Breaking the Bachelor (Entangled Lovestruck) (Smart Cupid) Read online

  At least Redford had tried to make love last. Jane ran from the man of her dreams because of a computer matrix, a Rum Runner girl, and a truckload of old fears. Worse, she had squandered her second chance by matching him with three other women, all to win a bet. Yes, Smart Cupid was her dream. Smart love was her dream. But was proving her theory more important than loving Charlie? Another pang of regret kicked her in the stomach. Maybe ice cream and tequila would help.

  Jane followed her friend into the living room and noticed her friend gaze at the files collected near her last known whereabouts, the overstuffed leather sofa. “Working at home?”

  Standing under the small archway that led to the hallway, her skin flushed a pink bright enough to match her flannels. “Just reviewing Charlie’s dates.” She shuffled her sheepskin slippers into the living room and flopped down on the couch, sending the Cupid files tumbling to the floor. She kicked the top file under the sofa, unable to control her feelings one more minute. No matter how desperately she wanted to. She bit down hard on the inside of her bottom lip to keep from crying. “Marianne…have I ever told you how much I love pizza?”

  “Um, no. But, okay.” M.A gave her a worried look and picked up her cell. “Do you want delivery? There’s a new place on the corner that’s supposed to be good.”

  “No, that’s okay.” Jane shook her head, more miserable now than she’d been at 6:37 PM. “It’s not just pizza. I love bagels, too, and bowling and Rocky. I love Rocky, but if Rocky doesn’t love you back…” She dropped her head between her knees on a sigh. “The worst part of it all is…I even love laundry.” Uncontrollable tears tightened her throat and a strangled cry escaped her. “Laundry.”

  “Laundry?” Marianne’s lips rounded into a small circle. “Oh, laundry…as in the Maytag.”

  Three of the runaway tears slipped down her cheeks. “The truth is…if I’m going to be honest…I think I love Charlie.” Despite logic, her fears, and their abysmal matrix score, she loved him.

  Marianne nodded. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  Jane buried her head into her knees. “No. Not really. I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe after a round of tequila.” Marianne walked into the kitchen and returned with two water glasses and the bottle of liquor. “Straight tequila, no lime, no salt.”

  Jane lifted her eyes and glared at the glass. “If you want all the gory details, you better make mine a double.”

  Marianne filled both glasses and raised hers in a toast. “To the gory details.”

  Jane knocked back the Cuervo with a wish that the alcohol would burn away the dull pain pitched like a tent in the middle of her chest. “I had sex with him. For real this time.” The words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush of tequila-infused nerve. “Lots and lots and lots of sex.”

  Marianne went for her cell. “I’m going to cancel his date.”

  “No cancelations. Better to let it all play out.” Jane shook her head, picked up the tequila, and unscrewed the top. “But when we lose…”

  “We’re not going to lose.”

  She pulled off the top and poured another double tequila. On second thought, she made hers a triple. “When we lose, I want you to know that I’ll make it right…”

  “We are not going to lose.” M.A. took the bottle and set it back on the coffee table.

  “Did you secure the rights to the dating app? Or call any of the contacts I gave you? I want to make sure you have legal ownership of the application. I want you to be protected.”

  Reaching out to touch her forearm, Marianne repeated. “We are not going to lose.”

  Jane gave her an indulgent smile and tilted her glass to finish her second shot. “Not even your surefire app can guarantee tonight’s date, or love, or chemistry…” Her voice trailed off to a near-whisper. “And even if it could…win or lose, Kathie Lee will rake me over the coals of morning television because…because…my logical matrix failed to match him. Instead, I fell heart-first into love. I love him, Marianne…like all-out, free-falling, sure-to-crash love, and the worst part…besides how illogical it is, how chemically combustible…the worst part is…is…I’m sorry…is the room spinning? Because it kind of feels like it’s…”

  A second later, she fell sideways into the couch.

  “I think you’ve had enough.” Marianne picked up the tequila and walked into the kitchen, reappearing a few minutes later with two pints of ice cream. Not a bad trade really.

  Jane flung her arm over the back of the couch and pulled her body upright, gratefully accepting the consolation pint of her all-time favorite. Plunging the spoon into the New York Super Fudge Chunk, she said, “I’m sorry I have no willpower where he’s concerned. If he’s within three feet of me, I’m a puddle of desperate, hopeful emotion and raging sexual need. It’s pathetic.” She spooned some of the ice cream into her mouth. “And afterwards, when he wanted to bet on us, I panicked, total full-blown panic, like you see in the movies.”

  Pain surged between her eyebrows and she wasn’t sure if it was from the ice cream or the tequila. Not that it mattered. Tomorrow morning, she’d regret both and the ache in her heart would still be there. She already regretted not taking Charlie up on his offer to bet on love.

  “Wait a minute. Charlie wanted to make a bet? What kind of bet?”

  Jane shoveled three spoons full of ice cream into her mouth. “He wanted to bet on us, on building a relationship that was part chemistry, part compatibility. And before you say it, I know it’s impossible. Passion burns out before it hits the long-term, and it always does, no matter how much you love Rocky or the Fluff ‘N Fold. So, I can never bet on love with Charlie because it’s fueled by the passion, and once the passion fades, so would the commitment, right?”

  Silence met her words.

  “Exactly.” She tilted forward and waved a spoonful of fudgy ice cream into the air in confirmation. “He’d leave me. Eventually, someday, he’d walk out, and he’s been at the center of my life for so long, I don’t think I’d survive him leaving.”

  Marianne’s face scrunched up behind the glasses. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Makes perfect sense to me.” Her spoon veered perilously close to her friend’s nose in an ice cream fueled rebuttal, but Marianne shifted to avoid getting smacked by the gyrating utensil.

  M.A. grabbed at the moving spoon and shoved it back into the pint. “Jane, I added the sexual chemistry component to the dating app.”

  “Let me guess,” she said, reclaiming her weapon and her ice cream. “The matrix saw all this coming.”

  Smoothing the line of her skirt, she said, “Actually, according to the updated application matrix…you and Charlie are a perfect match.”

  Jane shook her head several times. “No, no, and definitely not. Charlie and I are not a perfect match. I’m just another woman in the long Charlie train of love.” She pulled her arm up and down and whistled like the A Train. “All aboard that’s coming aboard.” The room shifted a little bit like a tilt-a-wheel. “Get it? Coming…aboard.”

  The look on Marianne’s face was priceless. “Maybe the tequila wasn’t such a good idea.”

  She stabbed at Ben and Jerry with her spoon. “I’m just another post in his bed notch. Or notch post, or something.” She offered Marianne the ice cream. If Charlie met his true love tonight, she’d be spared the pain of losing her company. A consolation prize at best. She’d return to her normal, straightforward life, and recommit to her criteria list, semi-hopeful that scientific love worked. But the part of her that Charlie had reawakened knew she’d never get over the way he thrilled her body and warmed her heart.

  Ignoring the stab of pain in her chest, she raised her head and picked up the current issue of Cosmopolitan. Bold red letters across the silver and white cover spelled out a contemporary throw down, Be Your Own True Love. Maybe that’s what it boiled down to in the end. Not compatibility and shared values. Not kissing multiple frogs hoping for a prince. Not even chemistry and heart-sea
ring sex.

  Just Be Your Own True Love.

  She handed Marianne the magazine and hugged Ben and Jerry. “Want to do the quiz?”

  “The Are you too much of a challenge for your man quiz? No thank you.” Marianne shoved the magazine onto the end table. “You’re perfect just the way you are—a smart, straightforward woman and the caretaker of an enormous, beautiful heart.”

  Her eyes burned and she so did not want to cry. “You’re sweet to say I have a big heart because I can be a real pain in the ass.”

  “Sometimes,” Marianne said with a small smile. “But I never forget that you gave me a job when no one else would even look at me. After my dad’s conviction, and the prison time, you believed in me.”

  Jane shrugged. “Hey, what’s a little white collar crime between friends?”

  Marianne offered a lopsided smile in response. “I owe you.”

  “No, we owe each other.” Jane raised her ice cream into the air for a toast, “Here’s to friendship…and my broken heart.”

  “To friendship…and broken hearts,” she said. “You’ll put yours back together, and next time around, it’ll be even smarter, even more beautiful.”

  “Best wing-woman ever.”

  Marianne gently pried away the spoon and the ice cream and Jane let her head fall onto her wing-woman’s shoulder.

  “Next time.” But she wasn’t sure she’d survive a next time. Her gaze drifted over to the magazine cover.

  Be Your Own True Love. Sounded like a smart move.

  …

  In a red leather booth near the back of Temptation, Charlie sat across from the third and final date he owed to Smart Cupid. Honestly, he had to give it up to Janey. She was good at her job. This woman was exactly his type. Would have been his type before he and Jane connected in Paradise, before he thought he had a shot with his overly-logical, hip-swaying Dream Girl.

  Kate smiled. Sweet. Blond. A little shy. Yeah, she was pretty and nice, perfectly nice. Charlie was sure there were a lot of nice women out there. Perfectly nice, perfectly sane women. Women who wouldn’t leave him high and dry. With a bottle of whiskey.

  Without a decent explanation.

  Women who were less bossy. More agreeable, less beholden to a set of criteria, or some stupid Ultimate Man List. More willing to take a chance and bet on love.

  Not the kind who bailed with a flamingo-colored cocktail napkin and a claim of too much chemistry. What kind of woman ditched a perfectly terrific relationship because of too much chemistry? The kind of woman who knew how to throw a sucker punch. A bona fide heartbreaker.

  “So, you think the Rangers will make the playoffs this year?” Kate asked.

  Yeah, she was really nice. Too bad his heart wasn’t in it.

  “It’s a little early in the season to tell,” he said, happy enough to talk hockey. “But Nash is healthy and their record’s good.”

  Kate took a sip of her white wine, a Pinot Grigio. Generally, he preferred a woman with a beer in her hand, or a rye whiskey Manhattan, but this woman was sweet and blonde and a little shy. She met every criterion on his “list”. White wine was fine, and it was good that she seemed to know a little bit about hockey.

  “Well, it’s not like in ’94 when the Blueshirts took it all, but I’m not counting them out this year.” She scrunched up her nose in this cute kind of way and swirled the wine in her glass. “Not yet anyway.”

  Make that a lot about hockey.

  Charlie took a short pull from his beer. He genuinely liked her sports knowledge and her blonde hair and her curves and her green eyes. He liked the way she ordered a burger and fries and actually ate it. Of course, she didn’t pack it away like Jane. She seemingly wasn’t sugar-dependent either since she hadn’t ordered dessert. But she was sweet and nice and available. Maybe he ought to be more open to the idea of dating. Maybe Janey really did know best.

  “Kate, do you like hot wings?”

  She blinked and said, “Love ‘em.”

  “How about Sylvester Stallone?”

  A cute “v” formed between her eyebrows. “Well, Rocky is great, but the rest of his movies…”

  “And you really like hockey?”

  Kate looked over her shoulder, and then back, like she was about to be revealed as a victim of Candid Camera. “Is this some kind of test? I haven’t been on a date in a long time…”

  Charlie shook his head a few times and set his beer firmly on the table. He felt bad. She was a nice woman who deserved a man’s attention. Deserved better than he could ever give her. “No test. No mistake. Just a damned Rangers fan who’s carrying a torch for his matchmaker.”

  Kate nodded and smiled with the understanding of a woman who’d had enough trouble with men to last a lifetime. She took another sip of the wine and set her glass on the table. “Want to walk me home? Tell me all about it?”

  Charlie smiled back at her, at this perfectly nice woman. “Sure, and hell, I’m sorry about tonight, the date.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, collecting her coat with an air of resignation. “Happens more than you’d think. That’s why I signed up with Smart Cupid.”

  And there was the truth. Maybe Jane was right. Maybe sometimes love was simply a matter of not getting burned. As much as it pained him to admit it, if he was ever going to regain his equilibrium, he needed to close off his heart from his sexy ex, the one woman on earth who drove him totally crazy. At least, a half-dozen times he’d considered going back, but unless she was willing to take a chance with him, unless she was willing to trust him, his days of seduction were over.

  …

  Outside of his date’s apartment, a gust of cold night air slammed against Charlie’s chest. Good thing he’d walked Kate home. He’d needed to get away, clear his mind, think straight. Head bent toward the cobblestone, he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and covered the couple of miles between her place and Temptation quickly, walking down Canal, passing a few other bars, other lovers tumbling out onto the sidewalk.

  A quick stab of pain shot through his system. He thought he and Jane had finally gotten it right, but after the way she’d fallen apart this morning, there wasn’t much chance of a life together. Better to forget it, for both their sakes. When the bet wrapped up, when it was all over, they’d find a way to be friends again. But damn, he’d wanted so much more. He accelerated his pace, his footsteps hard against the pavement. His fault, not tracking her down and forcing her to see him after the breakup, letting so much time go by. But he’d been reeling six months ago. Hell, he was reeling now. Maybe they could’ve worked it out if he’d only pushed aside his hurt feelings and really gone for it. He’d have laughed about the Rum Runner girl, and reassured her that he was nothing like her father. Too late now.

  He dragged in a breath of the night air and hoped it would knock some sense into him. Just keep walking. Crossing over Chambers Street, he picked up his pace until he saw the blue neon light of the bar. Temptation, it blinked at him like a neon blue warning. Temptation.

  Shucking off the cold, he entered the bar. Nick caught his eye as soon as he walked in. He was there, drinking a beer with one of his regulars, but his fierce expression telegraphed his thoughts. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Want a beer?” Nick asked, handing the television remote off to one of the customers.

  “No thanks.” He ducked beneath the bar and poured himself a Makers Mark instead. What the hell? Why not? “Come by to collect on a wager?”

  Nick watched him, eagle-eyed. “Nope. Don’t feel like a round of Jumpers tonight. I’m more interested in what happened with my sister.”

  Charlie was quiet for a long moment as his gaze fixed on the bottom of the glass. “Your sister is a woman with some issues.”

  Nick leaned his hip casually against the bar, a lawyer about to start cross-examination. “Really?”

  He set his glass down on the bar, not interested in whiskey, not interested in much at all, except hitting closing time. “Do
you know why she took off last year?”

  Shaking his head, Nick set down his beer. “No, I don’t. She refused to tell me.”

  “Of course she did,” he said, his voice surprisingly calm. “She left because she thought I was flirting with a woman she calls Rum Runner girl.”

  “Rum Runner girl?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Exactly. How crazy is that?”

  There was a pause, and then, “Were you?”

  “Was I what?” Charlie’s head whipped around at the accusation in his friend’s voice, a furious look on his face that dared him to ask again. Not that he’d back down. Nick never backed down.

  As expected, he repeated the question, but this time, his voice held a note of impatience. “Flirting with Rum Runner girl?”

  “Hell, no.” He resented the question, but he forged ahead with an explanation anyway. “Your sister just assumed I was flirting because she cannot get it into her head that a man could care enough about her not to leave her.”

  He frowned. “Care about her?”

  “And all her shit about chemistry?” He threw his hands in the air. “Who leaves a relationship, a perfectly terrific relationship, because of too much chemistry?” He ran a hand across the invisible band tightening in his chest. “Like I said, your sister has issues.”

  Nick crossed his arms over his chest. “What about your issues?”

  “Mine?” Part of him knew this mess wasn’t all Jane’s fault, but he’d be damned if he was going to admit it. “My issues?”

  “Yeah, your issues,” Nick said, leaning closer, obviously angry. “The way you hide behind your chemistry bullshit. How you keep the best part of yourself separate, closed off even.” Charlie started to defend himself, but Nick kept on talking. “You seem determined to let go of the one relationship you’ve wanted your whole life.”

  A couple ensconced in a quiet corner glanced over at them, taking in the heated exchange. Nick lowered his voice. “Jane isn’t the only one with issues, buddy, and I’m done being your sounding board. You had a chance at something real. Not everybody gets that.”