It was a lie. But it sounded better thanI signed up to study your app and then write an article to destroy it.
“You don’t strike me as someone who does things gently.”
“Someone told me recently I might be too harsh.”
“Someone close?”
“Close enough.”
He nodded once, as if filing the information away. “Well. Whatever the reason, thank you.”
“For signing up?”
“For the tweet.”
She blinked again. “Excuse me?”
“You boosted our user numbers by sixty percent. We should be cutting you a check.”
“Finally,” she said, deadpan. “Acknowledgement of my marketing genius.”
Darcy smiled—a small, reluctant one.
She smiled back, then immediately caught herself. It wasn’t that kind of moment. She wasn’t here to become his friend. Just to complete the two-date pact she made with Jane, and maybe find out more about the man called Fitzwilliam Darcy.
They fell into silence again, but it didn’t stretch as awkwardly this time. The air in the shop was still too cold, the neon sign in the window still flickering, but it was less noticeable now.
“You really believe in it?” she asked.
“The app?”
“The whole ‘algorithm knows your soul’ thing.”
“I believe people are bad at knowing what they need. We’re good at projecting. At curating. The algorithm sees past that.”
“So you trust data more than instinct.”
“I trust data to get people past their first set of blinders. The rest is human work.”
She stared at him. “That’s weirdly reasonable.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, I’m just trying to figure out if I owe you another apology.”
“For what?”
“For assuming you were the kind of CEO who builds a matchmaking empire and then dates supermodels in Paris.”
“I’ve never dated in Paris.”
“You’re dodging the supermodel part.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you interrogating me?”
“Absolutely.”
He didn’t seem bothered by it. If anything, he looked amused.
