Page 3 of Matched By Mistake
“You’re welcome. Now help me get ready. I’m going to be livestreaming the presentation. Would you mind keeping an eye on the comments?”
“Not at all. That’s why I’m here. What am I looking for?”
“Just any of those creepy, spammy things that pop up,” Misha said.
Maggie nodded. She’d been to a few of Misha’s livestreams and for the most part her followers were great and supportive, but she had a few haters and some spam from men who made wildly inappropriate comments. “I’ll block them.”
“Thanks. I’m so excited for this. It’s nice to be doing this in Royal and to have so many people turning out,” Misha said.
“It is. When I walked through the hall, I heard a lot of positive buzz. You’re going to kill it,” Maggie said. “The public is going to love the Surprise Me! function.”
“Thanks. I guess I better go,” she said, as her theme music started to play. Maggie hugged her friend and then stepped to a place just off the stage out of view where Misha had set up her laptop so that Maggie could monitor the comments.
“Hello, ByteCon! I’m Misha Law, the creator of k!smet. I’m so excited to be here today to share the app with you and we are going to match a couple live. So if you haven’t downloaded the app, then do it now. You don’t want to miss out on being the first to try the new Surprise Me! function and finding your perfect soul mate today!”
Misha went into her spiel about the app, describing the different streams that were available. She finished her overview presentation after about fifteen minutes and then switched to live mode and broadcast it on the jumbo screen behind her.
“Now the moment we’ve been waiting for. We are going to use the Surprise Me! button. K!smet, let’s make a match,” she said, hitting the button.
The screen was populated by a crowd that Maggie had provided the graphics for and slowly the group was whittled down to just two figures. The faces were revealed at the same time and a gasp went through the crowd. Maggie looked up to see her own face on the screen and then gasped herself when she realized she’d been “matched” with Jericho Winters.
She glanced at her phone and saw the alert and then the button asking her to accept it.
Misha looked over at her, her social smile frozen on her face. Maggie knew her friend needed this launch to go well, and she wasn’t going to be the one to let a centuries-old feud mess it up for her. Without another thought, she hit Accept on the match.
The ball was in Jericho Winters’s court now.
Jericho Winters cursed succinctly under his breath. Several people near him had turned and were waiting to see if he was going to accept the match. Some who knew him and were aware of the bad blood between his family and the Del Rios stared. But this...the woman he’d been trying to get out of his head for six weeks being matched with him. His hormones were trying damned hard to convince his brain that there was more to this than he was sure there was.
He hit Accept.
“Jericho Winters, if you could make your way backstage,” Misha said, as the Jumbotron confirmed it. “I want to have a word with our matched couple. But I think this perfectly demonstrates the unpredictability of possibility.”
He heard Misha continuing to talk as he made his way around to the roped-off section that led to the backstage area.
The scent of jasmine was in the air as he walked around the curtained corner. He saw Maggie standing off to one side chewing on her nails. She dropped her hand as she seemed to become aware of him and looked up.
“Jericho Winters.”
Just his name, but it sounded like the worst sort of curse.
He walked closer to her until only a few inches separated the two of them. “Maggie Del Rio.”
He tried to put the same edge in his voice but the truth was, this close he could see the amber flecks in her eyes and he noticed how thick her black lashes were. She had high cheekbones and as he let his gaze drop lower, he couldn’t help himself—he almost groaned when he saw her full lips.
Oh, he’d noticed her mouth before this. Had spent hours at night fantasizing about how it felt under his. God damn. He needed to get laid. And this app business was a mistake. A big one.
She sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said your name like that. I mean, we’ve never even met.”
“No we haven’t,” he said. “Should we at least introduce ourselves before we jump straight into family animosity?”
“Probably. I mean, you could be totally decent,” she said, wryly.
He couldn’t help the slight grin. “I could be. But you might have me confused with my brother.”
She gave him a shy smile back. “I’m Maggie Del Rio, owner and lead art director for MaggieInk.”
She held her hand out to him and he couldn’t help noticing her brightly colored manicure. He took her hand. “Jericho Winters. RoyalGreen Architects.”
