All Night Long

Excerpt from

All Night Long

The Heart of the City Series

Book Three

by

Candace Schuler

Bestselling, award-winning Author

ALL NIGHT LONG

Reviews & Accolades

"Good story—funny and romantic. The plot is a real grabber and the ending... you won't want to miss."

~Rendezvous

"Candace Schuler wins our hearts with... a pair of delightfully appealing lovers."

~Romantic Times Magazine

Previously titled: The Personal Touch

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ISBN: 978-1-61417-433-2

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter 1

Matthew Ryan glanced at his watch for the third time since he'd folded himself into the yellow shantung wing chair. Then he looked up over the newspaper he held, frowning at the elaborately carved wooden door almost directly across from where he sat. The soft-voiced receptionist had warned him it would be a few minutes before Ms. Bennington could see him, but those few minutes had come and gone several times and the lady still hadn't appeared.

He'd had time to catalog the room's entire furnishings twice over, from the brass candlesticks and fresh freesias on the polished oak mantel, to the gently faded Brussels carpet beneath his feet, to the jewel-colored Tiffany lamp on the receptionist's desk. It was a warm, charming room, more like his mother's elegant front parlor than the reception area of a business establishment, he thought. Which wasn't really surprising, considering the offices of The Personal Touch were located on the ground floor of a stately old Victorian house in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco. Charming or not, though, Matt had seen all of it he wanted to see in the last fifteen minutes.

He closed the
Chronicle
with a snap, folding it into a neat, narrow rectangle without finishing the column he'd started to read, and laid it on the gleaming surface of the cabriolet table next to his chair. He'd give her five more minutes, he decided, and then he was leaving. He probably shouldn't have come in the first place, anyway, especially without an appointment. But, dammit, he was just about at his wit's end.

His mother was driving him crazy.

Not that she wasn't a wonderful woman. She was. One of the best. It was just that she needed something—
someone
—other than her only son to fuss over now that she'd finally come to terms with her widowhood and joined the world again.

This morning, when a colleague in the D.A.'s office mentioned that his seventy-six-year-old father had used The Personal Touch and was as pleased as punch with the woman he'd been introduced to through it... Well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

"It's not your usual dating service," Cal had said just before court convened. "No slick pick-a-date videos or computer listings. None of that 'what's your favorite position from
The Kama Sutra'
stuff. It's more like an old-fashioned matchmaking service. You know, like that woman in
Fiddler on the Roof?
The one who arranged marriages for the villagers? This woman actually gives tea parties to introduce people to each other instead of letting them meet on their own in a bar somewhere. My dad really liked that aspect of it. Said he didn't feel like as big a fool as he would've otherwise."

After Matt thought about it a bit, mulling it over in the back of his mind while he listened to the opposing attorney argue for a continuance, it had still seemed like a good idea. When the judge had unexpectedly granted the defense's request, leaving Matt with the morning free, he'd decided to give it a try. It couldn't do any harm. And, with any luck at all, he thought now, grinning slightly, his mother would never have to know he'd fixed her up.

If this matchmaker woman ever puts in an appearance, that is.

Matt shifted in his chair, crossing his right ankle over the precise crease in the left knee of his crisply pressed navy-blue slacks. The fingers of one hand drummed silently on the folded newspaper.
Two more minutes,
he told himself, frowning at the receptionist's lowered head.

She looked up, as if sensing his impatience, and met his eyes. The soft smile she gave him was strangely seductive. "I'm sure it won't be more than a minute or two longer," she said, hooking a lock of shiny black hair behind her ear with the tip of one very long, very red fingernail before she turned her attention back to the computer keyboard and the instruction manual lying open on the desk in front of her.

Matt wondered how she managed to hit the right keys with such long nails. They looked lethal. In fact, he thought, idly studying her, she looked a bit lethal herself. Her glossy black hair was sleek and sassy, the deep bangs and short, chin-length cut calling attention to her dark, slanted eyes and exotic bone structure. Her makeup was expertly, if a little heavily, applied. Her trim black dress was simple, but too sophisticated for her years, which couldn't, he thought, number much more than twenty. It occurred to him that he'd seen her somewhere before. Around the courthouse, maybe? Or at campaign headquarters?

She'd known his name, calling him Mr. Ryan before he'd introduced himself. That wasn't unusual, of course. As a high-profile attorney with more than his share of headline-making cases, his picture was in the papers on a fairly regular basis. Two weeks ago, when he'd finally announced his candidacy for district judge, there'd been a small flurry of coverage, both in the newspapers and on the local TV stations—mostly because the seat he'd declared for had once been occupied by his father. That she recognized him wasn't really surprising... but he still had the nagging feeling he knew her from somewhere far different from where she was now. It annoyed him not to be able to place her.