Scoring a Fake FIANCÉE: Mr. Match Book 2

by Stewart, Delancey

  I picked up my phone and texted Trace, waiting for an answer that I knew wouldn’t come.

  Henri stood, looking between us uncertainly. When my mother didn't rise, Henri met my eyes and I saw sympathy there, and warmth. He was a good man. A good friend.

  "Lianne," he said, offering a hand to my mother.

  The waitress smiled graciously and walked away, thanking us and clearly sensing there was some kind of standoff afoot.

  "Fine," my mother sniffed, setting her glass down and taking her time in gathering her bag and cardigan from the chair beside her.

  I drove us back to Temecula in relative silence. My mind whirled, trying to understand what my mother had said to Trace that would cause him to leave like that. She’d been pushing the whole time she’d been here—what had finally done it? I suspected it had more to do with the loss of the game today, maybe that combined with Maman’s constant pressure. But once he was gone, I’d realized there were things he needed to know, things I needed to tell him.

  I didn’t care what my mother thought. I didn’t care if she knew everything now. I just wanted to fix things with Trace—to tell him how important he had become to me.

  As we drove, my mother and Henri occasionally commented about the game, the meal or the things they saw outside the car. It seemed now that Trace was gone, my mother was going to be an eager sightseer.

  I took them to their little house after a quick stop at the store to ensure they had what they needed for dinner and breakfast the next day.

  "Will you be all right?" I asked Henri when we'd finished putting the groceries away. "I might need a bit of time—a day or so." I felt awful that Henri was caught in the middle of whatever was happening between my mother and me.

  He smiled at me and nodded. "I will be fine, Magalie. But if I might suggest—you should speak to your mother. Clear this up. Don't let it eat at you both."

  I heaved a sigh. I wasn't sure I could face her without saying something absolutely horrible, but I knew Henri was probably right.

  "It shouldn't sit," he said, his tone firm but warm. I looked up into his face, and it occurred to me how lucky I was to have Henri as a friend. "You will feel better to speak with her. Besides," he went on. "I spoke with Adam on the phone earlier, and he mentioned a friend who might be looking for a consultant. If it doesn't bother you, I thought I might stay a bit, learn a little from this winemaker and teach him what I can."

  My eyebrows rose. "Oh." Surprise made all the words fly from my mind. "So, you plan to stay? For . . ."

  "Not long, I think. A few weeks. If you don't mind."

  I shook my head. "Of course not. I'm sure you could extend the lease on the house. But . . . my mother?"

  "I haven't spoken with her about it."

  "I'll talk to her," I said. "She may be ready to go home anyway." I felt angry and sad as I glanced over at my mother who was emerging from the little hallway leading to the bedrooms. I wanted to believe she meant well, but the heavy-handed approach she employed when it came to what she thought was best for me was something I couldn't tolerate anymore. It had driven me out of my home country, and was about to drive a permanent stake between us. Henri was right. I needed to speak to her now.

  "I’ll pick up a rental car tomorrow morning," Henri told me. “And now I’m going to go to bed. To let you talk.” He kissed my cheek. "Good luck." I was impressed at Henri's independence, his initiative. I also found it was reassuring to think of him working just down the road. Having someone here from home would be nice. I watched him head back to the bedroom and was happy someone was getting some benefit from their visit.

  The door shut and the front room filled with shadows as the sun traced down the sky opposite the house. I took a deep breath to calm myself and I turned to face my mother.

  "Maman, we need to speak."

  "Oui," she agreed, sitting in one of the chairs by the window.

  I took another steadying breath and went to sit across from her. "What you did, whatever you said to Trace today, you crossed a line. In fact, coming here, trying to force Henri and me together—that was a line, too. And tricking Henri into believing I would marry him in the first place, sending me to an apprenticeship that was actually some kind of old-fashioned arrangement between you . . ." I trailed off, shocked at the list of offenses I'd just thrown out.

  Of course I'd known my mother had done all these things, but I'd dealt with them one at a time, found ways to excuse her. "You cannot manipulate me like this, you cannot play with my life anymore. You are my mother, but I am a grown woman."

  "I only want what is best for you." She wouldn’t meet my eye, and I sensed that even she might have been surprised at the list of acts I’d just recited.

  It didn’t feel that way to me. It felt like she wanted to control me. My happiness would be “best” for me, and I didn’t think she cared about that. "How can you say that? Couldn't you see how disappointed I was when Trace didn't come back to the restaurant? Can't you see how my heart is shattered?" I was surprised to hear the words escape my lips, but as they did I recognized their truth. I needed to talk to Trace.

  She shook her head lightly. "I did not tell him to leave, Magalie. He was realizing all on his own that he was not a good fit for you."

  I didn’t believe her. "You pushed him to realize that."

  "He did not need much pushing. Ma chere, it was not a good match."

  Anger threatened to force words from my lips, especially at her use of the word "match." I wanted to tell her that he was mathematically my exact match, according to San Diego's best matchmaker. It didn't make any sense to me on paper either, but the huge silly goaltender for the South Bay Sharks was the only man I wanted. And maybe believing I'd lost him had made me realize it.

  "You will feel better tomorrow," my mother said, holding her fingers up to the light and inspecting her cuticles.

  "Maman," I said, forcing my voice to steady. "This isn't for you to decide. It isn't your business. And if you do not promise to stay out of my love life, I will drive you to the airport right now."

  She looked stricken and stared at me with sad eyes. "You are making the same mistakes I did," she said. She watched me a long minute, and then the calm mask she wore began to crack. Her lips trembled and little lines appeared around her eyes as her shoulders rounded forward and she reached for my hand.

  "Magalie," she said, her voice a strained whisper now. "You don't know what it is like to believe someone loves you, only to have them leave. To trust someone with all your heart, to carry his child—and to have him walk away." A single tear tracked through the powder on her cheek. "I loved your father. With everything inside me I loved him." She shook her head and pulled herself up straighter. "And I told myself I'd never give anyone else the power to hurt me like he did. I don’t want that for you. To know that kind of pain."

  "Maman," I whispered. I'd heard the story, she'd told me how he'd left as soon as he found out about me, how her parents had pushed her away as well, but she'd never allowed me to see the pain it had caused her.

  "I love him still," she whispered, dropping her eyes. And then she looked up, a glint of steel in her gaze. "Somewhere in the back of my heart, I do. And that is a weakness. If I can teach you anything, it will be not to give anyone that power over you. Can't you see that a match made with the intellect is superior to one made with the heart? Our hearts are blind, they are ignorant. We make mistakes, we fall in love and we are devastated and made less. Do not trust your heart, Magalie. Never."

  A laugh rolled out of me, but it held no humor. It was an incredulous noise. "You can't really believe that. That love is so worthless?"

  "Take Emile and me. Emile and I both understand the reasons behind our union." She sniffed, and I sensed something more, something she wasn't saying. "We have agreed." There was something else going on, something she wasn’t telling me.

  I shook my head. "But Maman, love is something everyone wants."

  "It is a weapon," she said s
imply.

  "I don't want to believe that," I told her. "I don't want to be that cynical, Maman. Love, I think, is a gift. It is a treasure. It is something I want more than anything else in the world, and something I will seek and protect if I'm ever lucky enough to discover it." I believed I had discovered it, actually, but I wasn’t about to debate that with her now.

  Maman dropped her dark eyes to her lap and stared at her hands a long moment. "I wanted to protect you from that. To teach you what I learned in the very hardest way."

  I shook my head and took her hand, a dawning understanding making me realize what had been beneath each one of my mother’s horrible acts. She had been trying to protect me. In a really awful impossible way. "I don't think you can."

  Because I was already in love. And I needed to tell him, even if in the end my heart would end up as broken and dark as my mother's.

  Chapter 36

  Flowery Fucking Feelings

  Trace

  I got home after leaving Shelter Island to find Fuerte and Erica on the couch, and I suspected they were waiting for me, ready to console me after the loss. They just didn't know the magnitude of my real loss today.

  "Hey," Erica called as I stepped through the door.

  Fuerte shot a hand up, and I felt his eyes on me as I stalked to the kitchen and pulled a beer from the refrigerator.

  I didn't want to talk to them, didn't want to talk about the game, or about Magalie, or about anything. But I didn't want to be alone either.

  Mostly I wanted to morph into a block of stone and make it impossible to feel all these fucking feelings. I'd spent a lifetime not feeling things, and in a few short weeks, Magalie had managed to unpack all those dark shoved-away and carefully taped-up boxes, and parade all my neglected little feelings out to run around. Now I couldn't stuff them back into their boxes. I hated her for it, for making me feel things, and I hated myself for being unable to stop.

  There was a part of me that thought there was a chance I might actually cry.

  I slumped into the armchair next to the couch.

  "What's this? You don't want to sit on my lap today?" Fuerte teased.

  "Fuck you." My sense of humor had been tackled, beaten and tied up by all these other flowery fucking feelings.

  "Nice," Erica said, her voice sharp. But then she leaned forward and made me look at her. "Hey," she said, her voice softer now. "Nothing's for sure. We don't know anything about playoffs yet."

  We had a week off while the league counted points and announced the brackets for playoffs. Simple math would determine the entrants, but thanks to my ineptitude, we were tied for seventh with Anaheim. They had to lose for us to make playoffs, and they didn't play until Sunday.

  "Oh, thanks for the information," I told her, unable to manage my anger. "So glad you're keeping track."

  Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. "You don't have to be an asshole."

  Except I kind of did. Game of Thrones was paused on the television that covered the far wall and I pointed at it and nodded. Caveman for "turn on the fucking show so I don't have to talk."

  "Look, Johnson," Fuerte said, picking up the remote. "The loss today wasn't your fault. Hammer and Isley were busy picking fucking daisies down there or something. The goal should never have been open in the first place."

  "Twice," I bit out, knowing full well that the second goal was completely on me.

  He stared at me a long minute like he might give me that same crap everyone else did, about taking a team to win or lose. But Fuerte finally pressed play on the remote and I felt a tiny bit of the tension release from my shoulders as Tyrion Lannister delivered some of the best-written lines in television.

  That guy, man. He might have been small, but Tyrion was my hero. He was abandoned by everyone who should have loved him. He had nothing going for him except his brain. And he still got the ladies and managed to win the battles.

  I drank two more beers and began to feel like I was unspooling a bit. Turning up the volume on the show made it almost impossible for my mind to churn around the day's second big loss, and for a few hours I managed to pretend I wasn't going to have to think about Magalie, about her mother, about the way my heart had shriveled into a dark little lump of shit in my chest.

  But then someone rang the doorbell, and Erica went to get it as every cell in my body spun right back up, eager like fucking puppies. One second later, I heard Magalie's soft voice filtering between the sounds of battle coming from the television. And whatever was left of my heart thumped inside me, twisting painfully and clenching until I thought I might actually die.

  "He's here. He's moping," Erica said, and I could hear her voice coming closer as they walked into the living room, approaching behind me. I didn't turn around. I wouldn't survive a look at Magalie's face.

  Could I pretend to have fallen asleep?

  No, Erica would just wake me up.

  Maybe I could pretend like I'd died. But I wasn't that good at holding my breath.

  It was too late to run.

  Fuck.

  I sighed and sat up, putting my empty beer bottle on the table in front of me. I wasn't going to be able to get out of this.

  I stood, still not facing her, and muttered, "Outside." Then I turned and walked to the door that opened onto the sprawling patio that faced the beach and stepped out, holding the door open so Magalie could follow.

  She did, and a moment later I had to look at her.

  She stood facing me, the patio lights lacing shining fingers through her curly hair, her cheeks lit with color. "Hi," she whispered, and the way she was looking at me made me want to kneel in front of her, bury my head against her and beg her to never leave me. Her eyes were huge and beautiful, and I could feel the questions they held as she scanned my face.

  But I didn't do that. I’d already decided this was over. Investing myself in her, in whatever this was, had tanked my soccer career. I needed to defend the goal. Playoffs. The team. My career. My fucking heart. I sat down heavily in one of the patio chairs instead. "Hi."

  "You left suddenly," she said.

  "Your mother thought it would be best."

  She sighed. "I'm so sorry about my mother. I've talked to her. She won't interfere again."

  "No," I said, and it came out like a bark. "It's not . . . it doesn't matter."

  Magalie's eyebrows pulled together and her mouth condensed into a line.

  I pushed down my desire to reach for her, to soothe her hurt feelings. I went on. "She's right. She could see things clearly from the outside, and I think we were just in the middle of whatever this was. And so we were confused. But she's right. This," I motioned between us. "This was all pretend anyway. And that's good because it would never work. Never in a million years." The words shot out of me in a rush.

  "What?" Magalie began to shake her head. "No, Trace. I came here because I realized something when Maman was trying to explain herself. She was trying to tell me that love is dangerous, that it isn't something I should want. But I told her," she ducked her head, took a deep breath and then met my eyes again. "It's already too late. I am falling in love with you."

  A spike of something impaled me, but I was too spun up to know whether it was happiness at her words, or fear that she’d said them, or acknowledgement that I felt the same way. "No," I said, cutting her off. "No, you're not."

  "Trace, I—"

  "I'm just going to stop you there." My heart clenched as I chose my next words, as if it was trying to stop me from saying them, stop me from spewing lies. "I love one thing—soccer. And having you around, pretending to be whatever we've been pretending to be . . . well, you saw the game today. You saw what it did to me. It's a distraction, and I can't have that. Playoffs were on the line, and I was out there like some kind of lovesick puppy, more focused on you than on the fucking ball, and . . ." I shook my head, deciding the only way to save everything I understood about myself—soccer and my career and my identity—was to push her as far away as I coul
d.

  I stood up, hating myself for the words I was about to say. "I don't feel the same way, and having you around is messing with my focus. So this needs to be over. Now."

  She stood and stepped close to me, that earthy warm scent threatening to break down my resolve, to change my mind. My fingers itched to touch her, to feel the softness of her hair, her skin. "Trace," she whispered, and I saw tears standing in her eyes.

  Fuck, if she cried, I'd lose it. "No," I said simply. "I just don't have time for you. For whatever the hell this is."

  "But you said . . . I thought . . ." One of the tears slipped over the edge of her bottom eyelid and slid down her cheek, tracing a line next to her slim upturned nose. "I think you're lying to me."

  I sucked in a breath, on the verge of losing it and admitting I loved her too. But I couldn’t. "I'm not."

  "I think you're afraid."

  "Hey, pretending to be engaged was your idea. I was just going along with it. And now it's time to stop."

  "That's not what this is about," she said, pulling herself up taller, which brought her about to my sternum. "This has become something more. You're just afraid to admit it."

  "It doesn't matter," I told her, bending down slightly to meet her eyes. "Don't you see that? Even if it was something more, something real, I can't have it. We can't have it. It's fucking up my game, and if I screw up my game, I screw up my career. You don't understand. This is all I have." I waved my arms around me, indicating my life. "This is literally all I have."

  She took one of my hands. "You have me."

  "No," I said, pulling my hand free as my stomach clenched. "You need to leave." I turned away from her so she couldn't see the way my face was beginning to crumple, the way my heart was trying to revolt inside me.

  "Trace, don't do this," she whispered.

  "Please go," I said, not facing her.

  She stood there for a long minute, and then I heard the outside patio gate unlock as she let herself out. I heard her soft footfalls on the path leading back to the street at the back of the house. I listened to Magalie leave and then I sat down in one of the chairs facing the beach and tried to figure out how I could continue living if my heart was missing. Because when she'd left, she had taken the blackened useless thing with her.