Cobblestone Press, LLC
“Damn, damn, and damn again,” Delia chanted. All the other matchmaking Web sites made money and they didn’t even have real magic to make their matches.
She’d convinced the other two—her mother and her aunt—to invest their tiny savings in the start-up. Her mother Deborah and her aunt Dorothea lived in the house next door to Delia and had taken in a boarder to help with taxes and maintenance.
Despite her concern over MatchMagic, Delia also considered the problem of Deborah and Delia’s boarder, Connie. Connie had lost her job, and it was pretty clear that she’d soon be giving her notice. There had to be something they—meaning MatchMagic—could do to keep her around.
Delia figured it was time to go with the old adage It takes money to make money . They needed someone to help them sell the services of the Web site.
Oh, their clients were completely and utterly satisfied. The magic always worked. But it was the getting, rather than the satisfying, that caused them problems. And she knew exactly who could help.
Jamieson Smith.
They could hire him to do some promotion for them—it was, after all, his job. And, as a special thank you, they could help the strait-laced man next door find his true love.
* * * * *
Jamieson—his mother had called him that, without once shortening the name, ever since he could remember—wasn’t sure what his next-door neighbors wanted with him, but his mother had also instilled in him a set of very pretty manners, so when they’d asked him to tea, he’d said yes.
The main floor of the brilliantly painted Victorian next door wasn’t at all how he’d imagined it to be. He’d pictured colorful wallpaper, and little-old-lady chairs, and tables filled with knick-knacks.
What he found was a modern office space, half a dozen computers humming, a huge air conditioning unit, stacks of pamphlets and letterhead, a sign proclaiming MatchMagic.com , and three of the women he’d seen coming and going from the two Victorian houses next to his, sitting in red leather chairs around a small boardroom table.
“Please,” the youngest one said. “Sit and have some tea. We have a proposition for you.”
“I’m Jamieson Smith,” he said, a tiny question embedded in the statement so they’d tell him their names.
The oldest one spoke. “I’m Dorothea.” She pointed at the woman next to her. “This is my sister, Deborah. She’s Delia’s mother,” she added, gesturing at the youngest one.
Jamieson kept his grin to himself. He liked older women. His mother had been almost forty when he was born, and he’d grown up with her and her older sister.
So the three D’s, as he immediately named them, were right up his alley, and he set himself to make them comfortable, asking first about their houses and what they’d done to restore them.
Their faces lit up as they talked about the staircases they’d redone, the stained glass windows they’d found in thrift stores, the great workmen they’d found to help with the floors.
Jamieson wanted to ask for a tour, but that could wait until he knew what they wanted with him. He knew Delia’s daughter Tonia had just moved in with James and Jeff, the two men who ran the coffee shop down the street, so they weren’t trying to fix him up, though the MatchMagic.com sign had him a little worried.
Blunt, he thought, would work best.
“What can I help you with?” That would get the meeting back on track—whatever track it was they had set out on and that he’d derailed them from with his question about the houses.
“MatchMagic is a dating Web site,” Delia said. “We’ve been up and running for a year and, even though 100% of our clients have been completely satisfied, we don’t seem to be getting enough new ones to make it work for the long term.
“We thought you might be able to assist us with some promotional ideas.”
Jamieson looked again at the sign on the wall
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