Paws for the Villain (The Matchmaker’s Book Club: Villains #1)

THE MATCHMAKER’S BOOK CLUB

THE MATCHMAKER’S BOOK CLUB

Champagne caught the chandelier light and threw tiny golden stars across the cream tablecloths.

Gerri Wilder stood near the champagne fountain in the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel, her emerald wrap dress catching those same fractured lights, and accepted a compliment about her matchmaking prowess with the kind of modesty that fooled absolutely no one.

Her silver-white bob was immaculate. Her smile carried the quiet satisfaction of a woman who had, once again, been spectacularly right about two people who’d been spectacularly wrong about themselves.

The engagement party for Zy Ashford and Ellie Madden filled the private dining room with laughter, music, and the particular electricity that happened when a hundred wealthy, opinionated women gathered in one place with unlimited champagne.

Floor-to-ceiling windows framed Central Park at dusk, the trees turning amber and rust beneath a bruised violet sky.

Orchid arrangements towered on every surface.

Crystal stemware clinked in a continuous percussion.

The Matchmaker’s Book Club was in session. Not that they’d discussed a book since—well. Gerri couldn’t remember. The club existed for one purpose, and it had nothing to do with literature.

She plucked a fresh flute from a passing tray and raised it. The room quieted by degrees—not because she demanded silence, but because Gerri Wilder holding a champagne glass was a woman about to deliver a line either brilliant or inappropriate, and no one wanted to miss either.

“To Zy and Ellie,” she began, her voice carrying with practiced ease across the room.

“Who proved that sometimes the best player wins the game — and the game master.” She let the pause settle.

Zy, across the room with his arm around Ellie’s waist, narrowed his eyes.

He knew Gerri. He knew that pause. “I’m told tiger shifters have remarkable... endurance.”

Ellie’s cheeks flushed scarlet. Zy’s champagne went down the wrong pipe.

“Ellie, dear.” Gerri’s expression was the picture of maternal concern. “Blink twice if you need a nap.”

The room erupted. Ellie buried her face in Zy’s shoulder while he coughed and laughed at the same time, his hand tightening on her hip in a way that suggested Gerri wasn’t entirely wrong.

Two hundred champagne flutes rose. Gerri drank with the serene confidence of a woman who had engineered a love story and lived to toast it.

The mothers descended within minutes.

Gerri navigated the swarm with the ease of a diplomat working a state dinner.

Helena Ashford—Zy’s mother, resplendent in midnight blue and trembling with pride she’d never publicly admit—gripped Gerri’s hands and whispered a thank-you that cracked on the last syllable.

Gerri pressed a lemon cookie into her palm.

“Sugar helps, darling. So does bourbon, but the hotel frowns on flasks.”

She moved through the crowd, distributing cookies from her emerald clutch like a society matriarch dispensing communion wafers.

The clutch was deceptively spacious. Gerri had it custom-made for exactly this purpose—enough room for two dozen homemade lemon cookies wrapped in wax paper, a lipstick, her phone, and a small notebook where she kept the names of every romantically hopeless adult child in her network. The notebook was getting thick.

Margaret Holloway approached with tears threatening her mascara, clutching her daughter’s engagement photos from last spring.

Gerri accepted the hug and the credit with equal grace.

Deborah Kim wanted to know if Gerri had “anyone in mind” for her son, a bear shifter veterinarian in Queens who collected model trains and hadn’t made eye contact with a woman since his residency.

Gerri filed that away. She always filed things away.

“I always bring extras,” she told a cluster of nervous mothers near the champagne fountain, pressing cookies into grateful hands.

“You’d be amazed how emotional mothers get at these things.

” She paused, considering the woman dabbing her eyes with a Plaza napkin.

“Sugar helps. So does perspective. Your children are brilliant, stubborn, and terrible at recognizing what’s good for them. That’s why you have me.”

The woman in the copper silk scarf approached like someone who had timed her entrance.

Ozara Stone. Late fifties. Dark skin that caught the warm chandelier glow.

Silver jewelry at her throat and wrists—not delicate, not understated.

Statement pieces, the kind an art consultant chose because she understood that accessories were a language.

The scarf was draped with an artist’s precision, one end trailing over her shoulder in a way that looked careless and absolutely was not.

She opened with the dress. “That green is magnificent. Oscar de la Renta?”

Gerri arched an eyebrow. “You have a good eye.”

“I spent twenty years running a gallery in Chelsea. I’d better.” Ozara accepted a cookie with the practiced ease of someone who understood that refusing Gerri’s cookies was refusing Gerri’s goodwill. She bit into it. Her expression shifted—surprise, then appreciation. “These are exceptional.”

“Secret recipe. I’d share it, but then I’d have to match you with someone dreadful.” Gerri tilted her head. The tilt was deliberate. Everything Gerri did at these events was deliberate. “You’re not here to discuss cookies, Ozara.”

Ozara’s mouth curved. Not sheepish. Strategic. The woman had come prepared, and she respected Gerri enough to stop circling.

“My daughter Lumi is the most romantic soul I’ve ever known.

” Ozara turned the cookie in her fingers, studying it the way she might study a canvas—with attention, with intent.

“She draws love stories that make people weep. Villain love stories. Characters so dark and layered that readers fall in love with the monster and don’t feel guilty about it.

” She paused. “And she goes home every night to an apartment full of plants she’s named after fictional murderers. ”

Gerri’s fingers stilled on her champagne glass.

“The pothos is Moriarty.” Ozara delivered this the way you deliver information you have long since made peace with. “The succulent is Hela. The fern is Iago.” She took another bite of cookie. “The fern is dying, which Lumi says is ‘on brand.’”

Gerri pressed her lips tight. Not disapproval. The suppression of a laugh that would have undermined the gravity Ozara was building toward.

“She has a cult following,” Ozara continued.

“Her comic series—Nightbloom—has readers who tattoo her characters on their bodies. Who wait in line for hours at conventions for a sketch. Who write letters about how her villain made them feel understood for the first time.” The pride in her voice was unmistakable and enormous.

Then it dimmed. “She also had a mentor. Harlan Cray.”

Gerri knew the name. Everyone in creative circles knew the name. The acclaimed graphic novelist who’d recently received a documentary deal and a wave of industry acclaim for work that—if certain whispers were accurate—was not entirely his own.

“He took credit for her work.” Ozara’s voice flattened. No drama. A mother stating a fact that still drew blood. “Positioned himself as her creative superior. And my daughter—my brilliant, stubborn, fiercely independent daughter—sealed herself inside her art like a tomb.”

Ozara set the half-eaten cookie on a napkin. Her hands were steady. Her jaw was not.

“She pours every ounce of love she has into characters on a page, Gerri. Builds these villains with so much emotional honesty that strangers weep over them. And there’s nothing left for a real person. She draws romance for a living and goes home alone every single night.”

The chandelier light shifted. Dusk was deepening beyond the windows, Central Park dissolving into shadows and the first pinpricks of city light.

Gerri watched Ozara’s face and saw what she always saw in the mothers who came to her: love wearing the mask of composure, and underneath it, the quiet dread of watching your child build a life that was impressive and empty at the same time.

Gerri reached into her clutch. Offered another cookie.

Ozara took it. This time without pretending she didn’t need it.

“Tell me about the mentor,” Gerri said. “The real version. Not the industry version.”

Ozara exhaled. “Harlan Cray was everything Lumi’s father wasn’t—not because Dominic is a bad father.

He’s wonderful. But Harlan filled the role of creative mentor.

He saw her talent when she was twenty-two and raw and desperate for someone in the industry to say—you belong here.

He said it. Then he took what she made and put his name on it. ”

“And she stopped trusting.”

“She stopped trusting her own judgment about people.” Ozara’s emphasis was precise.

“Her art? Flawless instincts. Her work? Extraordinary. But let someone get close enough to collaborate, close enough to see the raw material before it’s polished?

” She shook her head. “Not since Harlan. She does everything herself. The writing, the penciling, the inking, the marketing, the distribution. She sells at conventions and indie shops. She eats ramen four nights a week because she puts every cent back into printing costs rather than accept help from anyone—including her family, who could easily make that burden disappear.”

Gerri filed every detail. The plants with villains’ names. The ramen. The refusal of family money. The mentor wound. She was building a profile the way an architect builds a blueprint—every line precise, every measurement loaded with meaning.

“Does Lumi still draw those romantic pieces she won’t publish?”

Ozara blinked. Her composure cracked—a hairline fracture, barely a breath. “How did you—”