Page 24 of Match Me if You Can

Power games aren’t going to show him I can stand my ground.

They are just going to spur this man into action.

Hockey players are competitive.

They don’t like to lose.

They’re stubborn to a fault.

So me not giving in, not dulling the shiny interesting parts of me is like I’m chumming the water, waiting for the shadow of the giant shark to appear in the water beneath my boat, waiting for a glimpse of a soulless black eye, a flash of sharp white teeth, and then⁠—

Breach.

Dead in the water.

TEN

Ace

I should call her bluff and kiss her right now.

But something stops me.

Something has my lips going to her jaw instead, tasting her skin, inhaling the soft scent of her—flowers and woman.

I press my mouth to her cheek, trail it over to her ear. “I know I’m right. You pretend to be unaffected but you read romance novels. You probably curl up in front of the TV in the winter with a mug of hot cocoa, that sexy body clad in wholly unflattering pajamas. This hair”—I tug lightly at the only strand that has managed to escape its confines so far—“will still be tamed, though. Tucked tightly away because heaven forbid you unclench enough for you to actually let it down.”

“You’re full of it,” she says, and I would think she is completely unaffected by me, by our closeness that’s affecting me so intensely, if not for the way her nails are digging into her palms, her fists so tight the tendons on the backs of her hands are standing out sharply in relief.

“Do you ever unclench?” I push, some perverse part of me wanting to see how much she can take. “Probably not,” I say when she doesn’t answer. “When a man is lucky”—I lay it on thick here—“enough to fuck you, he’s gotta be risking frostbite on his dick.”

I’m not watching her face.

Maybe I should be.

Maybe it would explain what she does next.

Her hands flatten out, all the tension leaving them, and…the fire goes out.

“You’re right,” she says almost robotically. “My favorite color is purple and I do love a caprese salad, but cacio e pepe is my favorite food.” My eyes have made it from her hands to her face by now and I see that her expression is blandly amused, as though she’s wiped the slate clean and we haven’t just spent however many of the last minutes sniping at each other. “And I love chocolate—in particular, I love a chocolate mousse cake, the richer the better.”

Her gaze comes to mine and…

Nothing.

Not frost. Not ice. Just…unfathomable, indiscernible blue.

Like standing on a boat, staring down into the murky ocean below, trying to discern the depths under my feet.

Impossible.

Because it’s impossibly deep.

“I was born to a single mom,” she says. “But after she died, I lived with my dad and brothers—I’m sure you’ve heard of them, it’s how I’m so familiar with hockey players.” Here she gives me a ghost of a smile, and I think I detect something, a shadow in that dark blue ocean water. “The Conrad brothers.”

I blink, start to sit back, but have to freeze when that nearly sends her toppling to the cabin floor.

I snag her hips, hold her in place.