
No Match for Her
Stacy Travis · Completed · 88.6k Words
Introduction
Chapter 1
Prologue
C
harlie
T
hree Years Ago
I
t’s her laugh that catches my attention.
I hear a chorus of tiny bells, the lilting symphony of piano keys and windchimes late in the summer when the breeze is mild and warm. One of those days when all you want to do is stay outside until the sun drops, casting a warm pinkish glow on ordinary things.
Her laugh sounds pink.
It reminds me of the kind of joy I felt in my bones as a kid when I had a new idea and couldn’t sprint home fast enough to make it happen.
I sure haven’t felt that way lately. And not today.
Most of the time, I don’t know what I feel. Stress, I guess—the weight of accomplishment and expectations ruining what might otherwise be a productive afternoon. I should be building the company I’ve dreamed of since I started messing with circuit boards and computer code two dozen years ago.
I shouldn’t be rethinking decisions that have already been made.
But I think about everything, especially the dreams. I’m a planner, so I work through scenarios, gaming them out with all possible outcomes to be sure I’ve chosen the best one. Even when I should be losing myself in an audiobook out on a run, I can’t stop my goddamned brain from wondering what if?
What if I should’ve when I could’ve?
Doubt will be the death of those dreams. I’ll have to try to remember that when all I can see are the question marks and second guesses.
If my thoughts sound wooden, it’s because they are—thought and overthought so many times they’ve become petrified.
Just keep moving forward, doing what’s expected, and everything will be okay.
More than okay. My virtual reality company, ViviTech, is about to be go public in a stock offering worth billions. Yes, there’s a “b” at the front of that word. I will be a billionaire in a matter of weeks.
And I’d be the biggest douchebag asshole on the planet if I complained. So, I won’t.
I will simply say that the past few years have been a grind. What started as a senior thesis in college with a bunch of my knucklehead computer nerd friends has turned into a twenty-four/seven life.
I’m not being overly dramatic.
Our joint paper on the subject of whether machines could learn emotions opened doors for all of us. Tech incubators and venture capitalists came calling and sent us all off in different directions once we’d turned in our research.
Two of my fellow knuckleheads developed an app that uses tech to predict who’s most susceptible to different kinds of cancers using a couple drops of blood and powerful computers. I founded a virtual reality company that makes a whole new category of sports games and allows astronauts to virtually explore Mars and run experiments there using rovers in real time.
The fourth member of our dude group started a landscape design firm. It has nothing to do with technology or machine learning unless drip watering on a timer counts as high tech. And he’s probably the happiest of the bunch, married to a pastry chef who tries out new recipes on him daily and doesn’t mind when he comes home smelling like fertilizer.
He zigged, I zagged. Until now, I had no problem with spending all my time on algorithms. If managed correctly, they’re predictable.
I like predictable.
So do shareholders. They want predictable profits and growth—and it’s my job to produce.
Billions of dollars will be changing hands based on work I’ve completed and bold promises I’ve made about what I’ll continue to do. Investment dollars will allow my company to grow beyond anything I’ve dreamed of, but every future decision I make will be with shareholders in mind.
A deal with the devil.
No wonder I’m stressed. No wonder I’m grasping at anything that will lighten my load.
No wonder that today, when my mind is deep in a trough of investor questions I’d rather not answer, the melodic laugh kind of saves my life.
It reminds me that in some alternate dimension from where I currently eat, breathe, and sleep my work, some things are still beautiful.
And for some people, still funny.
It’s a foreign sound at my company, despite what I’ve done to make our workspace a pleasant environment with a ping-pong table, flexible hours, and free vending machine food. People like coming to work, but they don’t laugh at work. Not like that.
So, even though I have a hundred emails in my inbox, I leave my glass-walled office and walk through the cubicle farm in search of the sound that warmed me from the inside out.
I’m certain of the source before I hear a second peal that’s even more gleeful than the first. It has to be her—the auburn-haired woman in the red dress standing near one of the lunch tables in our central common area. She’s grinning at my newest hire, Tatum Finley.
Long, dark red waves hang down her back with bronze highlights catching light from the overhead LEDs. I’m struck by the need to put the correct name to the color—copper, russet, chestnut?
The dress defies description, both tastefully covering most of her body in a hip-hugging knit fabric and screaming sexy at the same time. Even from across the room, I can see her long lashes brush her cheeks when she blinks over greenish eyes that could easily be gemstones.
It’s none of my business who Tatum is talking to, and I’m not the kind of arrogant jerk who’d walk over and puff my feathers in front of her just because I founded the company. One of my project managers, Paul, is already positioning his weak, slip of a body between Tatum and her guest. Given his lack of stature, his eyes are right at chest level, and he’s not even embarrassed to gawk. If he gets any closer, he could bite one of her breasts like an apple.
To her credit, the woman says something I don’t hear, but it has him scurrying away like a rodent under the heel of a boot.
A moment later, I hear a repeat of the delightful carefree sound that called me from my office like a siren song. She’s laughing at Tatum, who’s waltzing in front of her with her hands on her hips, her hair flipping from side to side, and a wild sway in her hips. They both break up over whatever they’re talking about, and I feel like a stalker creeper for lingering by the snacks watching them.
For a split second, she looks in my direction, the deep pink of her lips parting to reveal an open-mouthed smile that confirms I was right—there’s something joyful about her. Something uninhibited, as though she isn’t weighed down by a job she hates or a husband who she married for the wrong reasons. Her laugh tells me she’s happy.
Not that you’re projecting…
She just seems…content.
Of course, I don’t know her at all, and I’m reading into the things I want to be true. But isn’t that how it always is? We seize on something and believe in it without knowing whether reality will bear out our hopes.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the hopes are enough to drive reality.
And maybe it’s because I’ve been working endless, god-awful hours getting the company ready for its initial public offering—listening to power players in the banking industry tell me what they think I want to hear about my brilliance because it will translate into millions of dollars for them—but I could use a little joy and contentment right now.
Berta, the Icelandic model who I married a year ago, has just asked for a divorce. I know she waited for the options to vest before bailing because she told me. I almost don’t blame her for making a shrewd financial play, especially since I knew we weren’t in love by the honeymoon.
I dove headlong into the marriage anyway because I’m good at fixing broken things. It’s taken me a year of therapy to learn the distinction between broken machines and broken people, and I’m still not sure I understand.
Now I’ll stick to the technical things I can repair using logic. I don’t need a relationship in order to live a meaningful life.
Still…I do need to hear that laughter.
Its surprising warmth has me relaxing the smallest degree about all the things on my massive, awful to-do list. Who knew another person could make a sound with the power to do that? Not me.
The fridge has a selection of drinks—ginger tonics, green smoothies, seltzers, cans side-by-side of Red Bull and Diet Red Bull that once launched an office-wide debate—and I take my time deciding on a cranberry seltzer. And because I skipped lunch, I scoop some raw almonds from one of the glass jars into a blue bowl that looks like someone sculpted it out of Play-Doh.
Then I linger in hopes of one more peal of laughter to lift me out of work hell, one more look at this red-haired beauty before I head back to my office for another coding marathon.
Still lost in my head and dreading the calls I need to make when I get back to my office, I nearly miss Tatum and her friend walk past. I don’t even take advantage of the moment and get a closer look at the cherubic features of the woman whose hair bounces as she fades out of range.
I’m left only with a lingering citrus scent that makes me want to grow lemon and orange trees all around my house so I can prolong the memory of her.
Glancing over to the table where the two of them sat a moment ago, my eyes snag on a slip of paper, maybe what they were laughing at, maybe not. But I’m curious enough to walk over and look.
It’s a page from one of the notepads we have all over the office. Rule one in working with people who are paid to find new solutions to old problems is to make it easy to capture the barest whiff of an idea before it’s lost.
That’s the work I love—the creativity, the collaboration, the ideas.
Do I even want the company to go public? Does it even matter? What if I want to own a sports team or a piano bar or an eco-travel company?
Shut up, you whiny, lucky bastard who’s about to have the biggest IPO to hit Silicon Valley in a year.
Yeah, I need to keep my complaints to myself, bury them deep, and forget about them.
The first thing I notice on the paper is the drawing—it’s a pencil-scrawled image of a hockey player sweeping a puck into the net. It’s highly detailed, surprisingly so for what’s basically a doodle.
She drew this?
Beneath it is a quote I know to be from Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
Yes, you do.
It’s exactly what I need to hear—or read—today. Not because I need courage before I take the company public. But because of all the other things I want to do someday.
Shareholders? Fuck ‘em.
Sometimes, the universe provides the exact inspiration at the exact time a person needs it. Sometimes, it’s provided by a mysterious redhead with a musical laugh. Either way, I’m smart enough to know it when I see it.
I understand that I’m holding something in my hands that could change my career trajectory if I do things right. It may even change my life. So I’m grateful for something a total stranger scribbled on a page, having no idea it would speak to me in a moment when I needed clarity.
I also know I need to see this woman again. When the time is right. When I have my life in order.
Popping the top on the cranberry seltzer, I take a long sip.
When I have my life in order.
Sure. I have no fucking idea when that will be.
Last Chapters
#32 Chapter 32
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#31 Chapter 31
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#30 Chapter 30
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#29 Chapter 29
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#28 Chapter 28
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#27 Chapter 27
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#26 Chapter 26
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#25 Chapter 25
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#24 Chapter 24
Last Updated: 3/3/2025#23 Chapter 23
Last Updated: 3/3/2025
You Might Like 😍
Mated to Her Alpha Instructor
Weeks later, our new Alpha combat instructor walks in. Regis. The guy from the woods. His eyes lock on mine, and I know he recognizes me. Then the secret I've been hiding hits me like a punch: I'm pregnant.
He has an offer that binds us tighter than ever. Protection… or a cage? Whispers turn ugly, darkness closes in. Why am I the one without a wolf? Is he my salvation… or will he drag me to ruin?
The CEO's Unspoken Love
Before I could answer, he moved closer, suddenly looming over me, his face inches from mine. I felt my breath caught, my lips parting in surprise.
"Then this is the price for speaking ill of me to others," he murmured, nipping my lower lip before claiming my mouth in a real kiss. It began as punishment but quickly transformed into something else entirely as I responded, my initial rigidity melting into compliance, then active participation.
My breathing accelerated, small sounds escaping my throat as he explored my body. His touches were both punishment and pleasure, drawing shudders from me that I thought he felt reverberating through his own body.
My nightgown had ridden up, his hands discovering more of mine with each caress. We were both lost in sensation, rational thought receding with each passing second...
Three years ago, to fulfill the wish of his grandmother, I was forced to marry Derek Wells, the second son of the family that had adopted me for ten years. He didn't love me, but I had secretly loved him all along.
Now, the three-year contractual marriage is about to end, but I feel that some kind of sentiment has developed between Derek and me that neither of us is willing to admit. I'm not sure if my feelings are right, but I know that we can't resist each other physically...
A Queen Among Tides (Book 5 in the Gods' Saga)
Shocked to find he's been bound in more ways than one to Sebastian, the future King to the Kingdom of Atlesper, Lemuel resists Sebastian's advances at every turn, believing this may be one pairing Goddess Zarseti got wrong.
Lemuel will have to face his past in hopes of starting a new future, but an overly flirtatious King is the least of his worries when he learns Sebastian's parents are convinced that a conniving usurper disguised as a curvy blonde, is the future king's true soulmate.
A Queen Among Tides is the 5th book in the Queen Among Series/The Gods' Saga. This is an interconnected series. To see how it ends, I recommend reading the full series.
Books in the series order:
A Queen Among Alphas - Book 1
Bite-Size Luna - A Queen Among Alphas Prequel (available under book 1)
A Queen Among Snakes - Book 2
A Queen Among Blood - Book 3
A Queen Among Darkness - Book 4
Whole Again - A Queen Among Alpha's spin-off (available under book 1)
A Queen Among Tides - Book 5
Valor, Virtue, and Verve - Tides Prequel Spin-off (will be available under book 5)
A Queen Among Gods - Book 6
Runaway Empress - A Queen Among Snakes Prequel (will be available under book 2)
A Queen Among Tempests - Book 7
Dark Vocation - Darkness spin-off (will be available under book 4)
A Court of Arcane Souls Anthology (side character short stories exclusive to Ream)
Royal Shadow Series (Next Gen Coming Soon)
After the Affair: Falling into a Billionaire's Arms
I’d appreciate all your support, thank you so much!
From first crush to wedding vows, George Capulet and I had been inseparable. But in our seventh year of marriage, he began an affair with his secretary.
On my birthday, he took her on vacation. On our anniversary, he brought her to our home and made love to her in our bed...
Heartbroken, I tricked him into signing divorce papers.
George remained unconcerned, convinced I would never leave him.
His deceptions continued until the day the divorce was finalized. I threw the papers in his face: "George Capulet, from this moment on, get out of my life!"
Only then did panic flood his eyes as he begged me to stay.
When his calls bombarded my phone later that night, it wasn't me who answered, but my new boyfriend Julian.
"Don't you know," Julian chuckled into the receiver, "that a proper ex-boyfriend should be as quiet as the dead?"
George seethed through gritted teeth: "Put her on the phone!"
"I'm afraid that's impossible."
Julian dropped a gentle kiss on my sleeping form nestled against him. "She's exhausted. She just fell asleep."
The Vampire Prince's Hybrid Bride
The Spy Who Left
"I still can't believe she actually did it. Aria Hart, filing for divorce. Who saw that coming?"
"How long do we think it'll take before she comes crawling back?" Another voice joins the conversation.
"Three days," Victoria declares. "Five at most. She has no money, no skills, no family. Where's she going to go?"
When Aria Chen divorced billionaire Leon Hart, New York's elite sneered, betting she'd crawl back within days. She never did.
Three years later, the world is rocked when Dr. Aria Vale, CEO of a revolutionary cybersecurity empire, steps into the spotlight. The mysterious genius who built a billion-dollar company from nothing is none other than Leon's discarded wife, the woman everyone thought was just a pretty ornament.
Now, every powerful man wants the queen Leon threw away a renowned scientist seeking partnership, a financial titan proposing an empire, and an actor offering devotion. Each sees the brilliance Leon ignored.
Then Leon discovers the truth: Aria's sacrifices, her secret double life, and the daughter she's been raising without him. For the first time, the man who once took her for granted must fight for her love. But can he compete with men who valued her from the beginning?
A story of love, betrayal, and power where the king must kneel before the queen who never needed saving.
Game of Destiny
When Finlay finds her, she is living among humans. He is smitten by the stubborn wolf that refuse to acknowledge his existence. She may not be his mate, but he wants her to be a part of his pack, latent wolf or not.
Amie cant resist the Alpha that comes into her life and drags her back into pack life. Not only does she find herself happier than she has been in a long time, her wolf finally comes to her. Finlay isn't her mate, but he becomes her best friend. Together with the other top wolves in the pack, they work to create the best and strongest pack.
When it's time for the pack games, the event that decides the packs rank for the coming ten year, Amie needs to face her old pack. When she sees the man that rejected her for the first time in ten years, everything she thought she knew is turned around. Amie and Finlay need to adapt to the new reality and find a way forward for their pack. But will the curve ball split them apart?
Accardi
“I thought you said you were done chasing me?” Gen mocked.
“I am done chasing you.”
Before she could formulate a witty remark, Matteo threw her down. She landed hard on her back atop his dining room table. She tried to sit up when she noticed what he was doing. His hands were working on his belt. It came free of his pants with a violent yank. She collapsed back on her elbows, her mouth gaping open at the display. His face was a mask of sheer determination, his eyes were a dark gold swimming with heat and desire. His hands wrapped around her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the table. He glided his fingers up her thighs and hooked several around the inside of her panties. His knuckles brushed her dripping sex.
“You’re soaking wet, Genevieve. Tell me, was it me that made you this way or him?” his voice told her to be careful with her answer. His knuckles slid down through her folds and she threw her head back as she moaned. “Weakness?”
“You…” she breathed.
Genevieve loses a bet she can’t afford to pay. In a compromise, she agrees to convince any man her opponent chooses to go home with her that night. What she doesn’t realize when her sister’s friend points out the brooding man sitting alone at the bar, is that man won’t be okay with just one night with her. No, Matteo Accardi, Don of one of the largest gangs in New York City doesn’t do one night stands. Not with her anyway.
Alpha VS Omega' Twin VS Twin (A Dark Werewolf Romance)
Stripped of everything, Callum is thrown into the Rookeries, where packless wolves go to die. But he survives. He builds a pack from the broken and the damned. He falls in love with Valentina, a dhampir hunted by the same vampire Parliament that destroyed his life.
In a city ruled by immortal aristocrats and controlled by ancient dragons, Callum learns the hardest truth: individual virtue cannot defeat systemic evil. But small victories matter. And some fights are worth losing everything
Goddess Of The Underworld
When the veil between the Divine, the Living, and the Dead begins to crack, Envy is thrust beneath with a job she can’t drop: keep the worlds from bleeding together, shepherd the lost, and make ordinary into armour, breakfasts, bedtime, battle plans. Peace lasts exactly one lullaby. This is the story of an orphan pup who became a goddess by choosing her family; of four imperfect alphas learning how to be better. Steamy, fierce, and full of heart, Goddess of the Underworld is a reverse harem, found-family paranormal romance where love writes the rules and keeps three realms from falling apart.
Omega Bound
Thane Knight is the alpha of the Midnight Pack of the La Plata Mountain Range, the largest wolf shifter pack in the world. He is an alpha by day and hunts the shifter trafficking ring with his group of mercenaries by night. His hunt for vengeance leads to one raid that changes his life.
Tropes:
Touch her and die/Slow burn romance/Fated Mates/Found family twist/Close circle betrayal/Cinnamon roll for only her/Traumatized heroine/Rare wolf/Hidden powers/Knotting/Nesting/Heats/Luna/Attempted assassination
They'll Regret This
My fiancé didn't just dump me—he proposed to her that same night. My so-called family handed me bus fare and a one-way ticket to the countryside.
Perfect. Let them think they won.
They don't know who I really am. The anonymous genius surgeon who saves lives when elite hospitals give up. The legendary artist whose paintings sell for millions at auction. The undefeated shadow queen of the underground fighting circuit. And the true heiress to a fortune that makes theirs look like pocket change.
Now my ex-fiancé begs on his knees. My fake sister's jealousy is eating her alive. And that cold, arrogant CEO who once threw our engagement contract in my face? He's hunting me down like a man possessed, desperate for one more chance.
They threw me away like trash to upgrade their lives.
Joke's on them.
I was always the upgrade.












