Page 1 of Mane Rival in Store

PROLOGUE

GERRI

The dark chocolate sea salt cookies were perfection tonight.

Gerri Wilder stood near the north wall of the Bellhaven Gallery, a private exhibition space tucked behind an unmarked door on a cobblestone side street in the Meatpacking District, and surveyed her empire.

Twenty-three women occupied the gallery’s main floor. Crystal flutes of Veuve Clicquot caught the overhead track lighting. A string quartet played Debussy in the corner, largely ignored. And every single one of these powerful, elegant, impeccably dressed women was here for one reason.

Their children were disasters.

Romantic disasters, specifically. Brilliant, accomplished, wildly successful romantic disasters who could run companies and negotiate treaties and perform surgery and win court cases but could not, for the love of God, figure out how to go on a second date without imploding.

Gerri selected a cookie from the silver tray she’d arranged on the gallery’s center table and bit into it with the satisfaction of someone who understood her purpose in the universe. She was seventy-two years old, five-foot-four in her wrap dress and kitten heels, and she had matched more stubborn hearts than any algorithm, any dating app, any well-meaning aunt at a holiday dinner could dream of producing.

She’d stopped counting years ago. Counting implied a quota. Gerri didn’t work quotas. She worked instinct, timing, and a batching method for dark chocolate sea salt cookies that had never once failed her.

The Dojin and Nari match was still fresh — the mothers’ network humming with the success of it, new names appearing on her invitation list with the regularity of compound interest.

Fresh off that bear of a romance, the Book Club had swelled from a cozy gathering into a proper society event. Ozara Stone and Colette Keiser had made calls. Suki Saitō had suggested the gallery. And suddenly Gerri had a Meatpacking District exhibition space with fourteen-foot ceilings, polished concrete floors, and the kind of lighting that made every woman in the room look ten years younger.

Not that these women needed the help. The Matchmaker’s Book Club attracted a specific breed: formidable. Wealthy enough to orbit the same social galaxies. Connected enough to know that Gerri’s matchmaking was the real deal, not some reality-show gimmick. The “book club” pretense had thinned to gossamer by this point — Colette Keiser hadn’t cracked a spine in three meetings, and Ozara Stone had been reading the same Anne Tyler novel since October.

Nobody cared. The books were a polite fiction, and Gerri was the real text.

Three new faces tonight.

Gerri cataloged them with the instinct of a general surveying fresh recruits. A Korean-American tech heiress from San Francisco whose son apparently collected medieval weaponry and hadn’t smiled at a woman since 2019.

A British baroness whose daughter ran a sustainable fashion label and kept dumping men who couldn’t pronounce ‘sustainability’ correctly. And near the cheese table, nursing a champagne flute with the restrained discipline — she rationed herself one sip per five minutes, Astrid Sterling.

That last one — Gerri had been waiting for her.

Astrid hadn’t RSVP’d. Hadn’t called ahead. She’d appeared in the doorway twenty minutes ago, swept the room with a single assessing glance, said nothing, and positioned herself near the hors d’oeuvres with the strategic patience of someone accustomed to choosing her moment.

Most people wouldn’t know who she was. Gerri wasn’t most people.

Astrid Bergman Sterling. Sixty. Former art dealer. Wife of Erik Magnus Sterling, the retired alpha of the Sterling Pride — one of the oldest and wealthiest lion prides in Northern Europe. Mother of Rune Sterling, who had taken over the Pride at twenty-two and turned his father’s legacy into a global conglomerate of premium comic book and collector stores.

Gerri had matched lion shifters before. She understood the species — the pride dynamics, the courtly politics, the mane vanity. And she recognized — from the way Astrid was not-looking at her while very much tracking her every movement across the gallery — that the Sterling matriarch had a specific situation.

Not a general concern. A situation.

Gerri straightened the cookie tray, adjusted the angle of the napkins, and made her rounds.

“Gerri.” Ozara Stone materialized at her elbow, champagne in hand, her auburn hair swept into the kind of effortless chignon that required forty-five minutes and professional help. She wore Chanel. She always wore Chanel. “Suki says you’ve spotted a new project.”

Gerri plucked a cookie from the tray. “I haven’t spotted anything. I’m circulating.”

“You’re circulating toward the blonde who looks like she’s about to annex the cheese table.” Ozara’s gaze tracked across the room. “She’s been watching you for fifteen minutes.”

“Has she?”

“With the intensity of a woman who has exhausted every other option.” Ozara sipped her champagne. “I recognize the expression. I wore it before you matched my Zeir with Lumi.”

Gerri patted Ozara’s arm. “Your Zeir was brooding. Bears are simple — feed them, love them, give them a woman who won’t take their nonsense. Wolves are intense but straightforward. Lions...” She trailed off, watching Astrid lift her champagne with measured grace, the posture of someone who made minimalism look like an Olympic sport. “Lions are dramatic. And political. And vain. And they court like they’re staging a royal ceremony with a twelve-month budget.”

“You sound excited.”