need to assign you a new project?” I shuffled through a stack of papers.
She sat on the edge of my desk. “Viv.”
I looked up questioningly.
She tilted her head to the side. “Talk to me.”
I pressed my lips together. Talking about the things I’d been feeling over the weekend was the last thing I wanted to do.
There had been no question-and-answer texts from Grant on Saturday or Sunday, which meant that my mind had gone to the only logical place: Grant and Jill had hit it off, were spending every second together, and were probably considering eloping.
As a perfect counter to that scenario, my Matchify inbox was as lively as a funeral.
Leo had been removed from Matchify, but neither Tanner nor Jeff had reached out to me since our dates.
The conclusions I had jumped to about Grant and Jill might’ve been extreme, but even a conservative interpretation of my Matchify inbox wasn’t a flattering one.
“You need to talk,” Katie pressed me, her voice more earnest than usual.
“What’s there to say?” I said, buckling under her sincerity.
“It depends how deep in denial you are, I guess.”
I shot her a flat look, but she was spot on. I was in the Mariana Trench of denial, swimming around with my fellow, weird anglerfish.
“I saw you bring him in here, Viv.” Katie nodded at Cam Carter, whom I had indeed invited to rejoin me in my office. “You hate Cam.”
“I don’t hate Cam,” I argued. I’d brought him back because, even though he was made of 100% recyclable material, I didn’t want to be alone with Grant.
“You fell for him.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. And she wasn’t talking about Cam.
Hearing her say it aloud was like nails on a chalkboard.
“I’ve been watching it happen, you know,” she continued, dragging Kourtney Kardashian-length nails down the chalkboard.
“Heck, I’ve encouraged it—mostly because I think you need to get back in the dating game.
But I didn’t realize how serious it was until that punk Alex ran your profiles and you saw the 12%. ”
My jaw slipped open. Did everyone know our actual compatibility percentage? “How do you know the percenta—you know what? Nevermind. I don’t even want to know. What does it have to do with anything?”
“Everything. You take pride in running your life on robust statistical models, Viv. Those models told you that you can’t have Grant. Boom”—she snapped—“instant fixation. Classic forbidden fruit problem.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“The good news,” she continued, “is that fruit goes bad. You just have to give it time.”
My mind conjured an image of Jenna biting into a juicy peach, a lustful pout on her full, red lips. “Can’t I just chuck it at Grant’s face?”
Katie grinned. “I like your style. But no. Grant is the fruit in my metaphor. Speaking of which, shouldn’t he be wrapping up here soon? How in-depth is this article he’s writing?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I put a four-date cap on things, which seemed reasonable at the time, but I’ve only done three, and I already want to crawl in a hole.”
Katie grimaced sympathetically. “Dating is hard enough without an audience—especially one as attractive as Grant.”
“Not helpful.”
She lifted her shoulders. “I’m just being honest. The man is a fox.
And I know you can handle hearing that from me.
You know why? Because you’re a professional, Vivian.
You built this company out of sheer gray matter.
You’re not about to let some attractive, hotshot, foxy journalist destabilize you or Matchify. Right?”
“Of course not.” I tried not to fixate on her unnecessarily generous description of Grant.
She was absolutely right, though. I’d worked for years to get to this point with Matchify. I’d given my blood, sweat, and tears to this company. Not just to the company. To the idea behind it: data-driven matches.
I stood behind that idea—personally and professionally. Men had hurt me; data had not.
“Thank you for the pep talk,” I said genuinely. “I needed it.”
She slipped off the desk and stood in front of me with a sympathetic expression, then put out her arms. “Bring it in.”
I rolled my eyes, then pulled her toward me.
Katie was what some people might call spicy, but she was also the type of person you wanted by your side when the going got tough.
She could be fierce, but that fierceness extended to her love and loyalty, and I’d seen both of those time and again over the years.
Thanks to our chat, I was totally composed once Grant came in from his extensive flirting session with Jenna.
I even managed a genuine smile as I asked him how his date had gone.
“It was good,” he said, getting situated in his seat.
Classic Grant response. Told me nothing. It could’ve been the most incredible date of his life and he’d have said that same thing.
He raised his brows at the sight of Cam. “Welcome back, buddy.”
I was saved the necessity of explaining the return of the cardboard cutout when a call I’d been waiting for came in, and I stepped out of the office to take it.
When I returned twenty minutes later, it was to find Grant on the phone. He glanced at me. “She just finished up, so I’d better go.”
I paused at the implication that they’d been talking about me—whoever they was.
Grant’s brow furrowed. “Why?” There was a pause, and his eyes flitted to me. “Okay, fine.” He pressed his phone to his chest. “He wants to talk to both of us on speaker.”
I shut the door behind me. “Who does?”
“Russ,” he said.
I puzzled my brow as I went to my chair. Russ was his boss. I’d heard about him but never talked to him. “Okay.”
Grant tapped the speaker button and set the phone on my desk. “We’re listening, Russ.”
“Hey, Vivian,” he said. “Nice to finally talk to you after hearing so much about you.”
“Likewise,” I said politely, wondering what in the world he could have to say to me—and what Grant had told him.
“I had something I wanted to run past the two of you,” Russ said.
My gaze swung to Grant, who was frowning, his eyes on the phone.
“Let’s hear it,” Grant said.
“Vivian, Grant mentioned you had an incident where one of your employees ran your profiles against each other.”
“Former employee,” I clarified. If Alex’s dumb choice ended up being a focus of Threadline’s article about Matchify, I’d never forgive him.
“Right,” Russ said. “Grant also mentioned that the generated compatibility score was extremely low.”
I stared Grant down like thanks for that. Maybe we should just rent a billboard to make sure everyone knew about the 12%.
Grant tapped the mute button. “He’s my boss, Vivian. He asks for daily updates.”
“It got me thinking,” Russ said, “about a new angle to explore. Grant says you’re a statistics woman.”
“That’s right,” I replied, wishing I’d heard how Grant said it. Like it was a good or a bad thing?
“I’m a bit rusty,” Russ continued. “I’m just a lowly stats minor here, so correct me if I’m wrong, but your null hypothesis at Matchify is that compatibility correlates with relationship success, right?”
“Correct,” I said. This man was speaking my language.
“Well, you’ve tested the high-scoring matches. Why not test the inverse?”
I frowned. “You want me to go out with people I’m statistically repelled by?”
“Ouch,” Grant said.
I shot him a flat look and rearranged the pens in my pencil cup. “He’s not talking about you.”
“Actually, I am.”
The pencil cup tipped, and pens went clattering over my desk.
“Everything okay?” Russ asked.
“Yep,” I said as I hurried to gather them up with Grant’s help.
Grant was watching me carefully while he did it. “Aren’t there some ethical considerations there, Russ?”
I simultaneously loved and hated him for bringing up issues with the plan. Loved because this plan was insane; hated because hearing him argue against a date with me wasn’t particularly flattering. Maybe he needed to run it by Jill first. Or Jenna.
Maybe he wanted to ask out Jackie while he was at it—round out his fetish for women with J names.
“Not necessarily,” Russ argued. “It shifts the tone a bit, sure. But it’s also good science and good story.
I don’t want to put pressure on you if it’s uncomfortable—I just figure you’re both professionals, and it could be really compelling.
Worth trying, definitely, even if we don’t use it in the final article. ”
My heart slammed against my ribs as Grant watched me.
He tapped the mute button. “You don’t have to do this, Vivian. It’s a lot of pressure on you.”
“On me?”
He shrugged. “It’s in the interests of Matchify for the date to go poorly.”
I scoffed, following the thread of implication he’d tossed toward me. “And you’re confident it won’t?”
He looked amused. “I mean, Leo set a pretty low bar for me to clear.”
I stared at him, half-amused, half-exasperated. Of course he already thought Matchify would fail. He’d wowed Jill on their date, flirted away the morning with Jenna…why not slide into third by beating Matchify and sweeping me off my feet? Easy peasy, according to him.
The sheer arrogance of it was astounding.
Did he really think I was so easy to manipulate?
Katie had said it a few minutes ago: I was a seasoned professional. This was my company, and this was my chance to stand behind it and prove it worked.
And to serve a healthy portion of humble pie to Grant Wilder.
I reached over and unmuted the phone. “I’m in.”