A Daring Game

Her soulmate was a rogue demon-hunter with excellent manners. Unfortunately, he lived inside a video game.

Felicity Dare teaches third grade, survives blind dates the way other people survive dental work, and saves her real life for the evenings — when she logs into Kingdoms of Myanthia as Lady Dare and trades banter with a knight called Sir Kelin.

Then a card turns up in her purse that she absolutely did not put there. FootSwept Matchmaking. Get Swept Away.

Felicity has no idea who arranged it, and no intention of cooperating. Because the matchmaker has set her up with a perfectly nice, perfectly real man named Brandon, and Felicity is very busy being in love with someone who does not technically exist.

She sabotages the date. She sabotages the next one. And she keeps right on sabotaging until a gaming convention puts her fantasy knight and her flesh-and-blood blind date in the same room — and Felicity finds out exactly how good a matchmaker she's been running from.

Somewhere at the back of the café, a young woman in a ball cap watches it land, and smiles.

A standalone Christmas rom-com novella set before Book 1 of the complete seven-book Fate Weaver series — back when Lexi Balefire was matching couples on pure instinct and hadn't yet come into her magic. Clean and closed-door.

Perfect for readers who love:

• A meet-cute that was already a meet-cute and nobody noticed • Gamer heroines who are done apologizing for it • Matchmakers working quietly in the background • Small-town Maine at Christmas • A warm, complete story in one sitting

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I saw the twist coming and I still grinned like an idiot when it landed."

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Sweet, funny, and over far too soon. I went straight into book one."