She’s not looking for Mr. Right.
She’s not looking for anyone.
But when the charismatic marketing man rescues her from the oddest of places, she is forced out of her comfort zone.
While delivering flowers to an event, Mackenzie meets a guest who unexpectedly charms her.
He’s different. He’s not pushy, or insistent, or boring.
Adam Hartman isn’t looking for love, even though he’s a ‘Love Doctor.’
But when he meets the beautiful florist in the oddest of circumstances, he can’t get her out of his mind.
Mackenzie has scars from her past. She keeps her guard down, not wanting to get close to anyone.
Sensing her wariness, Adam backs off, quickly learning that she wouldn’t approve of what he does for a living.
Besides, a relationship based on a secret isn’t the key to long lasting happiness.
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Excerpt:
“You won’t be the odd one out.”
“I’ve always been the odd one out,” Mackenzie disagreed. Her friend Leigh meant well, but Mackenzie was damned if she would be cajoled into attending another dinner party with three couples and her all by her lonesome self.
“We’re going to have to find you someone.” Leigh moved the coffee cups off the tray and the slice of lemon drizzle cake and set it down on the table. She liked this cozy little book and coffee shop that Leigh owned. When her workday finished, this was where she sometimes liked to end up, not just for the female company but because Leigh being a small business owner meant the two had some business matters they often discussed.
“As easily at that?” Mackenzie quipped. “Like finding a set of keys or a pen?” She dug her fork into the moist piece of cake and plopped it into her mouth. “This is a taste of heaven.”
“I’m glad you like it.” Leigh dug her fork into the other side. They shared the huge slice which Leigh had placed in the middle of the small table. “It’s one of my bestsellers.”
“Every cake you sell should be a bestseller.”
Leigh pointed her fork at her. “Rourke doesn’t have any single friends, otherwise I could have set you up with—.”
“Don’t. Stop. Please,” Mackenzie begged. “I’m not looking, and I don’t need a dinner date just to even up your numbers.”
“But I don’t understand why you’re still single. Look at you.” Her friend gestured with her hand at Mackenzie, who shook her head. The ugly duckling had grown up and the long legs and arms she had once hated were now the thing that got her noticed, as did her height and her long, strawberry-blonde corkscrew curls. Her freckles weren’t something to disguise under layers of foundation. In Adult World, these were things to be prized. Things weren’t so bad now. She was older and understood. It was all so different than the misery she had endured during her school years.
“I choose to be single. I choose. Besides, Bloom takes up a lot of my time.” Leigh meant well, but her friend was deliriously in love and viewed life through rose-colored glasses. She could not, and would not, understand—in her heightened sense of being in love—how anyone would want to spend their life alone.
Mackenzie didn’t plan to spend her life alone, but for now, she wasn’t interested in taking on the headache of meeting a man and going through the assault course of a new relationship.
“What about at Jenna and Reed’s engagement party?”
“What about it?”
“Did no one catch your eye?”
“I was working.” It had been an honor to have been chosen to do the flowers for such an event; one of Starling Bay’s most eligible bachelors had gotten engaged a few weeks ago, and to a woman who had once been his maid. It had been the highlight of her time here in Starling Bay. “I didn’t have time to bat my eyelashes at anyone. Nor would I have. It’s so unprofessional.”
“But that’s the perfect opportunity to meet someone! I’m sure both Reed and Jenna would have had plenty of single male friends. You do so many parties, Mackenzie. I don’t understand why you’ve never met anyone.”
Mackenzie laughed at the idea Leigh had in her head, as if she sat around, twiddling her thumbs and pouting at any single male guests at these events. She usually finished up her displays before the parties started. “Meeting someone isn’t a major goal in my life, and I’m not going to rely on anyone, any man, to make my life better. It didn’t work out for my mom, and, anyway, you should know better than anyone.”
Leigh looked away, her lashes lowered, making Mackenzie wince.
“Sorry.” It had been a low blow to mention Leigh’s controlling and abusive ex. Over time, Leigh had slowly confided in her and told her everything. The picture Leigh had painted of that vile bully had given Mackenzie a sense of kinship with this woman who had quickly become her good friend soon after she moved to this coastal town and opened her florist shop.
But unlike Leigh, Mackenzie hadn’t ever dated a man who had treated her badly. She’d just never allowed herself to get too close to people; she never fully believed them when they said they loved her.
It wasn’t the bullies who had stripped her self-esteem and seeded the doubts. No. It had been much closer than that. Mothers weren’t supposed to be cruel. She’d been unlucky in that way, but her beloved grandma, the rock of her life, had more than made up for the lack of parents in her childhood, and it was to this woman that she owed everything.
She had named her florist shop, Bloom, after her grandma’s mantra, ‘Be like the one and only Mackenzie.’ The letters of each word making up BLOOM. Those words had lifted Mackenzie through the misery of bullies who unleashed their vitriol at her, telling her that she was a freak, and that her long skinny legs had been stretched by a torture device, that her long neck looked like a giraffe’s.
You’re hideous, they told her. The words had remained imprinted on her brain for many years while she had been in school. But life after school, out of her teen years, had mostly been good. It had shown her that people could be good, and nice, and caring, and that the ugliness and name-calling she had suffered had been caused by a small but loud minority who had drowned out all the good things.
Yet her mother’s words she never forgot, no matter how hard she tried. When she had returned, not so long ago, Mackenzie decided it was time to leave. She’d moved to Starling Bay to start over, but would still visit her grandma as often as she could, even if that other woman now also lived there. She said she had changed, and asked for forgiveness. She said she’d been in rehab, and that she was now clean and had sorted herself out. She said she regretted everything she’d done but for Mackenzie, it was many years too late.
The only person who mattered, who had ever mattered to her was her grandma, and Mackenzie wanted to repay her by making her life easier and more comfortable now that she wasn’t so able. Arthritis plagued her knees and hands mostly, though sometimes she would have a stiff neck and shoulders as well. Mackenzie had an idea about adding in a small bathroom downstairs, as well as moving Grandma’s bed to this floor, because Grandma was finding it increasingly difficult to climb the stairs.
In the hope of trying to earn more from her business, she had added a small gift corner to her shop. It was a small display shelf with candles and pretty pouches of potpourri and other nice smelling things such as bath bombs, in case people wanted a variety of gifts.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t doing too well. Luckily, one of Leigh’s friends had a gift store and he sold vases and other gift items to an upscale department store. Mackenzie had recently contacted them with a view of creating some arrangements for them.
“Maybe we need to get you the services of the Love Doctor? Though I think Reed said he’s only helping the men.”
“A what?” Mackenzie stared at the one inch of cake left on the plate, and set down her fork.
“A Love Doctor.”
Mackenzie snorted. “What on earth is a Love Doctor?”
Leigh pushed the plate towards Mackenzie. “I can’t eat that. You have it. You could eat a horse and you still wouldn’t put on any weight.”
“If you’re sure you don’t want it.” But Mackenzie didn’t wait for an answer as she stabbed the last remaining piece of cake onto her fork.
“According to Reed, he’s a guy teaching other guys how to win women over.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious. Haven’t you heard about his book? It’s gone viral on the internet.” She typed away on her cell phone, then turned it around to show Mackenzie.
“The Love Doctor’s Ten Rules for Dating: How to Find the Woman of Your Dreams without Swiping Left or Right.”
They laughed. “That’s a mouthful for a title,” Mackenzie exclaimed.
“His angle is for men to move away from using social media and those dating apps, and to revert back to the old-fashioned way of face-to-face conversations and relating.”
Mackenzie groaned at the sight of the bright red cover with a man’s face in a thinking pose.
“Isn’t it gross?” Leigh agreed. “But this book is selling like crazy.”
“Really?”
“He’s making a small fortune. I wonder what he charges for coaching.”
“Coaching?” Mackenzie’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “You can’t be serious.”
Leigh nodded smugly. “Unfortunately, I am. His book is selling like wildfire. Reed said the guy is onto a great business. He’ll likely make a good chunk of change and then disappear.”
“Smart guy.” If only it were that easy for her to ramp up her business. “Who is he?”
“No one knows.”
“What do you mean no one knows”? Mackenzie asked. “So how does your friend know?”
Leigh shrugged. “He knew someone who used his services.”
Mackenzie didn’t know whether to believe her fully. It sounded like baseless rumors doing the rounds.
“There’s no photo and no name. He calls himself the Love Doctor,” Leigh continued.
“How does he do the coaching?”
“Reed knew someone who knew someone who had a friend who was getting coaching, and this guy said something about having to sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement, so that he couldn’t reveal the guy’s identity.”
“That sounds bizarre.” They looked at one another and burst out laughing.
“To think that he’s making so much money. We’re in the wrong business,” said Leigh.
“It would seem so. Ugh, Men,” groaned Mackenzie. “Only they would need a guidebook on how to attract women.”
“Tell me about it. Reed and the guys were in hysterics talking about it.”
Mackenzie almost choked on her latte. “Reed would know someone who knows someone.” The guy had contacts everywhere. Although she wasn’t in the inner circle of these couples, she had attended a few dinner parties, and of course had provided the flowers for Reed’s engagement party, and so she had come to know this small crowd well. “But coaching? How? And for what?”
“He has one-to-one consultations with guys and he advises them on how to find and keep women.”
Mackenzie made a face. “Ewww.” She didn’t like the sound of that. “That sounds sleazy. What does he teach them?”
“Tricks. That’s what.” Leigh raised an eyebrow.
“Have you read the book?”
Leigh wrinkled her face in disgust. “Lord, no! Who has the time?”
“Plenty of men, by the sounds of it.”
“Reed and the guys were reading excerpts from it on Reed’s phone. It had us in hysterics. Ten rules of dating, imagine that.”
“As many as that?”
“I should buy it and we’ll dissect it,” Leigh suggested. “It would make for some great entertainment one evening over a glass of wine.”
“I’d rather watch a romcom,” replied Mackenzie.