by Jessica Ames
Copyright © 2019 by Jessica Ames
www.jessicaamesauthor.com
All rights reserved. Apart from any permitted use under UK copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
Match Me Perfect is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.
Please note this book contains material aimed at an adult audience, including sex and bad language.
Editing by Eliza Ames
Proofreading by Charisse Sayers
Proofreading by Paige Sayer Proofreading
Cover design by Sly Fox Designs
Cover image copyright © 2019
Imprint: Independently published
To Amanda, without whom this story would not exist. Thank you for always making me laugh.
Contents
1. Callum
2. Sadie
3. Callum
4. Sadie
5. Callum
6. Sadie
7. Callum
8. Sadie
9. Callum
10. Sadie
11. Callum
12. Sadie
13. Callum
14. Sadie
15. Callum
16. Sadie
17. Callum
18. Sadie
19. Callum
20. Sadie
21. Callum
22. Sadie
23. Callum
24. Sadie
25. Callum
26. Sadie
27. Callum
28. Sadie
29. Callum
30. Sadie
31. Callum
32. Sadie
33. Callum
34. Sadie
35. Callum
36. Sadie
37. Callum
38. Sadie
39. Callum
40. Sadie
41. Callum
42. Sadie
43. Callum
44. Sadie
45. Callum
46. Sadie
47. Callum
48. Sadie
Epilogue
Also by Jessica Ames
Excerpt of Snared Rider
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Callum
Another wave crashes over the bow of the Scarlet Rose and her entire front end disappears into the murkiness of the water. The momentum throws me forward onto the control panel and I have to grab on to keep my footing.
Jesus, this storm is picking up. We need to sail out of it and head back towards the coastline and the calmer waters. This whole run has been one disaster after another. I can’t wait to get my feet back on dry land.
I can’t wait to get home.
Her face drifts into my mind for a moment and my chest aches. We need to talk, to sort things out and I just hope she’s going to let me talk to her. I don’t like how we left things.
My thoughts are cut short. I’m thrown across the cabin as the boat suddenly lurches to one side. My body slams into one of the panels and fire goes through my ribs and pain explodes through my head.
“Cal!” Hands are on me suddenly, steadying me, trying to help me. Alex’s worried face swims into my blurred vision as I try to focus. He’s soaked to the skin, his raincoat dripping, his hair too. “Can you stand?”
I swallow painfully and nod, even though I don’t think I can. “Where’s Mace? Tanner?” My voice sounds ravaged.
“They’re on deck still,” he tells me as he drags me to my feet.
I can’t stop the groan that escapes my mouth. Jesus, that hurt.
Alex reaches behind him and grabs a pile of paper towels which he presses against my head. “Hold this.”
“The boat—”
“Will be fine. Let’s just stop you bleeding first.”
The boat won’t be fine. We’re being pounded by the waves which is dangerous as hell. God knows how far off course we are now and fuck knows how long we’ve been drifting for. The thought of drifting in open water makes my stomach fill with ice. There are so many risks, so many dangers with losing control of a boat, and out here, this far out, help is going to be too far away to do anything.
“We need to get them off the deck,” I tell him, pushing past him.
Mentally, I try to remember where we were the last time I looked at the navigation system, but thinking makes my head pound harder, so I stop.
Anything not tied down is rolling around the floor as the boat rocks on the waves. I ignore the way it makes my stomach roil as I make a beeline for my crew. I have good sea legs, but even I’m not immune to this amount of movement.
Mace and Tanner are trying in vain to secure the lines.
“This storm is picking up,” Mace yells over the wind. “We’ve got to get out of it.”
I open my mouth to agree when a wave rolls over the boat. I can’t draw in air as I get a face full of water. My feet go from under me and my legs and side are battered as I hit the stuff on the deck.
Then I’m in the water.
And not the water on deck. I’m in the ocean.
It happens so fast I barely have time to register what is going on. The first inkling I have that I’m in trouble is when I’m fully submerged—fully submerged in the North Atlantic.
The cold hits me like a blast, and I gasp. This is a bad idea because I swallow a lungful of salt water as I’m pulled down by the swirling waves. I feel as if I have a ten-ton weight attached to my feet as I’m battered by the turbulent water.
I need to break the surface. I need to get air into my lungs.
My chest burns as I try to kick my feet to swim to the surface, but the water is like treacle and my body isn’t responding as I want.
I’m going to die…
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to leave her feeling the same pain I had after Mara died.
I can’t.
I need to survive, but everything hurts and it’s so dark under the water. I try to kick my legs but I don’t know if I’m moving or not. My body feels detached and everything is fuzzy. My vision, which had been darkening, fades out completely.
2
Sadie
Nine months earlier…
The dress is beautiful. It has a sweeping sweetheart neckline, with a diamond encrusted waistband and a satin bodice. The skirt flares at the hips into ripples of ivory material and there are small pearls sewn among the intricate embroidery. It’s coupled with a stunning lace veil held in place by a silver diamond slide, and a pair of beautiful satin ivory high heels that are to die for.
It is a dress that little girls grow up dreaming about wearing on their wedding day, it’s a dress I dreamed about wearing on my wedding day and it’s a dress I should have been walking up the aisle wearing about ten minutes ago.
“Sades? Please… say something.”
The pleading timbre of his voice makes my teeth grind so hard I worry about the enamel, but I don’t say something. Or anything, in fact. Instead, I keep my gaze locked on my hands, which are clenched in my lap. Mostly so I don’t reach over and strangle him, although I’m starting to think it would be worth the jail time.
“Sadie…” He tries again and this time I snap my gaze up.
My eyes must be heated because he recoils a little before he straightens and reclaims his control.
“I know you’re upset…”
I stare at him, at this
man I have devoted the past five years of my life to, a man I thought I would devote the next forty plus years to, and try to see past the film of red anger clouding my vision. It’s not an easy task because all I want to do is throttle him. It would be so easy to just reach out and wrap my fingers around his stupid neck and squeeze—
“Seriously, darling, please talk to me.”
I can’t hold my tongue any longer. My anger, which I have been keeping a tight hold of, bursts out of me.
“And what precisely would you like me to say, Richard?” I demand. “That I’m so happy you had this epiphany with a hundred and fifty of our friends and family sitting in the church, waiting for our wedding ceremony to kick off?” I hiss.
He winces. “I’m sorry—”
“So you keep saying,” I cut him off and glance towards the window.
It looks out over the lawn were the marquee is set up—the marquee that was set up in case the good old British summer did its usual act of turning into autumn and delivering a downpour midway through the day. Given the blue skies and the bright sunshine this doesn’t seem likely. In fact, it’s perfect wedding weather, which makes this entire conversation all the more ironic because nothing about this day has been perfect so far.
“I really don’t know what else I can say,” Richard tells me in a soft, nearly inaudible voice. “Is it not better to know now than a year or two into it, when we’re both miserable and at each other’s throats?”
Logically, the answer is yes, but sitting in the venue’s backroom—which is not only a store room but also doubles as the wedding planner’s office—wearing a wedding dress that cost an arm, leg and a foot, my hair styled and my make-up professionally applied, I can’t help but think no, it’s not fucking better.
“What would have been better, Richard, is if you had thought this six months ago—before we even got to this stage.”
My barbed words hide the physical pain blooming in my chest and I can’t help but rub at my sternum. It doesn’t disperse it. In fact, it does nothing. The pain is still there, still as fresh and getting worse by the moment. How can he do this to me? On today, of all days. Any day would be bad enough, but doing it today is tantamount to cruelty.
He rubs the back of his neck, a gesture that tells me just how uncomfortable he is with this conversation. Richard is not a man who likes confrontation—never has been. He’s only so high up in the corporate world because his father owns his company. Richard would never have made it in the real world. It’s a bitter, nasty thought, but it’s also true.
“I thought we could… work through it,” he says wretchedly and I scoff at him.
“You thought we could work through this? How, precisely?”
I should have known something was wrong when he accosted me outside the venue before the ceremony. It’s bad luck to see me, I’d hissed at him. A stupid old superstition was the least of my problems. He hadn’t met my gaze as he’d asked to speak to me in private. At that point, my brain had come to the conclusion something was wrong—seriously wrong—but my heart had been riding the high of the day, refusing to see the huge metaphorical raincloud hanging over my head. It also, stupidly, refused to believe this man, the love of my life, could ever do a thing to hurt me. How wrong was I?
Richard destroyed me with a matter of words. And he continues to tear away at the thin layers holding together what is left of me.
“I don’t know.” He looks miserable, as if he would rather be anywhere else but here.
Truthfully, I’m astounded he even approached me about this. Richard is the kind of man who would stay in a loveless marriage to avoid the argument—or so I thought. Clearly, I underestimated my fiancé.
“How long have you been feeling this way?” I demand to know and from the way he flinches I realise this is not a recent revelation. My heart sinks.
“Since my birthday,” he admits, albeit grudgingly, and this time it is my stomach that drops. How oblivious am I?
“That was seven fucking months ago.”
“Don’t swear—” he starts to chastise, but I’m not in the mood for one of his sermons on being ladylike. Ladylike can take a fucking hike.
“You’ve had doubts for seven-bloody-months?”
“Language, Sadie!”
I ignore his request to stop swearing. Fuck him, and the horse he rode in on.
He lets out a long, suffering breath, his fingers raking through his dark hair. I love his hair—loved his hair. It’s one of his best features. At least it was. Looking at him now, I can see nothing attractive about him. His nose is too straight and too rounded, his jaw is weak and his eyes are too small. And the tight line of his mouth only irritates me.
“I didn’t want to upset you.” At my look, which must be positively murderous, he adds, “Believe it or not, Sadie, there is a part of me that does love you. I’m just not in love with you.”
It sounds like semantics to me, but who am I to argue with whatever nonsense is going on in his head.
“Is this some sort of midlife crisis?” I ask, even though both of us are in our early-thirties and nowhere near that stage yet.
We have a good life together—a beautiful home in Chelsea, high-flying jobs, good families… everything was set. Although clearly I’m a first-class idiot because while I thought everything was going swimmingly well, my husband-to-be was planning how to leave me standing at the altar.
“Of course not. I just… I don’t think I want this anymore.”
I nod, clasping my hands together in my lap as a numbness settles through me. I feel devoid of any emotion, incapable of feeling anything.
“Right.”
He doesn’t want me, and God does that steal the breath from my lungs. How did I read this whole thing so wrong? How did I think everything was so perfect? I was talking about flowers and bridesmaid dresses and catering while he was considering whether he wanted to be with me at all. I’m such a fool.
“You don’t seem overly upset,” he observes.
I snap my gaze to him as my rage flares again.
“Oh, I’m upset, Richard. I want to strangle you right now and then dissolve into a puddle of tears but there is no chance I am walking out of here with my head held anything but high.”
I push up out of the wedding planner’s desk chair, grabbing handfuls of my oversized skirts so I don’t trip, and brush past him.
“Where are you going?” he demands to know.
I stop at the door and stare at the old wood. It’s hardwood, possibly oak, and pockmarked from use over the years. The age of the barn building was something that drew us to it—the rustic beams and old brickwork, the quaint gardens and the beautiful gazebo that looks over a manmade lake. We’d both loved the fact the main floor where the ceremony was to be held looked out over the water—a main floor that is currently filled with guests.
“I’m going home. You can tell everyone out there why.”
I push the door open and heft up my skirts, stepping back out into the ceremony hall. I can hear the voices of our friends and family—no doubt trying to work out why the hell the groom shooed away the bridesmaids and my stepfather before dragging me off.
“Sadie!” Richard’s voice carries in the open space, the high beamed ceilings making it echo loudly.
All eyes come to us as our guests swivel in their chairs to get a front row seat of our drama. I see my mother standing near the front with Henry and my half-sister Lilliana. They start moving towards us and their concerned eyes make my stomach twist. I can’t stay strong with them in my space and I need to stay strong because falling apart is not what Greenwood women do, and I’m not about to shred the last of my dignity in front of everyone I know.
So, I turn towards the main doors of the venue.
“Don’t leave like this,” he says, grabbing my arm in an attempt to halt me. “You’re too upset to be out there alone.”
The sentiment is almost laughable, only I don’t feel much like laughing.
I roll
to my toes, and hiss in his face, “Fuck you, Richard.”
Then I hoist my skirts and I rush from the wedding venue.
3
Callum
The air is choppy this morning, breezy but not enough to indicate a storm might be readying to blow through. It’s not optimum weather to be out on the open sea, but it’s not bad enough to keep us in port either. Truthfully, we’d be out there even if the weather was bad, so long as it’s not on the dangerous end of the scale. If we don’t go out, we don’t make money, simple as that, but we can’t make money if we sink the boat by heading into bad waters either, so we have to be sensible. As the captain—or skipper—it’s my job to keep me and my three-man crew safe.
Today should be a relatively easy run, providing the weather holds as it is. We’ll need to track where the fish are and then catch as much as we can before they move on again. The more fish we catch, the more money we’ll make at the end of the day when we hit the markets with our haul.
Fishing is in my blood. I’ve been fishing since I was sixteen-years-old and I don’t know how to do anything else. In fact, it’s my family legacy: my grandfather, Father and Uncle used to own the boat—the first version of the Scarlet Rose—but after Grandad died and Dad and Sam hung up their nets, me and my cousin, Alex, took over the business.
