Lori Borrill - Putting It To The Test

“Come again?” Carly asked.

Matt’s gray eyes darkened and the playfulness that had been there a moment ago turned into something smoky. He bent in to narrow the gap between them, stoking her desire.

“The rest of your answers. You’ve forgotten that I saw a couple of them already.” He dropped his eyes to her lips. “I don’t think you were toying with the survey when you completed the section about sex…. I think you were telling the truth.”

Carly dug her fingers into her office chair. “It’s just a silly questionnaire.”

The corners of his mouth cocked into a smile. “I don’t think there’s anything silly about this heat between us. I think we might do ourselves justice by seeing where it goes.”

She really should object, knowing what she knew about the fudged survey. But with Matt, she didn’t want to be decent. She wanted to be delightfully bad. Because no matter how wrong he was about the results, she hadn’t lied on every question.

He was right. When it came to sex, she and Matt were a perfect match….

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Dear Reader,

I’ve often seen those matchmaking commercials on TV. You know, the ones with those happy couples who look perfect for each other dancing to the promise of long-lasting love? The romantic in me smiles every time I see all those happily-ever-afters packed into one thirty-second spot.

The writer in me insisted there was a juicy story in there somewhere. For an angle, I knew it had to involve cheating of some sort. I wanted my heroine to lie through her teeth on the survey, then get stuck being matched to the wrong guy. Ideally, he’d be someone she knew. Even more perfect, someone she absolutely hated. Oh, and in the midst of all that, she’d be forced to pretend to be his soul mate. After all, what’s interesting about cheating if it doesn’t get a girl into trouble? So once the details were in place, I ended up with a story that was a total blast to write.

In the following pages Carly Abrams is about to discover that, while you might be able to boil matchmaking down to a science, true love is nothing short of magic.

Happy reading!

Lori Borrill

An Oregon native, Lori Borrill moved to the Bay Area just out of high school and has been a transplanted Californian ever since. Her weekdays are spent at the insurance company where she’s been employed for over twenty years, and she credits her writing career to the unending help and support she receives from her husband and real-life hero. When not sitting in front of a computer, she can usually be found at the Little League fields playing proud parent to their son, Tom. She’d love to hear from readers and can be reached through her Web site at www.LoriBorrill.com, or via mail addressed to Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd., 225 Duncan Mill Road, Toronto, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

HARLEQUIN BLAZE

308—PRIVATE CONFESSIONS

344—UNDERNEATH IT ALL

To the many friends and coworkers at the

office who have been a source of support and

encouragement from the very start. You make the

daily grind worth showing up for!

For Al and Tommy.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

I TEND TO BE conservative when it comes to sex.

Carly Abrams studied the survey option, wondering if she should answer based on her actual sex life or the one she really wanted. So far in her twenty-six years she hadn’t exactly pushed any sexual boundaries. But that wasn’t her fault. She simply hadn’t connected with any adventurous men. Give her the right partner with the right moves at the right time, and a very kinky side of Carly Abrams could make a flashing debut. The fact that it hadn’t happened yet shouldn’t be held against her, should it?

“No, it shouldn’t,” she muttered, then clicked the box titled Disagree. She briefly paused over Strongly Disagree, thinking if she was making a sexual admission, she might as well go all the way, but decided to leave it be. It was pointless to overanalyze the questions. Though this was a matchmaking survey, she wouldn’t be finding any soul mates on the design team at Hall Technologies. This was only an exercise to select the two Web designers who would be assigned to the company’s latest client, Singles Inc., an online matchmaking and dating service in need of a fresh new Web site.

A number of firms had vied for the account, Singles Inc. attracting some of the biggest names in advertising and Web design. But though Hall Technologies was no leader in the industry, Brayton Hall had landed the account with his unconventional style and his concepts about becoming one with the client, which in this case included using the client’s compatibility survey to select the project’s design team.

Everyone who wanted a shot at the job had to fill it out, though employees had the option of skipping any questions they felt uncomfortable answering.

Like this next one.

When it comes to sex, nothing’s too far out for me. Bring on the toys, tie me up and invite a friend to join us. “The wilder, the better” is my motto.

Well, if she were looking to connect with adventurous men, this would certainly be the way to do it.

Fidgeting with the hem of her canary-yellow tunic, she stared at the screen and smiled. Wouldn’t Mr. Hall keel over if she strongly agreed to that statement? Not that she expected him to read the answers. They’d made a big deal out of mentioning that Singles Inc. would tally the results and that no one at Hall Technologies would be privy to detailed information.

Still, if he did, it would be a riot. Ms. Sally Sunshine, as she was often regarded, coming out of her tidy closet to reveal a fetish for bondage, dildos and threesomes. Just the image of Mr. Hall’s reaction had her clicking Strongly Agree for fun and tempting herself to leave it that way. Of course, it wouldn’t be true. Though toys and bondage might have raided her fantasies, she couldn’t quite make the jump into threesomes—and she could hardly cop to the label of “wild” if she’d never even broached “moderate.”

Yet she couldn’t help staring at her answer as if she were trying the idea on for size.

“When it comes to sex, nothing’s too—”

The low, sultry voice over her shoulder caused her to jump and slap a hand to the screen.

Please don’t let that be who she thought it was.

“—far out for me.”

Oh, heck. It was. Matt Jacobs, the bane of her existence, the thorn in her professional side. The star of your sexual fantasies.

Oh, no. Scratch that last errant thought. Matt Jacobs was most definitely not her sexual fantasy. In fact, the only fantasy she had of Matt involved him making a fool out of himself in front of as many people as possible, getting fired, packing up his belongings and tripping over the threshold on his way out the door.