Next up in my 2025 publishing calendar is PERFECT MATCH, book 3 in the HEAVEN’S MATCHMAKER series.
Third-generation matchmaker, Olivia Joyner, enjoys a 99% success rate when it comes to helping people find their happily ever afters. But her newest client is proving to be part of the 0.1 percent.
All the women Olivia have matched geriatrician Hunter Reinhart with have been perfect on paper. None of them, though, have resulted in a second request for a date, and all the women say the same thing: Hunter, although handsome and successful, is just…dull. And boring. And too reserved.
Olivia can’t understand it, because to her? Hunter is none of those things. In fact, he’s the exact opposite of dull, boring, and reserved. He’s a man she would consider worthy of marrying herself – if she was in the market for a spouse.
Which she isn’t.
Olivia needs to figure out why she can’t find Hunter Reinhart the perfect match, and it just may require her to do something she’s never done before: go on a “date” with a client.
Purely for research and educational purposes, that is.
“So, tell me, Olivia, why matchmaking?”
Okay, not the question she would have led with, but he was making an effort.
She answered honestly. “Because I’m good at it. Always have been, even when I was in school. Plus, it’s the family business. I’m the third generation of Crally women to be a matchmaker.”
His eyes widened and he stopped cutting the roll in half to stare across at her. “Your grandmother is a matchmaker?”
“Mom, too. You didn’t know?”
“About your grandmother? No. She never mentioned it or even gave any indication she was in all the interactions we’ve had.”
“Well, in all fairness, the mantle was passed a while ago. First to my mom, and then from my mom to me.” She sighed. “It dies with me, too, because my daughter has no desire to take over for me.”
“You have a daughter.” Surprise lit his eyes. “I had no idea.”
She nodded. “Freya. She’s twenty-three and just got her Master’s Degree in physical therapy.”
“You have a twenty-three-year-old daughter. How is that possible?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re what? Thirty-two? Thirty-three, tops?”
She laughed. “Okay, I know I shouldn’t have to say this, but you should never ask a woman her age on a first date. Or ever! Whether it’s a real date or fake,” she added when he began to protest. “But thank you for the compliment, and for the record, I just turned forty a few months ago.”
“Impossible. That means you had her at,” he thought for a moment, “Seventeen?”
She nodded.
“You were a child, Olivia.”
Not the first time she’d heard this from someone who didn’t know her past. “A little more than a child, I think.”
“How?”
She cocked her head, her lips twisting into a grin. “The usual way.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean…” His face pulled into a confused mask. There was no judgment in his tone or his expression, just bewilderment.
She took pity on him. “My boyfriend and I had been together since third grade and had always planned to get married after college.” She shrugged. “Freya just upped the timeline a bit.”
“You were married at seventeen?”
“Sixteen, actually. And before you say I was a child again, my mother was married at seventeen, my grandmother at fifteen. Early marriages are another thing we’ve passed down through the generations in my family.” She rolled her eyes. “And Freya broke the mold on that one too, since she’s twenty-three and single.”
He sat back in his chair, the roll and his hunger forgotten, and simply stared at her.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Because I have a million other questions and I’m trying to discern if I should ask them.”
She waved her hand in the air. “Go for it.”
“Did you finish school? Go to college?”
“Yes and yes. I graduated high school as did Jon, my husband, and we both went to college in Concord. I majored in communications before you ask.”
“Where did you live?”
“With my parents.”
“They were…okay? With your…situation?”
“I told you, young marriages aren’t uncommon in my family. My grandparents and parents helped out, all of them thrilled to have a new baby to care for. My grandfather was the town pediatrician at the time and Freya couldn’t have had better care than from him and my grandmother and my parents. My grandparents said helping raise her made them feel young again.”
“I didn’t know your grandfather was a physician.”
She shrugged. “You didn’t grow up here, so why would you? He practiced for almost forty years and was still in practice when he…died.”
“I’m sorry,” he said automatically.
“You don’t need to be. He had a fabulous, fulfilling life, a thriving, rewarding practice, married his childhood sweetheart – see a pattern here?- and lived every day of his life with joy. That’s more than most people get in a fraction of their life.”
Again, the way he was staring at her, peering at her as though trying to see inside her head and body was a little disconcerting…but…alluring, as well.
“You are a surprise, Olivia Joyner,” he said as their waitress brought out their entrees.
Preorders are up here: PERFECT MATCH. Release date is 4.9.25! I can’t wait.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 