Not true. I live in a hundred-year-old house. I’ve basically rebuilt the heating and cooling system.

“What good are you?” she asks with a scowl.

“Not very,” I say. “But I can give my other buddy a call in the morning, have them both swing by. They’remuchmore useful.”

It’s a bit of a gamble, because one of the guys in this room could offer to go down and take a look, but I’m pretty sure none of the bachelors know which end of a screwdriver is the business half. The PAs probably just want to go to bed.

I’m not fool enough to think this little hiccup will cause much of a delay, but if enough problems and incidents crop up, surely these rich assholes will decide the show’s not worth their while—it’s them and the producers I’m counting on, not my grandmother. She isn’t the kind of person who’ll ever give up. It’s one of the things I reluctantly admire about her.

It’s probably the only thing I admire about her.

She heaves a sigh and waves me off, then announces to everyone else that it’s a wrap for the night.

I’ll have to sneak back downstairs in the middle of the night to fix the shit I messed up, but lucky me, I have a key. My grandmother has appointed me the official fix-it man for the show, mostly because she likes that she can pay me minimum wage.

If my gaze skates to Kennedy again before I take off, then my only explanation is that she’s a beautiful woman. Even orange. And there’s no harm in looking. Seeing her in her room earlier, her dress undone, showing a stretch of skin leading down the slope of her back to her magnificent ass is up there with the best things that have happened to me this year, even if it wasn’t my sight to see. If that’s pathetic, then so be it.

My breath catches when I realize she’s looking straight back at me. I make the kind of bow that would do any court jester proud.

“You did what?”my sister Holly asks, hitting me with a hard look.

“You heard me.”

She throws a french fry at me. I try to catch it in my mouth, and when it hits me in the nose, I scowl at her.

“You deserve it,” she says. “You deserve a dozen french fries to the face. That was a crap thing you did.”

“The heating system, the electricity, or the self-tanner?”

“The self-tanner, obviously. I couldn’t give a shit about Labelle Manor or whatever they’re calling it. In fact, if you want to throw a good haunting their way, I’d encourage it.”

She has plenty of reasons to dislike the Labelles. Her boyfriend Cole’s wife was a Labelle. Okay, that came out wrong. Holly’s boyfriend is a widower, and his late wife was Millie Labelle. The Labelles were shitty to him and his wife, and they’ve continued their trend of being garbage human beings.

Holly and I are currently having a late dinner in a booth at Cole’s brewery, which is basically the only place she likes to go now. I’d bitch about it more, except the food is not only pretty good but always free, and so is the beer. Besides, neither of us are much for cooking, so if we weren’t here, we’d be at the house we share with Harry, microwaving frozen dinners.

The brewery is already partially decked out for the holidays, and there’s holly lining each of the windows. I accused Holly of being responsible for that, but she said Cole did it as a joke. Therest is Cole’s daughter Jane’s handiwork, although Holly played elf.

My sister shakes another fry at me. “Tina and Zach are our friends, and so is Harry. If you fuck up our rooming situation with Harry, I’ll go red on you, so help me God.”

The fry breaks in half, the top falling limply. She bites it off.

“You’re a savage. But you’re also correct. He’s hardly ever there, but the house has never looked better.” I twist my mouth to the side. “You’re never around anymore either, but whenever you are, it immediately gets messier.”

“Takes one to know.”

I shrug because she’s right. About everything. “Yeah, the self-tanner was a dick move. It’s just…”

Her lips tip into a sly smile, and her eyes sparkle with it. “Kennedy’s too pretty, and you’re convinced those rich assholes would never willingly leave unless you turned her orange.”

Dammit. Holly’s become much too good at reading me. She’d probably phrase it differently and say she’s gotten good at slicing through my bullshit.

“Something like that,” I mutter, pushing my plate away. I barely mauled half my burger, which is unusual, but my appetite’s taken a hit. Everything’s taken a hit lately.

I hate that everyone around town is giving me shit about the show. I hate that my last name is synonymous with little cartoon hearts and fat babies carrying bows and arrows. It’s always been like that, to be honest—it’s your lot in life when your family business is matchmaking—but it’s much worse now that my sisters are launching a dating app and my grandmother is the cohost and creator ofMatchmaking the Rich.Try escapingthatclaim to fame.

My nickname since the first grade has been Cupid, for fuck’s sake. The guys at the firehouse where I’m a part-time firefighter still call me that.

“You like her,” Holly says, waggling her eyebrows.