The Perfect Score

Get a grip, man.

The truth was, he’d fallen hard for her the first day he’d met her. Fifteen days ago, actually, when she’d blown off grocery shopping to help him schlep boxes from the U-Haul up to his brand-new apartment. She’d been wearing ratty gray sweatpants and a T-shirt that boldly exclaimed that A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle. When he’d commented on it, she’d blushed and explained that she’d bought the T-shirt a few months before, after a breakup with her longtime boyfriend.

He could still remember the little surge of relief—both that she was unattached and that the shirt didn’t necessarily reflect her overall opinion of the male of the species.

Ever since that first encounter, he’d been intending to ask her out. Coffee at one of the little shops down on Ventura Boulevard. Maybe a movie. Even pizza by the pool. But damned if work hadn’t kept him booked solid for the past two weeks. Not that he could complain. Getting the Menagerie gig had been a huge coup, and he was more than willing to work his tail off for as long as MonkeyShines, Inc. was willing to pay him.

He’d worked in the computer gaming industry for years, but this was the first time he’d headed up a project since he’d gone freelance eighteen months ago. The fact that he’d scored the job at the same time he’d moved from Austin to Los Angeles had made life a little more hectic, but it had also satisfied that niggling fear that he wouldn’t be able to pay the bills.

Bottom line: the job came first. Women—even women as tempting as Mattie, whose scent alone had driven him nuts—were off-limits until the project was well under control.

He smiled a little to himself, wondering if Grandma Jo had been right—he really did have a guardian angel. Because how else could he explain the fortuitous convergence of events? Him finishing up Phase One of the Menagerie project right as Mattie was looking to add a little more spice to her life? And—more importantly—him being in the right place at the right time to hear about Mattie’s New Year’s resolution.

He took another swig of beer, casually wishing that he could have heard the rest of their conversation. He’d heard the first part only by happenstance, since he’d come the back way to the pool, circling around the laundry room because he’d gone to the parking garage first to get the Stephen King novel from his car. Their voices hadn’t been high so much as urgent. At least, Mattie’s had.

As soon as he’d recognized her voice, he’d slowed his pace, hoping to find an opening where he could pop into the laundry room. Maybe say hi. Casually suggest a coffee sometime.

But as soon as he’d realized the topic of their discussion, he’d known that any interruption would not only embarrass the heck out of Mattie, it would also kill any chance he’d ever have of taking her out on a proper date.

What he should have done was leave. Right then. That instant. But his guardian angel had sprouted horns and a tail, and he’d hung around, then overheard the delicious, decadent New Year’s resolution that Mattie had proposed.

Mike had been tempted to loiter and learn exactly what Mattie had in mind, but the devil on his shoulder had turned angelic again, and urged him to get out of there. Perfect timing, too, because not thirty seconds later, he heard Carla’s high-pitched voice followed by Mattie’s squeal and the appearance of her head around the door frame, as she scoped out the area, clearly looking for eavesdroppers.

He’d kept his eyes down, aimed at his book, and hoped that Mattie couldn’t tell that he’d not only heard her state her goal, but that he was looking forward to helping her reach it.

Which, of course, raised the question of exactly how he was going to convince Mattie that he could provide invaluable assistance with her quest.

That, however, was the kind of academic problem he thrived on. He might have to flowchart it, script it, program it and then debug it…but somehow, someway, he was going to come up with the perfect plan. After all, he didn’t have degrees from Stanford and MIT for nothing.

It was time to put his education to work. And he couldn’t think of a single thing he’d rather score an A+ in than the seduction of Mattie Brown.

2

HERE IS MY PROBLEM with the do-it-yourself culture we now live in: We’re expected to do all this stuff that professionals used to do, but no one has bothered to either a) train us, or b) give us the right freaking equipment.

Self-serve gas stations, for example. Okay, yes, sure. It’s nice not to have to wait for—or chat with—Tommy Tune Up, but Tommy’s absence from my life has caused me to burn oil on more than one occasion. I can fill up my car just fine, but those oil dipsticks are designed to be entirely unreadable by anyone lacking a Ph.D. in auto mechanics. It’s true! It’s like a nationwide conspiracy.

And furniture…Don’t even get me started on furniture.

I have vivid memories of wonderful wooden pieces being delivered to my parents’ house when I was a kid, hauled in on rolling dollies—fully assembled, mind you—by strapping young men working their way through college.

So why had those buff Adonises not delivered my furniture? I’ll tell you why: Because some genius somewhere decided that they could draw a picture, include an Allen wrench and make me do it myself.

Honestly, it’s enough to make a girl never want to have kids. Assemble toys on Christmas Eve? No thank you very much!

My future progeny notwithstanding, at the moment I had two shelves and a filing cabinet to assemble, and no Adonis to help with the project. Oh well. I’m a self-sufficient female, right? Absent any other options, I figured I could handle it myself.

I figured wrong.

An hour later, I’d manage to assemble only the bare frame of the first bookshelf, and that after having to remove and reinsert the first set of screws and little connector thingamabobs. Had the instructions been in English, perhaps I would have had better luck. Instead, the manufacturer had included only poorly drawn pictures of the various steps. And I’m ashamed to say I don’t know how to translate hieroglyphics.

Frustrated, I tossed the Allen wrench, then made a rude sound when it skittered over the battered wood floor to rest under the couch. That, I figured, was a signal that it was time for a break. Or to call in reinforcements. Or both.

Buoyed by the thought of something cool and refreshing, I headed to the kitchen. I grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge, popped the top, then took a sip before I called Carla. True, she’d just left an hour ago, but she only lived a stone’s throw away. She’d gone home to put away her laundry and catch up on some housework before Mitch came back from his latest business outing. Considering the depths of Carla’s hatred for toilet bowl scrubbing, I figured my odds of recruiting help were pretty darn high.

Again, unfortunately, I was wrong.

“I really wish I could give you a hand,” she said, after I explained my dilemma. “But Mitch caught an earlier flight and he’s already in a taxi.”

“Oh,” I said, knowing it was pointless to argue. Besides, I was happy for Carla. Happy and not the slightest bit envious. Nope. No green in my blood.

I cleared my throat. “Right. Well, guess I’ll let you get back to it.”

“You know, if John thinks it’s so important that you have office furniture at home, maybe he should have hired someone to put it together for you.”

“Yeah,” I said, figuring that it would be more likely that pink pigs would fly by my open window. “True enough.”

Carla sighed, obviously understanding what I hadn’t said: I’d never once defied my boss and I wasn’t about to start now. “Listen, Mitch will probably go home early tomorrow. I mean, he’s got to unpack, right? I could help you then.”

“Great,” I said, but without a lot of enthusiasm. I hung up the phone before she clued in to my suddenly miserable state. If Carla needed shelves assembled, she had Mitch. Me? I had neither a considerate boss nor a studly boy toy.

I leaned against the fridge and sighed, then took another sip of soda. The fact was, I was a neurotic mess. I mean, had I really announced to Carla that I wanted to up my score on a slut test? That was so not like me.

I called Carla back and told her that. She immediately laughed. “Are you kidding? That’s exactly like you!”

“Excuse me?”

“In school, if you made a lousy grade, you obsessed about it until you got it right. That’s why you’re still working for ballbuster John, isn’t it? Because you can’t go somewhere else until you’ve made a huge success of that? Which is ridiculous, actually, because you never wanted to be the queen of reality television. But you’re giving your life to the job. You haven’t finished a new screenplay in months. It’s your dream, Mattie, and you’ve stopped chasing it.”

We’d had this particular conversation about a million times, with Carla pushing and me pushing right back. I’d taken the job to further my writing career, and Carla damn well knew that. Today, though, I wasn’t in the mood to remind her. “This isn’t about my job. It’s about me. I mean, what normal person wants to up their Slut IQ?”

“Whoever said you’re normal?” she countered. “And you’re being ridiculous anyway. You and I both know it’s not about being a slut.”

“It’s not?”

“Of course not,” she said. “You just want to cut loose. Honestly, Mattie, it’s about time. You said yourself that your sex life is boring. And it has been boring ever since your first date. Louis Dailey? I mean, come on! You could have done so much better.”

I frowned at the phone. She had a point. I tended toward the safe guys. The nice guys. I wanted the spice in my life, but I think I was a little afraid that I was too…something for the bad boys. That they’d end up dumping me. And, yes, I was waaaaay too competitive to let that happen.

So I ended up with guys that I ultimately dumped. Guys without the adventurous quality that I craved. The wrong guys—I knew it from the start—but I hooked up anyway.

For years, I’d been living on the edge of a vicious—albeit comfortable—circle. Then Dex had gone and dumped me and my entire world view had shifted one-hundred-eighty degrees.

“A wild fling with Cullen is just the ticket,” Carla said, apparently reading my mind. “He’s definitely the guy to spice up a girl’s sex life, but you know he’s not boyfriend material, so it’s not like you’d date him. So there’s no emotional risk, you know?”

I did know. And it sounded delicious. In a super-scary sort of way.

The truth is, I’ve always played life pretty safe. Studying my ass off in high school because I was terrified of a bad grade. A good college. An even better law school. Not because I wanted to be a lawyer but because my parents had pounded into my head that I needed a solid career. Hobbies—like my love of writing—were fine…so long as I didn’t take them too seriously.