Description
They engineered the perfect match-then the algorithm turned on them. Harper Lin lives by two rules: color‑code everything and never, ever fall for cocky tech bros. Her precision‑built dating app, HeartLogic, is poised to revolutionize love-until the board forces a hostile "collaboration" with its flashier rival, Wink, headed by charismatic wunderkind Tari McKie. Harper would rather debug code with a spoon than spend a week at a luxury beach retreat playing nice with the man who swaggered into the market and stole her thunder. Tari isn't thrilled either. Behind the viral TED talks and heart‑throb headlines lies a burned‑out founder whose glossy smile is starting to crack. One merger could save his company-and his sanity-if only HeartLogic's prickly creator would lower her perfectly arched eyebrow long enough to listen. Then the companies' experimental AI matchmaker glitches...or so it claims. Overnight, the prototype assigns Harper and Tari 98 percent compatibility rating and locks them into mandatory "relationship exercises" for the duration of the retreat. Sunrise trust falls, sunset love‑language workshops, even a candlelit "empathy dinner" on the surf-every forced proximity drill tightens the net they both want to escape...and secretly don't. As boardroom politics clash with volleyball showdowns and midnight code sprints, Harper glimpses the exhausted dreamer beneath Tari's charm, while he discovers the wild creativity she hides behind spreadsheets. But when a power play threatens to cut both of them out of their own apps, the newfound spark between sworn rivals may be their only chance to save the companies-and admit that the smartest algorithm in the world can't compete with the mess of a real human heart.
Chapter 1 (Harper)
