No Match for a Millionaire (Noble Matchmaking Series #1)

Part 1

Though it didn't always come naturally to her, Riley Brennan figured that she couldn't be a successful matchmaker if she wasn't also an eternal optimist. It would be like a gambler without hope, a priest who didn't believe in faith, a fairy godmother with no magic.

Of course, hope, faith, and magic could only get her so far. What she really needed at the moment was caffeine.

She glanced over at her friend Whit as they stood at the counter of the small coffee stand waiting for their order. Ever since she had started working in this building, she and Whit had been making early morning coffee runs together at least once a week.

"Any sexy new cases you're working on?" Whit asked. He and Riley had first met at Texas A&M ten years before, and while Whit had gone into accounting and quickly settled into the routine of the monthly fiscal closes, he had always been fascinated by Riley's stories from working at Accenture as a management consultant.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much Riley could tell him about her new career. "It's confidential, you know that," she said, watching the barista behind the coffee stand begin to pour soy milk into a paper cup. She thought her order was finally up.

Whit looked disappointed, as he always did when Riley refused to divulge the secrets of her new job. "So no Texans players as clients?"

There wasn't a Texan player, but there was a Houston Rocket, Riley thought, though she didn't tell Whit that. "Even if there were, you know I couldn't talk about it." Despite the mystery of her new career, in a lot of ways, she was still just a consultant: statuses to report, budgets to balance, and, when her name was called and her drink finally came up, coffee to spill all over herself when the caffeine-deprived crowd surged behind her.

"Hey!" Whit said indignantly to the man who had made contact with Riley's back, then positioned himself to try to buffer her from the people behind her. "Are you ok?"

Focus on the positive, she reminded herself. "I'm fine," she replied. No use crying over spilled milk--even if it was the soy milk in her five-dollar latte.

"Here," a voice said to their right, and Riley glanced over to see a young woman offering her a stack of napkins. The woman was pretty, elegantly dressed in a raspberry sheath and sky-high pumps, and obviously kind to strangers. Riley could feel Whit, perpetually single, perk up beside her when he caught sight of the other woman.

"Thank you," Riley said, gratefully accepting the napkins and dabbing at the damp spot on her blouse. The coffee had soaked all the way through to her bra underneath. "Good thing I don't have any important meetings today."

"What floor do y'all work on?" The woman's tone was conversational as she braced herself against the milling crowd and waited for her own coffee order. Williams Tower was the tallest building in Uptown Houston, with 64 floors of workers who were apparently all trying to get their coffee from the little stand at that exact moment.

"Hi, I'm Whit," Whit interjected, reaching awkwardly over Riley to shake the woman's hand.

The woman blinked at his eagerness but shook his hand politely. "Taylor Dunn. Nice to meet you."

Riley glanced discreetly at the woman's bare ring finger and slipped a business card out of her purse. "Riley Brennan. I work at Noble Matchmaking on the 55th floor. Are you single?"

She recognized the speculative gleam that appeared in the other woman's eyes as she accepted Riley's business card. And that was how Riley managed to turn a spilled latte into a promising new candidate for her client portfolio.

"Are you single? is supposed to be my line.  I didn't even get a chance to ask for her number," Whit complained as he and Riley headed to the elevators several minutes later. "Now that you're a matchmaker, you keep swooping everyone up for your portfolio. Once they're offered filet mignon, they're never interested in hamburger."