Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,80

by wiggling around in her dress. She looked so carefree, it made him want to press pause. Freeze the scene so they could both stay here in their secret soccer truce-bubble.

She sat back down abruptly with a sigh of happiness. All this up and down brought to mind a marionette, except not because Maya was no one’s puppet. She pulled her own strings.

She looked at him, and he realized he’d been staring—probably too intently. He forced himself to look away, and his gaze landed on the fortune cookies. “Can I have one of these?”

“Please do.”

He contemplated his fortune while he chewed. A person of words and not deeds is a garden full of weeds.

The marionette comparison was actually pretty apt, Law thought nearly two hours later. The match had been close, and every time Crystal Palace pulled ahead, she leaped to her feet. When they fell behind, she slumped theatrically on the sofa.

“Noooo,” she moaned, watching through her fingers as Liverpool scored, putting Crystal Palace down by two goals with ten minutes left.

“Tell me about how you got into them,” Law said, because apparently they talked during matches now. After establishing that Brie was not, in fact, his new girlfriend, they’d chatted on and off about all kinds of stuff: the business Karl’s Junior Achievement kids were launching, names Jake and Nora were considering for their baby. “I know it has to do with your time in the UK, but no offense, you never struck me as very…”

“Sporty?” she suggested, peeling one hand off her face to look at him with one eye.

“Yeah, so do you arrive on British soil and they plug you directly into the Premier League matrix?”

She laughed. “No. You’re right. I’m not sporty. I went on the exchange purely for the theater angle. Royal National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, all that. But my host family was into Crystal Palace. The fan bases for the London clubs are very localized—so, like, you cheer for your neighborhood club. I have to tell you, I was not pleased being dragged along to a match, but once I got there—wow. Those stadiums are huge. It’s its own kind of theater. I understood nothing about the game at that point, but I was hooked immediately.”

“You should take up hockey. You’ve seen the bar on nights the Leafs play. You’d have lots of company then.”

“I like having my own thing.” She let the other hand fall from her face and tilted her head as she studied him. A half smile bloomed. “This company is okay, too.”

He sucked in a breath. As compliments went, it was mild. But it felt like she’d bequeathed him a precious gift. The question was, would this détente, this goodwill, last?

Did he want it to?

He liked battling with her.

But he also liked…whatever this was. He liked her staring at him with a cat-that-ate-the canary smile and saying not-mean things to him.

Man, his standards were low.

Cheers erupted from the TV, and they both turned. “Ahh!” She was on her feet again, celebrating as Crystal Palace tied the score. She remained standing, bouncing in place as play resumed.

There were ten seconds left when Crystal Palace got possession. He jumped to his feet, too, tension snaking through him as Hendricks, the player they’d been talking about before, took a shot. Time seemed to slow down as they watched the trajectory of the ball. The goalkeeper leaped to try to block it.

“It went in! It went in!” She jumped up and down and…

…threw herself into his arms?

It took him a second to adjust to what was happening. To the soft dress and the pull on his neck as her arms wound around it. To her. It took him a second to adjust to her, and didn’t that just about sum up the entirety of his history with Maya Mehta?

Then they were kissing. He wasn’t sure who started it. Just that it felt like it was what was supposed to happen now. Her team had won. But it wasn’t only that. If this had been purely an impulsive her-team-won kiss—or an I thought you were someone else kiss—it would have been quick. It would have been followed by an equally quick retreat and probably by awkwardness and apologies.

This kiss was not ending. She was moving her lips across his hungrily, like she hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time. God knew he hadn’t. So he turned off his brain and let himself sink into her. Her lips were soft, softer than he’d ever