C H A P T E R 1
LIBBY WAS PANTING after running across the parking garage when she mashed the elevator button. She glanced down at her watch, ignored the warning about her pulse being too high, and cursed at the time.
“Come on,” she muttered, repeatedly pushing the button as if the twentieth press might wake the lumbering beast waiting to carry her up thirty floors to the top of the high-rise building.
“Good morning, Ms. Cassanova,” a man’s voice echoed in the cavernous garage.
In one fell swoop, Libby pushed her chin-length brown hair out of her face and straightened before turning around.
“Morning, Mario,” she replied with a practiced smile. It faltered when she saw the sign he was carrying. “Oh no, please don’t tell me—”
The apology etched in his face was all the confirmation she needed. Libby’s shoulders drooped and she blinked for a long five seconds as she breathed in and out slowly. When she returned to the present after chanting her calming mantra, Mario was hanging up a sign indicating the elevators were temporarily out of order.
“How about the service elevator?” she asked, reaching for an alternative that wouldn’t add to her lateness.
Mario winced. “Those are being inspected too. It should only be a few minutes. Ten tops.”
Libby didn’t have a few minutes. She was already late, and according to the many messages she tried to ignore, her grandmother was none too pleased about it.
“I can see how much longer it’ll be,” he o ered, pulling a small radio from his pocket.
“That’s okay,” she replied as she peeled o her blazer and stu ed it in her large purse. She bolted for the door to the stairwell. “Thanks, though! Come up later. I’m sure we’ll have those guava danishes you like,” she shouted as she kicked o her heels and tucked them under her arm.
Running up the first five flights wasn’t too bad, but by the time she reached the eighteenth, she was sure her heart was going to explode out of her chest. Her beeping watch was even more frantic about her circumstances. Libby had no interest in reenacting a horror movie scene, but if she stopped to rest, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to start up again. The daily yoga she practiced was more about meditation than building endurance.
As she climbed, Libby tried to distract herself from the excruciating ache in her calves and thighs by anticipating what her grandmother would say. With two floors left to summit, she gripped the handrails and pulled herself up with her arms.
In a delirious out of body experience, she saw herself as if watching a movie. A thirty-two-year-old woman, her long, wavy bob plastered to her tanned skin in the same unflattering way her navy-blue sheath dress was clinging to her heavily perspiring body.
Damn, this was a bad idea, she decided when she dragged herself to the top floor on wobbly legs. She made a mental note to rejoin the CrossFit class she’d abandoned as she put
herself back together and spritzed a dash of perfume to mask the sweat.
Libby emerged from the silence of the dull, gray stairwell and into the sprawling, open-concept penthouse. Skirting the reception area where KMQ buzzed in neon letters just above the classic Cassanova Matchmaking Est. 1902 insignia, she tried to avoid being spotted sneaking in. If she could just get to the bathroom and freshen up, she might be able to pretend she’d been there all along but had been stuck on a call.
Considering Libby was the face of modern matchmaking, going incognito in her own o ce was a task. Neither of the girls manning the phones behind the curved glass desk noticed her. She took it as a good omen.
Sneaking into a place where nearly every surface was glass wasn’t easy, but Libby slipped on her sunglasses and the engagement ring stored in her bag and took the longest strides she could without running. She was halfway to her o ce when she smelled her grandmother’s trademark gardenia perfume a moment before she heard her kitten heels clicking against the white, marble floors.
So close.
“Elisabeth,” she said with the dramatic flair of a telenovela villain confronting a rival about a hidden twin.
Libby gritted her teeth for a second before perfecting her posture and smiling. “Good morning, Mima,” she said as she turned and moved toward the elegant woman dressed in a plum-colored suit and the same conservative hairstyle she’d worn her whole life. As a kid, Libby’s older brother had convinced her their grandmother had been born with the ‘do.
In nearly eighty years, no one but her hairdresser had seen it in an imperfect state.
After greeting her grandmother with a kiss on the cheek, Libby stepped back and let herself be inspected. She knew
what was coming.
“Didn’t you tell Mauricio not to go too short? You know they all get scissor happy,” she added, scrutinizing the dark, wavy hair. “With your heart-shaped face, they’re always going to want to go short.”
Only Carmen Cassanova could take the flattery out of a compliment.
“I like it,” Libby countered. “It’s fresh and new.”
Carmen quirked an eyebrow and made a sound in her chest that Libby took as disapproval out of habit. Her grandmother was a business genius who’d taken her mother’s little home-based matchmaking service and turned it into a very successful international operation. In the months since she’d retired and handed over control to Libby, there was little they’d agreed on. New haircut included, apparently.
“I have a meeting with my accountant in thirty-five minutes,” her grandmother announced as she turned Libby away from her o ce and toward the conference room overlooking the skyline and palm tree-lined bay. “I want to go over that o er to take your dating advice segment to Spanish language television permanently. That’s why I asked you to be here at eight.” She glanced at her thin gold watch, then at Libby with a stern gaze. “Not ten after.”
The elder Cassanova took her usual seat at the head of the long conference table. All the modern, white leather chairs around the table were identical except for the one with a dramatically high back at the head. It was supposed to be Libby’s chair, but she wasn’t going to remind her.
; Instead of taking the seat to her grandmother’s right that she’d occupied for ten years, Libby strode across the room as she pulled o her sunglasses. “Television is dying, Mima. We make a hundred times more from YouTube ads than what the networks pay. Significantly more exposure, too,” she
explained again as she approached the table overflowing with pastries and anchored by two co ee urns. The Friday catering was an homage to the company’s birth in a Havana kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century.
As her grandmother aired her thoughts on the Cassanova Matchmaking brand, Libby poured herself a cup of co ee.
The Miami skyline was a brilliant, glassy display of tall buildings reflecting the bodies of water around them. Before Libby took over, the expensive views were hidden behind heavy curtains. According to her grandmother, she wasn’t in the business of daydreaming.
Half an hour of barely suppressed frustration later, which Libby survived by reminding herself that she loved her grandmother who was struggling to let go of a business she’d poured her life into, they emerged having resolved very little.
Another few months, she told herself, give her another few months to adjust to not being in the driver’s seat. If she wasn’t truly stepping back by then, Libby would take more direct measures. It had been the same thing she said leading up to the transfer of power, but this time she meant it… she hoped.
“Elisabeth,” her grandmother said before Libby could flee to her o ce. “Remember, you are the face of this agency now. You should arrive before anyone else so you aren’t skulking around like a cat burglar.”
“Thanks,” she replied with a forced smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”