Seducing The Matchmaker: One Man Rush / Taking Him Down / The Personal Touch

For the next twenty minutes, Kyle basically watched Marissa do her thing—convincing two reporters for the social pages that she and Kyle were an item—while the reporters’ noisy friends drank the champagne he’d provided and took pictures of them. It seemed obvious to him that the members of the media she’d chosen didn’t have a huge amount of journalistic integrity to be wooed by a night out and expensive bubbly, but who was he to complain?

She was getting the job done in short order and impressing him even more. No wonder she’d been her mother’s manager. She was efficient and charming, but utterly professional. He only had to nod at the appropriate moments while Marissa spoon-fed her contacts some stock quotes about Kyle’s goals for the hockey season as an aside to their new romance.

“Anything else?” she asked him suddenly, making him remember he wasn’t just here to watch her work. Or to count down the minutes until they’d be alone together.

He straightened, already thinking about kissing her senseless in the limo he had waiting outside.

“Not that I can think of. I still owe you a date tonight.” He figured it was okay to flirt with her since they were trying to sell the relationship that he’d always told himself he’d never have during the play-offs.

While the women oohed and aahed about how romantic he was, Marissa turned to him and lowered her voice.

“Did you want to talk about your youth hockey camp with her?” she prompted, like a born promoter. “You might generate some more sponsorships if it’s mentioned in the paper.”

“I’ve already got some interest.” Kyle had spoken to the owner of the Phantoms’ hockey arena about using the space already. “Phil Goodwell is donating the ice time and some funding.”

Marissa frowned.

“But if that falls through, don’t you think it would be wise to make sure you have some backups?”

Before he’d made up his mind, Marissa was already relating his plan to Shawna, who took notes on a cocktail napkin now that her PDA battery had died.

Kyle didn’t interrupt, letting her call the shots with the media since she seemed comfortable with the role. Still, he was surprised about her strong support of the hockey camp. He’d only mentioned it briefly to her.

“Thank you.” He spoke into her ear as they rose to leave the meeting.

“No problem.” She peered back over her shoulder, having no idea how much she’d helped him.

“I mean it.” He tugged gently on her arm, wanting to be sure she knew how damn grateful he was. “You were amazing back there.”

“I got good at keeping my mom’s interviews on schedule. Otherwise, she’d chat everyone’s ear off.”

Not until that moment did he realize how much she deflected attention from herself. He’d seen it in the way she dressed before, but now he understood it went deeper than that. She didn’t even take credit for work that she was very, very good at.

“It was more than that.” His chest warmed at how easily she’d solved a whole world of problems for him. “I never would have thought of mentioning the hockey camp. I really want to make that happen this year.”

He couldn’t read the expression that crossed her face, but it vanished a moment later.

“I hope that it helps.” She edged closer, her skirt teasing along his leg again in a silken swish. “But right now, Kyle, you owe me a date and I intend to collect.”

“I CAN’T FOLLOW THIS woman anymore.”

Isaac Reynolds frowned at the frustrated voice coming through his phone in his home office. He’d called his head of security for an update on Stacy Goodwell, not a resignation.

“Can’t or won’t?” Isaac switched open the Skype window on his computer so he could see the guy he’d tasked to keep tabs on Stacy for the next forty-eight hours.

Although preliminary checks into her background suggested she was a privileged local girl who wrote a column for a Philly paper, Isaac wasn’t taking chances. His high-tech business full of corporate espionage taught him to trust no one.

“Can’t,” the head of his security team answered flatly, turning his phone’s camera so Isaac could see his face. Bob Wyatt had twenty years of experience and normally appeared well-groomed and competent. Right now, he looked sweaty, disheveled and pissed off. “Take a look at where we are.”

He swung the camera for a jerky view of his whereabouts. Passengers stared straight ahead, packed in tight while the steady hum of a motor made white noise in the background.

“On a bus? To where?” Isaac clicked the window to enlarge the picture. “And where the hell is she?’’

He hadn’t seen her in the pan of the swaying motor coach.

“We’re headed to Pittsburgh and she’s in the back,” he hissed into the phone, drawing attention from the guy next to him, who made a face in the frame beside him. “I can’t very well videotape her for you since she’s taping the whole damn ride herself.”

“That makes no sense.” Isaac didn’t want to be intrigued. At least not until he was one hundred percent sure she wasn’t out to sell his secrets. “Why would she film a bus trip?”

Let alone take a bus to Pittsburgh in the first place. It would be one thing if she was making contact with a buyer interested in having her spy on him. In that case, maybe a bus would have been discreet. But anyone who traded in expensive secrets did so anonymously, not on film.

“She made an announcement to the other passengers that she’s filming this for a new video blog.” Wyatt rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed with digital media. With his tie askew and one jacket lapel flipped over to show the felt lining beneath, he seethed into the camera while the knucklehead next to him kept leaning into the shot. “She passed around waivers for us to sign, so I had to come up with an excuse.”

“Why didn’t you sign, man?” the joker in the seat next to Bob asked him, as if he’d been part of the conversation. “The blog sounds cool. I’ll bet it gets a million hits.”

“What kind of blog?” Isaac had thought about the mystery woman all day. First, he’d had to research her. But also because she’d said they made the perfect couple.

A sex goddess swathed in silver had asked him out but he’d been too busy worrying she was a spy to notice, let alone say yes.

Dumb. Ass.

“It’s called Diva No More.” This from the helpful Joe in the seat next to his so-called head of security. The guy leaned all the way into the camera frame so that his face was superimposed sideways on top of Bob’s. “She’s leaving behind the hoity-toity life to become a regular girl.”

A scuffle ensued around the camera as Bob told the guy to mind his own business. For a few minutes, Isaac couldn’t see anything and he suspected Bob had changed seats.

Diva No More? Isaac remembered their conversation about Stacy’s father trying to buy her a man. Her insistence that she needed to make her own mistakes. Could she have gone a step further today? Cut the ties to the domineering dad?

Her life didn’t sound like a cover for a corporate spy. Future video blog queen Stacy Goodwell seemed like a sweet, sexy dream girl he’d been too blind to appreciate last night. Now that he’d researched her background, he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from seeing her again.

“Sorry about that—” Bob began.

“I need to know what she’s doing in Pittsburgh,” Isaac interrupted, wondering how to meet up with her without it being too coincidental. His home office in Philly was three hundred miles away. He could call for a plane and beat her there, but he didn’t want to look like a stalker.

“I can tell you it doesn’t have anything to do with our competitor.” Bob kept his voice low even though he’d changed seats and didn’t seem to have an eavesdropper. “She’s already announced to the whole bus that she’s going to the Phantoms game to write a column on fan style for the newspaper.”

The style column was her regular job. Isaac wondered how the video blog would fit in with it, but he agreed with Bob’s former seatmate—the blog would be a hit. Stacy’s whole dazzling personality was camera-ready. She’d be sought after by ten times the number of guys who probably already wanted her.

And that was assuming the damn matchmakers her father hired didn’t try to snag her first.

“Make sure she gets to her hotel safely.” He didn’t like the idea of thirty-odd strangers on a random bus knowing her whereabouts. “I’ll take over for you in a couple of hours. I’m on my way to Pittsburgh.”

10 (#u2c8abec5-cfce-5b1c-a35d-84eb41a10f70)

MARISSA WAS IN SUCH a hurry to be with Kyle that she bolted out the back door into the alley behind the nightclub.

“Wait up.” Kyle practically tripped her in his hurry to get in front of her.

He put his big, muscular body between her and the outside world. She didn’t mind that she stumbled into his back. He was fun to hold on to, for one thing. And for another, she thought it was kind of charming that he wanted to protect her.