Page 93 of The Billionaire Mismatch

“Sadie.”

“Does he feel the same?” She says.

“What?” I ask, having trouble keeping up.

“Luca. Does Luca have feelings for you too?” She asks.

“I think so,” I say modestly.

“I see…” she nods. “Well. Isn’t this a fun little plot twist? I trust you with my heartbreak and then the two of you hook up, leaving me the one who gets used. Tell me, Livv. You work in the world of dating and matchmaking. Are catfish a universal thing?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice breaking.

“I mean, is catfishing solely a dating thing? Or can you catfish your friends too?”

“That’s not fair,” I say, stuffing down some of the emotion. “It’s only catfishing if it was intended.”

“Well, just because you didn’t intend to hurt me doesn’t mean you didn’t,” she says, standing up. “I hope you two are happy together. Actually. No. I hope you two get exactly what you have coming to you. You deserve each other.”

“Sadie,” I call out, but she’s already marching out the door, leaving me with tears streaming down my cheeks and a fat check that I don’t know if I can pay. So I do the only thing I can think of. I call Luca.

* * *

“So she insisted on going to Indigo and then stuck you with the check,” Luca says as we drive back to my house. The only thing more embarrassing than having to call him because I couldn’t pay the tab is asking him for a ride home because Sadie and I carpooled here and the car was hers.

“We may or may not have gotten in an argument,” I admit, and he looks away from the road momentarily to look over at me.

“That’s not good,” he says, and I can feel more tears coming. I fight them vigorously, but I’m not sure what good it will do. I’m a mess.

“No, it’s not,” I sigh.

“Do you mind if I ask what it was about?” he gently asks, and I turn to him.

“What happened between you two?” I ask.

“Between Sadie and I?” he asks, pulling up to my place and putting the car in park.

“Yes. Because I only know her side. And I need to know yours,” I say.

“Well,” he sighs, sitting back in his seat and turning Hozier down. “Sadie worked for me.”

“I know,” I say.

“And while she was kind of…no offense…an airhead most of the time, I could tell she had potential. So, I promoted her to thedesign department. And she was good. Honestly, she was even better than I expected. We worked together a lot because design is incredibly important for a dating app. Any app really. If it’s not appealing to the eye, people swipe left. They end up on another app,” he explains, looking over at me to see if I am still following. When I nod timidly, he goes on.

“I think, somewhere in those meetings and private lunches, Sadie might have taken the one-on-one time the wrong way,” he says.

“So you weren’t interested in her,” I state.

“In short? No. I mean don’t get me wrong; she’s a pretty girl. But she isn’t really my type. And I wasn’t looking for a relationship anyway. So when she asked if I would go to dinner with her to discuss the layout for a new launch we were doing as part of a full app update, I figured, why not? We could discuss work things, and I could also explain that our relationship, if you want to call it that, was strictly professional.”

“So the dinner at the Italian restaurant wasn’t a date…” I say.

“No. And when I realized that’s what she thought it was–”

“You fired her,” I say, but Luca’s brow furrows.

“No. I fired her because after I explained where we stood, she lost her mind in the middle of the restaurant. I cut the dinner short and walked her to her car, and she kissed me,” Luca says, and my mouth literally pops open.