Jade's Match, the Jewel Series Book 7

by Hallee Bridgeman

  Marvin gestured at the sitting area. “Please make yourselves at home, and take some time to get to know each other before we launch the campaign. I’ve had lunch from a local Mediterranean restaurant brought in. Help yourselves. I’ll be back in about forty-five minutes.”

  As he shut the door behind him, Davis stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He suddenly felt nervous and unsure of himself. To cover, he smiled at Cora. “So, I know we go to the same school. What is your major?”

  “Pre-law. I want to eventually be a sports agent.” She walked over to the food and picked up a paper plate. Inspecting the food in front of her rather than looking at him, she asked, “You?”

  If she actually sounded interested, he might have elaborated. “International business.” He followed her lead and loaded a plate with grilled lamb, saffron rice, pita bread, hummus, and salad. She sat in a chair and immediately bowed her head, obviously blessing the food. He thought it might have been nice for her to have waited for him, but did not say anything. Instead, he silently blessed his own food and refused to react.

  As soon as she raised her head, he picked up his fork. “So, I know you agreed to this, and we just signed a mountain of paperwork, but I’m starting to get a sense that you don’t really want to.”

  Her eyes widened, obviously surprised at his directness. “Why would you think that?”

  He thought he accomplished quite a bit of restraint when he didn’t laugh out loud. Instead, he took a bite of rice to give himself time to formulate his response. “Because you’re not shy or uncomfortable, which was my first excuse for your attitude. Instead, you’re clearly hostile. So, I’m curious. We’ve never met before, have we?”

  “Are you implying that you wouldn’t remember if we’d met?”

  He gritted his teeth and smiled, annoyed and slightly angry. “Nice non-answer. That’s twice I’ve asked you direct questions and you’ve answered with questions.” He nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, but he held up a hand. “Know what? Never mind.”

  They ate in silence for about five minutes before she spoke again. “Okay. Here it is.” She straightened her spine and met his eyes. “I’m trying to decide if I really should have allowed myself to be drawn into a fake romantic match with someone with your reputation. That’s all.”

  “I’m sorry. My reputation?” Of everything she could have said, that was not what he expected.

  “Yes, your reputation.” She stared at him as if the conclusion she had reached concerning his character should be self-evident. “As in your picture plastered all over social media and the local news during a drunken brawl at that dive near campus last week.” She set her plate down. “I would think that an athlete seeking a place on the Olympic team would have been less inclined to act that way.”

  “Less inclined?” His jaw dropped open, appalled at her conclusions. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”

  He remembered the incident, of course. A group of guys from the hockey team had gone to a local pub to celebrate the end of finals. Things had gotten out of hand. A friend had texted him, the captain of the team, to come help break everything up. By the time Davis arrived, a full-on brawl had already ensued. He and a couple other sober-minded men had dragged teammates away one at a time and eventually broke it up. A few of them ended up in jail that night. He remembered his picture in the paper, but it never occurred to him that someone would think he had contributed to the problem instead of the solution. In fact, the article itself commended him and his friends for stepping in and breaking it up before things got even worse.

  “I think you know what I mean. I don’t think I need to explain it.” She haughtily raised her chin as she settled back into the chair and crossed her long legs. As she looked up at him, her eyes narrowed. “But we can probably still make it work. I don’t think it will damage my reputation too much. I think that if we’re careful --”

  “Hang on. Your reputation?” Davis' temper started to boil as he cut her off. He really couldn’t reconcile the wholesome girl-next-door silver medalist he’d seen on countless television interviews and internet videos with this judgmental shrew. “Well, now I’m having some second thoughts. I’m beginning to wonder if I should have allowed myself to be paired up with a self-righteous know-it-all with the social graces of a shark. While I’m down in Tampa, we’ll need to make sure to visit Sea World so you can swim with some of your own kind.”

  He surged to his feet and tossed his paper plate into the open paper bag sitting on the table next to the aluminum pans. Clenching his hands into fists, he stormed to the window, looking out at the manicured lawn of the office park. All of his excitement at this venture fizzled out, and irritation replaced it, making his neck muscles tighten painfully.

  Cora did not follow him, nor did she speak again. For the next fifteen minutes, he stayed completely still, trying very hard to cool the haze of red temper he started to see in his peripheral vision. He clenched his teeth hard and took long, deep breaths through his nose, praying silently for control.

  On the ice, he embraced his temper and let it feed his sport, his position as team captain and head enforcer. All the players on his team knew that Davis had their backs. The opposing teams gave “Dauntless” Davis a wide berth. They knew Davis would make them pay dearly if they took a cheap shot at any of his teammates. He would home in on his target with uncanny focus. At impact, he would inflict pain in astonishing ways. The most intimidating thing about Davis is that he never, ever let anything stop him. Instead, he used everything to his advantage. His pads were his armor. His skates were his swords. His stick was a deadly club. In the rink, everyone recognized Davis as a warrior first and a hockey player second, even though he was an exceptional and gifted hockey player. Though he had lost nearly as many games as he had won in his lifetime, he had also tossed the gloves off more times than he could count. In all those years, in all those games, no one had ever gotten the better of him during those violent seconds before he entered the penalty box. All he had to do was turn his mind off, lose all conscious control, and let his body become a 225-pound, 6-foot-tall missile racing over the ice at thirty miles per hour.

  Off the ice, he never ever wanted to lose control like that. He had only one time in his life, back in sixth grade when Andrew Marsoni had pulled the sides of his eyes tight and mocked his mother’s Korean accent. Davis had snapped and hurt Andrew. Bad. It had taken two adult teachers to pull him off the boy, and words about charges and a lawsuit were bandied about for a few days. After that, his Special Forces father began counseling him into channeling his rage through his hockey stick.

  He couldn’t believe he had let a spoiled, entitled rich girl’s ignorant remarks spur him into an emotional response. Obviously, he had built her up in his imagination; made her into something more than she truly was. He couldn’t blame her for being herself. He had only himself to blame for his lofty false expectations and subsequent disappointment.

  Gradually, the anger he felt toward Cora Anderson dissipated, and only a mild irritation remained. Feeling safe, he turned and looked at her. She sat sideways in the chair, using her drawn up legs as a prop for her notebook. She frowned as she focused on whatever she crafted. He could see her pencil moving up and down as she drew broad strokes.

  She didn’t look up until he moved forward. Quickly closing the cover of the notebook, she tossed it and the pencil into her bag and straightened in the chair. “Davis, I’d like to apologize --”

  “Don’t bother. I’m okay with the pretense. I’ll smile pretty for the camera with the best of them. But I get it. We aren’t friends. And we don’t need to be friends or even talk when the cameras are off. We can be fake friends.”

  She opened her mouth as if to argue, but then closed it, nodded stiffly, and said, “Fine.”

  “Yeah. It is fine.” He nodded. “Not sure I could be real friends with someone like you anyway.”

  “Someone like me?”

  “Right.” He n
odded again. “Fake.”

  Her eyes widened. “What do you mean by that?”

  He shrugged one shoulder slightly. “You’re absolutely nothing like you make yourself out to be online. You’re fake. Makes me think you should be great at teaching me to be fake─like you.” He walked out of the conference room and made his way to the elevators.

  CHAPTER 2

  Preparing for her selfie, Cora angled the phone just up and slightly to the right, then turned her head and snapped the picture. Jade’s face on the screen looking back at her had a happy glow, a hint of excitement and anticipation. Inside, though, the real Cora struggled with nerves, anxiety, and a little foreboding.

  Blind date tonight! Friend of a friend set us up. Hope he likes sports as much as I do.

  She frowned as she read the caption. Blind Date Tonight. That wasn’t exactly true. It was a date, but she knew who her date was. A friend of a friend set us up. That was sort of true. She knew Davis liked hockey and he had claimed he watched them compete — a little bit of fake and a little bit of almost truth. It felt a little overdone, but it would get attention which was the intent. She found herself second guessing everything she did online ever since Davis had called her fake the last time they spoke. His words hurt her feelings a little bit, and that pain informed her that they held some truth. Maybe she needed to deal with that.

  She walked to the mirror above her dresser and adjusted the strap of her dress. She wore a purple dress that hugged her figure. It had wide shoulder straps and straps that crossed over her chest in the front, making wearing any kind of necklace unnecessary. Instead, she wore several bracelets on both arms and large silver hoop earrings.

  She didn’t want to be fake. Granted, she was playing a part and, sure, she was getting paid to play that part. Certainly, there would be some people who would choose to believe this “romance” was the real deal while VelTech’s international marketing department turned Dauntless Davis and Jade Anderson into America’s newest sweethearts. Could she live with that? Was this pretend romantic match going to hurt anyone? Was it going to hurt her?

  Just as she finished applying lipstick that matched her dress, she heard the doorbell ring. She scooped up her shoes and rushed through the house.

  Determined to make this night fun despite their original hostilities, she smiled as she opened the door. She did not expect the thoughts about how handsome Davis looked. He wore black slacks and a black button-down shirt that he’d left open at the collar. She also didn’t expect to think about how good his aftershave smelled as it mingled with the sea breeze coming off the water of the Cape.

  “Hi,” she greeted, opening her door wider. “Welcome.”

  He did not return her smile. “Thanks.” She stepped aside as he entered the cottage.

  Her parents had bought the little home on Cape Cod before she and her twin brother were born. She’d come here for summers her entire life, but tried to see it through his eyes. An island bar separated the living area and kitchen. A dining nook sat against a wall of windows that looked out on dune grass and sand dunes. In the distance, she could see the dark blue of Cape Cod highlighted with staccato whitecaps hinting at the evening tide to come.

  Pastel rugs covered gleaming Spanish tile floors, and cream-colored couches and chairs topped with pastel pillows formed a cozy sitting area. Her mother’s paintings of harbors and ships graced the walls. White stones formed a fireplace, and lanterns flanked a large blue wooden anchor on the mantel.

  She thought of all the friends and family who had filled the three bedrooms upstairs and the two queen-sized sofa beds in this room over the years. Her thoughts then turned to all the volleyball games she’d played out there on the snow-white sand. As much as she loved her parents’ home in Boston and all the living her family had done there, this little cottage on the shore of Cape Cod held cherished moments, precious memories, and as her life became very public, the walls provided a sanctuary where she could just hide from the world and relax. When she walked in the doors, tension shed from her body and she felt herself come together. She felt closer to God, felt like she could think clearer and could breathe cleaner.

  “Nice place,” Davis observed, standing in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets. He turned just his upper body and caught her eye. “Thought you lived in Virginia.”

  “I do. I grew up in Boston, though. And this is just my family’s summer home.” His eyebrow twitched, and so did the corner of his mouth. Was that a stifled smirk again? Was he looking down on her because of her parents' financial success? Cora couldn’t help but raise her voice a little as if to speak over his apparent disapproval. Her smile grew so wide it hurt her cheeks a bit. “We used to move in on Memorial Day and stay until Labor Day. But, now my twin brother is at football training camp in Texas. My parents don’t come as often these days. After all, we’re both grown and pretty much gone.”

  Her memories flew over two decades worth of time spent in the kitchen, on the back deck, in the wet sand of the shore. Her smile turned genuine, thinking about the love contained in these walls. With the fluid balance of an Olympic volleyballer, she perched on the edge of the coffee table to don her silver sandals.

  “You have a twin?” he asked.

  “Yeah. My baby brother by a few minutes. He’s a senior this year. I took a year off for the games last year, so he managed to get ahead of me school-wise. What about you?”

  “What about me what?” he prompted.

  She grinned, realizing he still had his guard up. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “Nope,” Davis explained.

  So that’s how it was going to be. Cora finished buckling her shoes and stood, realizing that the heels made her about four inches taller than the man standing in the middle of her living room. “Did you send out any preemptive posts about tonight?”

  He retrieved the phone from his pocket and held it up. “I did. But, I have only a few hundred followers versus what’s probably your six figures.”

  “Seven,” she corrected.

  He paused, then with a skeptical scoff he clarified, “Millions?”

  Cora nodded, keeping her features neutral. “Millions. Across all social media platforms, I average about two million followers on each.” She crossed over to the kitchen island and picked up her phone. “Ready to launch this campaign? Probably grow your following by at least a few hundred.”

  He finally turned his entire body to face her. She still couldn’t read him very well. Was she reading too much into his expression? His body language? Was that look on his face excitement or reluctance? “Sure. You think one picture will do it?”

  Despite her nerves, she accessed her camera and crossed over to him, bending her knees slightly as she stood next to him and held up the phone for their first selfie. “Let’s try. I have no idea if people will follow you because of me or not, but that’s the plan, isn’t it?”

  Her bare shoulder brushed against his shirt. The angle wasn’t right, so she leaned further in. On the screen, she could see him look briefly at her before turning his face back to the phone and smiling a huge, surprised smile. “You do one now,” she prompted, tossing her straight black hair over her shoulder and changing the angle of her head so it would look like a different picture.

  He held his phone up and turned to look at her, his expression ensuring that anyone looking at the picture would see his attraction for her. As soon as she could, she stepped away from him and accessed one of the social media platforms that she’d integrated with a couple other accounts and contemplated what to write, finally typing:

  My date tonight, #TeamUSA hockey star Dauntless Davis Elliott! He’s a hottie in person, ladies. #goingforthegold

  “Okay?” she asked, holding up her phone so he could read the caption. She noticed his cheeks turn slightly red before he nodded and held up his phone for her inspection.

  Feel like I already scored the game-winning goal! My date is none other than #TeamUSA’s jewel, Jade. Jus
t as beautiful in person.

  She analyzed what he said. How much of his text was fake? Not much, assuming he really thought she looked beautiful. She nodded in approval. “Perfect.” She slipped her phone into her lavender beaded clutch and snapped it shut. “Ready?”

  “Yep.” He followed her to the door and paused on the front step while she locked it. She could hear his phone buzzing.

  “Are those notifications?”

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and his eyes widened as he stared at the screen while the phone continued to vibrate in his hand. “Apparently.”

  “You might want to go ahead and turn off notifications for now. It’s not going to stop buzzing for a while, I bet.” She laughed as he held the passenger’s door open for her. “I remember the day Ruby and I went viral. It was pretty crazy.”

  He handed her his phone as he got into the driver’s seat. “I don’t even know how to do that. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.” She accessed his accounts and maneuvered through all the menus until she had all his notifications turned off. “This will be much more peaceful.”

  “Thanks,” he said, sliding the phone back into his pocket. He didn’t speak for the rest of the drive. The silence didn’t feel comfortable, so a few miles down the street, she pulled her phone out and read some of the comments. Most of them confirmed her assessment of his appearance. As they pulled into the parking lot of the beachside restaurant, she remarked, “The general consensus seems to be that you’re a hottie,” she said dryly.

  She heard him snort, but he didn’t speak. Halfway up the sidewalk, though, he stopped in his tracks. “Wait. Did you just brand me? Is this something I’m going to have to deal with forever?”

  Cora pursed her lips. “Maybe. Unintentionally. I can come up with something else and use it over and over again to drown out the hottie if you want. Use it as a hashtag. I just chose it because you’re a hockey player.” At his blank stare, she clarified. “Hottie. Hockey. You know, assonance. Kind of rhymes?”