by Linda Verji
THE BRIDAL CANDIDATE 1
A Heart Connections Novel (Book #1)
Linda Verji
Titles Available In The Heart Connections Series
The Bridal Candidate 1
The Bridal Candidate 2
For information on Linda Verji’s other books/series join Linda’s Reading Group
Copyright © 2016 by Linda Verji
www.lindaverji.com
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior consent on the author, excepting brief quotes in reviews.
This is an original work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Rated 18+ for Explicit Sex and Strong Language
Edited by A.B. Ewing
Cover Design By Indigo Forest Designs
'You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams'
~ Dr Seuss ~
CHAPTER 1
Heart Connections by Donna V
"What a load of bullshit," Damián Colter mumbled under his breath as he stared at the sign that marked the building’s entrance.
There was no such thing as a heart connection when it came to marriage. Only money connections, name connections or sex connections. Love was a con; nothing but a mirage expertly conjured by charlatans to blind unsuspecting idiots as they sucked them dry of whatever they could. Thank God he’d opened his eyes in time.
The thought of love and relationships was enough to give him a chill despite the heated Alabama air swirling around him.
What the hell was he even doing here?
Oh yeah! Zoe.
Taking a deep breath and steeling his shoulders, Damián stepped into the building. A small arrow marked ‘Heart Connections’ and plastered to the cream wall pointed him up the narrow stairway. He took the stairs two at a time to the mezzanine floor. A glass door, with the words 'Heart Connections: Everyone deserves love' embossed on it, marked his destination.
The moment he pushed the door open, cool air laced with something sweet brushed across his face displacing the heat of summer. Heart Connections was everything he expected a matchmaking service to be. The reception area was a large, open and airy space enclosed by pristine white walls and large windows overlooking the busy townscape. White wicker loveseats with pastel green cushions were artfully arranged around the room and backed by wicker and glass coffee-tables. Large picture frames hosting happy couples lined the walls intermittently broken by abstract paintings and potted plants. To cap the easy yet romantic ambience, instrumentals of old-school rhythms played softly in the background.
"Good morning." The perky dark-skinned receptionist smiled at him as she rose from behind the reception desk. "Welcome to Heart Connections. I'm Cara."
"Thank you, Cara." Shifting his car keys to his left palm, Damián accepted the hand she offered. "I have an appointment with Ms. Vaughn for eleven a.m. Damián Colter."
"A minute, please." Cara turned to her computer, tapped on the keyboard a few time before nodding. "Please have a seat while I inform Ms. Vaughn that you’re here."
While the receptionist knocked then entered through the door on the right side of the room, Damián settled into one of the loveseats. Atop the coffee-table sat a bunch of magazines. He expected to find only bridal and wedding crap, but was pleasantly surprised to find the Financial Times, a copy of the day's newspaper… there was even a Car. Picking up the Car, he thumbed through the glossy pages while he waited.
"Ms. Vaughn is finishing up with a client and will be just a few minutes," Cara said when she returned. "Can I offer you something while you wait?"
"Cold water," Damián returned curtly. He didn’t like waiting – actually people, especially those working for him, rarely if ever kept him waiting. He cast an eye towards the clock. Realizing that it was only ten-thirty, he decided to give her fifteen more minutes, and only because he’d done his research.
Despite the fact that Heart Connections wasn’t exactly booming and that its current owner wasn’t married, the company had a staggeringly good success rate. A fair percentage of their matches led to marriage. And compared to other matchmaking services, their divorce rate was comfortingly low. Research aside, if Aiko Vaughn wasn’t done by ten forty-five, he’d find another matchmaker.
Lucky for her, at exactly ten forty-three, the door to her office opened and two women exited. Aiko was distinctive enough that he pegged her right on sight. She stood several inches above the pallid sixtyish woman walking beside her. Her figure was lip-licking sexy; an ample bust cinched into a tiny waist and flared into thick hips. The all-white sheathe dress she wore smoothed over her delicious curves and set off her bronzed skin and jet-black curly hair magnificently. But it was the jagged scar running from the edge of her left eye down to her cheek that drew Damián’s gaze back to her face.
"… and you’re not going to get me any faddy daddies, right?" the elderly woman asked.
"No faddy daddies," Aiko promised with a smile. There was something about her wide smile that seemed to bring all her features alive and camouflage her scar. It was the kind of smile you wanted to fall into and never come crawling out of. When she said, "Trust me," it was no wonder that the older lady nodded eagerly in response. Damián fought not to return her smile when she turned her attention to him.
"You must be Mr. Colter," she said.
"I am." Damián nodded as he set the magazine aside then stood to greet her.
"It’s nice to meet you." The hand that met his was warm and dainty, and her handshake was firm. She didn’t linger on the greeting. She gave him a quick and impersonal once over before she turned to her receptionist. "Cara, why don’t you finish up with Idi while Mr. Colter and I talk?"
Damián was oddly disappointed when her gaze didn’t linger on him as other women’s usually did. He swiftly tapped down on his disappointment; he wasn’t here for her approval - just her services. However that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the woman’s assets. As he followed Aiko to her office he couldn’t prevent the automatic lowering of his gaze to her ass; and what an ass it was - round, full and begging to be touched.
"Mr. Colter," Aiko yanked him from his errant observation as she turned and his gaze jerked upwards quickly to meet hers. "Please have a seat."
He took the offered loveseat. "Damián."
"I’m sorry?" Her brow arched in question.
"You can call me Damián," he clarified.
"Damián." She nodded. His ego crowed when she pronounced his name with a slight Spanish accent just the way he liked it. He caught the slight scent of her flowery perfume as she took the one-seater adjacent to his seat, and enjoyed the brief flash of silky smooth skin before she smoothed the skirt of her dress over her thighs. "So, Damián, you mentioned that you were looking for someone in your email but we didn’t really get to talk. What exactly are you looking for? A friend, lover, wife…"
"… a mother." Damián finished her sentence. "I’m looking for a mother for my daughter."
"O-okay." She drew out the word. "Why don’t you tell me about a bit about yourself so we can figure out what type of partner you’re looking for?"
"You don’t understand." He leant forward in his seat. "It doesn’t matter whether she and I match. I just want a woman capable of raising a twelve year old and I’m willing to pay for her."
Aiko’s eyebrows shot right up to her hairline. "Excuse me?"
"I’m offering marriage and ten thousand dollars per m
onth to any woman who can raise my daughter."
CHAPTER 2
Damián Colter was everything the magazines had claimed he was and more.
Aiko had done her research, as she usually did for all potential clients, but nothing could've prepared her to meet the man in person. Now that he was here she could see why the women of Montgomery had kept him on the list of top-five most eligible bachelors in the city for ten years running.
Tall? Check. At over six feet solid muscle, he dwarfed everything around him. She was by no means the shortest woman around but in his presence she felt like she was the china shop to his bull. She was keenly aware of his elegant lean, long length sprawled on the loveseat.
Dark? Check. His skin was a delicious tanned shade of olive that only heritage could've created. Handsome? Check… Actually scratch that and replace with too pretty for his own good. His haircut was a bit too long for a conventional businessman and a silky brown lock fell carelessly over his brow drawing attention to his eyes; dark, grey eyes that seemed to lure you in, promising endless and delicious secrets.
Mysterious? Check. There was precious little about the man in the press. Most of the articles about him were business-related. The only close to personal thing she'd found out was that three years ago he'd been briefly engaged to a woman named Holly but the engagement ended abruptly. No more details. Not that the lack of details into his personal life had quelled feminine interest in him. He had quite a vibrant fan club. In fact Aiko had found a lot of very explicit fan fiction about him online. No, she hadn't read it. Okay, maybe she'd glanced at it - but it was for research.
Rich? Stinking! Despite the careless haircut, the light fuzz on his chin, and his casual jeans and shirt combo, Damián was not only a member of one of the city's most affluent families but had gone ahead to make his own fortune in the aero-technology field.
There was only one thing the magazines had forgotten to mention.
Crazy? Bat-shit crazy.
"She's got to be older than twenty five." Damián played with the Mercedes Benz emblazoned car-key in his hand as he laid down his list of requirements. "She has to have her own children or at least be in a profession that requires constant handling of them."
Aiko couldn't even believe that she was sitting here listening to him rattle his order like he was in line at a take-out diner and ordering a burger. They'd had a lot of strange customers in Heart Connections. They'd had the man who only dated Yugoslavians who weighed under ninety pounds and couldn't speak English. They'd had the woman who wanted all potential mates respectful, owning their own home and measured for dick size. They'd had them all, but Damián was… new territory.
Usually, she dealt with clients like those by pointing out their own flaws and reminding them that they shouldn't expect her to find them Mr. or Ms. Perfection when they weren't that perfect themselves. Then she'd start the conversation by asking them what personality traits and values they were bringing to the table that a potential mate would want. Damián however seemed to think that ten thousand dollars per month was all the personality he needed.
She fought to keep the distaste from spilling into her expression as she nodded along to his words.
"I don't expect her to quit her job," Damián continued, "but I expect that her schedule will be flexible enough that she'll be home when Zoe is."
Before she could stop herself, she stated the obvious, "Have you considered just hiring a nanny?"
Her question drew the first indication of discomfort from Damián. He shifted slightly in his seat, his gaze lowered and he raked his fingers through his hair, ruffling the strands and making her itch to smooth it down for him. He stated simply, "I have needs."
Oh, he wanted a nanny and an escort.
Her dislike radar climbed a few hundred notches. Pretending she didn't understand what he meant, Aiko screwed her expression into one of confusion. "Needs?"
"Sex."His dark eyes met hers. "I don't expect or want love but she needs to be agreeable to sessions at least three times a week."
She'd heard sex called many things – sessions was not one of them. Behind her calm exterior, amusement bubbled and Aiko couldn't hide the slight tilt of her lips. Damián picked up on it. "Something funny, Ms. Vaughn?"
"Nothing. Nothing." She crossed her leg over the knee of the other. Damián's eyes immediately followed her movement but met hers again when she drew his attention. "It seems like you're looking for a business deal rather than a real marriage."
"This will be a real marriage." Damián's voice was insistent as he leant forward. "At least it's realer than anything else you're offering those people." He gestured towards a picture of a happy couple on the wall.
The potshot was subtle but Aiko caught it and her hackles rose. However, her tone didn't change in cadence as she asked, "How do you figure?"
"We're both walking in eyes wide open," he surmised. "I know she wants my money, and she knows that I want sex and a mother for my daughter. No surprises."
"Marriage comes with surprises," she stated. "People change and so do their expectations."
"How would you know?" He arched an eyebrow. "You've never been married."
That pricked. But he was right. She was just restating what she'd heard her mother, Donna, say to clients over and over again. Her own love life was a blank page with just one name written at the top.
Lincoln Ware.
Theirs had been an intense four month affair in Iraq in between dodging IEDs, snipers and suicide bombers. But it'd been everything. She knew what it felt like to be loved; to know that you were the most important person in someone's life; to know that you were the first face they wanted to see when they woke up to battle and the last face they wanted to see when they died on the field. Loving Lincoln had been like being doused in opium, injected with ecstasy and then lit up. She'd craved him night and day as he'd craved her, been willing to lay her life down for him as he'd laid down his for her.
Everyone deserved a Lincoln at least once in their lifetime.
And it just didn't feel right to inflict Damián to any woman out there.
Gathering her words and herding her voice to display the appropriate level of regret, she said, "Unfortunately, I don't think Heart Connections can match you."
"I thought your tagline was everyone deserves love," he scoffed, "or is that just a pretty decoration for your door?"
"You're right. Our door does say everyone deserves loves. But you see Mr. Colter…" Her voice practically dripped of fake sweetness as she her lips stretched out in a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "… we can only help those who are looking for it. And you're not."
If there was anything she'd learnt from working with her mother, it was that in this business the clients were often wrong. Many times, what they thought they wanted wasn't what they really needed. It was Heart Connections' job to guide them towards what they needed. If the client insisted on being right and wasn't open to negotiation, then Heart Connections reserved the right to kick them to the curb – politely of course. It was what had kept them at the top of their game.
Damián didn't look like the type of man who wanted to negotiate his 'needs'. He watched her in silence as her comeback reverberated in the room. A few moments later, his eyes narrowed and he sat back in the seat with his arms crossed over his chest. "What's your going rate to match someone?"
"Like I said, we won't be able to-"
His words slashed across hers, "Humor me."
Even though all she wanted to do was grab his arm and escort him out of her office, she said, "We charge a flat rate of five hundred dollars for a personalized mixer, and one hundred dollars per blind-date."
"I'll pay you five thousand to match me."
Not only was the guy crazy he was also selectively deaf.
"Thank you for your offer, Mr. Colter, but we are unable to help you at this time." She stood to indicate an end to their meeting. "However, when you're ready for a real relationship, we'll be glad to help out."
"I'M JUST SAYING Auntie." Cara shook her head in disappointment. "You lost us a cool five grand."
"Who was I supposed to match him with?" Aiko asked even as she kept her eyes on the road.
"Cashmere."
Aiko burst into laughter. "That gold-digger? No."
"But he was looking for a gold-digger," her niece insisted, "and Cash is looking for a gold mine. The Perfect Match by Aiko V."
"You're wrong for that." Aiko chuckled. Despite Cara being nine years younger than her, Aiko loved working with her. The nineteen year-old was mature, hardworking, fun to be around and extremely courteous to clients.
There was not a day that Aiko didn't thank God for prodding Cara to register at a college that was close by instead of going up north like she'd always threatened. There was no way Heart Connections would've found a part-timer who would’ve agreed to take as low a salary as she was paying Cara. Her other receptionist took home almost double Cara's pay. As soon as Aiko had Heart Connections rip-roaring again, she promised herself she'd give her niece a large bonus.
Pulling up in front of Little Theresa Preschool, Aiko craned her neck in search of the kids, just in time to see them racing towards the car, a thoroughly harassed teacher toddling after them. The moment Aiko exited the car, they both lunged for her.
"Mommy.""Auntie." At four and five respectively, Seraphina and Michael were a bundle of energy and it took both Aiko and Cara to strap them into their seats.
"Mommy, Mookie got in trouble with the teacher today," Seraphina tattled as Aiko drove away from the school.
"I did not. I did not." Michael whined from the back. "Phia's lying."
Practiced in negotiating peace agreements between the two feudalistic kids, Aiko managed to divert their attention to what they'd learnt today as she drove them home. She'd just turned right at the forked road that led to their street when she saw him; the gaunt, stooped man trudging along the dirt side-path. He was in stripped pajamas and socks with no shoes.
