Page 4 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

It had served him well in a lot of ways.

Except now it didn’t serve him at all. Now he was sitting on a short filing cabinet in a forgotten storage closet somewhere around the corner from his office, hoping no one would think to look for him in this one spot that he had never even noticed before stepping into it two minutes ago.

He still didn’t know where everything had gone wrong.

The manufactured attraction between them had beenperfect: Emily Sattler and Greg Church, two of the most acclaimed actors of their respective generations. Both single—she, recently divorced, and he a notorious bachelor—with an age gap that was scintillating enough without being too frowned upon (around seven years, give or take a few dermal fillers).

The flirtation had been natural, their chemistry obvious even to those who didn’t initially buy the relationship itself. Granted, Greg had that effect on all his female costars. And for Emily, with rumors of an alleged affair that had plagued her marriage and other unseemly whispers about her ex-husband’s preferences, it seemed as though they were keen to stoke the flames of gossip around their will-they-won’t-they potential.

Enter Ethan.

Known as Fordham PR’s premier matchmaking guru, Ethan prided himself on being able to distinguish precisely which celebrities would match well together, as well as on his ability to build exactly the right level of tabloid fodder for each star who sought out their help.

It had been something he’d always had a knack for, though it hadn’t exactly been boastworthy back in his teenage or postgraduate days. He’d just always been able to spot people who fit well together—people whose attraction (and attractiveness) meshed, people who gave themselves away with lingering glances or specific touches or even just a quick press of top teeth into a bottom lip. It was almost a sixth sense. One that he, for the most part, had kept to himself.

The only other person who had known his propensity for discovering compatibility was—

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he looked down at his phone again. Still blank, but he almost believed it wouldcome to life in his hands right then and there, imbued by the spirit of the workaholic version of Ethan who refused to accept that he might very well be losing his job at this precise moment.

The truth was, that was probably whatwashappening. Henry Fordham, the CEO and owner of Fordham PR, for all his eccentricities and his tendency to view Ethan as both a prodigy and a protégé, hated negative press above all.

“Gives me an ulcer,” the old man would say every time something came out about a celebrity whose reputation they’d tried to smooth over or a star who couldn’t quite maintain their perfectly crafted persona.

But this—this wasn’t just the fault of a reckless, egomaniacal celebrity. Of course, it had started that way. But in the end, it had devolved into something much worse. Something that implicated Ethan and Fordham PR as a whole. Something that was going to be more difficult to come back from than anything Ethan had done before.

“There you are.”

Light flooded the small storage closet, silhouetting a rounded, petite figure in a pencil skirt standing in the doorway.

Ethan stood up with a start, even subconsciously aware of how pathetic he looked, long limbs folded to sit on a filing cabinet that was less than three feet off the floor, then let out a long breath as he realized who it was.

“Ms. Smart.” Resisting the urge to sit back down, he smoothed out his pants and crossed his arms over his chest. “You found me.”

Gayle Smart, Mr. Fordham’s executive assistant and general guru of all the office hiding spots, regarded him with a folded-arm posture that matched his own.

“Mr. Fordham is looking for you,” she informed himwithout preamble, her glasses falling farther down her nose as her expression shifted to something even less favorable, if possible.

No shit, he thought, though he wouldn’t dare voice the words. Instead, he replied with “Oh?”

It was a coward’s answer—ofcourseHenry was looking for him—but he was hoping it would somehow stall her or help him come up with another plan in the ten seconds before her gaze went from unimpressed to downright withering.

“Ethan.” Her tone held the slightest hint of censure. She would never admonish an accounts director—at least not outwardly, to his face—but as Mr. Fordham’s executive assistant for the last two decades, she had seen enough of Ethan’s kind come and go to afford herself a certain omniscient seniority over even the most senior directors.

With that said, they had formed a tentative friendship of sorts in the few years Ethan had been there. Whatever it was about him, Gayle had taken a liking to it, even though she was old enough to be his mother and he had an inclination toward brashness and overconfidence.

So, either because of her appreciation for his persona or due to the fact that she saw through it, Ethan knew he had an ally in the formidable Ms. Smart. He was still trying to determine, however, whether her finding him now was going to work out in his favor or not.

“How bad is it, Gayle?” While they usually tried to keep a semblance of formality with each other, despite the tentative friendship that had been formed, he assumed that the current state of the company—and Ethan’s role in the reputation breaking of it all—allowed for a more casual address.

“Well…”

The executive assistant’s delay in responding was the onlyanswer Ethan needed. He let out a groan, eyes turning heavenward. Gayle was a straight shooter. For her to hesitate now meant it was exactly as bad as he’d anticipated.

He changed tacks. “How far has it traveled?”

“Pretty far,” she allowed, interlacing her fingers together. “We’re getting calls from all the major outlets, both television and whatever the hell is going on over on the internet these days.”

Ethan nodded, even while running his hand tiredly over his face. “Okay. Okay. We can figure this out, we just have to—”