His smile was faint. He tilted his head up to the sun. “I hope you don’t think I’m a dick now.”
She didn’t think he was. So hard not to write people off. “I don’t want to think I slept with some bad boy football jock. My instincts about this sort of thing are usually good. I don’t do assholes.”
“You must have felt like you couldn’t trust your instincts when I ghosted you. I’m sorry for that too.”
She jerked one shoulder up, another knot in her belly dissolving. Her confidence in herself had been rattled. For other women, agreeing to a second date was probably nothing. For her, it had been a huge concession.
Instincts were all a person had in this world where anybody could be out to hurt you. Her gut was her only defense. She had to have confidence in it.
“You won’t find any stories about that kind of bad behavior from me. No string of pissed ex-lovers, no arrests, no complaints. You can google me, if you want.” His head dipped. “You might find other stories, but not those.”
“Then I won’t google you.”
“Should I google you?”
“No,” she said flatly, though she wasn’t sure why. She shouldn’t care if he found some dude screaming about her on YouTube and repeating rumors from four years ago, but she did.
“Fine. A mutual no-googling pact.” He shifted and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He grimaced. “It’s Tina. They need to start getting me micced soon.”
Ah, shit. Rhiannon straightened. All this time, and they hadn’t even gotten to business yet. “Look, the apology is nice and all, but I didn’t actually come here only for that. I want something else from you.”
His dark eyes flashed up to hers, and there was something so hot and knowing in them, she shivered.
She hadn’t slept with the same guy twice in the last few years. She scratched, she left. There was an intimacy in sitting on the same bench with a man who had been inside her. All the little hairs on her arms stood up. Stuff everything down. “Not that,” she said sharply.
His lashes lowered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She rose to her feet, the better to ground herself. “Walk with me.”
Without complaint, he followed suit, matching his wider strides to hers. “I want to buy Matchmaker,” she said, as quietly as she could.
His steps faltered and he stopped. “I’m sorry, what?”
She clasped her hands behind her and faced him. This was better. Business was more comfortable than the nebulous world of feelings and emotions and interpersonal relationships. “I want to buy the company.”
Samson scratched his chin. “I think you’re confused. I don’t own enough of Matchmaker for you to buy it.”
Her eyes narrowed and she pounced on that new information. “But you own some of it?”
“A tiny percentage. Not enough for it to matter.”
That was good to know. “You know Annabelle Kostas personally. She introduced your parents to each other. She owns a beach house in your hometown.”
His mouth dropped open. “How do you . . . how do you know that?”
“You said it.”
“I didn’t say anything about her owning a house in Cayucos,” he said sharply. “Were you in Cayucos for my aunt? She was your business there?”
“She’s your aunt?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. She thought he was angry, but then she realized he was laughing. “Oh Jesus. So you went there to get to her and we met? By pure chance of our fingers swiping?” He chuckled. “What are the odds?”
Rhiannon tried to redirect. She didn’t want to think about the moment she’d swiped right on him, not at all. “We need to get back to the aunt thing. If you’re her nephew, why weren’t you and your uncle living in her beach house?”
He sobered. “You knew which house was hers?”
“You’re making me sound like a stalker.”
“I’m just stating facts. If those make you sound like a stalker . . .” He shrugged.
She huffed out a breath. “Okay, yes. I did know which house was hers. I wanted to talk to her about buying her company. And yes, our night”—she gestured between them—“together was an accident. I definitely did not know you were her nephew.”
“For someone who makes her living off cell phones, you’re really weirdly committed to in-person meetings.”
She bristled but caught the teasing glimmer dancing in his eyes. “Going to Cayucos was a desperate move. Annabelle hadn’t responded to my phone calls or messages. I thought . . . there might be a reason for that.”
“What reason?”
Ah, damn it. She didn’t want to reveal that part of her past if he was untainted, and also because she had a standing rule not to speak of it with anyone. But then again, if Annabelle did listen to gossip about her unchallenged, she’d lose her last shot with Matchmaker.
Practicality won out over her pride, and she took a calculated risk, first glancing around to ensure no one was lurking behind a perfectly manicured bush or tree. They stood by a fountain, the closed doors of the restaurant within sight. “This is a small industry. I used to work for Swype. When I left them, there were hard feelings. They spread rumors about me. Some people believed them.” They was really he but Peter had been significantly assisted by others at Swype to shut her down and out. No need to let his bro friends and colleagues off the hook.
Samson swayed toward her, his concerned frown so real and authentic she wished she could believe that anyone cared that much about past Rhiannon. “What kind of rumors?”
“Not important.” When he looked like he might press, she played on his empathy. “I don’t like to think about it or talk about it. In any case, my name isn’t totally blemish-free. So I wondered if Annabelle had heard those whispers, if that’s why she wasn’t responding to me and I . . . I took some more drastic measures than I otherwise would have.”
He studied her for a long minute. She didn’t mind his hesitation. Whether he did owe her or not, she was also asking him to trust her.
With his aunt. What pure luck, stumbling upon Annabelle’s nephew.
“Annabelle isn’t the type of person to believe rumors if she hasn’t met someone yet. And she’s not technically my aunt. She’s more of a common-law aunt,” he said, finally. “She and my uncle Joe were together for almost forty years.”
“I didn’t know she had a long-term partner.” Lakshmi was good at ferreting out information, too, so it must have been super well-hidden.
“No reason you would have. Annabelle’s always been private. To answer your question as to why we weren’t staying in her home: my uncle and I lived in my childhood home.” He squinted at her. “What interest is Matchmaker to you? Aren’t you outperforming us?”
Us. He might have only a small financial stake in Matchmaker, but he felt proprietary toward it. She filed that away in her little box of red flags, though she’d already decided to proceed as though Samson was a competitor. “I want to outperform everyone,” she said mildly. Which wasn’t a lie. She didn’t have to tell him how badly she wanted to crush Swype, specifically. “Give me twenty minutes with her. Lunch, dinner, coffee, whatever she wants. Let her hear me out, and then if she’s not interested, I’ll vanish.” Rhiannon snapped her fingers. “I only want a shot. That’s all.” Stop. She was coming perilously close to begging, and she wasn’t about that.