Rules Of Engagement

3

We walk through the front door of the building into a waiting room, and I have to stop myself from running right back out.

Everything is pink. Everything. The walls, the carpet, the sofa and chairs. It’s like being inside a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Looking around in horror, I say, “What. The actual. Fuck.”

Dick hisses, “It’s romantic! Now shut the hell up!” Plastering a fake smile on his face, he strolls over to the counter behind which a big woman with a frizzy red perm dozes in a chair. Her eyes are closed. She’s snoring gently.

And by “gently” I mean “like a chainsaw.” I’ve heard riots quieter than this.

Dick has to clear his throat several times to be heard over the racket, until Sleeping Beauty wakes with a start.

Then she screams.

I say, “I know exactly how you feel, lady.” Then everything falls into slow motion.

A door on the other side of the room swings open. Through it steps a young woman. She’s slim and petite, just over five feet tall, and dressed demurely, like a librarian.

A beige skirt hangs past her knees. A simple white blouse is buttoned all the way up to her neck. On her nose perches a pair of delicate gold-rimmed glasses. Her dark hair is gathered back into a tidy bun.

She doesn’t have any jewelry on. The only makeup she’s wearing is lipstick.

It’s the same horrific shade of pink as the walls.

She looks at the woman who screamed. She looks at d**k. Then she turns her head and looks at me.

She smiles.

I feel that smile all the way down to the darkest corner of my soul, the place where light never shines and I keep all the monsters hidden under lock and key.

She smiles with her whole body. With her whole being, like she’s a conductor of light itself and all that’s good and pure in the universe is being channeled through her on its way to me, where it surrounds me and bathes me in golden rays of sunshine, so warm and sweet I could almost cry.

I stand there stunned, stupidly gaping at her, until she speaks.

In a voice like music, the librarian says, “Hello.”

That’s it. One word. A simple, common, everyday word I’ve heard a million times before, except never in that voice, from that mouth, from those lips in their hideous pink lipstick.

In response, I think a simple, common word.

FUCK.

Remember my point from earlier, the one I said I had? Here it is:

For the first time ever, in all its variations, as a noun, verb, or adjective, that word doesn’t even begin to cover what I feel the first time I set eyes on Maddie McRae.

Unfortunately, I’m still me. Guess what happens next.

Spoiler alert: I f**k it up.

2

MADDIE

I

’ve never had an out-of-body experience before, but today is a day of firsts.

First time meeting the infamous Mason Spark.

First time seeing size eighteen feet in real life.

First time wanting to commit murder.

So here I am, looking down at myself from my vantage point on the ceiling where my soul has fled in horror as the scene unfolds below, terrible but weirdly compelling, like one of those accidents you pass on the highway where you know it’s wrong to but you still have to slow down to check for blood and mangled bodies.

At least my hair looks good from up here.

The same can’t be said for my new client, who appears to have an angry goth porcupine nesting on top of his cranium. “Bed head” doesn’t even begin to cover it. It looks like his preferred hair styling method is sticking his head into a blender and setting it to puree.

That would account for his beastly attitude, too. His brains are obviously scrambled. I’ve met bears nicer than him.

It started to fall apart the minute we laid eyes on each other. Or, I should say, the minute he laid eyes on me. I opened my office door to Auntie Waldine’s scream and found two men in the waiting room, one of whom was as tall as a skyscraper… and just as friendly.

He took one look at me, froze, then curled his lip into a sneer so acidic he could’ve bleached the walls with it.

At first I thought it was on account of Auntie Waldine and her startling scream, but even after I explained that she suffers from narcolepsy—a sleep disease that makes sufferers of the condition fall asleep suddenly and sometimes hallucinate frightening things when they just as suddenly wake—he still kept staring at me in disgust like I was the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Honestly, I’ve never met a man with such a serious case of resting b***h face.

“I told you this was matchmaker thing was bullshit,” snaps Prince Charmless to his sidekick, a short, sweating man with bug eyes who thought it was a good idea to wear an entire bottle of cologne and every piece of gold jewelry he owns to a morning business meeting.

And let’s not talk about the plaid leisure suit. Or the white leather shoes. Or the toupee, which looks like a taxidermy experiment gone horribly wrong.

Somewhere out in the world, a dead badger is missing its scalp.

The sidekick—who goes by d**k, because apparently Richard is too dignified—waves a hand in the air. I’m nearly blinded by the light flashing off his rings.

“Now, listen here, Missy—”

“It’s Maddie,” I remind him, eyeing the porcupine on Mason’s head.

“—my boy here signed a contract with your company, a very expensive contract, I might add, and we expect results.” Leaning forward in his chair, d**k stabs a stubby index finger repeatedly onto the top of my desk. “Qualified. Guaranteed. Hand-selected matches. That’s what we were promised.”