Cameron (Cam) Johnson

Seattle, WA

At thirty-one, I'm the last single man standing from my longtime group of friends. The others are all married, engaged, or in a committed relationship. I could say being last was by design—the captain always goes down with the ship. But I did my tour with the Army, not Navy. And I didn't make this battle plan. Our mutual matchmaker, Ashley Harte, had done all the strategizing in this war for love. She was pretty damn good at it, too. But even the best generals have stragglers. I was hers.

My dating profile on file with Ashley says I did my four years of active duty after the U.S. government paid for my college with an ROTC scholarship. I came out of school with a degree in computer science and served as a low-level officer in a technical capacity I'm not allowed to talk about. What I did was still classified. One of my attributes—I'm good at keeping my mouth shut. You can trust me with a secret. I know many more than I admit to.

Though I come from middle-class roots, I'm a recent multimillionaire thanks to a dating app I developed with my buddies. Austin, Jeremy, Dylan—we're all multimillionaires. Everyone except Lazer. He's a billionaire. He's always been a showoff. There's one in every bunch. He's also the guy who hired Ashley for the rest of us—to prove that money really can buy love, even for a pack of geeks and software nerds—and fell in love with her in the process. He was the playboy of the group. Now he's a one-woman, engaged man. The joke's on him.

Ashley is great. We all love her. She has found better matches for the rest of my friends than they probably deserve. I say that with a wink. They're a great group of guys, but given their former nerd status, they've definitely dated up.

I have faith Ashley will eventually find the needle in the haystack that is the woman for me. Love is mostly a matter of proximity and being ready for it. I've been ready for a while. The future Mrs. Johnson, however, has remained elusive. I'm relieved, in a way, that I'm the last one. There was a time I worried it would be Dylan. I didn't think he'd handle being the lone wolf well. He's a teddy bear if you know him, but quiet, big, and intimidating—hard to crack his shell and get to know.

I had an appointment with Ashley later in the day over drinks, after I met with my real estate agent to look at yet another office space for my pet project, a program mentoring up-and-coming high school tech nerds. Experience with this hot Seattle real estate market had taught me not to be optimistic. If my bad luck held, it would already be snapped up before I even got there. At least this time my agent wasn't selling it as a fixer-upper property with potential or easy freeway access. We all know what that means.

People from outside the area have no idea how difficult it is to get office space of any kind within the city limits. Even the shared office spaces were filled to capacity, and those were inadequate for my needs, anyway. I had to be able to set up high-tech equipment and leave it up.

A certain retailer and tech giant who shall not be named gobbled up all the space as soon as it became available. Sometimes even before. If its diabolical plan was to drive up demand and prices, it was succeeding. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd think they had secret property investments. More likely, though, the giant retailer was aiming for world domination. Whatever its motivation, it was making life hard for the little guy around here. Or hard to be the incubator for young people with smarts and big dreams, in my case. We were homeless when it came to downtown office space.

Ashley wanted to pitch another batch of matches she'd found for me. The meeting was part of our weekly ritual. She spends the week scouring the city for women I might be interested in. We meet for coffee, lunch, or drinks. She pitches me candidates. We laugh. She coaches me, fine-tunes my dating skills. I ask out the women I find most intriguing, take out those who are amenable. And then I either reject them or they me. The process repeats the next week. By my modest calculations, there are enough single women in the city for this to continue for the rest of my life and well beyond.

This time, though, something was different. Ashley was having a hard time containing her excitement, which meant her matchmaking instinct was stirring. She was famous for her gut feelings about certain matches. Her intuition was notorious and made her the best in the business.

She'd been right about matches for both Jeremy and Dylan. I had no reason to doubt she'd be right about someone for me, eventually. Right now, I was mostly amused by her passion for what she did. I had a battle of my own I was fighting that was distracting me. One I was going to be damned if I lost.

I walked briskly along Westlake on this beautiful spring evening, excited about the location of the new property. Right in the heart of the high-tech giants. That was a plus, a must-have. I turned into one of many office buildings along the street and took the elevator to the tenth floor to a small suite of office space.

Dave, my agent, was waiting for me with a set of keys in his hand. "Right on time." He reached out and shook my hand.

"Hey, buddy." I nodded toward the door. "The location looks good. Is it still available?"

He laughed. "It was five minutes ago when I picked the key up from the building manager. It hasn't even been listed yet, but the sharks can smell blood in the water and have been circling. We'll have to make a snap decision."

I nodded. "Got it. Let's take a look."

Dave nodded. "Keep in mind—the current occupant has no idea the landlord is allowing me to show it. If it's a mess, look past it."

I raised an eyebrow. "Is it even legal to show it without the renter's consent?"

Thinking ahead to being a possible tenant, I didn't like the sound of that. I didn't appreciate being shot in the back.

"We have consent." Dave slipped the key into the lock. "Their micro-lease gives the owner the right to show it at his pleasure. These micro-leases are so short that it has to be that way." Dave pushed the door open and stepped aside to let me in first.

As I stepped inside, I was greeted with the lingering scent of perfume. Just a wisp of it, an impression. Nothing overwhelming. It was sexy enough that it conjured up a hot woman in my mind's eye. I wasn't familiar with this particular scent, and that was a good thing. I liked originality.

Believe me, I'd smelled a lot of different perfumes since working with Ashley and going on multiple dates a week. It had gotten so that I could name the most common perfumes on first sniff. Not a skill I was proud to have. I was becoming a bit of scent snob, and had made a game with myself of using perfumes as an eliminator. If a perfume made a bad association with me—if one of my particularly bad dates had worn it, or it was Mom's signature scent—the woman I was out with had a hurdle to overcome. If she wore a scent I was tired of, or didn't care for, same deal.

When you date prolifically, you begin to see patterns—the same shades of lipstick, the same hairstyles, the same manner of flirting, the same topics of conversation, the same flattery. It took the mystique out of falling in love when you began to feel many of these women were interchangeable. I didn't want highly switchable. I was determined to fall in love with a woman who was one in a million, not one of a million cast in the same mold.

Riding on the edges of the perfume were the usual scents of an office—coffee, paper, the comfortable smell of electronics, which I personally found appealing, too. We stepped into a small reception area with a desk. A bank of windows was directly across from us with a view of other buildings, nothing spectacular.

Dave stepped around me. "Not the best view."

"Not a deal-breaker. My kids are going to be head down in their code and projects, not painting sunsets and lake-scapes. I don't give a damn about the view." My gaze swept the area. "It could be bigger."

"Don't let the clutter fool you. This is one of the most spacious suites we've looked at in terms of actual square footage," he said.

Clutter? I thought, taking a closer look. Dave either wasn't looking close enough or he was trying to humor me.

The office was girly. I'd give him that. But it was decorated with a deft hand. Not the style I would have chosen. But I didn't care about style. Functionality was all that mattered to me. The walls were white, a nice, clean base for operations. Most of the furniture was white or cream as well. But that would be gone. All the accents and accessories were in pink, robin's-egg blues, bright greens, and gold. It looked like Pinterest had exploded all over the space.

"If you want larger, we'll have to look outside the city," Dave said. "There's plenty of space available in almost any of the suburbs and malls."

I shook my head. "Location, location, location. This is the perfect one. On the bus line. Right in the heart of the tech community. Perfect access to thousands of techie and geek mentors. And seed money from corporations."

My pulse quickened as I walked around the space, examining it more closely, feeling more and more like an intruder in an intimate, personal place. I should have been repelled by the blatant femininity around me. I felt sorry for any bit of testosterone who dared walk in and wasn't completely confident in his masculinity.

Despite all that, I kind of liked the place. It was quirky and unique, but not bizarre. Definitely nothing cookie cutter about it. The place displayed a sense of humor, right down to a bright pink plastic swing hanging by ropes from rings in the ceiling in the center of the largest space. A sign hung over it, hand-lettered in gold with elegant script calligraphy: never grow up.

"We have to keep this." I gave the swing a gentle push. "We'll swap out the seat and the sign for something a little less pink and gold."

Dave shook his head. "If you take the place, I'll see what I can do."

I took a tape measure out of my pocket. I was already imagining the suite filled with workbenches, Raspberry Pis, and state-of-the-art desktops. Everything the young would-be entrepreneur needed to get started. All staffed by my teenaged protégés, young men and women from underprivileged or underserved backgrounds. Geeks who were made fun of and ostracized, who needed a place to belong. Young people I was trying to keep off the streets and hook on STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As I walked around, measuring spaces and taking stock of the number of electrical outlets, I felt more and more like a voyeur. Every desk and workspace was personally decorated with family pictures, snaps of vacations, and all the little touches.

I made a point of not looking at them. I had to keep my head about me, and these people, whoever they were, at a distance. I didn't need any guilt for displacing this obviously settled and happy little team.

Dave stood quietly to the side as I worked my way around the suite, finishing in the corner office, so to speak. The place was open concept. It was really more a corner space and, as the suite was in the middle of the building floor, not on the corner at all. It had the usual row of windows on just one side. But it was quite obviously the head honcho's desk.

Once again, like all the furniture, it was white. The desk faced out into the office. A vase of crepe paper flowers in pinks, purples, and reds sat on one corner. Built-in white bookcases filled the windowless wall behind it. The bookcase was stocked with a stylish assortment of odds and ends, some decoratively placed, but very few books. Some of the miscellaneous pieces were quite obviously part of current projects that were set aside quickly at the end of the day. A garland of silk tassels in creams and pinks of various pale shades hung across the top of the bookcase.

Except for the paper flowers and an in-basket—in cream, of course—the desk was clear. Another calligraphy sign standing on a bookcase shelf caught my attention. In pink and gold again, it was hard to miss.

Wake up.

Kick ass.

Be Kind.

Repeat.

I laughed. "I have to have one of these, too. I wonder if the calligrapher can make me one in camo?"

Dave grinned.

"How soon is this place available?" I asked.

"The lease is up at the end of the month."

I frowned. "And they haven't listed it yet?" Something was off. That wasn't usual.

"The owner has a soft spot for techies. They're giving us first shot. And hinting that if any future successful tech startups come out of here, you'll let them buy in early."

I gave a nod. "We hope to have many success stories. Who to give what will be up to them." I paused. "The current tenant doesn't want to renew?"

I looked around the room. They didn't look like they were in any hurry to leave.

"If we offer the right price, they won't be given the option."

"What's the maximum lease length they're offering?"

These micro-leases were usually three to eight months and tailored for either seasonal retail or startups that expected to outgrow space quickly.

I was hoping my program would outgrow this place by the end of the year. But with space in the city so limited, and the location excellent for what I wanted, I'd be happy to take it for as long as I could get it. If that meant setting up satellite locations as we grew, so be it. I'd cross that bridge later.

"Eight months is the usual maximum." Dave grinned. "But, again, if we offer them enough, I'm sure we can persuade them to give us a year at least."

My grin matched his. I looked around the room, nodding. "Let's do it. Let's nail this space down."

Dave pulled out his phone. "This space is hot. Are you prepared to offer top dollar?"

"Money is no object," I said. "I have a billionaire bankrolling me. This is a tax write-off for us."

I looked around again, liking the feel of the space more and more the longer we stayed. "Seriously, we have plenty of capital. But let's try not to waste it. I have plenty to spend it on. I say we negotiate hard, but we pay what we need to secure the place." I named a figure I was comfortable with, above the asking price, and realistic given the hot market.

"That should do it." Dave was usually a calm guy, but he was obviously excited. He looked like a hunter about to make a kill. "I'll call the owner and make our offer."

"Do it." I glanced at my watch. If I didn't get going, I was going to be late to my meeting with Ashley. "I have to run. I have another meeting I need to get to."

I headed for the door, pointing at Dave as I left. I trusted him to handle the offer and make it happen. "Let me know when we can move in and set up."

I hit the street, happy and excited. Optimistic. The kids were going to love this place.