Best Played (Salt Lake Pumas)

by Camellia Tate

  That made me laugh. She wasn’t wrong. Enough of the Pumas were in serious relationships now that it probably wouldn’t be that long before I got invited to a wedding for real.

  “So you’ll be away?” Mom clarified. “But you can still call from Tennessee.”

  It made me laugh that after double-checking that I really planned to be someone’s fake boyfriend, my mom’s next and only concern was that I still call her. “Yes, of course, I’ll still call,” I promised. “Maybe I’ll even video call you, so you can see what Tennessee is like, too.”

  “Are you a little interested, at least? In my adventures as a fake boyfriend?” I grinned. The ludicrous nature of what I’d agreed to was difficult to get past and it kind of made it worth it.

  Mom chuckled, too. “If you see it as an adventure, then, of course, I’m interested,” she promised. “You know I always want to hear about what you’re doing.” And that was certainly true. Mom had come out to Salt Lake City to see me almost more times than I could count, despite the distance and her busy social life.

  “Will this Roxi take good care of you?” she asked. “You’re in the playoffs! You need to get enough sleep and enough exercise.” She paused, then added, “Or, I suppose I can trust you to take care of yourself. You do when you’re not in Tennessee pretending to be someone’s boyfriend.”

  That, too, made me laugh. But it also made me feel a little proud. There had definitely been a time when I hadn’t been that good at taking care of myself and we both knew it. So having my mom confirm that I was made a nice sort of feeling settle low in my stomach.

  “I promise to take care of myself,” I told her easily. “And get enough sleep and exercise.” That might be a little tougher, but, presumably, I could at least go on runs. There might even be a local gym or something. A week wasn’t too long.

  “Maybe I can also send you some wine! It is a vineyard, after all.” And my mom did like a nice wine. Besides, it was kind of exciting, I’d never been to a vineyard and got to send home some wine from it.

  “And take some pictures for me,” Mom insisted. “I like to see photos of you enjoying your adventures.” I promised that there would be plenty of pictures. Mom didn’t say it, but I got the feeling she was curious to see what Roxi looked like. Well, I didn’t doubt that there would be photographs taken of the two of us together. Maybe taking some to send to my parents would help sell the image of us as a couple.

  Mom wrapped up by telling me about her plans for the rest of the week while I got ready for bed. The wedding was still a few weeks off, and I had hockey to focus on in the meantime. Lacey had given me Roxi’s number so that we could call and arrange flights. That was a task that could definitely wait until tomorrow.

  For now, I was cautiously optimistic. It was just a week in a vineyard, after all. The worst that could happen would be that I wouldn’t enjoy myself. And hopefully, it really would be an adventure!

  Chapter Five

  Roxi

  Our flight to Nashville was scheduled to take off late in the evening, giving Olle and me plenty of time to sit awkwardly side by side in the departure lounge. Until that morning, I’d been convinced he was going to back out, to say that, after all, he couldn’t agree to come and pretend to be my boyfriend for a week.

  It would almost have been a relief if he had. And yet, a part of me was secretly excited. I’d get to spend a whole week with my favorite player in the NHL! There was no way we wouldn’t know each other better after this wedding than we had before.

  I tried to keep that part of myself quiet. After all, what was I expecting to happen? No matter what Lacey might think, Olle was not going to fall in love with me in a matter of days. The best that could happen would be that we had a nice time together. Maybe, next time he saw me at one of Luke’s after-parties, he’d actually remember that we’d met before.

  “Here,” I said, leaning closer to show Olle a photo on my cell. “That’s my family. My mom and dad, obviously. Rachel, who’s getting married, Peter and Steph. Steph’s the youngest, then me.”

  I tried to think of what else Olle might need to know about my family, what I would expect to have told him in the months we were going to pretend to have been dating. “What do you usually know about a girlfriend’s siblings?” I asked.

  It seemed a fair enough question so when he laughed, I frowned. “No, no, it’s fine,” Olle promised. “It’s just a funny question. In as much as the situation is funny. I’m surprised you haven’t made a list.”

  That also made me scrunch my nose up. Just because I hadn’t got the list out in front of me, didn’t mean it didn’t exist! I was trying to look cool, here. Besides, I’d never really had a boyfriend for long enough to know what facts about my family they would be interested in.

  “Well,” he hummed. “I suppose maybe what your siblings do? Your brother, you said, he works at the vineyard, too, right?” The fact that Olle remembered that made me feel a little taken aback. I hadn’t actually expected him to have been listening to all the stuff I’d told him at the party.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, giving Olle a sudden smile. I liked that he had been listening, especially since he hadn’t known at the time that there was any reason for him to commit this kind of information to memory.

  Pushing the flutter of butterflies in my stomach aside, I carried on. “Rachel’s a pediatrician in Nashville. That’s where she met Tim. He’s in construction.” Glancing at Olle, I almost offered to write him a list, then stopped myself. Olle would know best how he learned. If a list would be helpful to him, there was nothing stopping him from making it himself.

  “Steph’s a travel writer,” I finished. “It’s pretty great, it means she gets to take me on vacation at least once a year!” Now that Steph, too, was in a pretty serious relationship, I wondered if those days were history.

  “That’s cool,” Olle nodded. “I haven’t got any siblings.” I already knew that. I didn’t say as much, though. It was a bit weird, trying to figure out how much to admit already knowing about him. I had read a lot of interviews over the years. In a way, it felt like I already knew Olle.

  But that was probably unfair. He could hardly be exactly like the media portrayed him. Already, Olle was proving to be much sweeter than I had expected. It wasn’t that I had thought he’d be nasty or anything, but there was a kindness that surprised me.

  I must have paused for too long, because Olle waved his hand at me. “You still with me?” he asked, tone teasing.

  Biting down on my lower lip, I nodded. “Yeah. Sorry, I guess I was just thinking about… all this.” A wave of my hand indicated the whole ‘pretending to be in a relationship, attending my sister’s wedding’ thing. “I know it’s kind of weird,” I admitted, “but I really do appreciate you coming.”

  Glancing at Olle, I felt compelled to ask something that I didn’t already know. “Why did you agree to it?” I asked. “I mean, if you really wanted to see my vineyard that much, you could have booked your own ticket and come in the summer. Not that I wish you’d done it that way!”

  My luck at having Olle agree to come with me was almost more than I could believe. Maybe that was why I wanted to know his motivations, because it might make it feel more real.

  “You did make it sound very enticing,” he told me with a grin, before shrugging one shoulder. “I guess, it’s a bit different? I mean, it is weird. Pretending to be someone’s boyfriend isn’t really what I’d expect to do, but even in the worst-case scenario it’d still be kind of a good story?”

  That wasn’t really the motivation I had expected and it must’ve shown on my face. “Don’t get me wrong, also Lacey does this puppy dog eye thing that is very hard to say no to.”

  Having been on the receiving end of Lacey’s pleading looks, I couldn’t argue with that. “Yeah, I don’t know how Will ever gets his own way on anything,” I admitted. But Lacey seemed to want to give Will things, which was sweet, too. “They’re a good couple, I think.”

  Everyon
e in my life seemed to have found happiness with somebody. It made me a little jealous sometimes, though I tried not to let my thoughts dwell in that direction very often.

  Twisting my braid around my fingers, I contemplated how much truth I wanted to drop on Olle this early in our fake relationship. He was going to find it out eventually, though, so I decided to just be open.

  “My family has never really seen me with a long-term boyfriend, so you don’t have to worry that they’re comparing our behavior as a couple to what they might be used to.”

  From the way his eyes widened, it obviously was not what he had expected me to say. “Oh, so no pressure?” he joked, shaking his head. “Can I ask, is your relationship with your parents not... very good? I don’t mean to insult you! But there’s just no way my mom would believe I’ve been dating someone and not told her.”

  Then, almost a little sheepishly, Olle shrugged one shoulder. “I am very close to my mom, though. I told her about... this.” At that, he waved his hand between us.

  “My relationship with my parents is great,” I said, frowning. It was easy enough to see how Olle had jumped to the conclusion that it wasn’t, so why did I feel annoyed at him? He barely knew me and had never met my parents. It was silly to expect him to be right in anything he might say about us.

  But it forced me to clarify in a way I didn’t really want to. “We talk a lot. About work, about my friends, about hockey and what’s going on at the vineyard. We just… don’t really talk about my relationships.”

  It was hard to force myself to keep going, but I knew that I needed to. “I haven’t really had many. None that were serious enough to take my boyfriend home to meet them, that’s all.” It wasn’t all, but it was enough for Olle to know for now.

  “Ah.” Olle nodded. I wasn’t sure what I had expected, maybe more pity or judgment but there was neither. He just accepted what I said as true and didn’t question it. In a way, that felt nice, knowing that Olle just believed me.

  When he did speak again, it was to give a small shrug. “I’ve had two serious relationships,” he explained. This actually was information I didn’t know, not something he’d ever discussed in interviews, perhaps understandably. “One was in my early twenties. Laura. And the other was a couple of years ago, Nova.”

  There was another short pause and then Olle laughed. “And I guess you’re my third,” he grinned.

  I laughed a little too hard, hoping to distract Olle from the color that had rushed into my cheeks. There was a part of me that very much wanted to be Olle’s third serious relationship. But I didn’t really believe that it would happen.

  “For the next week, anyway,” I confirmed. “I don’t think we’ll have to be with my family all the time. For dinners, obviously, but we can say I’m showing you around the vineyard during the days we don’t have wedding stuff to do. And I imagine you want to train? There’s a gym not too far away where you can get a week’s pass.”

  “Yeah, that’d be great,” Olle nodded. “But I do also want to actually see the vineyard. You’ve spoken so highly of Tennessee, I’m very much looking forward to seeing it.” That made my heart skip a beat. It felt almost overwhelming how truthful Olle sounded, like Tennessee was all his dream vacation destinations at once.

  I had to glance away to make sure he couldn’t just read my feelings right off my face. It was almost possible to imagine that a real boyfriend might be this interested in my home.

  “Anyway! So Rachel, who is a pediatrician, is marrying Tim who works in construction. Steph is a travel writer and... Peter? He works at the vineyard?” Olle checked.

  I turned back, favoring Olle with a bright grin. “Perfect,” I answered. “And we still have the whole flight to work out how we got together.” That was the kind of question somebody was definitely going to ask, especially at a wedding. To me, it seemed simplest to just say we’d met through Lacey, as we had done in real life.

  “But we should also probably have a couple of stories to tell people. You know, how we decided we wanted to keep seeing each other, when we decided it was serious enough for you to come home and meet my family.”

  Olle nodded. “If we say we’ve been together for a few months, would your parents have visited you at any point since we got together?”

  “It would be easiest to say no?” Olle offered. “I mean, surely the best way to lie is to keep it as close to the truth as possible? It seems like lying about meeting my parents would just make things harder.” He definitely had a point there, though his comment made me wonder how often he might have had to lie like this.

  Sensing my thoughts, Olle laughed. “I’m not a seasoned liar or anything,” he promised. “I just find it pretty easy to figure out how people tick. A lot of people lie.” He shrugged.

  I nodded. It hadn’t occurred to me that, potentially, telling the truth about Olle’s parents having visited might mean I would have to lie about having met them. “You’re right,” I agreed, “it’s simplest to say that they haven’t.” The smile I offered was softer than the bright grins I’d been giving Olle since we’d sat down.

  “I’m glad that, since I have to do this, I found someone to lie with who can cut right to what’s simplest,” I praised. “I’m not always good at that. I’m at my best when I’m dealing with things that are complicated.” My job, certainly, involved a lot of organizing, and I was very, very good at that.

  “Did you always want to play hockey professionally?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Olle answered. “I imagine that’s the answer pretty much anyone in the NHL would give. It’s what you hope for, what you aim for. I would have been happy to play in a more minor league, too, but obviously playing in the NHL is the dream.” It was a very fair answer and it struck me how most of Olle’s answers to my questions were.

  He seemed to take things as they came, which was different from the approach I took. “What about you? Always dreamed of being a property manager?” he asked. “I honestly don’t quite know what a property manager even does. Manage properties, I guess. Like rentals? Or commercial properties? I should probably understand what you do, as your boyfriend.”

  Warmth bloomed in my stomach. Clearly, Olle was a good boyfriend, even if he wasn’t really mine. I’d met plenty of men who had little to no interest in what I did. They only cared when it interfered with making the kinds of plans they wanted to make. “Rental properties, at the moment,” I answered. “I’ve done commercial properties in the past.”

  Licking my lips, I thought about the best way to explain. “I guess the easiest way to imagine it is that I’m basically a personal assistant to a landlord. I make sure that the bills are paid on time, and keep track of all the accounts.”

  I shrugged. “Basically, all the admin that the landlord is too busy and important to do themselves.”

  “Sure.” Olle nodded. “Organizational.” And yes, I supposed that was, more or less, what it boiled down to. “But you didn’t answer my original question,” he pointed out. “Is it something you always wanted to do?”

  I laughed. “I don’t think I even knew what a property manager was until I was old enough to do it.” Probably most people didn’t. It wasn’t exactly the kind of job that little kids would play pretend about doing.

  “My mom manages the vineyard. I didn’t really know that was what it was called, but I watched her do it for years. I guess I learned from watching her, so when I needed a job to do, it was a pretty easy leap to make.”

  Smiling, I thought back to my mom’s color-coded calendars. Mine were on my cell phone, rather than the wall, but it was the same basic idea. “But the vineyard already has someone to manage it, so I looked for other kinds of properties.”

  “Oh, okay, that makes sense,” Olle nodded. “Like I get how that progression happened. It’s... interesting. I don’t know if I’d say it’s cool,” he admitted, giving me a sheepish smile. “It’s probably not the sort of job kids dream of having.”

  Unlike hockey! I could hear the
implication even without Olle saying it out loud. He must have known I got it, too, because his smile went from sheepish to an arrogant grin. I had to look away because God! That was... way too sexy for an airport lounge!

  “So we met at a party?” Olle asked, drawing me back to our pretend relationship.

  “Oh. Uh.” I faltered, desperately wishing that I could agree. It would be so much more cool to say that we met at a party. But there was no way my siblings had all forgotten about my huge crush on the Puma’s Swedish goalie, even if they might not remember his name.

  There was nothing for it but to tell the truth, no matter how embarrassing. “Actually, you signed a jersey for me before the party,” I admitted. “But clearly, you didn’t remember that until I brought it up.” Put in the context of a relationship, that almost sounded cute. Like the kind of story Lacey might tell about how she’d fancied Will before he’d ever really noticed.

  “My siblings will get a kick out of that, anyway,” I muttered.

  Olle chuckled at that and I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks. I’d done so well not to blush so far, but how could I not when this was all about how much of a fan I was of Olle’s?!

  What I hadn’t expected was the way he reached out, giving my hand a small squeeze. “But then we met at a party?” he pointed out. “You told me about your family’s vineyard and then you got a bit too merry on some wine and I helped you home?” I blinked at that, because, well, that was exactly what had happened.

  “Stay close to the truth, right?” Olle reminded. “After that? Well, we can say you asked me out. You probably would have had you not been too busy telling me about how good my arms felt,” he teased. It felt lighthearted but made my blush intensify.

  “And you said ‘yes’.” It was hard not to wonder whether Olle would have said yes if I had genuinely asked him. I’d asked men out before, I wasn’t shy about that. I just usually kept things casual. Which meant we’d need a good reason why Olle had lasted.