Scoring a Holiday Match (Mr. Match) Read online

  “Fuck,” he said loudly, and then he tried one more time and a loud ripping noise followed as more people erupted in laughter.

  “Oh great,” he bellowed, his hands going to his butt as he laid on the ground. “Mags,” he called to the beleaguered woman holding his jacket and rolling her eyes. “My pants busted.”

  The crowd burst into all-out laughter as Trace got up. He was right. His tux pants were split down the back, revealing a pair of Christmas-themed boxers beneath.

  “At least I’m wearing my good undies,” Trace called out, leaving the dance floor with the pretty woman at his side.

  “Magalie puts up with a lot,” Max said, turning back to me. “So tell me again why you aren’t with Rose right now?”

  I was about to explain everything when a woman in a tight green dress practically bounced over. I thought I recognized her as one of the Oceanside Stars players, and the woman who had whisked Rose off earlier.

  “Why are you with him?” She asked Max accusingly, narrowing her eyes at me.

  This wasn’t Max’s fiancée, Tatum, and yet this woman seemed angry. Jealous? I was confused, and didn’t have the energy to try to figure it out.

  “We’re not together,” I volunteered.

  They both turned to look at me, surprise etched along the slides of Max’s mouth.

  The woman burst into laughter. “Together?” She recovered herself. “You’d actually make a really stunning couple,” she said. “But what I mean is, where the fuck did Rose go?”

  I’d been asking myself the same question.

  “Uh, she had to go.” I said. Who was this woman anyway?

  “But you got her number and you’re going to see her tomorrow.” It wasn’t even a question. She was standing quite close to me, crowding my personal space.

  “Ash, meet Tallulah.”

  “Hello,” I said to the woman practically glued to my chest and glaring up at me. “No. I didn’t get her number and she didn’t take mine.” I felt sad as I said it.

  “Yeah. Hi. I know who you are, and you’re supposed to be with Rose. It was working, I saw it. What the fuck happened?”

  Tallulah seemed to have a special affinity for the “f” word and a weird sense of entitlement to my personal business. “She needed to go,” I repeated. “It wouldn’t have worked in the long run anyway.”

  “What?” She pressed an index finger into my chest. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her finger pressed harder, and then her gaze dropped down to the finger, and she pressed her whole hand into my chest. “Wow. This is . . . Wow.”

  “Lu.” Max pulled her away from me.

  “Sorry,” she said to us both. “But all that—" she waved a hand to indicate my chest, “—is distracting.”

  “Right,” Max said, amusement coloring his voice. “So listen, Ash. Lu and I set you up with Rose because we thought you might be a good match. If you say there was no possibility at all that things could work, we’ll back off.”

  “No we won’t,” Tallulah protested.

  “But if there was even a chance,” Max went on. “Then Lu will give you her number so you can call her tomorrow.”

  “I, uh . . .” I prepared the lie in my mind. “I’d like her number,” my mouth said.

  “Phone.” Tallulah held out her hand to me, palm up.

  She was very demanding. I wanted to protest, but instead, I dropped my phone into her palm after unlocking it.

  “There’s a crab here.”

  I frowned. Crab? What?

  “Your wallpaper. It’s a crab.”

  “Oh yeah, that was a monster my guys hauled in right on the border of—”

  “If a big crab is the familiar face you’re looking at every time you pick up the phone, this is more critical than I thought.” Her thumbs flew across the face of my phone., and then she held it for a moment more while she fished her own phone out of her bag and swiped a few times at it. I watched her, pretty sure she was doing more than just adding a contact, while Max smiled out across the ballroom like a king surveying his kingdom. “Here you go,” she handed it back a few minutes later. “Ros is in there—it’s Rose Gonzalez, by the way. You guys were so busy groping each other you probably didn’t even exchange full names.”

  “Thanks,” I said, accepting the phone back. I tapped it to wake up the screen, and my breath left my lungs as Rose stared back at me. Tallulah had replaced my home screen photo and this one was much, much better. Rose. In a bikini. Laughing on the deck of a boat with her hair flying wild around her and her skin shining. She looked happy and free, and so pretty it nearly broke my heart.

  “Better, right?” Tallulah poked me in the arm, and then shamelessly wrapped her hand around my bicep. “My lord,” she murmured.

  “Yeah, better.” I wrenched my arm from her grasp the way I’d done with my grandmother when I was small. Tallulah shrugged and then bounced away.

  The evening seemed to be deteriorating, and without Rose here, there was no reason for me to stay. I said goodbye to Max and wandered through the cold night to my car, parked in a lot a few blocks away. When I got there, I sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, just looking at Rose’s photo.

  Did I have the guts to call her? And what would I be starting if I did? Could I see it through?

  I’d met the woman once, and as Tallulah pointed out, hadn’t even bothered to get her full name. But I knew she was strong and determined, I had a sense that family was important to her—she had seemed so shocked at the state of mine. And I knew she cared about people and would sacrifice her own needs if someone else needed her more—she’d done all that for PJ.

  I knew she was beautiful. God was she beautiful.

  I also knew that something had shifted inside me when I met her.

  Maybe that was enough.

  Chapter 7

  Lost and Found

  Rose

  I was not in the habit of answering the phone if it rang after ten p.m., unless it was work. And then only if I knew there was something going on that needed my attention. In my opinion, most things and people were not as urgent as they were made out to be. Most things, and most people, could easily wait.

  And whoever was blowing up my phone at eleven on a Friday night as I sat out on my patio and mourned the loss of an opportunity that had turned my heart inside out in one short evening, with one brief kiss . . . Well, that person could probably wait.

  Except something told me to answer the phone. That same thread of magic that had wound its way around Ash and me as we’d first met, and pulled us together all evening, was shimmering in the night sky on the patio now. It was a faint glow, like a whisper that made me do things I would not normally do.

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair, picking up my phone. I should have just left the damned thing inside. No good came from phone calls late at night.

  “Rose Gonzalez.” It was my business tone. Assertive and a tiny bit angry.

  “Ah, yes. Hi. Hello. Ms. Gonzalez. I’m calling about an item you left behind this evening at the party.”

  I knew I had not left anything behind at the party. Furthermore, I didn’t believe that any of the caterers or event staff were in possession of this particular voice. Deep, sexy, warm. Confident and cultured.

  “Did I?” I decided to play along. “I seem to have all my possessions. What did I leave?”

  “It’s a large item,” the voice said.

  “Would you say it’s bigger than a breadbox?” That was something my mother had always asked when we played twenty questions on road trips when I’d been a kid.

  “I don’t think most people know what a breadbox is anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you have a breadbox?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Have you ever seen a breadbox, Ms. Gonzalez?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Then how do we know how large one might be?”

  “Want me to Google it?” I asked, laughing now, easing ba
ck onto the lounge chair where I sat. It was Ash. I didn’t know how he’d gotten my number, but I felt like I could talk to him about breadboxes all night and be happier than I’d felt in a long time.

  “I think that would be cheating. Ask me something else.”

  “Did you have a good time tonight, Ash?” I felt brave, sitting here in my own home, the night and its holiday magic wrapping around me as the stars burned bright overhead.

  “I did,” he said, his voice lowering like a secret just for us. “Until it ended too early. And I let a woman I’d hoped to know better disappear like Cinderella, without getting her number.”

  “But you must be very resourceful. You got it somehow.”

  “Tallulah gave it to me. I didn’t know if you’d pick up this late.”

  “Normally, I wouldn’t.”

  “I wish we’d had a little more time together.”

  “I do too,” I said. Where would things have gone if we had? And really, in the long run, where could they go? “Maybe it was for the best,” I tried, not believing my own words and hating them as soon as they were out of my mouth.

  “Rose,” Ash said, his voice still low and sexy, but with a sharper edge to it as he spoke. “It was not for the best.”

  I had no words for that. At work I had the tough conversations, managed the difficult customers, fired employees. But in my personal life, maybe I was not used to being quite so bold. “Maybe not,” I said.

  “There was something there tonight. Something between us. The second we met,” he asserted.

  “It was just a first date,” I suggested, willing to let him spell out what I already knew, if he was brave enough to do it.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and though the silence was tense, the tension was laced with something else, something almost pleasant. It was like foreplay in a way, these long moments full of anticipation and pulled taut with possibility. “No, Rose. This was not a first date. Not for me.”

  “Not for me either,” I admitted, not quite sure what I was actually saying. Only that this had been more. Much more.

  “First dates for me are difficult,” he went on. “The women I meet generally know something about me, or infer things based on where we meet. In Alaska, they’re looking for a man I look like, but am not. A guy like the men I hire to fish on my crew. Here, they’re looking for the man my mother wants me to be. But you’re different. You weren’t looking for any man.”

  “I wasn’t,” I agreed.

  “And you found me.”

  I felt the weight of that statement. He wasn’t being coy or making a joke. And I understood the sentiment. “I think you found me too,” I whispered. “But what do we do about it? Our lives don’t exactly line up. We can’t—”

  “We don’t know what we can do,” he interrupted. “And I’m not saying it will be easy. But in my experience, the best things aren’t easy.”

  “True,” I agreed, my whole body tingling.

  “Have breakfast with me,” he suggested, and I heard a hint of uncertainty there, which was what made me completely certain this was a man I wanted.

  “Yes.” The word was out even before I thought to say it, as if my subconscious knew this was right even if the rest of my mind hadn’t caught up yet.

  “Tell me when and where.”

  God, I wanted to see him now. I wanted to tell him to come here, I didn’t want to wait through all those long hours ahead between morning and now. But PJ was asleep in my guest room. “Eight? At O’Hara’s Pancakes?”

  “Pacific Beach?”

  “Right.” Just down the street from my condo.

  “See you at eight, Rose.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  “Sleep well,” he said.

  “You too,” I whispered. And I hung up, feeling the magic pulling at me again, lacing every second with possibility. I’d go to sleep now, and in the morning?

  Ash.

  Chapter 8

  Breakfast Magic

  ASH

  I was at O’Hara’s at seven thirty. I hadn’t slept much after hanging up with Rose, but when I did, she filled my dreams. My mind pulled the few images I had of her from the short time we’d been together, and wove them into fantasies. In one, Rose was on my boat, in my cabin when I came down to grab a few hours of sleep after the crew hauled and reset the gear.

  She hadn’t spoken, but had simply beckoned me to her, peeled my clothes from my body and ridden me until I came—and then she’d vanished, filtering into the air around us like a genie. I was still hard, thinking about that dream.

  “Coffee?” the waitress wore an elf costume that made it hard not to smile. The entire place was decorated, Christmas music filtered through the bacon-scented air, and snowflakes hung in the windows. Even here in Pacific Beach where dogs and surfers filled the sidewalks, it felt like Christmas.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Shall I clear the other setting?” She asked, moving to remove Rose’s fork and coffee cup.

  “No,” I said. “I’m expecting someone.”

  And I was, every cell in my body tinging in anticipation of seeing her again.

  Twenty minutes later, I was scrolling through nonsense on my phone when the air inside the pancake house shifted, whirring to life and pelting me suddenly with energy that made me look up and around to see what had changed.

  Rose.

  She wore jeans and a long green sweater that wrapped her body, ending mid-thigh. It was tight, and looked soft, and I wanted immediately to run my hands over it. Her hair fell over her shoulder in soft waves, and those perfect lips were red. Again.

  “Rose,” I said, standing as she stepped closer.

  “Ash,” she said, looking up at me as she moved near. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

  We sat, and for maybe the first time in my life, I couldn’t stop smiling.

  But once pancakes and bacon, eggs and toast were gone, and we’d talked about everything and nothing for over an hour, Rose looked sad.

  “When do you go back to Alaska?” she asked.

  “After the holidays,” I told her. “January second.”

  She didn’t respond, only stared down at her hands on the table, where her fingers were twisting a ring in circles around her finger.

  “Rose.” She looked up at me, her expression sad. “Don’t worry about that.” I wanted to live in the now, to focus on what could happen over the next few weeks.

  “That’s what I do,” she said. “I look for potential threats, try to anticipate problems before they happen. And with you, with us, I just don’t see solutions.”

  I did, but I wasn’t ready to offer any of them quite yet. “Let’s live for today. Just for a little while. We’ll figure the rest out.”

  She had lifted her gaze to mine, and she held it now, her warm chocolate eyes seeking answers as we stared at one another. “We’ll figure it out,” she said on a sigh.

  “Okay?” I asked. It had occurred to me that she could decide things were just too uncertain, could tell me she wasn’t willing to risk it. But instead, she stood and reached a hand back to me. I took it, wrapping her small hand in my larger one, stepping away from the table with Rose at my side.

  She led me from the restaurant and along the boardwalk lining the beach without speaking. We walked slowly, holding hands and letting the cool air, the sounds of gulls crying around us, and the far horizon of the Pacific create the soundtrack around us. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but with Rose’s hand in mine, I didn’t care very much.

  We turned down a narrow street lined with trees and houses, and Rose led me up the path to a condo, two stories reaching up above the bungalows around it. She unlocked the front door and just before we crossed the threshold, she turned to face me.

  “Okay,” she said.

  And as I stepped through the door into Rose’s private world, my heart told me I’d never leave it again.

  Chapter 9

  Making Deals with Fish


  Rose

  EPILOGUE - Three Weeks Later

  Giving myself to Ash hadn’t been easy.

  Well, that’s a partial lie. Pulling him into my condo and slowly peeling the beautiful cashmere sweater from his strong shoulders, and sliding the dark jeans down his long powerful legs had been easy enough.

  He’d lifted the sweater from my body and taken me right there on the couch, though I was not a girl who was easily taken. The whole scenario had ended on the floor between the couch and coffee table, me riding him until we both hollered our releases, and then repeating the whole thing upstairs in my bedroom. That time I let him stay on top.

  It had been perfect—just as it had been almost every time between us since then.

  And these last three weeks have been perfect too.

  Ash had introduced me to his mother, and I immediately felt the weight of her expectations for him. And it was clear that while seeing him get serious about a strong Latino woman was not what she’d imagined for her only son, she was also a very warm and welcoming woman. We had become careful friends, and she had confided a bit in me about her fears and insecurities. Ash was right—some of them had to do with money—but he was also wrong. Most of them had to do with having no family except her son, and watching him leave time and again to risk his life in a job most people did because they had no other choice, or because they were seeking fortune. It was hard to understand why Ash did it.

  “To prove I can,” he said in answer to that very question as we lay together in my bed two days before he was going to fly back again.

  “You have nothing to prove,” I told him. “Or if you did, you just proved it to me a few minutes ago.”

  “Need me to prove that again?” he asked, pulling me against him and nestling his nose into my hair.