A Match for the Marine: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (First Comes Love Book 1)

by Jess Mastorakos

  “Exactly. You value many things over your love life.” She pulled a file out of the briefcase next to her chair and thumbed through it. “So much so that you waited until you were thirty-five to gain a sizable fortune from your father just because you didn’t want to get married?”

  “No, it was because there wasn’t anyone in my life I wanted to marry.”

  “Well, how hard did you look for someone?”

  I took a drink of my coffee, deciding to let my silence be answer enough.

  “Right,” she said, turning back to the file.

  I tipped my head toward the paperwork in her hands. “There’s no folder full of celebrities in there for you to use as your guide, right?”

  “Oh, you mean the one that clearly outlines what type of forehead your future wife should have so that your offspring don’t wind up with a five-head?”

  Swallowing back the white-hot rage that sparked towards my mother, I nodded. “Yes, that one.”

  “I went ahead and trashed that. Don’t worry, Julia told me it wasn’t your doing.”

  “Good.” Relief washed over me. It wasn’t enough to make me completely comfortable with this whole thing, but it was a start.

  After another moment of perusing the file, she snapped it shut and placed it on the table between us. “So, here’s how this is going to work. I have the dating profile you completed at the office the other day and am in possession of the first-impression details drafted by Julia. But, like her, I want to hear about you and your life firsthand.”

  “All right.”

  “I want more details about your dating history, preferences in a partner, priorities when it comes to relationships, and goals for the future. I’ll use all of this information while I search and screen your potential matches.”

  “Sounds thorough.”

  “Would you have it any other way?”

  I shrugged. Sure, I valued accuracy in life. But filling out the questionnaire in Julia’s office had been bad enough. The idea of delving into all of that in more detail with Amy set me on edge. I didn’t like to talk about this stuff—or even think about it, really. Plus, I’d mentally prepared myself to talk about what I wanted in a woman with another man, not with a woman who was pretty darn close to fitting the bill herself. Appearance-wise, at any rate. And no, it wasn’t based on the size of her forehead.

  I studied her across the table as we sat in some sort of standoff. Her braid was both perfectly constructed and wispy at the same time, giving her an air that suggested she wasn’t all business. She could be laid back, too. She looked like the type who could sit on the couch and chill one minute, then get up and be social the next. I admired that in a woman, since I felt like I needed to be shaken pretty hard to come out of my shell and be comfortable around people.

  “So, after we get all up close and personal,” she said, almost like she was trying to make me squirm, “you’ll have your first date.”

  I swallowed and shifted in my seat. “My first date?”

  “Yep. I’ll plan the dates, you’ll show up, meet your match, and see if you hit it off.”

  “You plan the dates?”

  “I sure do. But don’t worry, we’ll talk about potential date locations during this initial phase, too. I believe in getting out of your comfort zone to bond with a woman, but I don’t believe in making my clients look stupid in front of their dates. My job is to take this whole I’m-too-cool-for-love vibe you have going on and turn it into something worth writing a romance novel about.”

  “I’m not too cool for love.”

  She grinned. “Oh, I know that. But I don’t think you do.”

  4

  Amy

  I watched him sip his coffee and try to relax. He’d reached the point in the initial appointment where he’d resigned himself to giving me a chance. Which was good, because I had zero doubts that I would be able to find love for Dexter Harrington. Even if he did look at me like I was one of those meddling grandmas who played matchmaker for their strapping young grandsons. He was strapping, sure, but I wasn’t playing.

  And speaking of meddling relatives, there was always a bit of resistance involved whenever the client had been signed up for our services by someone else. If they didn’t seek us out themselves, that usually meant they didn’t think they needed us. And if they didn’t think they needed us, that was for one of two reasons: (a) they thought they could find love on their own and didn’t need any help, or (b) they weren’t interested in finding love at all. Whichever reason it was, it was my job to show them they were wrong. Because everyone could use a little help, and everyone wanted to find love, whether they admitted it to themselves or not.

  “So, first things first.” I crossed my legs in the exact same way he had, leaning in the same direction, mirroring his posture completely—to make him feel as subconsciously at ease as possible. “Your mom has already purchased the VIP package, so I know she’s confident in our methods. But I want you to be equally confident since you’re the one going through the program. Do you have any questions for me about what we’re going to be doing?”

  “Why are you a matchmaker?” he asked, eyeing me closely.

  “Why are you a Marine?”

  “I thought it was my turn to ask the questions.”

  Ah, boundaries. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. I cleared my throat. “I said you could ask me questions about what we’re going to be doing … you know, as it relates to your love life. This isn’t a free-for-all to ask about me.”

  “It’s a simple question. Why do you do this?” Dex shrugged, a small smile playing at his lips. “It just seems odd to want a career sticking your nose into other people’s love lives.”

  I raised a brow, though his tone was more teasing than critical of my profession. “I do this because I love making a difference in people’s lives. It’s a great feeling to know that the next meeting I take could lead to a lifetime of happiness for someone.”

  “Or heartache.”

  I blew out a breath and put a hand over my heart like it had been impaled by an arrow. “Ouch, Marine. That is just cruel.”

  “It’s true, though, right?”

  “I suppose. But that’s not the part I choose to focus on. And you’re not going to get very far with this if you focus on the negative. Try to have fun with the experience. Come at it with a feeling of hope, not cynicism.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He winced when I gave him a look for calling me ma’am again, then he redirected. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “I’ve been a matchmaker for seven years now, but I’ve been with the company for fifteen years. I started as a freshman in college just getting coffee or running errands for Julia and the other matchmakers.”

  He made a noise like he was impressed. “Started from the bottom, now you’re here.”

  “Next stop, world domination.”

  His gaze flickered over my body, seeming to note how I was sitting. He changed his posture by uncrossing his legs and leaning forward. Knowing how closely he was watching me, I refrained from mirroring him again. This guy was much sharper than the average tack. And much, much, sharper than the Marine in my own past.

  In fact, with such a keen sense of observation, I wondered how he could be so blind to things like flirting. He really hadn’t noticed my attempt at piquing his interest by picking up his coffee earlier? I grabbed his guns for goodness sakes. He must have twenty-foot walls around his heart, and no matter how perfect a match I found for him, I’d need to kick those down before the date. The sooner I did that, the fewer dates he’d need to go on before he found a match. And that meant a better score for me against Battle-Ax Belinda.

  “Any other questions?” I asked, feeling the urge to get down to business. “Or can I get started with mine?”

  He held out a hand. “Please.”

  “Great. First, your dating history. Who was your high school sweetheart?”

  “Zelda.”

  My pen hovered o
ver the paper and I froze. “Please tell me you dated an actual girl named Zelda, and you’re not talking about the video game character?”

  He pursed his lips. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “So, you didn’t date at all in high school?”

  “In high school, I had braces and acne. I was in the chess club, the mathletes, and the debate team because my dad thought it would get me into Yale or Harvard. All of that plus weekly RPG nights with my buddies didn’t leave much time for girls.”

  “RPG?”

  “Role-playing games … Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft.”

  I snorted, scribbled some notes, and then sat back in my chair. “So even in high school, you prioritized everything else before love?”

  “It was high school.”

  “Exactly.”

  We stared at each other with matching expressions that seemed to have a conversation of their own.

  That’s my point.

  Mine too.

  “Anyway,” I said, breaking the stalemate, “I know from your file that you joined the Marines at eighteen. All of that prep work didn’t get you into an Ivy League school?”

  “It did. I got into several.”

  “But?”

  “But that was my dad’s dream for me.”

  Interested, I leaned forward. “How did the Marines come into the picture? Because I won’t lie, all of that talk about the mathletes doesn’t clear it up for me. You didn’t exactly sound like a typical Marine in the making.”

  He chuckled, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that did funny things to my insides. “That’s what you think. Recruiters love kids like me. Besides my general lack of police record, I also had great grades, excellent scores on the military entrance tests, and a serious love for all things strategy. At least someone appreciated all those hours clocked in World of Warcraft.”

  “Huh. But what about the physical stuff? Mathlete doesn’t really translate to athlete in my mind, and boot camp looks pretty intense from where I’m sitting.”

  He sniffed. “It took me a few months to be able to do a pull-up, but I got there eventually.”

  My eyes quickly scanned the biceps that I now knew were rock solid, then traveled over shoulders so broad I could probably balance a tray of coffees on them. Yep, he’d come a long way. There was virtually no evidence remaining of the pimply high school kid he’d described from all those years ago.

  I met his bright-blue eyes and instantly realized he’d caught me admiring him. Oops. I blushed, then hated myself for it.

  What was wrong with me? I never fell for clients. Ever. Dex was a means to an end, one of three clients whose successful love matches would secure my spot at the head of this company. Under no circumstances would he become the client that would get me fired.

  Julia only had a few rules for her matchmakers—just kidding, she had many, ranging from returning all client calls within twenty-four hours to no flossing in the employee bathroom—but rule numero uno was that we were absolutely, positively, prohibited from dating clients. Even the super-hot ones who also happened to hold master’s degrees in digital forensics and cyber investigations.

  “So,” I said, my eyes scanning the papers in front of me but not really reading them. I just needed my cheeks to return to their normal coloring before I could look back up at him. “You didn’t date in high school. Where does your dating history actually begin?”

  He shifted in his seat. “Japan.”

  “Japan?”

  “I was stationed there for six years,” he explained. “It was my first duty station.”

  “And who did you date in Japan?”

  “A Japanese woman.”

  I rolled my eyes and checked my watch. “Dex, do you have all day? Because I certainly don’t. Chop, chop. Give me the goods.”

  The smile came back, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “Her name was Harumi. I met her when I was nineteen. Love at first sight and all that. She was a bit of a hard sell at first. Lots of … cultural differences. Complications. But we figured it out, and we were happy. We were together until I left Japan.”

  “I see.” I was afraid to say too much. It had taken a lot of elbow grease to get him to open up and I didn’t want him to stop now.

  He held out his hands. “And that’s it.”

  I slumped forward, dropping my head. “Dex. Throw me a bone here.”

  “We were engaged.”

  I popped my head back up. “You were?”

  “Yep.” He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “We’d been together for two years and my time in Japan was coming to an end. I also needed to submit my reenlistment paperwork or else get out the following year when my contract ended. It was that big moment in every Marine’s life where they decide if they’re going to get out after their first enlistment or head toward a career in the military.”

  “Sounds like a lot of pressure for a twenty-one-year-old.”

  He shrugged. “I won’t lie, it was. The end of the line seems a lot farther away when you’re only three years in. I’m three years from retirement now.”

  I watched as he looked over my head, his eyes unfocused in reflection. I couldn’t imagine what he’d seen during his time in the military, and I found myself wanting to pepper him with questions like a kid. Where have you traveled? What was your favorite part? Do you have a Purple Heart? Okay, fine, that last one might be a stretch. But it would be a good selling point to potential matches.

  “Anyway,” Dex continued, “we talked about it a lot. Her family was afraid I wanted to take her away from them and off to America, and they didn’t want that. I told her that as long as I could be with her, I’d get out of the military and stay in Japan with her.”

  “So, you were going to stay there?” My hand—apparently acting of its own volition—traveled up to my chest and rested heavily over my traitorous heart.

  He ran a hand over his cropped dark hair and exhaled deeply. “I would have stayed. I would have done anything for her. But she said she’d come with me to America. I signed the contract for another four years and proposed later that night.”

  I bit my lip, my heart hurting for this younger, less jaded version of Dex that I could clearly picture in my mind. “Then what happened?”

  “I’d requested to stay in Japan for another tour as a condition of my reenlistment. That allowed us to have a long engagement, like her family wanted. I didn’t see it at the time, but now I think she was just delaying the inevitable. When it was time for me to leave Japan, I was in the middle of a contract. I had no choice. I had to leave. And instead of getting married and coming with me, she broke it off with me. Turned out she didn’t want to leave Japan after all.”

  My heart squeezed again. You could see in his eyes that some part of him had never recovered from the pain Harumi had caused him. Sure, on the surface, he was one tough-looking guy. But on the inside, the walls around his heart were spray-painted with a big fat H for Harumi. She’d basically put it in his mind that he wasn’t worth a woman’s love. He wasn’t worth a woman sacrificing for him. It wasn’t going to be easy for any woman to get through to him and make him realize this wasn’t true. And that did not bode well for my competition.

  And as much as I hated to admit it … what Harumi had done to Dex sounded an awful lot like what I had done to the Marine in my own past.

  5

  Dex

  “Hang on. You said your mom wanted to meet for lunch,” Lopez said, raising a brow. “You didn’t say anything about going to a matchmaking firm. Which, by the way, I didn’t even know was a real thing.”

  I took a long pull of my beer before I answered my best friend. “Oh, we ate lunch first. She spent the whole meal listing all of the reasons I needed to do it or it would break her heart.”

  “Ouch,” he replied. “She still thinks you’re going to die alone?”

  “I’m not alone,” I said, slapping my other best friend, Huck, on the shoulder. “I have you guys.�
��

  Huck made a face. “Somehow I don’t think we’re what she means by that.”

  “I know. But it’s just not a priority for me right now.” My own words reminded me of my conversation with Amy. She’d accused me of that very thing as if it were a problem. I’d never thought of it as a problem. In fact, I saw it as a solution. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I’d already tried to find love once, and it hadn’t worked out. Why try again and risk the same outcome?

  “I’m pretty shocked she got you to do this,” Lopez observed. “Remember that time I told you I had a friend you’d like, and you told me to beat it? This is like that but on crack.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, well, when she started getting all weepy over her Asian chicken salad, I had to say yes.”

  Huck scoffed. “I mean, you didn’t have to.”

  “If my mother were your mother, you’d get it,” I replied.

  “Maybe. But I don’t need any help with my love life, so I’ll never know.” Huck flexed, indifferent to the eye rolls from me and Lopez.

  I’d known Lopez for about seventeen years, ever since bootcamp. He was basically a brother to me at this point. We’d only been stationed together one time before this current enlistment, but we’d kept in touch whenever we weren’t. When he’d gotten transferred to my unit last fall, we’d fallen right back into being the best of friends, as if we hadn’t spent any time apart.

  Huck, on the other hand, was a more recent friend. He was here when I got to San Diego and showed me the ropes at the office. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t know the secret button code on the vending machine to free the trapped honey buns when they inevitably got stuck. He showed me that little trick one day and turned a really crappy morning into a great one. We’d been friends ever since.

  Now, as was our Wednesday night ritual, we sat around my kitchen table having pizza and beer. After that, we’d spend the next several hours playing video games. Times like these were why I was glad we were all single. I seriously hoped this matchmaking thing wouldn’t result in me getting a girl who didn’t approve of our Wednesday nights. Because no matter how many boxes she ticked on Amy’s Perfect for Dex checklist, she wouldn’t be the right one for me if she wasn’t on board with my friends.