they breathed in the quiet of the room. The floral musk of the other woman’s perfume that smelled out of place. The fingerprint smudges on the glass in front of the blonde that indicated she’d pressed her hands on the table for some reason. Kayla wanted to wipe them away, erase the evidence of the woman’s presence, even as she sat there.
Kayla shook her head. Denial a scream inside her. That could not be right.
Andreas was no help. He still sat there with his stony “you were late” expression on his handsome, angular face, his green eyes snapping with disapproval.
“Search for a wife?” Kayla’s breath ran out on the final word, her entire body going cold and then hot with the implications.
Andreas finally deigned to nod, not one strand of his dark hair going out of place with the short movement. “It’s time.”
“It is?” Kayla hadn’t noticed Andreas being any less focused on business. Any more open to interpersonal relationships.
She would have noticed. She’d been watching for just such a change in him for the past six years.
In fact, lately, he’d been more driven and working even longer hours than usual and expecting her to do the same, wanting Dolphin’s launch on time and without a single hiccup.
“I’ve exceeded my father’s net worth. A wife and family are next on the list.” He didn’t shrug, his perfectly tailored suit-clad shoulders remaining ramrod straight, but the sense of dismissal was there in his voice.
Like this decision wasn’t something life changing, monumental and the one thing Kayla had been hoping for since they broke up to become business partners.
Kayla looked at the woman who had informed her of Andreas’s plans. Who was she? And why did she know Andreas’s personal plans when Kayla, a friend, had not?
A truly horrifying prospect popped into Kayla’s mind. Was this woman a matchmaker? It would be just like Andreas to hire a professional to find him a wife.
Not that he needed one.
While Kayla had been practically celibate the past few years, the same could not be said of Andreas. He’d taken many beautiful women to his bed, each and every one a risk to Kayla’s hopes for the future. But he’d never gotten serious, his heart and Kayla’s deepest desires remaining unchanged.
“That’s what I’m here for,” the sleek blonde said confidently, clearly thrilled to have a client of Andreas’s stature on her roster.
“You’re a matchmaker?” Kayla asked for confirmation, still trying to come to terms with that possible reality.
The woman nodded. “I own the Patterson Group.”
It sounded like a firm of lawyers, not a service designed to bring people together in wedded bliss.
“She specializes in millionaires,” Andreas added, like that was important.
“You’re a billionaire.” On paper anyway.
KJ Software was obscenely successful, just like Andreas had said it would be. The company, of which he owned 95 percent, was valued at over a billion dollars. Not bad for six years of blood, sweat and sleepless nights working.
The matchmaker nodded, her expression showing how much she appreciated the distinction and the fact Andreas was her client. Kayla knew being a billionaire rather than just worth millions mattered to Andreas too. A lot. That valuation was what had spurred this particular move toward domestic harmony, after all. He was finally worth more than his father, but still had more to prove.
Andreas was giving Kayla that look again. “Don’t be so literal. The point is Miss Patterson—”
“Genevieve, please.” The blonde’s smile was all polish, no substance.
“Genevieve...”
Kayla wondered if Genevieve noticed the short pause and the way Andreas’s square jaw tightened when using the more personal address. “...specializes in matching wealthy men with women who will make them the ideal wife.”
Kayla was appalled and made no effort to hide it. “I don’t think it works like that.”
She wasn’t opposed to matchmakers, was sure that there were plenty in the business who really believed in matching two people meant to be together, but this woman? She was every bit as predatory in her way as Andreas. Kayla had learned to read people very young.
If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have survived her childhood.
Genevieve of the Patterson Group did not read as caring about long-term happiness or emotional harmony by any stretch of the imagination.
“My track record speaks for itself,” the woman said now, superiority in her tone and the tilt of her head. So, impressed and happy to have Andreas as a client, but arrogant and utterly sure of herself, as well.
“If it didn’t, I wouldn’t consider your twenty-five-thousand-dollar retainer.”
Kayla gasped. “I’m pretty sure you can buy a bride who looks like a supermodel for that kind of money.”
Or, you know, marry the woman who had loved him for the last eight years and waited in hope for the past six.
“Your employer isn’t looking for a trophy bride, he’s interested in finding someone to share his life with.” The matchmaker’s self-righteous rhetoric would be a lot more convincing if she’d protested as vehemently at Andreas referring to finding a wife as the next item on his goal list.
If Andreas was really looking for a soul mate, he wouldn’t look beyond the one woman he’d called friend for nearly a decade. Would he?
They hadn’t broken up because they weren’t good together. They’d ended their sexual relationship because Andreas had very strict views in regard to business and personal relationships. They’d never had what one might term a romantic relationship.
It had been friends with benefits.
Kayla had thought that was changing, that their relationship was morphing into something deeper.
She had been wrong.
Andreas had wanted to morph it all right, but not into something more personal. He’d wanted her senior project software design as the cornerstone for his new digital security company. And he’d made it very clear that he valued her skills as a programmer above her willingness to share his bed.
The six-year-old rejection she’d thought dealt with and dormant erupted with the power to leave her heart in ashes.
She had to get out of there.
Forcing her emotions behind the blank face she’d carefully crafted during a childhood bouncing from one foster home to another, Kayla asked, “Why am I here? What do you need from me?”
“You are my business partner,” Andreas said, like that explained everything.
“Five-percent ownership hardly makes me a material partner.” It was an old argument, one Andreas had never given in on.
The expression on the matchmaker’s face said she agreed with Kayla, though.
Andreas frowned. The man didn’t like being corrected and barely tolerated it from Kayla, but she never let that stop her from saying what needed saying. At least when it came to the business.
“You are my partner and this change in circumstance will affect the business and therefore you, by default.” Andreas’s tone brooked no argument.
Kayla was still confused, though, something she was used to when it came to interpersonal relationships, but not their company. “Why?”
She wasn’t in the running. This whole “pay a matchmaker ridiculous amounts of money” thing made that very clear. And it hurt. Badly.
But she