Dream Date with the Millionaire. Melissa Mcclone

online dating world was cutthroat. The competition stole from each other regularly, but pretending to want to meet dates went against the terms of service users agreed to when they joined Blinddatebrides.com. But she hadn’t mentioned anything about her job prior to her saying she was a spy.

      “What does she do for a living?” Bryce asked.

      “She listed sales as her occupation,” Joelle said.

      “That’s too vague, given the list of options she could have chosen.”

      “Red flag number three?” Joelle asked.

      Bryce nodded. He prided himself on making his Web site a safe and secure place to meet and fall in love. His sister had had her heart broken, as well as her bank account drained, thanks to the “love” she’d found on a competitor’s site. The guy had turned out to be the exact opposite of what he’d claimed to be. No one was going to pull a stunt like that on Bryce’s site, during his watch. “I’ll get right on it.”

      Joelle smiled. “I almost feel sorry for her.”

      “Why is that?” he asked.

      “Because, once you get started, you don’t stop.”

      He shrugged. “Just doing my job.”

      “Remember, it’s just a job.” She pulled the pen from behind her ear. “Grant is e-mailing you a file with additional information you might need.”

      “Thanks.” As she left the office and closed the door behind her, Bryce stared at the picture in the folder. He glanced at the user name. “Who are you, Sanfrandani? And what are you doing on my site?”

      At three o’clock, Dani sat at the rectangular table that functioned as the “conference room” as well as the “break room” with her five coworkers at the fledgling Internet dating site Hookamate.com. Pacing back and forth across the floor of the converted warehouse was their boss, James Richardson.

      James wore ripped-at-the-knee jeans and a black T-shirt. He had long, straggly blond hair. He spoke fast and loud, as if fueled by caffeine and junk food. He reminded her of a stereotypical computer science graduate student in desperate need of a balanced meal, sunshine and a girlfriend, but his first two Internet ventures had made him tons of money. He’d sold them, and now wanted to replicate that success with a new online dating site.

      Succeed at any cost, Dani had finally figured out.

      During her interview, James had seemed more captivated with her double-D bra cup sized breasts than the qualifications on her résumé. Yet he’d surprised her by asking detailed questions about her schooling and work experience. He’d known exactly what he wanted in a marketing person.

      She had the skills so she’d made the most of what nature had given her, just as her mother had taught her to do, and secured the job. Which meant she only had herself to blame for where she found herself today. She wanted to bang her head on the table for her stupidity.

      “The good news is we had an increase in traffic thanks to Danica’s marketing efforts.” James winked at her. No one at the company except him knew she was undercover, so to speak, spying on the local competition, Blinddatebrides.com. “Unfortunately the traffic exceeded our capacity so we’ve been having to add machines. But that’s not a bad problem. Traffic will drive our advertising revenue. That means more money for us. Anyone have other ideas to generate more users?”

      No one said anything.

      “Rethinking our branding might help,” she suggested. “Taglines, image, ads, name.”

      James clenched his jaw. “Our Web site name rocks.”

      “Totally.”

      “Yeah.”

      Dani listened to the men in the room support their boss who they held in almost cult leader esteem. The only other woman at the table, Shelley, the office manager, shook her head and mouthed the word sorry to Dani.

      The responses didn’t deter her. She had to do something. Say something.

      “Look at Blinddatebrides.com.” The name of the fastest-growing competitor brought groans from the three engineers at the table, but Dani kept going. “When people hear Blinddatebrides.com, they can’t help but think about brides. That word connotes weddings, which makes people think relationships, marriage, permanence. That’s appealing to users.”

      “Only if you want to end up with a ball and chain,” a Ruby on Rails developer named Andrew murmured.

      Dani ignored him. “Granted, your…I mean our…site’s name does have ‘mate’, but ‘hook’ makes people think of…”

      “What?” James asked.

      “One-night stands,” a PHP programmer, who probably hadn’t showered let alone had a date in a month, said.

      People—okay, guys—laughed.

      “Yeah, sex,” the interface hacker offered. “Sex appeals to a lot of people, too.”

      The two men gave each other high fives.

      Dani sighed. “I worry the name brings about images of hookups, not serious relationships.”

      No one spoke.

      “There’s such a thing as a niche market,” Andrew said. “Hookups can be our niche.”

      She stared at all the nodding heads. Male heads. No wonder women had a hard time finding good men to date these days. Not that she was interested in anything to do with dating.

      “I appreciate you bringing this up, Danica,” James said finally. “I’ll have to think about what you said.”

      Which meant he would never mention it again. That was how things worked around here. James’s way or the highway. He’d given her a choice—join Blinddatebrides.com or quit. She needed the paycheck so did as he’d requested. Up until that point, she’d really liked the challenges of being in on the ground floor of a start-up again. Now she hated getting up in the morning.

      “Anything else?” he asked.

      No one said a word. No one ever did. Except her. She didn’t know why she bothered.

      “Get to work, people.” James clapped his hands together. “We don’t want anyone to be lonely tonight. They need to hook a mate!”

      Dani trudged back to her cubicle, frustrated and tired. She’d stayed up late last night sending out another batch of résumés. Speaking of which, she’d better check her e-mail in case someone had replied. She clicked on her in-box. There, at the top, was a new message, but not from a potential employer. This was one was from bigbrother@blinddatebrides. com with the subject header “I read your profile.”

      Oh, no. She squeezed her eyes shut. Another guy who wanted to get to know her.

      Her stomach churned. She hated this. Sure, she could just hit “delete”—that was par for the course on many dating sites—but Blinddatebrides.com was different. The site touted itself as a community where politeness and manners mattered. Users were requested to reply, even if the intent was to give someone a brush-off. Still, the thought of telling another guy she wasn’t interested in getting to know him better made her feel physically ill.

      But what else could she do?

      Leading a guy on when she was on the site under false pretenses ranked right up there with corporate spying in her book. She massaged her forehead to stop a full-on headache from erupting. Okay, one rejection wasn’t going to send some guy scampering back to his mommy in tears, but…

      Why did this keep happening?

      Dani had taken steps to ensure it wouldn’t. What sense of honor she had left had made her fill out the profile questionnaire truthfully so she understood when the compatibility program deemed her a match with someone. But Dani had hedged against the computer algorithms by uploading the most unattractive