Meet Your Match: Perfect Match, #8

By EmKay Connor

He's smart, he's rich…and he's lonely as hell. Axel Caverly isn't your typical millionaire playboy. The top tech guy at Dragon Sports, an athletic gear company that's recently expanded into designing products for athletes with special needs, he spends more time with circuit boards than socialites. When his boss, an alum of Perfect Match, suggests Axel entrust his love life to technology, it's a no-brainer.

Bravery isn't an issue for U.S. Marine Corps aviator Babs McClellan. She's flown in combat situations and survived a helicopter crash in enemy territory. But when she auditions for Perfect Match, a televised dating reality show in hopes of meeting a man who will appreciate her for the woman she is instead of who she isn't, it will take every ounce of courage to reveal her heart, body and soul.

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This story is set in a world based on Roxanne St. Claire's Barefoot Bay Series; it is published with the permission of Roxanne St. Claire. Visit her website for links to her books and more information.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EmKay Connor
• Release date: Apr 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386537649

Book preview

1

Where else but in California did a CEO hold staff meetings during a five-mile run on the beach? Pounding the Alamitos Beach sand alongside his boss, Axel ignored the sweat stinging his eyes and concentrated on what Damon Drake was saying about the company’s expansion.

The demand for adaptive athletic equipment has increased significantly in the last five years—Damon exhaled—partially because of wounded military service members like Rainey.

I saw the report, Axel huffed, glad they only had another quarter mile to go. The day was unseasonably warm, without the usual Pacific breeze to counter the overhead sun. Injuries from combat in the Middle East, he heaved another breath, have resulted in the highest number ever of soldiers experiencing an amputation.

Fortunately, today’s technology offers them more options than spending the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or hobbling around on crutches. Damon’s pace increased, as if to underscore his next words. I want Dragon Sports to be one of the leading innovators of this technology.

We’re already headed in that direction, Axel said.

Damon was silent as they sprinted the last hundred yards of their run, ending at a palm-shaded picnic area. Hands on his hips, chest heaving, Axel paced in a circle to bring his breathing and pulse rate back to normal. His boss did the same. After a few stretches and deep gulps from water bottles both men carried in waist packs branded with the company’s fiery red logo, they sat atop one of the cement picnic tables.

Right now it’s just you and Seiji working on R & D. Damon picked up the conversation where they’d left off. We got a huge jumpstart on our competition, thanks to your patents, but there is tremendous potential. Especially if we were to land a contract with the DOD.

Axel caught Damon’s narrowed expression and realized his boss wasn’t talking maybe. There was no way he’d even hint at something like a government contract—likely a multimillion dollar government contract—unless it was already in the works. The guy had a knack for creating opportunity like no one else Axel had ever met. Since meeting and marrying his wife, Rainey Hart, a military veteran who’d lost a leg in combat, Damon’s focus on developing gear and equipment for athletes with special needs had become a corporate priority.

A tingle of something like excitement flared in Axel’s chest. You aren’t just talking sports gear, are you?

Damon’s smirk confirmed Axel’s growing suspicion that his boss had something big, really big, in mind.

The Pentagon finally recognizes the value of returning soldiers to active duty instead of discharging them, following a significant injury like an amputation, Damon said. "They need prosthetics that can be adapted for different tasks. Say, one for an infantryman in the field and another for a fighter pilot. The microprocessor you developed has the potential to be programmed for different prostheses. Not just for mass production, like limbs that can handle jumping and climbing, but on an individual