She sighed, then put down the pen. “This isn’t going to work if you keep flirting with me.”
“I’m not flirting with you, Marnie. If I was flirting with you, you’d know it.”
“That,” she waved a finger between them, “was definitely flirting.”
“No. This is flirting.” He got up again and approached her desk, then placed his hands on the oak surface and leaned over until their faces were inches apart.
“You are a beautiful, intoxicating, infuriating woman,” he whispered, his voice a low, sensual growl, “and I can’t stop thinking about you. And I love the way you look today. All…unfettered. Untamed.”
Heat washed over her body. “Okay.” Her words shook and she drew in a breath to steady herself. “Yes, that…that was flirting.”
He smiled, held her gaze a moment longer, then retreated to the chair. “Glad we got that settled.”
Settled? If anything, things between them had become more unsettled. Jack Knight. The enemy. In more ways than one.
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author SHIRLEY JUMP didn’t have the will-power to diet, nor the talent to master under-eye concealer, so she bowed out of a career in television and opted instead for a career where she could be paid to eat at her desk—writing. At first, seeking revenge on her children for their grocery store tantrums, she sold embarrassing essays about them to anthologies. However, it wasn’t enough to feed her growing addiction to writing funny. So she turned to the world of romance novels, where messes are (usually) cleaned up before The End. In the worlds Shirley gets to create and control, the children listen to their parents, the husbands always remember holidays, and the housework is magically done by elves. Though she’s thrilled to see her books in stores around the world, Shirley mostly writes because it gives her an excuse to avoid cleaning the toilets and helps feed her shoe habit.
To learn more, visit her website at www.shirleyjump.com
The Matchmaker’s Happy Ending
Shirley Jump
To Mom. I miss you every day.
CHAPTER ONE
MARNIE FRANKLIN LEFT her thirtieth wedding of the year, with aching feet, flower petals in her hair and a satisfied smile on her face. She’d done it. Again.
From behind the wide glass and brass doors of Boston’s Park Plaza hotel, the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Corliss waved and shouted their thanks. “We owe it all to you, Marnie!” Andrew called. A geeky but lovable guy who tended toward neon colored ties that were knotted too tight around his skinny neck, Andrew had been one of her best success stories. Internet millionaire, now married to an energetic, friendly woman who loved him for his mind—and their mutual affection for difficult Sudoku puzzles.
“You’re welcome! May you have a long and happy life together.” Marnie gave them a smile, then turned to the street and waited while a valet waved up one of the half dozen waiting cabs outside the hotel. Exhaustion weighed on Marnie’s shoulders, despite the two cups of coffee she’d downed at the reception. A light rain had started, adding a chill to the late spring air. The always busy Boston traffic passed the hotel in a swoosh-swoosh of tires on damp pavement, a melody highlighted by the honking of horns, the constant music of a city. She loved this city, she really did, but there were days—like today—when she wished she lived somewhere quiet. Like the other side of the moon.
Her phone rang as she opened the taxi’s door and told the driver her address. She pressed mute, sending the call straight to voice mail. That was the trouble with being on the top of her field—there was no room for a holiday or vacation. She’d become one of Boston’s most successful matchmakers, and that meant everyone who wanted a happy ending called her, looking for true love.
Something she didn’t believe in herself.
An irony she couldn’t tell her clients. Couldn’t admit she’d never fallen in love, and had given up on the emotion after one too many failed relationships. She couldn’t tell people that the matchmaker had no faith in a match for herself. So she poured herself into her job and kept a bright smile on her face whenever she told her clients that they could have that happy ending, too.
She’d seen the fairy tale ending happen for other people, but a part of Marnie wondered if she’d missed her one big chance to have a happily-ever-after. She was almost thirty, and had yet to meet Mr. Right. Only a few heartbreaker Mr. Wrongs. At least with her job, she had some control over the outcome, which was the way Marnie preferred the things in her life. Controlled, predictable. The phone rang again, like a punctuation mark to the end of her thoughts.
In front of her, the cabbie pulled away from the curb, at the same time fiddling with the GPS on the dash. Must be a new driver, Marnie decided, and grabbed her phone to answer the call. “This is Marnie. How can I help you make a match?”
“You need to stop working, dear, and find your own Mr. Right.”
Her mother. Who meant well, but who thought Marnie’s personal life should take precedence over everything else in the universe. “Hi, Ma. What are you doing up so late on a Friday night?”
“Worrying about my single daughter. And why she’s working on a Friday night. Again.”
The GPS announced a left turn, a little late for the distracted cab driver, who jerked the wheel to the left and jerked Marnie to one side, too. She gave him a glare in the rearview mirror, but he ignored it. The noxious fumes of Boston exhaust filled the interior, or maybe that was the bad ventilation system in the cab. The car had seen better days, heck, better decades, if the duct tape on the scarred vinyl seats was any indication.
“You should be out on a date of your own,” Marnie countered to her mother.
“Oh, I’m too old for that foolishness,” Helen said. “Besides, your father hasn’t been gone that long.”
“Three years, Ma.” Marnie lowered her voice to a sympathetic tone. Dad’s heart attack had taken them all by surprise. One day he’d been there, grinning and heading out the door, the next he’d been a shell of himself, and then…gone. “It’s okay to move on.”
“So, what are you doing on Sunday?” her mother said, instead of responding to Marnie’s advice, a sure-fire Helen tactic. Change the topic from anything difficult. Marnie’s parents had been the type who avoided the hard stuff, swept it under the rug. To them, the world had been a perpetually sunny place, even when evidence to the contrary dropped a big gray shadow in their way.
A part of Marnie wanted to keep things that way for her mother, to protect Helen, who had been through so much.
“I wanted to have you and your sisters over for brunch after church,” Ma said. “I could serve that coffee cake you love and…”
As her mother talked about the menu, Marnie murmured agreement, and reviewed her To Do list in her head. She had three appointments with new clients early in the morning tomorrow, one afternoon bachelor meet and greet to host, then her company’s Saturday night speed date event—
“Did you hear what I said?” her mother cut in.
“Sorry, Ma. The connection faded.” Or her brain, but she didn’t say that.
The cab driver fiddled again with the GPS, pushing buttons to zoom in or out, Marnie wasn’t sure. He seemed flustered and confused. She leaned forward. “Just take a left up here,” she said to him. “Onto Boylston. Then a right on Harvard.”
The