Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98496 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98496 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
I stared up at him, breathing hard, trapped between his body and the desk. This close, I could see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, could smell that maddening cologne mixed with something purely him.
“Fine,” I whispered. “One test. That’s it.”
He smiled again, and this time it was all predator.
“See you at the first trial, Maryah.”
I WAS HALFWAY TO MY car when my phone buzzed.
Ada: Emergency meeting in your office! Crisis level: DEFCON 1!
I sighed and turned around, my heels clicking against the concrete as I made my way back to the Concord Agency offices. Whatever Ada had managed to catastrophically mess up this time, it couldn’t be worse than what I’d just agreed to.
Right?
The glass doors to my office swung open before I could even reach for the handle. Ada stood there, bouncing on her toes like a caffeinated chihuahua, her tablet clutched against her chest.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” she blurted. “I have so much to tell you, and none of it is good, and I think I might need to update my resume—”
“Breathe, Ada.”
She sucked in a dramatic gulp of air. “Okay. Breathing. Got it.”
My mind went back to the time she had started working here. She hadn’t even meant to, actually, since Ada being Ada, she had accidentally responded to a job posting for a personal assistant with a detailed analysis of why my agency’s logo font choice was “emotionally manipulative but in a good way.” Somehow, that had convinced me she was exactly what I needed.
I was starting to question that decision.
“What’s the crisis?” I asked, settling behind my desk.
“Well,” Ada began, wringing her hands, “you know how you asked me to compile that list of potential trial matches for the agency beta testing?”
“Yes...”
“And you know how I’ve been really, really careful about following protocol since the whole email incident?”
My stomach dropped. “Ada.”
“I might have accidentally sent the preliminary compatibility reports to Prince Alexei instead of saving them to the internal database.”
I stared at her. “You what?”
“But!” She held up one finger like this somehow made it better. “I caught the mistake really quickly! Only took them three minutes to read everything!”
“Three minutes to—” I rubbed my temples. “Ada, those reports contain confidential client information. Alpha bloodline data. Mating compatibility algorithms that took me two years to develop.”
“I know! That’s why I called it a DEFCON 1 situation!” She paused. “That is the really bad one, right? I always get confused about whether one or five is worse.”
“One is worse, Ada. One is definitely worse.”
She wilted. “So...you’re going to fire me?”
I looked at her—twenty years old, tears already gathering in her brown eyes, wearing a sweater with a cartoon llama that said “No Prob-llama” across the front—and felt my anger deflate.
“No, Ada. I’m not going to fire you.”
She brightened immediately. “Really?”
“Really. But we need to do damage control.”
“Yes, exactly, and that’s why...I think what I’m about to say is a good thing.”
“I highly doubt that, but just...give it to me.”
“Prince Alexei’s office sent a formal request for an in-person meeting. Tomorrow.”
I dropped my head into my hands.
“How formal?” I asked, my voice muffled.
“It was in a language that Google Translate can’t even read?”
I’m-about-to-die-formal then.
Perfect.
Just perfect.
In the span of one afternoon, I’d agreed to let my stepbrother—my gorgeous, impossible, infuriating stepbrother—test my matchmaking protocols on me personally, and I’d accidentally exposed my entire business model to one of the world’s most powerful and dangerously unpredictable shifter princes.
“Ada?” I said, lifting my head.
“Yes?”
“Next time you make a mistake this big, just run away and join the circus. It’ll be less complicated.”
Ada looked at me suspiciously. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“Probably.”
“Oh, good. I was worried for a second.” She bounced back to cheerful. “So! Should I start preparing for the meeting with Prince Alexei? I could make a presentation! With charts!”
“No charts, Ada.”
“Graphs?”
“No graphs.”
“What about—”
“No visual aids of any kind.”
She deflated slightly. “You’re no fun when you’re stressed.”
I laughed despite myself. Somehow, Ada always managed to do that, pull me back from the edge of total panic with her weird superpower of turning disasters into life application exercises for clueless optimism.
“Just...schedule the meeting,” I said. “And Ada?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe double-check the recipient list this time?”
She gave me a thumbs up. “Triple-check. Got it.”
As she bounced out of my office, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes.
Tomorrow, I’d face Prince Alexei and try to explain why I’d accidentally submitted classified compatibility data to his Council.
Next week, I’d subject myself to whatever twisted matchmaking trials Nicolo had designed.
And somehow, in between all of that, I had to figure out how to run a business without dying of embarrassment or spontaneous combustion.
Just another day in the life of Maryah Gray, entrepreneur extraordinaire.
What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter Three
“Shirt off, Maryah.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Nicolo didn’t even blink. He just stood there with a clipboard and an unreadable expression, like this was a perfectly normal Tuesday request in his perfectly normal life.