“Thanks, everyone, and thank you, William.”
That voice. That deep, husky voice that had whispered all sorts of nonsense in her ear.
“I’m so honored to be a member of the Matchmaker family. People laugh when I say this, but it’s hard for me to meet women.”
Oh, this motherfucker. Rhi cracked her neck. Maybe you shouldn’t ghost the women you’ve met then.
“But I’m thirty-six and I’m ready, past ready, to put some time and energy into my love life. So I decided to make the big leap.” William handed him a tablet. Samson glanced behind him as the screen melted away to a Matchmaker profile, while the women in the audience hooted in delight. The main photo was a picture of Samson, casually leaning against a car.
“Now, I don’t know much about dating sites.”
Liar.
Samson swiped on the screen of the tablet. “But I was told I needed a photo of me with a baby, with a caption that says, ‘Not my baby.’” The photo dissolved into one of him holding an adorable Asian baby. He smiled when people in the audience laughed and awwed. “That’s my goddaughter, Miley. She’s a cutie. Also, stereotypically conventional masculinity and a sense of adventure is important, right? So here I am posing on a safari.” He swiped to a photo of him holding a stuffed tiger and lion. “These are also my goddaughter’s. She’s the real MVP, letting me borrow them.”
This asshole, showing affection for an infant. Her ovaries were sighing, and she didn’t even know if she wanted children.
He clicked to a photo of a younger Samson in a helmet and his green-and-black football uniform, face hard and intense. “I haven’t played pro in almost a decade, but my friend said a work photo is appropriate.”
That night they’d lain in bed together, he hadn’t told her he was a former pro-football player. She could have found out but she’d consciously refused and unmatched him, releasing him to the wilds of dating other women.
There was a lot you didn’t tell him too. Starting with your real name.
A good call, she’d told herself, the night he’d stood her up.
While he scrolled through the rest of his too-sexy pics and the rest of the audience hummed their appreciation, Rhiannon seethed. When Rhi had swiped right on him on Crush, he’d only had one photo, and it had been vague, his face in profile, his thick bare chest revealed, the line of hair on his muscular belly his main attraction.
She hadn’t minded the photo, and since she owned the app—and the data people willingly forked over in their quest for love—she didn’t fear for her safety in the same way other women might. Her own single pic was of her in a bikini, face also turned away. It wouldn’t be the end of the world in terms of PR for someone to know who she was, but she didn’t particularly want to advertise her identity.
On the rare occasions she was itching for a hookup, Rhiannon chose her conquests carefully, men who appeared to be far away from her world in both distance and work. Samson had looked big and eager for sex and they’d been almost 250 miles north of her home base in L.A. Just her type.
“And finally, a shirtless selfie,” Samson said, grabbing her attention, and judging by the hoots from the audience, the attention of most of the women in the room.
The screen went blank, and he smiled. “Actually, you know what? You all can sign up to see that.”
Rhi grit her teeth as people clapped and laughed. She’d had to rip and claw her way into the good graces of so many of the people in this room, overcome a reputation damaged by Swype’s power-hungry, vindictive Chief Executive Asshole. A lot of people in her own industry still sneered at her, whispered about her, dismissed her, even though she’d worked around the clock to prove herself with a multimillion-dollar company that was poised on the verge of billion-hood.
This good-looking asshole walked right in, made some jokes, and Matchmaker was probably already getting new clients.
“All humor aside, though.” Samson’s face sobered. “This is serious.” His profile took up the screen with blocks of text about who he was looking for.
Rhiannon’s rage only allowed her to consume single words and short phrases out of the word salad he’d posted.
Sweet.
Kind.
Loyal.
Loves animals and children.
Looking for the real thing.
So funny, that he could type all these words for Matchmaker to describe the woman of his dreams. He hadn’t even used all 250 characters that were allotted when he’d filled out his Crush profile.
Respectful and fully understand consent, not looking for anything serious, just a mutually satisfying physical relationship.
And now he’d just said, This is serious, with a straight face, and backed it up with a written thesis about his ideal woman.
Her eye twitched.
“If you’re in the greater Los Angeles area and we match, we can go out. If you agree, parts of our date will be filmed for short online episodes and commercials. If you don’t agree to the filming, we’ll go get a steak anyway, my treat.” He shrugged sheepishly. “This is a marketing campaign, yes. But it’s also my heart. So sign up. Match me if you can. Because as William said . . .” Samson’s gaze drifted over the crowd. “You never know who you’ll—”
His dark eyes landed on her and he stopped midsentence.
Rhiannon folded her arms over her chest, refusing to give him anything. She’d given him so much. Her body, her thoughts, her tentative trust even when she knew better.
Her hope for another night.
Even when she knew better.
Stone. Stone cold. That’s what she was.
Someone in the audience cleared their throat, and Samson jerked. It might be the lights, but Rhiannon swore there was a trickle of sweat at his temple.
Let it not be the lights. Squirm, you bastard.
“Find.” Samson’s hand fell to his side, the tablet tapping his thigh. “You never know who you’ll find.”
Chapter Two
GETTING HIT was nothing new to Samson. He’d played football from ages six to twenty-six and had been hit so many times, he’d lost count. He’d gotten knocked out cold twice in his career, and each time his late mother had bolted from her seat to his side, sobbing in fear.
The concussions hadn’t been fun, but it had been the countless subconcussive hits that had truly freaked Samson out. The ones that left him awake, but rattled everything inside his body, from the bones of his toes to his precious soft brain. Those hits had left him disoriented and confused, utterly discombobulated.
A person could still get up and play after a hit like that, their body on autopilot. Just like Samson could force himself to finish the speech he’d written and prepped in his hotel room last night without taking his gaze off the woman who was standing close enough to the stage that the light exposed her. “You never know who you’ll find.”
Like her. That face. The face of the one and only woman he’d ever met through his phone. The face he’d touched and kissed. The face that had haunted his dreams for months, so much so that he now thought about that night as That Night, in caps.
He’d wondered if he’d imagined how beautiful she was, or his memories had built her up to be more than she was, but no. Her long, lean body was all dressed up in a trendy siren-red number, a cropped jacket highlighting her nipped-in waist and curved hips, the vee of her neckline giving him a glimpse of shadowy cleavage. Her lips were painted red to match her outfit.