Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,77
up his remote and cued up the match. “It will be interesting to see how Hendricks works out.”
“Huh?”
“The new guy traded from Tottenham?”
“I know, I’m just surprised you do.”
“Eh, you’ve got me kind of invested in this band of hooligans.”
“Well, the conventional wisdom is that it was a bad transfer—they call it a transfer, not a trade.”
She expected him to razz her about her insistence on the UK terminology, but he didn’t. “I don’t know. I feel like Hendricks could go either way. Yes, they lost Diaz, but he didn’t have that great a season last year, really. He had some big, theatrical moments, but when you actually look at the numbers, I’m not sure he was worth what they were paying him.”
She blinked. She was struck dumb.
“What?” he asked.
“I just…” She was not used to talking to him about football. There was no one in this town who cared about the Premier League. There might be some passing interest toward the end of the season, but other than that it was a typical Canadian town, all hockey all the time with perhaps a small chaser of the NBA.
“What?” he said again, looking a little alarmed.
“Nothing!” Why was he suddenly so worried about everything? “Honestly, Benjamin, I’m a little gobsmacked to find that you actually enjoy this.”
Instead of responding, he said, “Why don’t you call me Law like everyone else does?”
“Because everyone else does.” Crap. That had come out on its own. “I just…” Ugh, how to salvage this? “Law seems like a friendly nickname, and you and I are…”
“Not friendly?” he said cheerfully.
That was true. Or it had been. Lately they seemed to be swinging back and forth between their usual mode of “not friendly” and…something else. Something that felt friendly? She looked at his angular jaw, the morning sun making the auburn in his stubble glint. No, friendly was not the word.
She was overthinking this. “Right. Anyway, I don’t know, I don’t like calling you what everyone else does.”
“Well, I’m sorry to inform you that my mother calls me Benjamin.”
“Really?” Calling him the same thing his mother did felt…not right. “Does anyone call you Ben?”
“Not really. Maybe telemarketers trying to be friendly. And it’s how I introduce myself when I’m meeting someone new and I need a first and last name—Ben Lawson. But that’s pretty much it for Ben.”
Hmm. She let the name rattle around in her brain. Ben.
When Maya got up to get some more coffee a while later, Crystal Palace was ahead by one, and she twirled across the living room instead of walking, all stripes and glee. It drew Law’s attention to her blue-and-red dress. Apparently he’d been wrong that night in Bayshore when he’d had the notion that she never wore dresses in real life. This one was made out of T-shirt material, so it was casual. But it was kind of formfitting, which seemed…not casual.
“Does anyone ever wonder where you are when you come here?”
She paused under the archway that separated the dining room from the living room. “Not really. I live alone. Well, when I’m not living in the Mermaid. I did kind of have to sneak out this morning because Eiko and Pearl were in the lobby.”
“Weren’t you worried someone would see you in your dress? Everyone knows you love Crystal Palace.”
She looked down at herself. “Well, but this isn’t, like, an official dress. It’s just a red-and-blue-striped dress I happened to find at Old Navy a couple years ago.”
Still. She looked very…spirited.
“And really,” she went on, “does the average person around here know that Crystal Palace’s colors are red and blue?”
Fair point, he supposed.
“Anyway, it’s not like it’s a secret that I’m here.”
“You were the one texting 911 to try to get in here unseen this morning.”
He thought they might be ramping up to argue, but she made a funny face and said, “You’re right.”
He cupped his hand to his ear. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
She rolled her eyes and turned for the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “You were right. Once. Don’t let it go to your head.”
He kind of loved when she said that to him. Not the You were right part so much as the Don’t let it go to your head part. He had no idea why.
“But anyway,” she called from the kitchen as she refilled her coffee, “I was avoiding Karl. I think we can both agree that Karl and his minions do not need to know I’m up here. Not only would