by Joanna Bell
I continued drunkenly browsing crappy websites and was on the verge of giving up when one caught my eye. There were zero photos of Eastern European women in tight dresses. It all looked very plain, very minimalist. In the middle of a blank page was a single line:
Viola White, Matchmaker. Since 1972.
The lack of the hard sell is what sucked me in. Also: 1972. If anyone understood the subtleties of arranging relationships between strangers, surely it would be someone who'd been doing it since 1972?
Not that it even matters. This is a stupid idea. You're not getting married, you drunk idiot. Go to bed.
I put the phone down on the nightstand. Before I could drift off, though, I picked it back up again. The message I sent to Viola White, Matchmaker, was brief:
"26/male/straight. Interested in your service. Tell me more."
Chapter 3: Astrid
I sipped chilled white wine and gazed out the window, watching the green patchwork quilt of the Midwest morph into the rangeland of the west.
No one knew where I was. No one knew where I was going, or what I was doing.
Well, one person knew – and he was waiting for me at the airport in Billings, Montana.
My whole life, I was the reliable one. The good girl.
I am the only child of William and Heather Walker, who love me the way parents are supposed to love their children. I grew up in a bubble of privilege: the best schools, the best mentors, the best friends, the best child-nutritionist-approved diet.
Children know. They know, even if goes unsaid, what their parents want from them. What my parents wanted was my success and happiness. They wanted that for me, and they wanted it for themselves as well – as a reflection of their own lives and choices. And they didn't have to put any pressure on me to deliver, either, because I was more than willing to put it on myself.
I've always been very conscious of who I am. Always aware that any misbehavior on my part would confirm everyone's suspicions about spoiled rich kids – and their parents. So it was at a very young age that I set myself to the task of proving myself worthy. Straight A's meant I was worthy of my private schools, impeccable behavior meant I was worthy of my family name and my parents' approval.
I didn't taste alcohol or kiss a boy until I was in college. Even then it was only a few sips of beer – and I got engaged to the boy!
And all around me as all this good behavior was going on, people were having fun. My peers were having fun. I can still remember the hurt of discovering, in tenth grade, that a lot of my childhood friends were moving on socially in ways I was not. It had not been so many years before that I was playing princesses with the girls who were suddenly going to parties with boys and beer and make-out sessions in the dark. It wasn't that I was purposefully excluded, exactly. It's that everyone knew I wouldn't go anyway, even if they did invite me.
Parties were too risky, as I saw it. There was too much opportunity to get into trouble. What if I got drunk and peed my pants? Or let some boy put his hand up my shirt – or worse? What if my parents found out? What if someone took photos, and those photos ended up on the internet? What if some tabloid got hold of them?
I wasn't famous or anything, but my parents were household names for a few years when they were younger – the handsome, self-made billionaire and the beautiful model. A scandal involving their daughter might have warranted a short write-up or two in the gossip press – especially if there were embarrassing pictures to go alongside it.
So far so uptight, right? It was the same story in college. I spent many a Friday night doing my assigned reading while my friends partied. I did it because I had been given so much more than so many others. Anything less than perfection wasn't good enough.
It was exhausting.
I don't think I quite realized how exhausting until Julian dumped me on our wedding day and I spent most of that first month or so in France sleeping. Mourning, yes – that too. But mostly? Sleeping. For the first time in my life there was nothing to be done. No test I could ace or party invite I could virtuously decline. There was nothing except humiliation and sadness.
I survived, though. That was the truly mind-blowing part. I survived. I didn't curl up into a ball and die because something bad happened. The world kept spinning, the sun rose the next day...
And I flew to Montana to meet a handsome cowboy I didn't know the first thing about. Even the matchmaker we paid to introduce us advised against meeting so soon.
Cillian Devlin and I spoke on the phone precisely once before we met.
I didn't even tell Ava what I was doing. I knew she would just try to talk me out of it.
A belated teenage rebellion, then.
Or was it?
Because as Hollywood-handsome as Cillian Devlin was, there was no setting aside the fact that he was looking for a wife. Not just any wife – an old-fashioned wife.
Maybe it was expediency more than it was anything else that had me on a private jet to Montana on that particular day? I had dreamed of marriage – of a husband and children and cozy domestic bliss – since I was a little girl. The urge to do something naughty for once was newer, but no less powerful.
Sometimes I wonder if the cowboy with the devilish glint in his eye was just the most efficient way for a good girl with a serious case of FOMO to kill 2 birds with one stone.
***
I saw him before he saw me. He was leaning against a pillar, one hand shoved in his jeans pocket, the other holding his phone. I knew it was him even without seeing his face because he was at least a head taller than anyone else in the small crowd waiting at the arrivals gate.
The matchmaker told me he was tall. She didn't have to tell me he was handsome. But nothing quite prepared me for Cillian Devlin in the flesh, though.
Like I said, he was tall. Really, toweringly tall. And unlike some tall men, who can lean to the slender of build, he was also broad. There was a bulge of muscle visible under his t-shirt where his arm, the one that was holding his phone, bent slightly across his chest. And oh, God, what a chest. He wasn't even standing up straight and already I could tell it was one of those male chests that you just want to nestle your face into.
I actually stopped in my tracks for a moment or two, desperately trying to get it together before he looked up and saw me. A man like that was probably bored to tears with giggling, swooning women.
Did I mention the cowboy hat? A lot of people in the airport were wearing them, but none even came close to giving off the aura Cillian did. He was, in the those first few moments – and not to put too fine a point on it – perfect. A city girl's dream of western masculinity come to life, right down to the dust on his boots.
And then he looked up. His eyes were a clear, bright blue, narrow and deep-set and fringed with blond lashes. I froze instantly, caught in the tractor-beam of those eyes like a butterfly in a spider's web.
"Hey," he said, straightening up and smiling a smile that flipped me on like a light switch. "You must be Astrid."
Chapter 4: Cillian
I saw her before she saw me. I waited at the regular arrivals area even though I knew she was flying private, just so I could get a look at her first. I'd seen a couple of photographs in which she looked a bit school teacher-y, a bit straight-laced – and neither one showed enough of her body.
The first thing I noticed was that she was tall. Five foot nine or thereabouts, maybe even five foot ten.
She was slim, too. Some might say skinny.
Her hair was light brown, long and wavy, and she was wearing a long-sleeved blouse and a skirt that hit below the knee – an outfit that immediately marked her as a non-local.
I pretended to be looking at my phone as she got closer, only looking up when she was right in front of me.
"You must be Astrid."
I'm good at first impressions. Especially when the person getting the impression is female.
Astrid Walker blinked when she looked up at me. Her eyes were golden-brown and, as far as I co
uld tell, she wasn't wearing a scrap of make-up.
We shook hands and she laughed self-consciously, holding one slender-fingered hand up to her mouth.
"What?" I asked, still taking her in.
"This is weird, right?"
Her voice was soft, and a little lower in pitch than some women.
I've looked back on those moments – the first moments of our acquaintance – before. I've wondered when the idea that Astrid Walker was different first entered my head. It couldn't have been right there – could it? How can you know how a person is before you've barely said 3 words to each other?
Sometimes I think I did know, though. Like maybe I picked up on some vibration in the air or sensed the path of my own fate beginning to curve in a new direction as soon as I laid eyes on her.
I reached out and took her suitcase, compelled by some previously-unknown gentlemanly instinct. "What's weird?"
"This," she replied, gesturing with one hand at the two of us. "Us. This whole thing."
"Oh you mean this whole maybe getting married even though we're only just meeting for the first time right now thing?"
"Yeah. That."
We headed for the doors and, on the way out, I reached out and put my hand briefly on the small of Astrid's back, guiding her ahead of me.
"You're right," I said when we were sitting next to each other in my truck and it still didn't quite feel real. "This is weird."
Beside me, the girl from Miami was taking everything in. The truck's dusty interior, the people walking through the parking lot – she even appeared to be sniffing the air.
"It's not bad-weird," she observed. "I suppose it's just a unique situation. I've never met a stranger for the explicit purpose of marriage before."
She didn't sound like anyone in Sweetgrass Ridge, that much I could tell already. There was something almost formal about the way she spoke – slowly, as if she was considering every word before allowing it to leave her mouth.
"You ready?" I asked as I started up the engine. "It's a ways to Sweetgrass Ridge – and there aren't a lot of rest stops on the way."
Astrid looked at me. She was pretty, but not the kind of pretty I was used to. And I thought she was smart too, although I couldn't have told you how I got that into my head so soon. I didn't quite know what to make of her.
"Are you telling me to pee now if I have to?"
I laughed. "Yeah, I guess I am."
"I'm fine."
Five minutes later we were on the highway headed for home. My home? Yes. Her home? Maybe. Things were quiet for a little bit but I couldn't tell if it was an awkward kind of quiet or not. I liked Astrid's presence, though. There was something soft about her manner, something sort of old-fashioned and feminine. She brushed a stray hair off her cheek at one point, using a single fingertip to nudge it back into place, and there was just something about the gesture that struck me as particularly charming and gentle.
Her upper lip, I noticed when I stole a little glance at her as she looked out the window, was slightly fuller than the lower one. It gave her a slight air of cute, almost childlike poutiness. I wondered, in that moment, what it would feel like to kiss her.
And then I turned away quickly and refocused on the road.
I admit I was surprised. Maybe I shouldn't have been. Astrid was just so different to the girls I knew. She looked different, for one thing. Those lips I couldn't stop looking at were un-glossed, her nails unpolished and, as far as I could tell, her breasts were real. Yeah, I looked. I didn't really know how not to look, to be honest. All I knew was what most men know – how to not look like you're looking.
"Oh! Look!"
Astrid was pointing straight ahead. I covered the brake, ready to slam it down. But she wasn't pointing out an animal on the road.
"Are those the Rockies?"
Ahead of us, the mountains rose up against the sky. "Uh-huh," I replied. "That's them. You ever been?"
I felt her giving me a look. "Have I ever been to the Rockies?"
"Yeah," I replied. "You sounded surprised to see them, is all."
She laughed. "I've just never seen them like this. From the road, I mean. My parents have a chalet in Deer Valley but we always fly in."
I knew from her answers to the matchmaker's questionnaire that Astrid Walker came from serious money, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised she'd never seen the mountains from the road.
"Deer Valley, huh? Nice place."
"Oh," she replied, sounding relieved that we might have something in common. "Is that where you go?"
Is that where you go? That's such a rich-girl question. The assumption that you ski is automatic. The only question is where.
I chuckled. "No. I just heard it's a nice place."
"It is. We used to go there every winter when I was younger but now we switch it out every second year for Courchevel. My mom likes to shop in Geneva and it's close so, you know."
I'd never heard of Courchevel. Geneva sounded vaguely familiar, though. It was in Europe, I was about 50% sure of that. Geography isn't my thing.
Nothing in Astrid's tone suggested she was showing off. I know what that kind of showing off looks like because it's my stepmother Darcy's main hobby. But Astrid Walker wasn't waiting for a reaction the way Darcy would have been. She wasn't waiting for me to be impressed. In fact as far as I could tell she didn't seem to think she'd said anything unusual.
"What?" She asked, probably noticing my amused expression. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing," I replied, turning to look at her. "I'll tell you what, though. You might be the first person I ever met who has more money than me."
"Am I? How do you know?"
The sun was getting lower on the horizon. I grabbed my sunglasses from the center console and put them on. "Because you're talking about going to Courche, uh, to Courche –"
"Courchevel," she said, sparing me from having to pronounce the word but doing so quietly and kindly, refusing to take the opportunity to make fun of me. "Courchevel. It's in France."
"Yeah, there."
"Lots of people go skiing in Europe."
"Lots of rich people."
Astrid laughed. She had one of those cute, conspiratorial laughs, the kind that seem to indicate an in-joke or a shared secret. And I couldn't help feeling weirdly privileged at being on the receiving end of it.
***
I didn't see it coming, you know. I should have, I really should. Less than 3 hours into knowing her and I think I was already half-besotted, glowing like a praised child at a few giggles. The problem I had back then was a lack of experience. Not a lack of what people usually mean when they use that phrase – I had plenty of that kind of experience. Some would say too much.
My specific lack of experience centered more around the concept of giving a fuck. I just wasn't used to giving a fuck what this or that girl thought of me. So when the signs of giving a fuck – of perhaps giving a dangerous amount of fucks – about what Astrid Walker thought of me arose, I didn't really recognize them for what they were. The warning sirens didn't go off.
"So you Googled me, huh?"
"What?"
"You Googled me?" She repeated, eying me.
"I read your little thing," I replied quickly. "From the matchmaker. The thing she makes clients write about –"
"All I said on there was that I'm financially comfortable. I didn't say anything about 'rich.'"
Busted.
"It doesn't matter," she continued, grinning sheepishly. "I mean, it's not like I didn't do any research of my own."
"Oh really?" I replied, my heart sinking as I thought of all the photos that were out there on friends' social media accounts, of me acting like a drunken asshole. Damnit, why hadn't I thought to ask people to take them down before I even contacted the matchmaking agency?
Because I didn't care, that's why. And then, suddenly, I did.
"Find anything good?" I asked, thinking maybe I could brazen it out.
"Not really. Yo
u don't have a very big online presence. I learned a lot about the Devlin Ranch, though – it has its own Wikipedia entry."
Good. She hadn't done a deep enough dive.
"Your dad has his own Wikipedia entry," I replied, just happy to move the topic away from myself.
"So you did Google me!" She laughed. "Anyway. Your dad has one too."
"Really?" I asked, surprised.
"Uh-huh."
We sat in amused silence for a few moments. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she rummaged around inside her purse, eventually pulling out a small pot of lip balm and twisting the cap off in that careful way I was already beginning to recognize as hers.
"So I guess neither of us has to worry that the other one is a gold-digger, right?" She continued, smoothing a thin layer of lip balm over her top lip, and then repeating the same for the bottom.
"Huh?" I replied, distracted by the lips. "Oh – yeah. Yeah, I guess not."
"Is that something you worry about?"
"That you're a gold-digger?"
She pulled a hair tie out of her purse and pulled her hair back off her face, gathering it into a ponytail. I could barely tear my eyes away from her long, slender neck long enough to take even a cursory glance at the road. The image of her exposing that neck to me, leaning her head back in blissful abandon, leapt into my mind. I tried to push it away.
"No," she said, giggling again. "Not me. Just gold-diggers in general."
It was difficult to concentrate on the conversation, what with the driving and the thinking about how warm her skin would feel against my mouth if I kissed her neck.
"Uh – yeah," I replied. "Gold-diggers. Yeah. My dad, uh – he warned me about them. I guess I just, I don't know, I guess I never really, um, ran into any."
I swear if Astrid hadn't been sitting there beside me I would have punched myself square in the face. She must have thought I was a total fucking moron, um-ing and uh-ing my way through simple sentences.
There was something there with her, though. Right there, from the very beginning. I even felt it in the airport, a sudden softness in a part of my heart I didn't even know existed before I noticed the particular thinness of her wrist as she reached for the handle of her suitcase, or heard the specific octave of her laugh.
