“Tradition insists, Mrs. Lesley Biltenhouse, that I remove your garter with my teeth.”

The geeky- cute, middle-aged groom knelt and rested his chin on the bride’s thigh. He gazed up at her, smitten. “Or our first year of married life will go to shit.”

“You just made that up, John.” Lesley smoothed her three-and-a-half carat diamond-encrusted hand across his shaggy salt and pepper hair, tucking a wayward lock behind his ear.

“But it sounded convincing.” He grinned, dove back to her garter, snagged it between his teeth, and dragged it down her leg. The bride stifled her giggles and the black-tie wedding crowd erupted in laughter and enthusiastic applause.

I leaned back against the wall of the grand ballroom at the posh Delacroix Hotel on the Magnificent Mile in downtown Chicago and applauded along with them. The skin on the back of my arms erupted in goosebumps.

Breathe, Charlotte. This is not a dress rehearsal. You made this happen. Breathe.

I smoothed my designer tea-length gown down my legs, the raw silk scratchy against my bare knees. Its prickly roughness grounded me in reality, which was good. I couldn’t afford to be kidnapped by commercialism, swept away like a chick in one of those stupid commercials for Dead Sea bath salts. I had too much to get done, too much at stake.

I, Charlotte Louise Bauer, a woman whose income hovered slightly above the poverty line, was the person responsible for brokering the Biltenhouse marriage resulting in the swank, society Chicago wedding of the year. My bosses at the White Glove Matchmaking Agency had rewarded my efforts, promoting me from shlepper of coffee and water-er of plants to junior agent. I’d start my new position on Monday, but this weekend was mine all mine, and I planned on enjoying myself tonight.

I sipped the top-shelf Champagne and glanced around at all the gorgeousness an expensive, tasteful wedding offered. The Delacroix Hotel was built in the 1920s, a throwback to elegance and old-fashioned glamour. The ballroom was decked out for the Christmas holidays: Italian lights twinkled, draped over wreathes hung on the wallpapered ballroom walls as well as the fifteen-foot Douglas fir in the corner, decorated with sparkling Tiffany ornaments. I inhaled the scent of pine needles and freshly-cut flower arrangements that intermingled with notes of expensive perfumes and colognes.

Heaven. I’d landed in heaven.

I tipped my head back and drained my glass of Champagne. The bubbles swirled into my bloodstream and my shoulders slid off my ears for the first time in the year since I’d moved to Chicago. I stretched my neck right to left, then side to side, and decided one more drink couldn’t hurt. I swiveled to look for a waiter but collided boobs first into a tall, solid, brick wall of a man carrying a tray. “Oof!”

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry!” My face was buried against his rock-hard chest and I spotted only a flash of muscular largeness, a hint of his black tux, and a glimpse of chiseled cheekbones as we mashed up against each other.

Oh no.

Oh, fuckity fuck.

This would not do.

I’d leased my gown from Cinderella For a Night and had had my hair styled at the South Dearborn Beauty Academy. I needed to fit in with this crowd. These people were potential clients. I couldn’t afford to be seen canoodling in public at this wedding. I leaned back on my heels, sucked in my core, and pulled a few inches away from the hot waiter.

My small movement pitched him off balance. He bobbled the serving tray high in the air with one hand, and grabbed onto a large decanter with his other, saving it from falling. But a crystal tumbler filled with liquor seized the opportunity to break free and wobbled at the edge of the tray.

“Fuck!” I said, watching the glass plummet toward my cleavage.

“Crap!” he said, his eyes widening as he abandoned the decanter and reached for the tumbler.

I sucked in my stomach. The glass skimmed past my chest and crashed onto the carpet, splashing thick amber liquor onto my legs and skirt at exactly the same time the hot waiter’s hand landed squarely on my silken bodice, where it remained, large fingers firmly clamped on my boob. The feeling wasn’t all that unpleasant.

I glared up at the guy ready to kill or dismember him, but his hazel eyes—or were they green—appeared remorseful, as did the set of his jaw, and the pout of his very full lips. “Hand off my boobs!” I whispered. I glanced around, hoping against hope no one had spotted this.

“Correction. Boob, singular,” he said.

“Who are you, the grammar police? Hand off my boob.”

“Awfully sorry about that.” He removed his hand and stared down at my chest. “Lovely, really. Warm. Soft.”

“What?”

“Your breast. From the quick time we’ve spent together I can tell they’re real. Shocking in today’s world.”

“Right.” I glared at the tall man whom I’d just inadvertently gone to second base with. He was handsome as hell, tight, muscular, and I suspected he could have given David Gandy a run for his reign as king of underwear models.

I felt something warm, moist, and sticky in my nether regions but I didn’t think it was emanating from my lady parts. I peered down at my rental gown. The skirt was soggy and reeked of scotch. Blood rushed to my cheeks. I wouldn’t be getting my deposit back. “Damn it!”

“You have every right to be furious. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” he said, sliding the tray onto an unoccupied table and snagging a discarded table napkin smeared with remnants of chicken cordon bleu. He dropped to his knees in front of me, dabbing the cloth on my skirt. “I’ll fix this.”

“No! You’re just going to make it worse.” I stared down at his thick head of black hair and wide muscular shoulders that strained at the confines of his upscale penguin suit. He worked his way up my shins that had suddenly sprouted goosebumps. “I’ll handle it.”

“No. I’ll handle it.” He graduated to my thighs. Pat. Pat. Pat.

Several wedding guests were watching me.

Getting felt up.

By the persistent hot waiter.

In the middle of the poshest wedding reception of the year.

“Really you don’t have to do this,” I said. His mouth was mere inches from my sex, his warm breath penetrating the drenched silk of my gown, heating my skin. My face flushed and I broke into a sweat because in spite of this whole disaster I was tingling down there and this time it wasn’t from the Champagne. “Let’s just call it a night, okay?”

“That’s awfully forward of you,” he said. “But if you insist. Your place or mine?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

He smiled up at me and my heart melted for a moment. His full lips. His twinkling eyes. The way he waggled his eyebrows in a suggestive, naughty fashion. “I know. Just trying to cheer you up. Can you believe someone actually married John ‘Wanker’ Biltenhouse? I heard a matchmaker fixed them up. Who do you think the idiot was?”

“A very smart idiot.” His grip was firm, large fingers pushing through my dress. It felt like he was working. Attempting to accomplish something, righting a wrong, not trying to cop a feel. That said, if this had happened to me on the “L” train, I’d have clocked him over the head with my purse and kneed him in the balls. “Enough. The attendant in the ladies’ room can help me—”

“Stop worrying, Cupcake.” He winked. “I got this.”

“Uh…” He was so earnest, so incredibly fucking gorgeous, that for a second I forgot how to breathe. It dawned on me that waiters weren’t usually this hot unless they were struggling actors. I knew only too well how difficult it was to survive in a big city when you were down on your luck, playing a part that you didn’t quite have down yet, and my anger dissipated.

Then I wondered if my run in with the hot server was part of my promotion package. Not literally. I didn’t work for a pimp service after all. But cosmically. Like divine intervention. Life had been super tough the last year and a half. Maybe meeting the sinfully delicious server was the gods’ attempts to make up for all the bullshit I’d been through.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Charlotte. What’s yours?”

“You tell me. What name springs to mind when you look at me?” He stared at me with a hint of a smile on his handsome face, the beginning of twinkle wrinkles crinkling around the corners of his eyes. He was so…

“Hot Waiter,” I blurted. “Oops! I meant to say… Matt Baiter. You look like a Matt Baiter to me.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously? Matt Baiter? It’s that obvious what I’ll be doing tonight if you don’t go home with me?

“No!” I bit my lip. “I really did mean to say Hot Waiter. I’m sorry!”

“I’ve been called worse,” he said. “I could swear I’ve seen you before, Charlotte. You’re so pretty. And boobs that majestic make you impossible to forget.”

“Thanks—I think.” I reversed my decision and was suddenly tempted to let the excitement of the night take me. Enjoy your night, Charlotte. Let your guard down and savor an evening of beauty and decadence, fine Champagne, and a gorgeous man who looks like he’d be more than happy to service your every need. “You work at the hotel, right?”

“You could say that.”

“I stopped by the catering department with the bride a few months ago when she was sampling entrees for the reception. Maybe you spotted me then.” I gazed at his lower lip, full and fleshy, wondering what it would feel like if he kissed me. Long and hot. Insistent and passionate, as he wrapped his big, muscular arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him…

“Charlotte!” An earnest female voice called, snapping me out of my reverie. I glanced up and spotted my pal, the immaculately coiffed Hailey Frankle, waving her hand high in the air as she hustled through the well-appointed crowd toward me.

My heart sank because I realized this stunning man on his knees before me with the big muscular arms, a cleft in his chin, and dark brown hair with a hint of curl at the ends, might have been the handsomest waiter in Chicago, let alone the entire Midwest—but I had to shut this down. “Thank you,” I said and popped open the clasp on my pearl-encrusted evening bag, pulled out a twenty bill, and tapped it on his hand that was still attending to my thigh. “I hope this covers the damages.”

He stopped and stared up at me. “For what?”

“The drink I spilled.”

Hailey waved her hands in the air. “Charlotte! The bride needs you—STAT!”

“I ran into you.” He pushed back the bill.

“Clearly, it was the other way around.” I extended the twenty.

“It doesn’t matter who made first contact, Cupcake. You’re doused in Glenfiddich 1962 Private Reserve. You might smell like a trust fund baby after a wild night, but that’s an expense you don’t want to cover. Besides, I owe you for the dry cleaning.”

“You owe me nothing,” I said.

He stood up and I was reminded of why I ran into him in the first place. Hot waiter was as big and tall as a Green Bay Packer linebacker but far prettier. Like a long-lost heir to the Kennedy dynasty. For or a second I wished I was the Charlotte Louise Bauer from a year ago—a simpler girl living in more innocent times in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. But innocence had passed me by.

“Charlotte!” Hailey raised her voice, a worried look consuming her face. “I need you!”

“Thanks for the clean-up,” I said. “You’re sweet. But I’ve got to go.”

“You have no idea how sweet I can be,” he said. “Stay and find out.”

“I wish I could. I really do. But I can’t.” I turned, my heart bumping around in my chest, and walked away from what could have been my wedding reception fling as the band played You’re Just Too Good to be True. I stopped in my tracks, and regret nagged at me, practically poking me in the ribs. I couldn’t help but wonder what time he got off work.

I turned to look for him. “Hey, I don’t even know your real name. What’s your name?” But he had vanished into the thick of the wedding crowd. He was so big, a force of nature. How was that even possible?