Shy No More Worksheet Name: Jasmine Burns Imagine the person who intimidates you. Naked. I'm intimidated by Josh Toby, the world's biggest movie star. Who has to imagine him naked? I've seen it on a forty-foot screen. Breathe deep. Did I mention he's Josh Toby? As his costume designer, I'm supposed to dress him. And undress him. Oh, and my psychic sister Amy, who has never been wrong, named him my One True Love. Breathing is completely out of the question. Ask for what you want. What I want is for him to stop being so...irresistible! I want not to fall in love with a man who's stalked by the paparazzi, whose washboard abs could cut glass, and whose movie star girlfriend is the most stunning creature ever. Believe you can do what needs to be done. Then do it. So, all I have to do is believe I can resist Josh Toby. Resist those deep violet eyes, those strong, muscular arms, and the way he makes me feel like the only woman on earth. Couldn't be easier. Yeah right...
Release date:
October 1, 2007
Publisher:
Forever
Print pages:
352
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She closed her eyes and heard Amy’s words from the day she showed up in New York. Josh Toby is your One True Love.
Dear God, destiny was a sadistic fiend to hand her Josh Toby.
“Okay. I’ll do it,” she found herself saying. Her hand flew to her mouth. Had she really just said that? Okay, that was it: she was no longer shy. Now she was possessed by an evil twin.
Josh leaned in and wrapped her in a hug. “Hot damn!” He took her face in his hands and kissed her smack on the lips. Then he pulled back a hairsbreadth, looked her in the eyes, then kissed her again. More slowly. Deliberately.
Seconds. Minutes. Days.
He pulled back.
They stared at each other.
Her hand went to her lips. Again.
He leaned in and kissed her again.
PRAISE FOR MAKE ME A MATCH
“4½ stars!
Holquist’s novel is pure entertainment from beginning to end. The interaction between the sisters is genuinely depicted, and the relationship developments are a joy to observe.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub Magazine
“Sparkles with humor and heart. I enjoyed the fully realized characters and conflict amidst the fun. A sequel has already been announced, so it’s time to get to know the Burns family and their psychic talents.”
—RomanceReaderatHeart.com
“Diana Holquist explodes onto the romance market with this ingenious tale. Make Me a Match is a fun frolic through love’s twisty maze, with just enough of life’s hard knocks to keep it real.”
—Margaret Marr, NightsandWeekends.com
“Five cups! This was the most heartwarming story I have read in a long time . . . Finn was delicious, broody, and so sweet you wanted to keep him for yourself . . . I devoured this book and wanted to beg for more. Ms. Holquist is a gifted storyteller who makes you laugh, cry, and cheer. Do not miss this book!”
—CoffeetimeRomance.com
“If you’re looking for a funny, light-hearted tale of a match made in the stars, then pick up Make Me a Match.”
—RomRevToday.com
“If you enjoy stories where character development is right on par with sizzling romance, Make Me a Match will be the perfect match for you!”
—ARomanceReview.com
“Humorous and entertaining . . . An enjoyable debut novel . . . Ms. Holquist does a great job showing the great leaps people will take for love.”
—RomanceReadersConnection.com
“A unique romantic comedy that has a heart that will keep you laughing, crying, and sighing until the last page. Holquist has brought readers a great new concept and everyone should look forward to her next book—because who doesn’t want to know the name of their one true love?”
—ContemporaryRomanceWriters.com
“Ms. Holquist has created a laugh-out-loud book that looks at the wild and wacky way in which we screw up our lives . . . the fast-paced, emotion-grabbing Make Me a Match is one story I truly enjoyed.”
—FallenAngelsReviews.com
“Diana Holquist has a knack for pulling together a great story with romance, humor, and a touch of the paranormal—a story that keeps readers turning pages as fast as possible.”
—Bookloons.com
“The attraction between Cecelia and Finn sparked like the fireworks on the 4th of July. Their banter was witty yet realistic and the romance worthy of a cheer and a sigh. Make Me a Match is clever and engaging, the storyline is unique and fun. I’m looking forward to the sequel, Sexiest Man Alive, to see what fun Diana can create with the family next.”
—OnceUponaRomance.net
Chapter 1
Hi! I’m Jasmine Burns!”
The naked man stared up at Jasmine blankly.
Great. She sounded like a cruise ship director on crack. She cleared her throat and adjusted her black teddy. “It’s great to meet you!”
Ugh. This was definitely not working.
Jasmine stared at herself in the mirror on the far (okay, not-so-far) wall of her tiny Upper-Upper West Side Manhattan studio. This only looks crazy, she silently assured her reflection.
She looked down at the naked Ken doll perched on her couch.
Okay, it was crazy. Call-the-cops nuts, even.
She paced. Seven steps. Pivot. Seven steps. Pivot. Exercise #12, page 127 in her Good-bye Shy! workbook had made sense in theory: Practice job interviews with a doll to focus on until the panic is gone. To achieve maximum vulnerability, rehearse the interview with both parties naked.
Jasmine couldn’t get completely naked. She settled on a black lace teddy for herself. Ken wasn’t so shy. He went all the way without complaint.
The mind controls the body. Let the panic wash over, then continue. Repeated exposure to the object of fear will dull the emotion.
So why was her terror growing? Her interview was three days, seven hours, and twenty-seven minutes away, and she was getting more panicked by the second.
Okay, so she knew why her terror was growing: Arturo Mastriani. Her (hopefully) future boss was one of the sexiest men she had ever met, and she was deathly shy around sexy men. No, not shy. The label the self-help books used these days was “socially anxious.”
When she had met Arturo a year ago at the cast party for The Cheddar Chronicles at her friend Lucy’s apartment, the right word was clearly “bananas.” Jasmine had hid out in the back bedroom until the party ended. Two hours! She could still smell Lucy’s lavender potpourri sachets every time she thought of Arturo.
Jasmine flopped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling of her shoebox-shaped apartment. The heel end of her single room was crammed with her elaborate queen-size iron bed, which was centered between the door to the hallway and the door to her tiny bathroom. The toe end was dominated by a lead-glass window that stretched four feet across and from the ceiling to within two feet of the floor.
And what a window. It made the narrow, tiny studio worthwhile. Magnificent, even. In a shoebox sort of way.
Despite her exhaustion, Jasmine forced herself off the bed and back to the “living room”—a flea-market, all-white couch; one white overstuffed chair; and a white coffee table rescued from a curbside trash pile, all arranged neatly at the foot of her bed. She sat next to Ken on the couch and toyed with a scrap of black Italian gabardine wool that had called out to her the day before from a sample table on 37th Street. Salsa music and car horns floated up from Amsterdam Avenue, a melody of the city she barely noticed anymore.
This shot at a real costume design job with Arturo was the chance of a lifetime. After all, the tailoring business she ran out of her apartment was an accident, not part of her plan.
Okay, so it was a wildly successful accident. A hem here, a tuck there, and within days she was in demand—the miracle worker of 109th Street. She could make a cigarette hole in silk pajamas disappear, or take in a suit better than anyone west of Hong Kong.
It wasn’t a bad way to make a living. She rarely had to leave her apartment, and she liked her clients. Plus, no one noticed they were all women. When a man called, she claimed she was too busy to take the job. It was perfect. No stress.
Not that she had a problem with all men. Just appealing men. It was a minor problem. Insignificant, like a fear of snakes or spiders. A person could get by avoiding tempting men. Especially in New York, where two out of three men who (a) were tempting or (b) had anything to do with costume design were (c) gay.
Arturo, unfortunately, was (d) beautiful, straight, and terrifying.
Ugh! She had to get a hold of herself. It wasn’t like she wanted to sleep with the guy.
Tell that to her nerve endings, though. Those suckers were immune to reason.
She had to get control of herself. Her graduation (MA in costume design from NYU) was five months past, and her ex-classmates were out hitting the pavement, interning and networking, sometimes in theaters, sometimes even getting paid. She let the wonderful possibility of being in their shoes spread through her.
Meanwhile, I’m twenty-eight and playing with dolls.
Naked dolls.
Maybe that was the problem. Naked Ken was too much. After all, if Ken were impersonating a famous costume designer, shouldn’t he have amazing clothes?
She carried Ken to the whitewashed plywood door balanced on two white wooden sawhorses next to her window. Her black vintage Singer Featherweight 221-1 sewing machine with gold scrollwork gleamed in welcome. She ran her hand down its curves, her steel and chrome kitty. She settled into the space next to it and began to sketch.
She could do this. Costume design was her destiny. She was sure of it. She just had to get past her fear of Arturo. And she could. She would. She had to.
She took a cleansing breath and began to sketch.
One sure, practiced stroke at a time, the perfect outfit for Arturo Mastriani to interview his up-and-coming brilliant new assistant began to form on the page as if of its own accord.
Jasmine jolted awake. She was on the couch, Ken in his beautiful new clothes at her side—a tiny, perfectly behaved date.
Someone was ringing the downstairs buzzer.
Her eyes jumped to the clock: 2:00 AM. Probably Suz with a ripped seam. Jasmine had warned her wildest client and best friend that the cheap Chinese silk was too delicate to wear for clubbing, especially when Suz had insisted that she take it in to skinlike tightness.
Jasmine pushed the intercom button to the street-level door. “Suzie?”
“Jas? Let me up—quick.”
Jasmine fell away from the intercom.
Amy, Jasmine’s sister. In New York. In the middle of the night. Last time Amy showed up unannounced, Jasmine had to hide her from a guy named Rufus for two weeks.
Definitely not good.
Jasmine pushed the buzzer to let her sister up, then raced for the couch, tripping over the white shag throw rug. Must hide Ken.
Jasmine had only once made the mistake of discussing her man issues with her sister. The next day, Amy had brought home a tattoo-covered gypsy named Mario who gave “the best oral sex this side of the Mississippi.” Or so Amy said. Jasmine chose not to find out for herself. It was bad enough imagining what Mario’s gypsy brethren were up to on opposite banks of that raging river.
Amy had assured Jasmine that a man like Mario would make Jasmine “shake at the sight of sexy men in a whole new way.”
Jasmine shuddered—in her same old way—at the memory. It had taken her forty-five minutes of absurd chase-around-the-couch terror before she managed to shove Mario out of her apartment and toss his faux-leather pants after him.
She shoved Ken between the pillows. Kicked The Shyness Handbook under the couch. Scooped Living with Social Anxiety and Ten Steps to Being Bold into the crick of her elbow, then crammed them into one of a dozen identical blue forty-gallon fabric bins stacked along the wall. She was forcing the top closed when she remembered she was wearing the black teddy.
Oh, hell. Amy was going to love this.
The doorbell rang.
Jasmine could smell Amy’s clove and cinnamon through the thin plank door separating them. Jasmine ransacked her apartment for her white terry bathrobe. “One sec!”
Amy pounded on the door. “Jas? You got a man in there?”
Yeah, but he doesn’t have a penis. How could she lose her bathrobe in a closet-sized apartment?
“Jas! Your place is the size of a rowboat. You can reach the door from the damn pot.”
Could she? Well, it was close. She spotted her bathrobe neatly folded on top of a bin of last season’s wool flannels. She pulled it on over her teddy, flipped the three deadbolts, slid free the safety chain, and stood back as Amy burst into the room.
Showtime.
“Jasmine. Shit.” Amy went straight to the window, threw open the curtains, and peered out. “We have to talk.”
Jasmine followed her sister to the window and peered down five stories to the deserted sidewalk. The trees were just changing, and the brilliant yellow of the maple glowing in the moonlight complemented her pomegranate red crepe curtains. She sucked in her breath at the pleasure of the night-muted colors, then carefully closed the curtains. She hadn’t seen Amy since her graduation from NYU last spring.
“I need cash,” Amy said.
Well, might as well cut to the chase. The memories of Jasmine’s happy graduation were replaced with memories of the meal afterward—Amy hadn’t contributed a dime. Come to think of it, there was no gift either. “Let me put some coffee on.”
Amy pulled a two-liter, almost-empty vodka bottle out of her sheepskin coat.
“Okay. Not coffee, then,” Jasmine said. Amy was a social drinker, not a drunk. Jasmine’s blood ran cold. Something was wrong. Amy, after all, wasn’t a normal person.
Amy was a psychic.
But not just any psychic. She had one gift, besides crashing into Jasmine’s life at the most inopportune moments. She could touch a person and hear a voice that spoke the name of the person’s One True Love. Her soul mate. Her true companion. Her One and Only.
If you believed in such a thing.
And Jasmine did. Jasmine believed completely. Not just in Amy’s power, but in destiny as a concept. In a world where attractive men reduced her to a blushing, fumbling mess, there had to be one desirable man, somewhere, who would make her whole.
But there were problems with Amy’s names. If your One True Love was named John Smith, well, too bad for you; you had to figure out which John Smith was the right one. And if the right John Smith turned out to be a married pig farmer in Iowa with seven children and you were an up-and-coming New York City costume designer (and she was; she knew she was; she was going to get this job), well, then, you had some tough choices to make. Amy’s spirit voice rarely served up the lover a person expected. After all, who was this fate, this voice, this power? An angel? A devil? A long-dead kibbitzing old ghost, too mean-spirited even in death to mind her own business?
Well, whoever or whatever the voice was, it had stopped talking just days before Jasmine found her sisters after a lifetime apart. They had been separated twenty-six years earlier, the ugly result of their parents’ True Love– induced divorce. (A naïve child, Amy had told their parents they were not each other’s One True Love. Mom and Dad promptly split to find their individual bliss.)
Amy and Cecelia, the eldest sister, stayed with their dad in Baltimore. Jasmine, a toddler at the time, was taken by their mom to Bombay, India, in search of a stranger named Emeril Livingston—her mother’s One True Love. Jasmine had briefly reunited with her sisters when she was sixteen, a calamitous three months together that ended in Jasmine leaving without even saying good-bye. She reunited with her sisters again just two years ago in Baltimore. Their relationship was still on eggshells.
Of course, Amy wasn’t the sort to let a few dozen trampled eggshells slow her down.
Since losing her power, Amy had been doing everything she could to get the voice to spit out more names. She ladled soup for the homeless in the moldy basements of churches (well, once anyway; the spores irritated her sinuses). She consulted other psychics (whom she then accused of conning her). She wore elaborate, ever-changing combinations of crystals. Now, obviously, she had turned to vodka.
It seemed an unlikely fix.
Amy closed her eyes and rocked. The bottle was empty.
Jasmine gently removed the bottle from her sister’s grasp. “Is this about the voice?”
Amy’s eyes sprang open, and she flung herself onto the couch in a dramatic display of exhaustion. Everything about Amy was dramatic. She craved attention as much as Jasmine avoided it. “Would you get in the real world, please? I told you—it’s about cash. Money. The green stuff.” Amy frowned, lifted her ample hips, and felt under her.
Busted.
Out came Famous Costume Designer Ken in his high-sheen Hugo Boss–style suit.
Jasmine feigned surprise.
Amy dangled him from his right heel, his double-breasted jacket flapping helplessly. “Does Barbie know about this?”
Jasmine sank onto the couch opposite Amy. She ran her hand over the angora throw she had tossed over the couch, sensing the red through her fingertips. “Oh! There he is! I was designing costumes for a new play. He’s a prototype.” The lie tasted stale in her mouth.
Amy leaned forward and studied Jasmine closely, as if noticing her for the first time, which was likely the case. “Look at you! What are you wearing? Under your robe?” Amy poked at Jasmine’s bathrobe. “Something sexy? Was there a man here?” She frowned at Ken. “I mean, a real one?”
Jasmine considered telling her sister that she had made the black teddy for a blind date last Thursday that her friend Suz had set up. She tried not to think about that awful almost-date: gasping for breath, her racing heart. Suz was still furious at her for disappearing on the guy mid-salad, but Jasmine couldn’t help it. He had such soft, deep, chestnut-brown eyes.
Jasmine took a deep breath. The cat was already out of the bag, or, in this case, the Ken was already out of the couch. Plus, Amy was right—Jasmine was an awful liar. “Ken’s part of an exercise to help me get ready for an interview. I’m supposed to pretend he’s the interviewer.”
Amy shoved Jasmine’s shoulder a touch too hard to be entirely playful. “When will you stop reading those con-job self-help books and let me help you get over this stupid man thing? I know a guy who can use his tongue like—”
“No! Not Mario again. I can handle this myself.” Jasmine pulled her bathrobe tightly around her.
Amy looked doubtful.
Jasmine studied her beautiful sister. The woman did know a thing or two about men. Smudged kohl rimmed her dark eyes. Her wild black hair, tangling into her legendary cleavage, was alive with her constant motion. Under her sheepskin coat, every inch of her clothes sparkled despite the dim light, as if lit by Amy’s excess energy. She was the stereotypical lusty gypsy, from headscarf to toe ring.
Jasmine looked down at the plain bathrobe wrapping her straight, thin body. The only thing gypsy about her was the blackness of her hair, as if every drop of her gypsy blood were trying to escape through the top of her head to a more gypsy-worthy life in another body, leaving the rest of her pale and drained. She looked more vampire than gypsy.
“Don’t you get lonely?” Amy asked.
Of course Jasmine got lonely. But it was like asking a one-legged man if he missed his leg. He did, but there was no sense dwelling on what wasn’t possible. “How much money do you need?” Jasmine tried to turn the conversation back to Amy.
“Two thousand.”
Jasmine gasped. “What about Cecelia?” Cecelia was their doctor sister. The one with the cash.
“She’s the one I owe. We had a little disagreement.”
Jasmine shook her head. Amy surely owed Cecelia more than two thousand dollars; she borrowed money from Cecelia all the time, with only the faintest notion of paying her back. This had to be about something more than money.
“I sort of pawned one of Cecelia’s rings,” Amy said into the silence. “How could I have known it was her engagement ring? Only someone as uptight as Cecelia would keep her diamond engagement ring in a box.”
“The little toe ring?”
“No. The one Finny bought her last year. The big one.”
Jasmine winced. Two thousand would only pay for the setting on that rock. “She doesn’t wear it because she works in a clinic with people who can’t buy their kids shoes, Amy. It’s a matter of principle.”
“Whatever. She’s got so much jewelry she never touches.”
Jasmine was about to launch into a sermon on “borrowing” when she noticed Amy giving her a sideways smile. “What?”
“Forget it.”
“What?” Jasmine knew that smile. A chill ran up her spine. Amy is a con artist.
“Nothing. I was just thinking. No.” Amy shook her head, but her smile was growing. She shrugged out of her coat and stretched her arms like a cat. A sparkly, satisfied cat. Her shirt was skintight sheer black rayon stitched through with multicolored glittering thread. Her skirt was shiny, black, flowing to her ankles.
“Okay. Here’s a deal for you.” Amy licked her lips. “I’ll tell you the name of your One True Love for two thousand bucks.”
Chapter 2
The thrill of finally knowing her One True Love’s name battled with the disgust of knowing her sister was an opportunistic con artist. Either Amy had known the name for two years and not told her, or she was about to make up a name for cash.
Which option was more despicable?
“You don’t know the name of my One True Love,” Jasmine reminded her sister. “You lost your powers before we were reunited. Remember? You last heard the voice on September thirteenth two years ago. I came back the nineteenth.” Jasmine tried not to think about how hard it had been to come back to her sisters after running away from them ten years earlier. She had barely been a teenager when she left.
“Not true. I never told you that the voice came back one last time. For you. I read you two Thanksgivings ago; then the voice faded away for good.”
Jasmine’s heart plunged into her stomach. One last time? For her? Or another one of Amy’s lies?
Amy went on. “Cecelia had roasted that huge turkey, and you asked me to pass you the peas and bam!” Amy pounded her fist on the coffee table. “We both held on to those peas, and there it was clear as day! The name of your One True Love. We must have connected through the platter.”
Jasmine studied her beautiful sister. “I don’t believe you.” Truth wasn’t one of Amy’s strong points.
Amy shrugged.
Jasmine’s body suddenly went cold at the memory. “You spilled those peas in my lap.” Was Amy telling the truth? She remembered Amy startling. Jasmine had assumed the platter had burned her, but it felt cold to her touch. She had shaken off her confusion in the rush to clean up the mess. “You heard the name of my One True Love as destined by Fate and all I got was a lap full of peas?” Jasmine jumped off the couch. She paced, her arms crossed. “You knew for two years and didn’t tell me?” Her anger expanded through her chest, a hot orange-red gone blue around the edges. Jasmine threw up her hands. She believed Amy. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt that her sister was telling the truth. The moment had, after all, struck her as so odd that she still remembered it two years later. “Out!”
Amy didn’t budge. In fact, she settled herself deeper into the couch. “Gypsy hospitality rules, love.”
They may have had an unconventional upbringing with their divorced parents splitting the family apart, but their mother (and grandmother, in Amy and Cecelia’s case) had instilled them all with a strict sense of their gypsy. . .
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