"I'm pretty sure that's just you. And you're not going to get matched with Fuerte. He's mine." Erica smiled in a way that challenged my gag reflex.
Don't get me wrong—I liked seeing my twin sister happy. I'd spent most of my life trying to accomplish exactly that. We hadn't had it easy growing up. Our dad had taken off before we were born, Mom had died when we were eight, and we’d been through a string of foster families after that. So we had become a team—looking out for each other, sticking together, having each other's back.
So I should have been happy when she found love, I knew. Maybe I should have been relieved. It was like those guys on Game of Thrones—my watch had come to an end. Only I wasn't dead, and I didn't have to wear a huge black cape crafted from crow feathers or stand on some wall made out of ice. We lived in San Diego, so the odds of white walkers bursting from a frozen lake were pretty slim, really. Though I wouldn't have minded seeing a dragon or two around.
"I'll be retired before I manage to finish this, sis. It's like a horrible test. I've never been good at tests. And this has all the family stuff . . ." I draped myself over the back of the couch, blocking her view of the television.
Erica pushed at my head, which had landed on the pillow in her lap so I could whine more effectively, and she heaved a frustrated sigh, rolling her eyes at me. "I know the family part is crappy, but you've always totally underestimated yourself in the test-taking department. Go finish this."
"I just want to drink scotch, play soccer, and die alone. Why won't you let me?" My back was starting to hurt from being draped sideways over the couch, so I slid all the way down, landing in a reclined position next to my sister, my head still on her lap looking up at her.
"Get off me."
I swung my legs down and sat up. "I don't need a match."
"You're driving me nuts, you need to grow up, and one day I want to be Auntie Erica."
"I feel like it’d be weird if I called you that.
“Oh my God, seriously. You need a girlfriend."
“Why? I have you. And Fuerte.”
"I'm not your match, I'm your sister. And we have to live our own lives."
I knew she was right, but it still hurt to hear her say it. I knew it was immature and ridiculous to be pouting over my twenty-seven year old sister talking about moving out, but I couldn't help it. I didn't want her to go. I tried refusing to allow her to date Fuerte in the first place, but that didn't go very well. Plus, he's a good guy, and I actually like him a lot. Of all the guys on the team she could have picked, he's probably the one I would have chosen for her.
And while I'd dated a little in the past, I'd never been serious about anyone. And those women I might have gotten serious about could have potentially been scared away by Erica's dominant presence in my life. We were probably the definition of co-dependent, but Erica had taken great strides recently in changing all of that. And now she was forcing me ahead, too. The whole relationship between her and Fuerte surprised me a little bit—she made it look easy. But for me, the idea of putting yourself in front of someone and asking them to love you was terrifying. Maybe because that’s what we’d been forced to do over and over as kids, and no one ever had.
Erica picked up the remote and turned off the television. "Fine," she said, standing and walking to the dining table where the laptop sat open. "Want me to help you?"
I pushed out my bottom lip and made my best sad puppy face. "Yes please," I said.
She sighed again, and began typing. She didn't even have to ask me half the questions because she already knew the answers, and she knew what to put in the ones about our parents. I tried not to think about that stuff, but she knew their names, their birthdays, everything. I didn’t want to know—they’d never wanted to know me. Or at least Dad hadn’t. I kicked back on the couch and made myself comfortable, switching the television back on and turning it to watch FOX Soccer Plus.
As I watched, I rolled the shoulder that had been bothering me all season and thought about my life as a soccer player. Not a lot of guys were willing to sacrifice themselves to keep their team in the game, which was why I was a good keeper. I'd been kicked in the face, kicked in the junk, dislocated a shoulder, and smashed my head into the goalpost—all in the name of saving the ball. But I was one of the best goalies in the league, and that was something I was effing proud about.
At the moment, it was critical I kept demonstrating my value at work. Marissa, the ex-owner’s ex-wife, had ended up with ownership of the team in their very messy split, and she was making a lot of noise about selling us. New owners meant new ideas, and new ideas could mean new players. I wanted to stay a Shark, and I needed to stay on my game to ensure it.
Soccer was pretty much my life. Well, being there for my sis, and soccer. And if Erica was insisting on the whole ‘next phase of adulthood’ thing—if she really thought it was time we looked after ourselves—then I was going to be sure as hell that the soccer part of my life worked out. Because if I lost that? I'd have nothing.
Chapter 40
French for “Faking out Maman”
Magalie
"Maman, non," I sliced my hand across my chest in a definitive motion as I spoke to my overbearing mother on the phone, though I realized she could not see me from France. I spoke with my hands whether I was on the phone or not. I couldn't help it, and I needed my mother to hear how seriously I did not want her racing around the world to visit me after I’d been here less than six months. Not yet.
"But Magalie," she said in French, "I know you are going to change your mind anyway, and if I can come there and help you change it just a little bit quicker, then you will not have wasted so much time. These are your productive years—the best ones for children. I don't want you to wake up one day, old and dried out, and regret your barren womb."
This was classic Maman. She tossed off mentions of my "barren womb" without a second thought, but when it came to being supportive about my accomplishments, it was like pulling teeth. "Maman," I said, my voice rising in an effort to practice patience with the woman who was more capable of driving me to anger than anyone else in the world. "Maman, I know you don't agree with my choice to move, but in many ways you forced me into it."
My mother made an aggravated little noise in the back of her throat. I stared out my sliding glass doors at the vineyards marching over the hills behind the building where I rented my apartment. The sun was just beginning to reach purple and red fingers over the horizon to the east, and my heart settled as the familiar landscape out my window began to appear. This was the right place for me. Among the vines, doing the work I loved, with a real chance to build a career and a life. I’d found a position where I could lead winemaking for a small winery, which was working to establish itself through old world-style wines, and September was smack dab in the middle of the crush. This would be my first season in the lead as we blended and bottled wines for the coming years.
I would have liked to have done it in France where I grew up, but she had made that virtually impossible because there was no place in France far enough away to avoid her controlling nature, and she would not hear the word no from me. "Maman, I'm happy here for now. I'm establishing myself, and building a reputation."
"You should be building a family," she sniffed.
"There will be time for that." I said the words, not knowing if they were true. My mother’s idea of family wasn’t quite the one I had. Hers involved a marriage that made good practical sense and children to carry on the family name. It had little to do with the heart, and that didn’t feel right to me. We’d never agreed on this.
My mother's greatest fear in life was to be alone, and I didn't share her worry. My greatest fear wasn't solitude—it was that nothing I did would ever matter, that I’d never be allowed to find out what kind of strength I had. Maman had a habit of arranging everything for me. And while I would have liked to meet a man, have a family perhaps, it wasn't my first priority. And Maman’s urgency to marry me off had very littl
e to do with what I wanted, or with love, and everything to do with answering her own fears. "Maman, listen, I need to get ready for work. I will call you tomorrow."
I could hear my mother sniff, offended that I would end a call with her so suddenly. "Very well," she said tightly. "J'taime, ma petite."
"J'taime, Maman." I slid my phone onto the round table next to the window and let out a long breath, rubbing my hands over my face. Talking to my mother was challenging at the best of times. Since moving to Temecula, where we were nine hours behind my home in France, I had found the only time I had to speak to her was early in the morning—before work, sometimes before coffee. And that was the ultimate challenge.
But I was keen to get dressed quickly and hurry to Chateau Le Sec to face the next part of my day, which would be far more fulfilling.
I dressed quickly—work clothes for me were jeans and a tank top with a loose flannel thrown over the top for the cooler mornings—and pulled my hair into a messy bun on top of my head. I slathered on sunscreen and finished my coffee. I was in the car a mere fifteen minutes after my frustrating conversation with my mother, and stepping through door at Chateau Le Sec ten minutes later.
Chloe Tennyson was already inside the tasting room, organizing things and dusting the long tasting counter as the first beams of true sunlight flooded the arched windows overlooking the patio outside and the Temecula Valley beyond.
"Bonjour,” I sang out, stepping into what was quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the world.
Chloe turned with a huge smile, her blond hair in wild tendrils around her face, and sang back, "Magalie! Bonjour!” She pulled the coffee carafe from behind her and poured us each a cup, sliding mine across the counter to me.
Coffee had become our morning ritual, and I'd become addicted to the delicious American coffee they favored here. It more than did the job, and while there were some things about American cuisine that had been hard to adapt to, coffee was not one of them. I'd already been planning to set up some kind of underground coffee trade once I went back home.
"How is the harvest looking?" I asked Chloe as I took the first sip. I knew they'd been pulling grapes in over the past few days and was eager to get to work. Bringing in the grapes wasn’t something I’d been involved with, though I’d offered.
She smiled. Chloe had been an exchange student from France when she'd met Adam Tennyson, the owner of Chateau Le Sec. "The fruit is perfect," she said. "I cannot wait to see what you and Adam do with it this year."
I sipped my coffee, excitement for work roiling inside me. I was making wine, I was among new friends, and I was free of the entanglement my mother had pushed me into in France, when she had basically arranged a marriage for me without my knowledge or consent. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to see the text. My heart sank.
Maybe I wasn't free of my mother's plans for me, after all.
"What is it?" Chloe asked, putting down her cup as concern wrinkled her forehead.
"My mother," I said, reading the text a third time as shock trickled through me. "She's bought a ticket. She's coming in a month. And she's bringing Henri. She will not give up!"
Chloe sucked in a sharp breath and then whispered, "You don’t want your mother here?"
I shook my head. “My relationship with my mother is . . . impossible.”
“How do you mean? And wait, who is Henri?”
We switched to French—I had more words to describe exactly how frustrating life with Maman had been. “Maman is trying to force me into a marriage I don’t want—to Henri, and she doesn’t think I should be focusing on a career. She says I should marry someone capable and smart who will want to take care of me and worry about everything else later.”
“How romantic.” Chloe shook her head, her mouth drawn into a frown.
“Maman’s ideal relationship is the opposite of romantic. In fact, she’s always told me not to trust my heart, that love is to be avoided.” I told Chloe a little about how my mother had manipulated my whole life, and how her latest effort had resulted in me reaching out to California wineries and ultimately ending up here. The man she’d tried to make me marry, Henri, was a friend of the family, a winemaker in Avignon. Maman had set up an "internship" for me there, leading me to believe she was actually supportive of my desire to be a winemaker. In truth, she had promised my hand in marriage to sweet, kind Henri—who was absolutely not my type and just enough older for it to be slightly creepy—and sent me there under false pretenses.
That had been almost a year ago. I thought I'd set Henri straight, but my mother made it sound like they both still harbored hope that I'd somehow change my mind. It had been the impetus for finding a job here and moving as far away from home as I could.
"I was clear enough that this wasn’t going to happen," I said. "I told her I wasn’t marrying him and then I moved halfway around the world, isn’t that clear?"
I texted my mother back furiously, but she didn’t respond.
"She does not seem like the type to take no for an answer," Chloe observed. "Why is she so committed to marrying you off?"
I sighed, putting my phone down and dropping my head into my hands. "She is terrified I will make her mistake."
"Which was?"
"Falling in love." I looked back up at Chloe.
Chloe’s mouth dropped open. "What? Why would that be a mistake?"
I slumped into one of the tall stools next to the counter. I'd heard the story so many times, I didn't have to think to repeat it to Chloe. My mother had been young, beautiful, evidently not very smart. She'd fallen for my father, who had been a playboy. They were in love, but it was an affair of passion for him, and he wouldn't marry her, even after she was pregnant. Her heart was broken and her parents had disowned her because they'd already set up a match, which she'd broken to be with my father. When he'd moved on, she'd been alone with me, and life had not been easy. She’d worked multiple jobs, I’d been left home alone as a very young child, and we often weren’t sure where our next meal would come from.
"Your poor mother. I can’t blame her for not wanting to be in an arranged marriage though. How old fashioned.”
“It was—they’d been doing it in my family for generations. The man ended up being very wealthy, running a big company. I think my mother always regretted not marrying him for the security.”
“Did your grandparents ever forgive her?"
I smiled, thinking of my grandfather's kind face. "Eventually, when I was three or so, but they wouldn’t help her financially." I lifted my coffee cup to my lips again. "But a few years ago, Maman met Emile, and she's happy now and taken care of."
“So she does believe in love now?”
I shook my head. “She has been very clear that the biggest mistake she ever made was not listening to her parents, going ahead with the practical match they had made for her. She says she and Emile have an agreement. Not love.”
Chloe made a clucking noise of understanding. "She trying to set up an agreement for you.”
"It's awful," I said.
"It is," Chloe agreed. "She thinks she’s taking care of you, though."
"Well I feel terrible for poor Henri. I’ve emailed him and explained everything, and I thought he understood." I put down my cup so I could explain my point better, waving my hands as I spoke. "Maybe he still thinks there's a chance I'll marry him. He isn't very assertive, and maybe my mother is wrangling him to come here."
"Maybe you need to show them both that there is no chance," Chloe suggested.
"I've told them."
"Yes, but show them." She wiggled her eyebrows.
"How?" I lifted my hands, palms up, in confusion.
"Be already taken when they arrive." Chloe smiled, her dark brown eyes shining above her full pink lips. She looked pleased with herself, like she'd just solved the world's greatest problem.
"I’m not dating anyone.” I shook my head, making a curl spring loose from my bun. “I don’t want to, eithe
r. I don’t need complications. I have work.”
"Sign up for Mr. Match," Chloe said. And then she proceeded to explain about a dating site she'd heard of on the news, and forced me into the back office to fill out the longest questionnaire of my life after going back to tell Adam I’d be late because I was helping her with something up front. It took two hours and included questions about my preferred fruits and my opinions about smoked fish.
"I don't understand why it cares what I think of hamsters as pets," I called out to Chloe at the tasting counter just outside the door. “And I don’t want a match, Chloe. I should just find an actor.”
"It's very scientific," she replied. “I saw it on the news. And if you end up meeting your real match? Won’t that be a good thing?”
"It also says there are no guarantees," I told her, stepping back through the door after finishing the profile and hitting submit. “If I’m going to do this, I need a man now.”
She turned and raised an eyebrow at me. "Look at you, darling. The dark lush hair, those deep soulful eyes. Your perfect French complexion and those curves! You'll be matched before you know it."
“It specifically says it could take months or even years, and that the match depends on your perfect algorithmic match also being in the database. It has nothing to do with looks.”
Chloe shrugged, and I envied her easy certainty about everything. “But it doesn’t say it won’t happen right away. Worth a try.”
"I don't think I want to be matched," I moaned, readjusting my bun.
"It would only be to show your mother you aren't available. And Henri," Chloe reminded me. "Ooh, you know what would work best?"
A little pit of dread opened in my stomach. "What?"
"If you pretended to be engaged. Then there would be no questions at all."
"You want me to convince a man I haven't even met yet to pretend we are engaged? And make my mother believe this has all happened in two weeks?"
Mr. Match: The Boxed Set Page 21