Cassandra awoke the next morning feeling like a helium balloon floating over the most gorgeous landscape. Everything she looked at had a special glow to it, all the way down to her toothbrush. She grinned into the mirror as she brushed her teeth.

Today was going to be awesome.

Post-coital bliss sure was a thing, one that she’d forgotten about entirely.

She hummed as she headed into the living room to start the work day. Every Friday she worked from home, and she belted out her favorite guilty pleasure Rihanna song while she waited for the computer to load.

Clicking through the start-up windows, she navigated to her e-mail client. A long string of e-mails awaited her, and one was marked with the red exclamation point. It was from her boss, with the subject: “New client!!! Interesting case, you’ll be perfect for it!”

Cassandra smiled, standing up to go brew some coffee. She loved being hand-picked for client cases; in the afterglow of an amazing orgasm, she also wanted to relish feeling chosen. Her career goals included being the dependable one, the matchmaker everyone turned to for advice. And she was already well on her way.

Cassandra made a cup of coffee in her single-serve Keurig, humming vehemently, wondering what Nasir was doing right then. When she settled into her seat once more, she hugged the mug of coffee close to her mouth as she scanned the urgent e-mail.

Her boss had a quick note at the top of the new client profile: “Hey Cassandra! New case came in a few days ago, a high-profile client looking for a business-oriented match. I just went ahead and assigned it to you, because I know you’ll love the challenge!!!”

Per her protocol, Cassandra saved the name for the last when reviewing a case. Something about reading a person’s responses before attaching them to a name allowed her to better understand them. She could always guess gender correctly, but also sometimes profession and background. Finding out the name was a cherry on top—the final piece of the puzzle.

Mr. CEO. She scrolled through the responses, finding the applicant a bit dry and narrow-minded. He wanted a business partner, or he wanted a trophy wife. Family was important, but his standard of living was just a bit more important—to her, it sounded like he wanted a rich wife who was the CEO of her own company who would also bake cookies with his mother on holidays. Some of the answers contradicted each other, revealing a possible internal conflict on the applicant’s part. At thirty-five, he seemed well-off and financially secure. Excitement licked through her as she neared the end of the profile, eager to attach a name to the personality.

Her eyes flicked up to the top, where her thumb covered the name space. She yanked it aside, gobbling up the name.

Nasir Azhar.

She blinked once and then twice. She reread it so many times that her vision went blurry. Just to make sure this wasn’t a joke—that she was one hundred percent understanding this correctly. That her amazing night hadn’t actually morphed into some sick alternate reality during her sleep.

Nasir Azhar.

She drew a shaky breath, gaze drifting to the far wall. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was just a freakish coincidence, the kind that arrives like a drunk brute to the party and turns over tables and kicks in the china cabinet.

She clicked onto the photo image and grimaced. There he was. The gorgeous Lebanese businessman, the delectable star of their amazing night together, her memory of whom was entirely different from the man presented in this profile.

He had been her client since 4:34 p.m. the day before.

Which meant their entire date had been one huge breach of ethics…not to mention a total waste of time.

She ran through the profile again, gobbling up the words more intensely, applying each one specifically to Nasir. Dismay uncoiled inside her, slick and insidious. Whoever this man was—if he was truly the Nasir she knew, or vice versa—was not a fit for Cassandra. Which meant that anything that might transpire between them was doomed to fail.

Maybe he’d been showing her a carefully executed façade, something to simply woo her, get her into bed. If he’d been signing up for matchmaking services, roughly since the evening they met, then apparently he knew exactly what he wanted, and Cassandra was just some fun diversion.

She buried her face in her hands, letting the sorry truth sink into her. Getting her hopes up was the dumbest thing she could have done. She’d even tried to circumvent the hurt by preventing him from spending the night, but still the disappointment found a way through.

She didn’t want to be a trophy wife, and she didn’t want to be his business partner. She wasn’t even sure of what she wanted, but it sure as hell wasn’t anything his profile called for.

Cassandra set her mug down gently, all of the bliss from the previous night crashing into ugly shards. She’d been so hopeful and excited for a mere twelve hours, and now it was an ugly shadow, something scarred and shameful. How had she let herself get so excited?

She and Nasir would never fit, not in a million years.

The profiles never lied. Furthermore, there was no way she could work the case of a man she’d slept with. No matter how mind-blowing or earth-shattering the sex had been…it would be completely wrong of her to now act as his matchmaker.

She heaved a sigh, clicking ‘Reply’ on the e-mail. She’d tell her boss she just couldn’t do it now—the less detail, the better—and ask that Laura take it instead.

And she wasn’t sure which stung more: telling her boss that her confident choice had been mistaken for some reason, or finding out that the man she’d been very secretly and quickly falling for had turned out to be the biggest dead-end of all time.

* * *

By Monday morning, Nasir felt considerably uneasy. Like a door had been left ajar inside him, allowing a cold gust inside, but he couldn’t find out where to shut the door.

The entire weekend, he’d waited for Cassandra to respond to one of his various texts. They’d ranged from sexy to sweet to cloying, all of them inviting a response or another meet-up. Already he missed her scent, the feel of her pressed up to him, the way her kisses danced feather-light over his forehead in her bed.

But something was off. And after Monday came and went, he feared he’d never get his response.

Each sound from his phone made him hopeful that Cassandra had finally gotten around to responding. Maybe some last-minute emergency stole her from regular communication, and now would begin the barrage of catch-up texts.

Around six p.m. Monday, his phone dinged with a new e-mail. The sender was unknown by the e-mail client, but bore an interesting subject line: Introducing your Love Detective.

He sighed, swiping into the e-mail, finding a peppy welcome message from the matchmaker at the agency his mother had chosen. It included general information about the process and suggested a meeting time for him to review potential matches with his so-called Love Detective, someone named Laura.

He huffed, swiping his phone off. Maybe the Love Detective could figure out why Cassandra hadn’t responded even once to his texts. He’d thought ghosting was something reserved for college kids, not what a mature, put-together woman in her mid-20’s would do.

All those countless sheets of probing questions and tireless entry fields requesting him to detail his ideal future…he could barely remember what he’d filled out, but maybe they were his real shot at finding a suitable match, like his mother had suggested all along.