The Perfect Date Series

Never Is A Very Long Time is a contemporary romantic comedy from USA Today Bestselling Author Donna McDonald. This series is perfect for the romance over 30, 40, or 50 crowd who are looking for love a little later in life.   Unexpected love can be funny, romantic, and if you're lucky, perfect!    For dating expert, Dr. Mariah Bates, nothing in the world feels better than finding her clients the perfect date. Finding one for herself might be nice, but creative bill paying is not for accomplished doctors in their forties. Satisfied customers keep the electricity on.    Everything in her life was fine until she quit her celebrity radio job to start a dating business. Two years, a cheating ex, and a very ugly divorce later, she's back to living with her mother. Not that her mom isn't great, but come on.   With her cop ex-husband doing everything he can to ruin her business, she's at her wit's end. Throw in another cop who makes her want to believe in love at first sight again and life is a mess.  Another sexy bad boy cop is the last thing she needs.   AUTHOR NOTE: This story is an old-school sensual romance. There is some kissing and touching, then the door softly closes. You can count on an absolute HEA and plenty of humorous situations guaranteed to make you laugh.

Dating's one thing, but what's love got to do with it?  Nothing. At least not for Ann Lynx. She's fifty-three for goodness sake. She's had love. All she's in the market for these days is some fun companionship—no strings attached.  Right? Wrong. Thanks to her pain-in-the-rear-end best friend, Georgia, she's now back on the dating scene. Add Georgia's matchmaking daughter Mariah to the mix and Ann is officially in a world of trouble—or dates—to be more accurate. All that would be kind of doable, but her handyman's sexy too-young-for-her son is making her feel like a silly young girl. She should definitely stick to the handsome, successful, and older men that Mariah keeps throwing in her path, but she can't seem to banish the sexy Cal from her thoughts any more than from her broken pantry. The retired military man is very good at fixing things, and at kissing her senseless. Who's going to fix her though if Cal ends up breaking her heart?  What's love got to do with it? Maybe everything.

Della needs a hero. Anybody got a cape Elliston can borrow? How can a 31-year-old guy in his prime have a dating emergency? Elliston stupidly told his best client that he would bring a date to his weekend function, but then he got too busy with work to actually get off his butt and find one.  Hey, don't judge. Finding a girlfriend wasn't on his agenda. So what did he do? He called his favorite dating service. The owner of The Perfect Date, Dr. Mariah Bates, offered the perfect deal—one that just might save his ego and his man card. He gets a fake girlfriend for his business trip and all he has to do in exchange is take his fake girlfriend to her sister's wedding.  Enter Dr. Della Livingston. Mariah's career-minded assistant with surprisingly great legs has Elliston soon thinking he's hit the fake girlfriend jackpot.  Maybe he's nuts from months of working too hard, but he's beginning to wish this whole fake date thing wasn't so fake. Now he wants to jump off the love cliff and save the girl, except he needs to figure out how to fly first.  Anybody got a Superman cape he can borrow?

All she wants is a friend. What's wrong with that? Sure Jellica felt a smidge guilty for the money Greg Skyler spent on their date, but what did a man who wears sweater vests expect from a woman who wears crystals, burns sage, and teaches yoga? The two of them are never going to be the romance of the century. In fact, they have absolutely nothing in common. So why is Greg acting so surprised and hurt to hear she wants only to be friends? Before her mind can sort it out, Greg's sister is stalking her, his mother becomes her lawyer, and Greg starts bossing her around in the nicest way possible. Plus he's still trying to kiss her. And he's a really good kisser. Talk about confusing… Sometimes nice guys—and girls—do finish first. And being friends and lovers is as perfect as you can get.

What could she possibly have in common with a man whose watch costs more than her car? Georgia may be slowing down a bit at her age, but she isn't stupid yet. The idea of her genuinely dating Dr. Brentwood Colombo, aka Hollywood… well, that's just totally insane.  Where is her dignity? Where is her pride? How did she let her snickering friends dare her into giving him a chance? And where is the kind, caring daughter she raised? Mariah's been replaced with an evil version insisting she gives the womanizing plastic surgeon who dates twenty-year-olds a fair chance. A fair chance at what? Breaking her heart? No, thank you. Her dignity will not be trampled under Hollywood's expensive shoes. Now if he'd just stop talking about her perfect, perfect breasts, she might forget about him completely.

The last thing Iris needs is a man with his head in the clouds.   Most days Iris can't believe that she actually left her home and country for a smooth-talking jerk who tossed her into the street first chance he got. A woman has to view that sort of thing as life lesson. Her mum raised her to be a survivor, and that includes understanding her worst enemy is herself when it comes to good-looking men. Besides… nice men don't date broke women staying at hostels. And Lincoln Walker seems to be a very, very nice man. He has a growing list of rich, beautiful, and successful business women wanting to date him. Iris calls tending bar a career. They couldn't be any less suited for each other. Imagine Cinderella never getting to the ball. Then imagine her turning forty and still scrubbing fireplaces for a living. That would be the fairytale version of Iris's life. She's got no time to waste on dating Prince Charming—or rather, Prince Walker. The man owns his own urban kingdom and yet chooses to fly balloons for a living. Iris, on the other hand, chooses to take down rowdy drunks in bars. Cupid better not shoot an arrow her way or she'll take him down too. In her life, love and romance are temporary. That's all Iris can afford. 

If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Right? That's easier said than done when Chef Trudy Baker has to co-host the cooking show of a former love, Chef Jack Dozen. Problem is Jack would rather throw Trudy into the fire than share the spotlight with her. Sexy Jack has all the right ingredients for the perfect man... except he's too young for her.  He's also her guilty secret--one she never told anyone about. Trudy's romantically happy friends are insisting she gets happy too, which is the only reason she signed up with The Perfect Date. Dating sounds nice in theory, but in practice, the only place Trudy ever gets hot these days is in the kitchen.  Her saner self knows she's better off dating a mature man closer to her own age than a cocky idiot who's spent the last decade hating her. The recipe of the network putting them together on TV is one that spells disaster. The only thing she and Jack ever cooked up together was trouble. Maybe trouble is the ingredient she's been missing...

Her real life is no fairy tale and she's no Cinderella.   After what her ex-husband did to her, heiress Henna Colombo is a man-hater, not a dater. And the thing she hates most of all is the fairytale of falling in love.  Why do her father and her new wicked stepmother insist she keeps looking for her prince? And why at The Perfect Date? Only the most pathetic losers use a dating service. She's fine being single. As far as Henna's concerned, the love God can take his diaper-wrapped butt and arrows elsewhere. Cupid can also shove those arrows where the sun doesn't shine if he thinks for one second that someone like Vassal Milano is her perfect man.  Vassal's perfect alright—perfect at sneaking around behind her back. Just like her ex, she caught him kissing someone else.  No… she didn't confront Vassal about it. Why would she put herself through all that heartache and torture again? Outside of a few unforgettable kisses, she and Vassal were only friends anyway. Cupid's arrow missed her that time—thankfully.  As for the whole dating thing and looking for any sort of honorable Prince Charming? Forget it. No such man exists. Luckily, Henna doesn't care.

Her business is wildly successful, but the rest of her life is just wild.    Sixty may be the new forty, but not for the Honorable Eleanor J. Skyler. She's retiring from the law firm she spent her entire career building. What's wrong with wanting to wear yoga clothes every day and go zip-lining whenever the adventurous mood strikes? Nothing, that's what.   She's got no time for dating and drama. She certainly has no time to deal with her senior law partner, Andrew Carson, who has for reasons she can't fathom, decided she's his perfect woman. To say she's confused in an understatement. They've known each other for over twenty years. They knew each other's spouses before they died. Why is Andrew suddenly looking at her legs and telling her she's beautiful? He's barely over fifty. He has the tiny sports car. Why can't Andrew chase a twenty-year-old like every other man having a mid-life crisis?   It's bad enough her son bought her a membership to The Perfect Date. She's going through that hot mess to stop her children from nagging about her love life. Just because Greg found sweet Jellica through that dating service doesn't mean Eleanor's going to waste her time going out with grumpy old men. No, thank you. That's never happening. Neither is dating men younger than her shoes. The whole dating situation is ridiculous. Why does she have to date at all?   Before she went back to work to rescue Jellica, her life was perfectly calm and peaceful. The hope of returning to that flew out the window when one of Dr. Brentwood Colombo's ex-wives mistook her for his new flame, Georgia Bates. Apparently whiskey can make you appear taller. Who knew? A video of the woman smacking her with her purse has gone viral. Now, she's a social celebrity. If her broken nose is making the news, people need to get a life.    The only consolation to the wildness is Andrew having to stand in line to woo her out of widowhood because her list of potential suitors at The Perfect Date is out of control.

The Holidays Can't Get Much More Perfect!   Singer, Natalie Bright, sings for her supper, and for her grandmother's supper too. With bills to pay and her grandmother's illness to fight, life takes all the energy she has and then some. Love is something she tried once in her twenties and it didn't work out. Natalie's never stopped believing in Santa, but she's not very hopeful when it comes to finding love.   Several years ago Dr. Jet Rahman lost the love of his life who was also his best friend. Now his work fills the empty space inside him, and what's left goes to his five-year-old daughter. Does he believe he can find love again? He certainly believes starting over is possible when you find someone who's a good match for you. He and Natalie though? Well, they're not a totally brilliant idea, but kissing her makes him more hopeful than he's been in a very long time.

Is there such a thing as being too perfect?   Dylan's a genius when it comes to engineering and his bank account proves it. But he's failing in the one area of his life that matters the most. He wants to remarry and has already waited twenty years to do it. Now he's finally found the perfect woman, but marrying again is the last thing Dr. Sydney Hawking wants to do.   Sydney can't believe that her dating membership—aka her divorce gift from her friends—has brought such crazy chaos into her already chaotic life. And it only took one date with Dr. Dylan Maxwell to know she was jumping back in too soon. Yes, her divorce is now final. Yes, her ex-husband remarried the day after. The intelligent thing would be to quit the agency before Dylan gets any more ideas about her being his perfect match.

The new man in her life calls her Amazing Grace. Grace Under Fire is more like it.   Grace Ward-Adams only ever loved one man. When Vance left her for a younger woman, their divorce felt like death to her. Now the only man she'd ever loved is dead for real and she's so mad at him she could scream. Not that Grace had been pining for Vance the entire decade that had passed because she hasn't been. She married twice after him... and divorced twice too.   Yes, Vance's death had stunned her. The video he left stunned her too. How could Vance ask her to help the other discarded women in his life get over him? Two members of his harem were young enough to be her daughters. It was utterly selfish of him to ask such a thing and to make their inheritance her problem. She didn't need his millions.    Grace felt like digging Vance up and shaking him until he died again. Her plan to get revenge is currently circling the drain as well. Dating the so-called "grief expert" his estate hired was supposed to be a joke where she got the last laugh. It turns out, though, that falling in love again isn't funny at all.

Claire loves a good adventure, but dating at her age might be too much of one.  Getting the makeover for her video felt traumatizing rather than adventurous. Sure, it was only hair, and one day it would grow back, but the shock of her shorter style had yet to fade. Luckily, Claire was a survivor. She would survive seeing a stranger when she looked in the mirror. Like every other challenge of her life, she'd eventually figure this one out as well.   A failed first marriage and terrible divorce hadn't broken her. Neither had becoming a widow when she'd allowed herself to try marriage again. However, signing up at The Perfect Date might be the one decision that ruins her love life permanently. Or maybe it's because she's dating for revenge.