My favorite color is pink. Biting is so over (I’d rather drink my dinner out of a martini glass and follow it up with a Cosmopolitan chaser). I sleep in a king-sized bed on a pillow-top mattress (yum). I score a ten on the O-meter when it comes to Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and Toby Keith (I know, I know, he’s so not my type, but there’s just something about the cowboy hat). I’ve also been known to cry during the MasterCard commercials. And (and this is the eighth deadly sin as far as my kind are concerned) I’m a closet romantic.
I absolutely, positively love love.
I love everything about it, from that first initial glance between two strangers, to the earth-shattering moment when both realize that they are meant to be together forever (deep sigh). My favorite movie is Pretty Woman, followed by An Officer and a Gentleman and The Terminator (the movie itself isn’t all that touching, but the one love scene really rocks). My favorite holiday is Valentine’s Day, and I have a heart-shaped tattoo on my left bikini line. And I actually jumped up and down when Carrie ended up with Big in the final episode of Sex and the City.
So it only stands to reason that I should forego Moe’s and opt for something a little more romantic to pay the bills.
Vampires need love, too.
Okay, most of my brethren would argue this with me because they a) don’t believe in the concept and are, for the most part, vicious bloodsuckers, and b) aren’t nearly as enlightened as me. But while the average Joe Vamp doesn’t buy into the “L” concept, he’s still hard-pressed to find an eternity mate for all those practical reasons mentioned above (see little Morticia and baby Vlad). Who better to hook him up than yours truly?
For a fee, of course. After all, a girl’s gotta eat (okay, so this girl’s gotta keep up her supply of M*A*C bronzing powder, but you get the idea). Which is why I’m not limiting my services to vamps. Hence my fantabulous entrepreneurial brainstorm—Dead-End Dating. A Manhattan-based, equal opportunity matchmaking service for the smart, savvy, sophisticated single who is sick and tired of dead- end dating, and the smart, savvy, sophisticated single vampire looking for just that.
I know, I know. It’s brilliant. What can I say? Genius runs in my family (ever heard of Marie Curie?). Anyhow, it’s a great plan, one that I’ve already put into motion. Last week, I leased the perfect office space just around the corner from my favorite Starbucks (ah, the smell of mocha lattes and maple scones), and I hired my first employee—Camie Dalton. Camie is as human as they come, but I’m a sucker (no pun intended) for an impressive interview ensemble—DKNY miniature jacket, boot-cut Gucci corduroys, Kenneth Cole boots and the pièce de résistance—a rhinestone belt to die for.
So here I sit on a clear, moonlit Monday evening in Manhattan, my laptop open in front of me, ready and willing to change someone’s destiny. To pluck them from the pit of loneliness and lift them into the blessed light of companionship. To save them from the jaws of isolation and deliver them into the warm, comforting embrace of . . . Well, you get the picture.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll find my own eternity mate while I’m dishing out happily ever afters. Not that I’m getting my hopes up, mind you—I’m even pickier when it comes to men than I am with accessories. For now, I’m willing to settle for paying the bills, particularly the whopper of a Visa bill that’s headed my way after funding this latest venture.
Not that I’m worried. Once my ad runs in all of the local papers, the masses will be climbing over one another to get to my office (I’m picturing a half-off sale at Barney’s). The funds will roll in and I won’t have to crawl back to my folks in Connecticut and endure yet another Friday night dinner with a prospective Count Right. Did I mention that my mother has a habit of fixing me up? She doesn’t buy into the whole non-lonely spiel.
Anyhow, I just know Dead-End Dating is going to be it. The next big thing. My ticket to complete financial independence and personal fulfillment. Or, at the very least, a really cool way to pay next month’s rent.
The matchmaking biz totally rocks.
Chapter 1
The matchmaking biz totally bites.
Not the matchmaking part, mind you. It’s been all of fifteen days since I started Dead-End Dating and I’ve yet to actually make a match. It’s the biz part that’s chewing me a new one.
I stared at the stack of bills that Camie sat on my desk next to my client folders—all two of them—and tried to ignore the sudden hollowness in the pit of my stomach. Ignorance was good in a situation like this. Bliss. Especially to a card-carrying optimist like myself. There’s positively simply no way to handle being alive for a gazillion years if you panic at life’s every twist and turn. You have to keep your cool and withhold off on all hysterics until you’ve got a bona fide problem on your hands.
“I really wasn’t expecting monthly bills until we’ve we’d been open a full month,” I told Camie.
“These are hook-up charges for new service. You’ve got your electric, telephone, Internet—the usual.” She handed over another stack. “These are the monthly bills.”
Okay, so this was a bona fide problem, but I tried for a smile anyway. “Any phone calls today?” When facing a negative, it’s best to put it in proper perspective by focusing on the positives.
“Only two. The first was Mrs. Wilhelm.” Louisa Wilhelm was the subject of client folder number one. She was a widow—about ten years ago her eternity mate went parachuting and landed a little too close to the sharp end of an oak tree branch. She was also my mother’s best friend. “She wants to know if you’ve found her a date yet.”
“But she just signed with us last night.”
“That’s what I told her, but she said to remind you that the Soiree is in two weeks.” The Soiree was the annual midnight soiree party sponsored by the Connecticut Huntress Club, in which my mother served as vice president and handled the refreshments every third meeting. We’re talking the event for upper-crust vamps. “She said we should hurry up because if she wanted last last-minute plans, she could just wait for Marvin Terribone to ask her the day of like he did last year. She wants to teach him a lesson and make him jealous.” Camie leveled a stare at me. “She wants results by tomorrow.”
I was pretty sure this news qualified as a negative, so I turned to my laptop to find a positive. I brought up my new Web site, which offered three free matches to anyone who took the time to fill out the carefully worded questionnaire and joined the Dead-End Dating family matchmaking database. I’d had ten hits in the past twenty-four hours and all of three applicants.
Three.
And they were all women.
Definitely another negative.
“Maybe Mrs. Wilhelm swings both ways,” Camie offered as she came around to peer over my shoulder.
“And maybe I’m the next Miss Hawaiian Tropic.” While vamps were like humans in that their sexual preferences tended to go in various directions, Mrs. Wilhelm was like a trillion years old. As in really old. As in really old-fashioned. And snotty. And pretentious. Even if she did butter her bread on both sides, she wasn’t likely to admit it.
Add a capital “B” to the bona fide problems.
“I told you we should have advertised in Times Square,” Camie said.
“I’m on a tight budget.”
“How tight?”
“Nonexistent. I’ve maxed out my credit cards, so short of hocking my great-great-grandmother’s engraved goblet, the only sign I’m likely to have in Times Square is one I paint and wear myself.”
“If it’s any consolation, you’re having a really good hair night.”
Did Camie actually believe I was so shallow that I could be distracted from a major crisis with a compliment?
I smiled. “I used a new shampoo.”
“And that blush is incredible.”
My smile widened. Hey, we’re talking blush as in M*A*C. “It’s a new combination blush/bronzer from M*A*C called Sunlight Sparkle. It’s pretty hot, huh?”
“Totally hot.”
“Smoking hot,” I ad
ded.
“Blazing hot.”
“Hellaciously hot.” Now that I’d exhausted my “hot” adjectives, it was back to reality. I stiffened and prepared myself. “What about the second call?”
“Your father. He said he has your new uniforms and that you should pick them up this week on account of the fact that you start training in the store at Midnight Moe’s next week.”
Okay, so maybe I didn’t prepare myself quite enough because this news made my stomach flip. “But I already told him I’m not starting anything next week. I’m not working for him.”
“I don’t think he’s clear on that. He also said that he got you your very own name tag. Beige with lime-green lettering. To match the shirt.” Camie must have read the look of horror on my face. “Then again, maybe I misunderstood him. It’s been a long day.”
If only.
My father had selective hearing when it came to his four offspring—me and my three older brothers. Namely, he tuned out any and everything that didn’t pertain to one of three things: 1) making money, 2) the Knicks, and 3) making money. Since he didn’t consider my new venture anything more than a temporary, and not very well-thought-out endeavor—like the time I told everyone I wanted to be an artist; I did all of three pictures before deciding it was much less messy to sit for a portrait than paint one—raking in the green wasn’t a likely possibility. And unless I managed to lure one of the Knicks into my clutches for a little matchmaking—I should be so lucky—I wasn’t going to hit pay dirt for number two, either. Which meant when I’d turned down the offer to manage the second NYU location of Midnight Moe’s, he hadn’t been paying attention.
He expected me to don the lime-green shirt and the Dockers and report for duty just like my three brothers had. But the thing was, I wasn’t like them.
I had dreams of something bigger.
I had aspirations.
I had goals.
Even more, I had good taste.
“I’ll just have to pull out the big guns,” I told Camie.
“Are we talking a Beretta or an Uzi?”
“You’ve been watching too much CSI.”
She smiled. “There’s no such thing as too much.” Her expression grew serious. “So are you going to sell the goblet and get us into Times Square?”
It was my turn to smile. “Who needs Times Square when we’ve got two hundred and twenty locations nationwide?”
THE EDITOR’S DIARY
Dear Reader,
An old nursery rhyme told us “first comes love, then comes marriage.” But passion never follows the rules, even if they are Mother Goose’s. So pick up a copy of our two Warner Forever titles this August and take part in a love revolution.
Most mothers are dying to marry their daughters off, but what if your mother never wants you to tie the knot? Eve Farrel from Kimberly Raye’s SWEET AS SUGAR, HOT AS SPICE knows she’s in a pickle. By day Eve creates red-hot how-to videos as owner and operator of Sugar & Spice Sinema, and by night she tries to stay sane by dodging her famous feminist mother at her every turn. Her only solution is the ultimate rebellion: get married. One of NASCAR’s hottest drivers, Linc Adams just wants to race. The last thing he cares to do is follow in his father’s footsteps of becoming mayor of his Georgia town. So he hatches a full-proof plan to blow his chances starring Eve, the one woman whose steamy career could shock the pants off his conservative town. Eve and Linc agree to marry in name only, but they’re about to find out that love knows no rules and attraction knows no limits. Grab a copy now and find out why New York Times bestselling author Vicki Lewis Thompson raves, “Kimberly Raye is hot, hot, hot!”
And I’d like to introduce a debut novel from an exciting and sensual new voice at Warner Forever, Paula Quinn’s LORD OF DESIRE. Lady Brynnafar Dumont is having difficulties of her own. When Lord Brand “the Passionate” Risande ruthlessly defeats her father’s army, almost killing her father in the process, Brynna knows she has to keep her wits about her. For her goal now is to protect her people and she’ll do whatever is necessary to ensure their safety . . . even if it means seducing Lord Brand, the savage Norman knight. The only problem is that he wants absolutely nothing to do with her. But Brynna refuses to be ignored. Since King Edward decreed they must marry, they will. Yet one look at Lord Brand’s broad shoulders and bedroom eyes leaves Brynna wondering if having his name is enough. For now she wants his heart . . .
To find out more about Warner Forever, these titles, and the author, visit us at www.warnerforever.com.
With warmest wishes,
Karen Kosztolnyik, Senior Editor
P.S. A little feistiness never did a girl any harm in these two irresistible novels: Kathryn Caskie delivers a tantalizing battle of wits and will when a cad meets his match in a beautiful young writer in A LADY’S GUIDE TO RAKES; and Robin T. Popp tells the sensual and spellbinding tale of a spunky woman searching for her father and the sexy half-man, half-vampire who comes to her aid in OUT OF THE NIGHT.
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