Hottie for the Holidays (Three Steamy Holiday Rom Coms)

“All right, Maggie.” I take a deep breath, swiping the tears from my cheeks. “Time to think. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You can figure this out.”

The pyramid of expired canned goods in the breakfast nook shoots me the hairy eyeball, issuing a challenge I refuse to take seriously. I do have a good head on my shoulders, and I excel at troubleshooting. It’s one of the things that makes me great at my job.

I also have an extensive list of contacts and connections.

Growing up in New York’s high society and attending an Ivy League school, I did enough networking before college graduation to make up for the fact that I spent the rest of my twenties caring for my surprise baby—turns out condoms really aren’t 100 percent effective, and that wasn’t just something my mom said to keep me from having sex in high school—and starting over after my divorce at the ripe old age of twenty-seven.

Add in my ten years as a house flipper, and I know somebody, or somebody who knows somebody, in almost every corner of this city. And I don’t hesitate to utilize my connections.

I’ve found people usually enjoy helping other people.

I know I do, especially two days before Christmas.

“Hey, Jerry, happy holidays,” I say when my old foreman answers. Jerry quit to start a handmade cabinet business a few years ago, but we’ve stayed close. “I’ve got a hoarding situation in Chelsea and could really use an extra pair of hands. A cheap pair, if you know one. I didn’t factor removal of ten thousand beer steins into my budget and need to get this job done on a shoestring and sweat equity. Preferably before Christmas.”

Jerry laughs—loudly, because he’s from the Bronx and not even a little bit shy about making noise. “No problem, Mags. I got you. Some of the twentysomethings in the neighborhood started a handyman service a few months ago. They’re new, but cheap and getting great reviews. I’ll text the number as soon as we hang up.”

“Thanks so much, Jerry. You’re a lifesaver.” We chat for a few more minutes—catching up on kid and work news—before we say goodbye, and I pull up another number.

A number that’s not nearly as easy to punch into my phone…

When my little sister’s friend Penny gave me her business card at a wedding last summer, I thought it was a joke. The idea that sweet, soft-spoken Penny runs a male escort service blew my mind. She insisted Magnificent Bastard Consulting isn’t an escort service—it’s a unique company, specializing in helping scorned women get revenge on their evil exes, no hanky-panky involved—but I wasn’t sure whether to believe her.

Is there really a market for such a thing? Enough of a market to sustain Penny and her husband, Bash’s, not-at-all humble lifestyle? They own an apartment in a neighborhood even swankier than mine, for goodness’ sake.

But as my not-at-all-evil ex, Ken, reminded me when we discussed it later, I have no frame of reference for a really bad breakup.

Yes, when Ken and I called it quits, I was devastated for our daughter, and so sad that we couldn’t make our marriage work, no matter how hard we tried, but I never hated Ken. He’d hurt me, and I’d hurt him, but at the end of the day, we were able to forgive each other for the sin of being too different to stay in love, hold onto our friendship, and devote ourselves to raising the happiest kid possible.

Ten years later, we still have dinner with Lexi as a family at least once a week and even took her to Disney World together for her twelfth birthday, staying in separate rooms and reuniting each morning to tackle the parks. Ken is still my go-to emergency contact—he can be scatterbrained, but he has a cool head in a crisis, unlike my excitable mother and short-tempered father. And now that my ex and I are just friends, I truly enjoy his company.

When I took Penny’s card, I never imagined I’d need an intervention from a service specializing in making ex-husbands jealous and convincing creepy stalker-types to back off.

I still don’t, but I do need a date for the ball—tonight, leaving me no time to hunt down a bachelor of my own.

Not that I would have much success with that, even if I had a solid month to search. I haven’t been on a date in over a year, and the last time I had a boyfriend, Lexi still needed help reaching the top buttons in the elevator.

Sadly, in my experience, Stephanie’s depressing words have proven true.

Men in Manhattan aren’t interested in dating single mothers, especially single mothers with teenage daughters who look far more like their ideal woman than a lady with fine lines around her eyes and the curves to prove she fell off the No Carb Bandwagon around Donut Junction and never got back on.