Page 6 of Match Me if You Can

Product of growing up as one of five brothers.

There’s always someone fighting with someone else (usually Oakes and Noble, though Lex isn’t shy about joining a scrum), always someone tattling (usually Beck, but we all take our turns), and always someone lying (usually me—which is why I’m so damned good at bluffing). Further, there’s always blood being drawn, shit being broken—and that’s just when we get together during the holidays.

A good ol’ American family.

From two middle class—a firefighter and a teacher—parents, who worked their butts off to make five excellent hockey players.

It’s marketing gold.

Or at least that’s what my agent says.

The only thing missing according to her?

For me to create my own perfect—at least on social media—family. A wife. Kids. A golden retriever, or one of those fucking doodles that everyone seems to have nowadays.

That will bring the big bucks.

More, it won’t jeopardize the payoff coming my way like my usual one-night stands can. Especially after the last one went so fucking bad⁠—

I shake myself, table the churning in my stomach telling me that the next two minutes are going to both fuck everything up and make everything better, and prepare to keep arguing with this ice princess. I need a fiancée, and I need one as frigidly cold as Violet Lamour.

Not a woman who might catch feelings.

One who’s motivated to keep shit quiet.

Who’s mercenary.

I know the last is true when her lips part and she says, “A million dollars.”

What’d I say?

Fucking. Mercenary. As. Shit.

Still, I say, “Done,” before she can take it back.

Her eyes go wide, and there’s a part of me that seriously enjoys the panic in those frosty blue depths, that wonders what it might be like to see her befuddled in other ways, to crack through some of the smooth icy demeanor on the regular. “I-I⁠—”

I stand there, enjoying the sputtering for a couple of seconds before I stroke the backs of my fingers along her cheek.

Like fucking silk.

Somehow, I knew that would be the case.

“Write up the contract,” I say, “and send your bank information over to my accountant.”

“I—”

Dropping my hand to my side is strangely difficult, same as sidestepping her, as rounding the desk and moving to her office door.

But I do it, just like I walk out into the blistering summer sunshine.

Christ, the sun hits harder at these high elevations.

I bleep the locks on my car⁠—

“One million dollars?”

I freeze, my fingers wrapped around the door handle.