Page 60 of Matched By Mistake
“Aperfectly good match?” he asked, incredulous. “She’s a Del Rio.”
“She’s also my best friend and an amazing person, so if I were you, I’d watch what I said.”
He crossed his arms, knowing that he’d obviously gone too far. “Okay, I’m sorry for insulting your friend.”
“And my work?”
“I know you do good work,” he told her. “I wouldn’t have invested in the platform if I didn’t. But I feel that with the match between Jericho and Maggie, there is something weird going on.”
“Just because there’s some family feud between the Winterses and the Del Rios, has nothing to do with k!smet. It did what it’s supposed to do,” she told him. “It took their information that they provided and matched them based on compatibility.”
“What could they have in common?” he asked. He knew he was grasping at straws. He’d been frustrated by his brother’s new relationship with a Del Rio, and he’d made Misha the target of those feelings.
“Maybe you should ask them.”
“Okay, let’s clear the air.” He was feeling stupider and more inarticulate by the second. Misha had the ability to put him off-kilter, to make him lose his train of thought. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him feel like that. “I feel like I got off on the wrong foot here.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Did you even try to get on the right foot?” she asked.
He’d really stepped in it. He had to turn it around. “What I’m doing here is offering my services. Royal is on track to become a technology hub. I don’t want a faulty app to tarnish that.” He had a lot of money on the line.
“Faulty.”
“Maybe that was the wrong word to use,” he admitted. Her smirk told him that she was enjoying him coming into her office and looking stupid. “As one of your key investors, I want to take a look at the platform. Maggie and Jericho agreed to go on some dates so the app doesn’t look bad before IPO launch. In the meantime, I want to know if there’s something wrong with it and fix it before the problem gets too huge.”
Misha Law blinked several times.Trey Winters.How dare this guy, investor or not, come into her office and claim there’s a problem with k!smet, the app that she poured her life and soul and energy into creating and launching. “There’s nothing wrong with my code, or the algorithm. What you’re saying is completely unfounded.”
“There has to be something.”
“The onlysomethingis that your family has been feuding with the Del Rios for so many years that you feel like it’s outside the realm of possibility that they could be compatible.”
Misha was frustrated. Trey was one of those unobtainable guys. They’d met several times and had had pleasant enough conversations in the past. Interest in him had always given her a flutter in her stomach. He was perhaps one of the sexiest men she’d even had the pleasure of seeing, but he was also quiet, mysterious. Like there was also something at work behind his dark brown eyes.
But having him come into her office was another matter. His unexpected visit had surprised her and pissed her off. But it was also stressful to her because there was a small part of her that wondered if he might have been right. Misha would never tell Trey, but for a moment, she had also wondered about the veracity of the app when she saw the pairing of Maggie and Jericho—on the surface, they were quite different. But seeing her best friend happy with a good man from the moment they connected made her forget about any questions she had about the app.It clearly worked, right?
“There isn’t a problem with k!smet,” she told him firmly. His determined stance told her that he didn’t believe her, and the stubborn clench of his jaw told her that he wasn’t appeased by that response. He sure was cute, though.
“Okay,” she relented. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the app. But you’re one of my biggest investors, and if we can work together, to look into anything you think might be wrong, then we can.”
Trey was a rancher, but he was also known for his tech proficiency. If there was anyone whose skills she trusted to dig around in the backend of the app, it was him. He nodded. “Okay, fine.”
“But there’s another thing.”
“What?”
“In exchange for access to the app and my code, I need you to promise that you’ll leave Maggie and Jericho alone. No questioning their match, or their relationship. They’re happy to give this a chance. Leave them alone to see where it goes. I certainly can’t have you out in public raving about how the app doesn’t work, okay?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he told her. “I have as much riding on k!smet’s success as you do.”
She gave a short laugh. “No, you certainly don’t.” He had no idea how much of her time, energy, money,lifeshe’d put into developing k!smet. “Sure, you’ve written a check, and a large one, at that. I appreciate it. But there’s so much of myself in this app, this business. No one has more to lose here than I do.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. “You’re right. When do you want to get to work on this?”
“Why don’t we start tonight? When the rest of the staff goes home, you come over. I don’t want any of them thinking that there’s something strange going on with the app.”
He nodded. “That’s fair.”
“Does around eight work for you?”
