Seven displaced romance novel heroes. One matchmaker devoted to giving them Happily Ever After.
Pilot Episode
(An upscale bar. Five attractive women, four with red hair, are chatting at a table in the corner. Six other women in various stages of intoxication are throwing back shots at the bar. Six men wait in a private room under the supervision of an agitated professional matchmaker, who scowls when a seventh man enters the room.)
Matchmaker: A vampire walks into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a great joke, but there’s nothing funny about you being an hour late.
Dante Dracovich: Complain to Daylight Savings Time. I didn’t make the sun set at nine.
Matchmaker: No more excuses from any of you. If you’re not going to take this seriously, hit the road, keeping in mind your deposit is nonrefundable. I’m going to go talk to the girls, tell them how fabulous you are, and get them liquored up before I send you out to mingle. Talk amongst yourselves.
Man with Lacy Cravat and Skintight Pants: I shall begin. I am Lord Tristan, Duke of Lanshropberktershire.
Christian Rockvanfellerbilt: Uh-huh. Where, exactly, is that located?
Tristan: It’s just north of Liverwurstershire.
Bane Aphelion: Ah, yes. Latifah, Queen of Newark, has a summer home there.
Tristan: Is that so? I must say, I am quite put out that I have never received an invitation from Her Majesty. We are practically neighbors, after all.
Bane: I know what’ll be fun. Let’s play a word-association game. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say “Regency rake”?
Tristan: Illicit rendezvous with lady fair.
Christian: Fashion fit for the artist-once-again-known-as Prince.
Dante: Gonorrhea.
Tristan: I beg your pardon!
Dante: I was there, buddy. Every one of you players swizzled your stick in some kind of pox.
Tristan: At least I haven’t adopted a pseudo-Romanian alias like a certain nocturnal fiend who used to be known to the ton as Donald Dunston.
Dante: You know, fop, a stake in the heart will kill a human, too.
Christian: Don’t make me separate you two. Unlike some people who inherited their fortunes along with their blue blood, I earned my billions by exerting my dominance over those who would waste time on such petty pursuits when they should be working as hard as I do to achieve my success.
Mitch Ruger: Please. Your great-granddaddy was the last member of your family to break a sweat. A hard day’s work for you is signing too many credit card receipts.
Christian: What do you know, and what is that lump under your arm?
Mitch: My gun. I work for a top-secret government-funded law enforcement agency whose acronym you’ve never heard of, rescuing trust-fund suckers like you from bad guys who want to part you from your money and your lives. I’ve been shot, stabbed, and once spent a week in a pit in Somalia, surviving on bugs and dew, all in the line of duty. I bring home five figures a year for that, so I don’t want to hear any whining about how rough your board meetings are, rich boy.
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