You’re My Match (Heaven’s Matchmaker #4)

Chapter One

“I swear, if my ass gets pinched one more time by any of these drunken frat boys," Charity Quinlan told her reflection, "a come-to-Jesus firestorm is gonna rain down on them the likes of which has never been seen ’round these parts.

" It wasn’t often she slipped into her Southern dialect, but she was madder than a nest of hornets.

After hauling in a giant breath, she smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle from her dress and then nodded at the image staring back at her from the inn’s guest bathroom mirror.

“Take a breath and get it together, Baby-girl. Remember who you are and whose you are.”

One more hour and she could go home. The wedding reception was almost over and she envisioned putting her screaming feet up on her coffee table, inhaling a quart of takeaway General Tso’s chicken, and vegging with a few episodes of Blind for Love, her newest reality show obsession.

But first she had to get through this wedding from hell.

No, that wasn’t fair. The wedding itself was lovely, as were the bride and groom.

When Charity had been put in charge of their preparations by her boss, Heaven’s famed, award-winning wedding planner Colleen O’Dowd, she’d found the happy couple a joy to work with.

Genuinely in love, they’d agreed on everything she’d presented to them for options.

Even their mothers had been amenable, never once shoving their own opinions and expectations onto the couple’s day.

She’d given the bride and groom a wedding day to remember forever. Everything was timed to perfection and had gone off without a hitch, every tiny detail flawless and exactly what they desired.

It was the groomsmen who were spoiling it.

Two of them had arrived at the church hung over from the raucous bachelor party the night before.

She’d spotted a flask covertly passed around in the vestibule before the ceremony.

Knowing a little hair of the dog went a long way in easing a post-party hangover, Charity had kept silent.

When the reception started, liter bottles of champagne and tequila replaced the flask. The bartender had refilled the stocked bar twice before dinner to keep up with the drinking flow. She’d wanted to tell him to stop serving the obnoxious twenty-somethings, but knew she couldn’t.

She’d tried to speak to the ringleader, the groom’s brother, at one point when they’d all begun removing their tuxedo jackets, shirts, and shoes.

He’d looked down on her from his substantial six-foot-plus height to her petite five-foot-barely-one, plastered a wet, leering smirk across his face and slung an arm around her waist, tugging her up against his sweating-like-a-working-farm-animal body.

She had to hold her breath from the rancid combination of hoppy-breath and body odor engulfing her.

“Why don’t you take that stick out of your gorgeous little ass, sweetheart? It’s a wedding. Loosen up a little.” He punctuated the remark by dropping his hand to her butt and giving it a lecherous pinch.

Charity didn’t know which was more repugnant: the smell of him, the comment about her ass, or his hand on it.

As she expertly extricated herself from his hold, she gave equal weight to all three.

Taking several steps away, she tried reasoning with him, forgetting you can never reason with a drunk.

His body listed to one side as he said, “You’re not paying for this shindig, babe, so you don’t get a say in how we act or what we do at my baby brother’s wedding.

” He then waved a dismissive hand at her, mumbled something that sounded like bitch, and strutted away without another word to her.

Back at his group of inebriated friends, he blatantly turned around and indicated her while he spoke. Laughter wafted from their little circle, and she wasn’t blind to the nasty, squinty-eyed stares they threw her way.

It was then an ass-pinching campaign began in earnest. Wherever she was, she found one of the frat boys just happened to be in her vicinity as well. Stealthily, a hand would make its way to her bottom before she realized it. After the deed was done, the idiot would laugh and walk off.

Charity couldn’t react like she wanted to, which was to roundhouse the guy’s nuts, aiming her foot at the perfect level she knew would inflict the most pain.

Two decades of studying karate had given her height-challenged body a decided edge when dealing with bullies of all sizes, ilk, and inebriated states.

But she couldn’t drop the guy like a sack of fermented potatoes. She had a job to do and dealing with groomsmen who’d drank a little too much was part of it.

But oh, how her leg itched to kick out.

After taking a bracing breath, she opened the bathroom door and found, to her utter frustration, another booze-rattled frat bro leaning against the wall.

That he was waiting for her was apparent. That he was up to no good? Also clear. He pushed off the wall with a tipsy shrug and plastered a boozy smile on his face.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

She ignored him and attempted to sidle by, but even with a few heavily poured glasses of alcohol swimming in his system, he moved faster and snaked a hand around her bare upper arm, halting her.

Cursing the choice of sundress she’d worn for the day, she bemoaned the fact she hadn’t opted for sleeves instead of spaghetti straps. The guy’s naked hand against her flesh made her skin crawl.

Charity clamped down on her anger and the urge to sucker punch him and said in a voice carved from steel, “Let go of my arm.”

He simply squeezed harder and leered down at her.

For the millionth time in her life, she cursed her lack of height.

“I said,” she spat between clenched teeth, her calm dissolving, “Let. Me. Go.”

“Now, that’s not nice, babe. You’re the hired help. You’re supposed to make nice with the guests.”

Even drunk, the guy was a mass of muscle. He tugged her full up against his body, her face crushing into his chest.

The breezeway between the ballroom and the bathrooms was empty, save for the two of them, the booming bass of the band, wall-shakingly loud. Charity could scream, but knew no one would hear her.

His free hand slid down her back to cup her ass. She was just about to give in to her training when he fell backward, releasing her. Charity rocked on her heels as she ricocheted into the wall behind her.

Frat boy was the one wobbling now, held by the back scruff of his smelly tuxedo shirt in a hold he was incapable of breaking free from.

“She said let go.” The voice was thick, harsh, and deathly soft.

And familiar.

Kolby O’Brian, her co-worker and, unfortunately, the bane of her existence, held the guy in a death grip, his muscular arms pulling him up to the tips of his toes as he held on to him.

“Give off, Dude,” the man whined. “I’m a guest. You’re hurting me.”

“I don’t care if you’re the leader of the free world. If you think this hurts, you try to touch her again and you’ll know what real pain is.” He shook the guy as if he were a rag doll, and then released him with a forceful shove toward the ballroom. “I’d advise you to go back to the party. Now.”

The guy clutched his throat, his face a mask of pain and fear as he stared at the behemoth that was her photographer. With a quick side-eye to her, he shook his head and mumbled, “Not worth it,” as he beelined on shaky legs back to the ballroom.

“Are you okay?” Kolby asked as he peered down at her, worry cascading over his handsome face.

“Why did you do that?" Fury bowled through her shaking voice. Her heart rate was speeding like a freight train, and it wasn’t solely from the encounter with the drunk.

Kolby's thick, arched eyebrows tugged to the center of his forehead. “Why did I—? The guy had you plastered against him, Charity, against your will. What was I supposed to do? Let him assault you?”

“I had it handled, Kolby. I didn’t need any interference from you.”

“How? The guy was twice your size and weight, not to mention piss-drunk. You can’t predict what someone like that is going to do.”

“I. Had. It. Handled,” she spat through tight lips. “You didn’t need to ride in on your macho white horse to save me. I’m not a little girl who needs protecting. I can take care of myself.”

The expression on his face went from confusion to hurt and then morphed into anger.

Beetled brows tugged down over those blue eyes that haunted her in dreams, the mouth she’d fantasized about pressing her own against, tight at the corners and bent into an upside-down U.

His nostrils flared once, then relaxed again when he let out a breath shrouded in annoyance.

It was evident in the derision that framed his expression he didn’t believe she could take care of herself. She braced for a verbal unleashing. Kolby’s ego was a solid wall of masculinity built with a cocky, know-it-all base that he never attempted to hide.

He was everything she despised in a man, and it killed her to be so damn drawn to him.

Their working relationship had started on rocky ground the first day they’d met.

He was the senior employee, fabulous at his job, and had enjoyed a relaxed, flirty relationship with the previous assistant.

He’d sized Charity up with those hooded bedroom eyes, and she got the feeling he was trying to gauge how fast he could get her in his bed.

She’d known and dealt with guys like Kolby O’Brian her entire life.

Good-looking, cocky, self-assured men who lived life as if it was all going to burn away tomorrow.

No long-term relationships, no commitment to anything but themselves and their pleasures.

And they went through women like water goes through new pipes: fast and free-flowing.

Charity had shaken his hand, ignoring how he held it just a smidge longer than necessary, and then treated him with an air of professional disinterest that had served her well when put in challenging situations during her life.

He’d regarded her with a quizzical eyebrow lift and nothing else.