“Well, why don’t you spend today going over some online course offerings, and see what hits a note with you? And here—” I handed him my paperback copy of Clifton StrengthsFinder. There’s a code in here for a test you can take online.”
“I suck at tests,” he moaned.
“Take this one. It will tell you all the things about you that rock. And we can figure out how to apply your strengths after that. But I’ve gotta get out of here today at five.”
His face cleared and he looked at me with interest. “You never leave at five.”
“I have a . . .” I did not really want to confide in PJ.
He read my unspoken words on my face, and then he glanced over to where the dress hung in a garment bag at the back of my office next to the couch. “You have a date!” He seemed strangely enthused about this idea.
“I, ahem. Yes. I am meeting someone.”
“Not the Jingle Ball?” he was almost bouncing out of his seat.
He knew about the Jingle Ball? “Yes . . .”
“You got matched! Me too, boss.” The grin that spread across his young face was bright and shiny, and just a little bit too big, considering my match was evidently not my match at all.
“Well, I hope it works out great for you,” I said. “But I need to get back to work. Go take that test.”
He leapt to his feet. “Sure thing. And I’ll see you at the ball. Hey,” he leaned toward me, “wanna go together?”
The ball was only a few blocks away, but for some reason I really didn’t want to walk in with PJ. At the same time he looked so hopeful. “Sure. Okay.”
“Leave at 4:45?” Why on earth he wanted to be punctual now, when he was at least twenty minutes late for work every morning, had me baffled.
“Yeah, okay.” Tallulah would be thrilled if I showed up right on time. I’d planned to be late myself.
Now, as I smoothed the sparkling dress down my hips, I felt a strange twist of worry inside. The man in the photo was not the average San Diego “dude” I was used to. He was burly and tough looking, his face giving away a hint of something else. And for whatever reason, even his photograph made me nervous.
“I am a successful, strong, independent woman,” I told my mirror.
It said nothing back, but a knock came at my office door. “Ready boss?” PJ called.
“Yeah, you can come in,” I called back as I stepped into my heels.
“Holy shit,” my assistant said when he stepped through the door and laid eyes on me. “I mean, wow.”
That did a little to make me feel less nervous. “So I look okay?” I’d wrestled my hair up into a chignon, with tendrils escaping around my face, and had doubled down on eyeliner and lipstick.
“You look amazing.” He nodded his head to enforce the point.
“Well you look pretty good yourself,” I told him, taking in the dark suit and shiny loafers. “Very handsome.” I wasn’t lying. PJ was a good-looking kid. Secretly, I hoped his match didn’t work out, though. He needed some time to figure himself out, maybe travel a bit.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping to pull my coat from the rack.
“Let me,” PJ said, lifting it from the hook and holding it open for me to step into.
“Thank you.” A little laugh escaped me at the gentlemanly move.
Moments later we were outside, a wind carrying a December chill blowing in off the harbor. The ball was in one of the big hotels lining the marina, and it took just a few minutes for us to get there from the office. Downtown San Diego glowed around us as we walked, holiday lights glowing in many of the restaurants and shops at street level, and the buildings themselves shining in the fading light of the sun.
We gave our names at the registration table, and checked our coats, and then walked into a ballroom that twinkled and glinted in shades of red and silver. It was beautiful. There was a bar set up in the far corner, and I turned to PJ, “Want a drink?” I was pretty sure he was over twenty-one.
“Yeah.” The confident guy who’d walked me to the party had vanished, and PJ looked almost sick in his nervousness. We’d each had a number pinned to us, the same number our matches would be wearing. And PJ was scanning the thin crowd, looking for his match.
“Have a drink, and don’t worry about finding her yet,” I suggested. “Maybe she’ll come find you. In the meantime, just enjoy the party.”
He nodded with a weak smile. “Thanks, boss. I’m glad you’re here.”
I picked up a flute of champagne and a beer, and we moved to gaze out the windows at the marina outside, the boats bobbing merrily in the water. Many of them had been lit for the holidays. I felt a little glow of cheer ignite inside me—I’d been so busy at work I’d hardly noticed the season arrive, but it was impossible to ignore when wearing red sequins and surrounded by twinkle lights and trees. I was just about to ask PJ about the test I’d suggested he take today when a deep voice rolled over my right shoulder.
“Rose?”
I turned and met the dark dancing eyes of the man in the picture Lulu had sent, and I nearly dropped my drink as my knees weakened. He was in a tux, the dark beard cropped close to his face and those perfect lips posed in that same sexy smile. The man was at least a foot taller than me, with broad shoulders and a presence that was both imposing and somehow regal.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice as weak as my knees felt. I cleared my throat and tried to get hold of myself. I was not a shy twenty-one-year-old, dammit. “Yes,” I tried again, straightening to my full height. I remembered with embarrassment that I didn’t know his name. I was pretty sure it wasn’t “Crab Man.”
“I’m Ash,” he said, relieving me of my burden of confusion. “I believe we are matched for the evening.” He said this with a confidence that set something inside me blazing with attraction. It didn’t even seem to matter that I was a melting puddle of nerves—this guy was confident enough for both of us.
“Yes,” I managed, having now said two whole words to this man. The same word twice, actually. “Good.” Shit.
“Hi,” PJ said, stepping up beside me. For once I was happy to have PJ interrupt a meeting. “I work with Rose,” he went on, shaking Ash’s hand.
“Do you have a fated match here tonight too, PJ?” Ash asked, smiling at my assistant.
I sipped my champagne, wishing I could think of some of the other words that I had once known.
“Yeah,” PJ said, ducking his head. “I’m supposed to. I’m pretty nervous, man.”
How was he able to talk to my giant cologne-model match when I couldn’t form a single word?
“Don’t be nervous,” Ash suggested. “She’s human too, she’ll be just as nervous, I promise.”
Yeah, just look at me.
“She’s really pretty, though,” PJ said.
Ash let out a little breath, and looked down at me, winking and nearly sending me to the floor. I sipped again, words still absent from my mind. “PJ, look at my match. You think I’m not nervous? Rose is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, between you and me.”
Oh. My. God. He said these words, clearly not just between him and PJ but also between him and me. And my cheeks were flaming, and other things were . . . Happening to my body. Inside my body. God, I needed to think of something to say. I swigged the rest of my champagne instead, as his words ran over and over through my head. He thinks I’m beautiful.
I opened my mouth, about to try to respond, when Lulu flounced towards us, wearing a tight green dress that hit just above her knees, grinning madly. “You’re here! Oh, and you met Ash already!” She pulled me into a fierce hug. “You okay? You look weird. I mean gorgeous, but weird.”
“No,” I whisper-shrieked. The hug was becoming unnaturally long, but I felt safe in Lu’s arms. “I’m a mess.”
She released me. “Rose, will you come with me for a minute? I need help with some, ah, some shrimp.”
PJ frowned as Lu took my hand and began leading me away. “Shrimp?” he asked.
&nbs
p; “Crabs too,” Lu called back, giggling as she pulled me toward a Christmas tree and around the side of it, out of sight.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “He is effing gorgeous, by the way. What could possibly be wrong with that?”
I seemed to have recovered my ability to speak. “He is,” I agreed. “Maybe too good looking? I can’t even speak around him!”
“Maybe words are not required.” Lu lifted her eyebrows and smiled suggestively.
“Stop that,” I swatted at her arm. “You look amazing, by the way.”
“So do you, and Ash was totally checking out your ass as we walked away.”
“But if I can’t even talk to him, there’s no chance this will ever work.”
“You want it to work?” Lulu bounced and clapped her hands.
“Well, I don’t want to humiliate myself completely,” I said.
“Take the pressure off,” she suggested. “Ask about him.”
“Right, right.” I glanced toward the windows, where someone else had joined PJ and Ash—a young girl in a gold dress, who was fiddling nervously with her clutch as she talked to the men. PJ’s date?
“Go back over there,” Lu said. “And just be yourself. Learn about the guy. And then report back.”
I took a deep breath. I could do this. Of course I could do this. I strode back toward the windows, toward the giant tower of sheer sexiness that was my date. “Sorry about that,” I said, happy to find actual words coming out of my mouth.
“Rose,” PJ said, pulling my attention away from the behemoth of hotness. “This is Becky. Becky, this is my boss, Rose.”
I glanced at Ash as PJ called me his boss and the man’s eyebrows lifted with interest. That was good. “Hi Becky,” I said, greeting the girl. She was pretty, with blond straight hair, a depth of intelligence in her dark-eyed gaze, and pink full lips.
“Hello,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Polite too.
“Would you like to get a drink, Rose?” Ash’s voice was like warm caramel, wrapping around me, pulling me to him.
I turned back to him and managed a nod. “Yeah,” I thought I heard myself whisper. “Okay.”
We left PJ and Becky and headed back to the bar, Ash’s big hand on the small of my back. Heat emanated from the spot where he touched me, and already I was imagining that big hand sliding over other parts of my body.
When we each had a drink and were seated at one of the high-top tables next to the windows, Ash turned every powerful ounce of his attention on me and lifted his glass. “Cheers.”
I was a goner.
Chapter 4
On Behalf of Birds…
ASH
I was going to kill Max.
This woman—Rose—was the whole fucking package. He’d given me what equated to her resume as we’d come over in the car, and I guessed he knew her pretty well somehow. The woman had graduated top of her class at CalTech and gone on to get a master’s degree in computer engineering from MIT. And then founded her own cyber security company, and based on the information Max had about the company, she was killing it.
And now that I’d met her, stood trapped in that keen intelligent gaze and felt the sheer magnetism between her tight curvy little body and my own . . . Well, I worried that was going to make it hard to go back to Alaska. I wasn’t normally away from the boat in December as it was, but this year Mom had demanded I be home for the holiday, and I gave in, hiring another captain for my boat. Taking time off wouldn’t kill me—it wasn’t like I needed the money.
But I did need to be able to get away from San Diego, and getting involved with someone who lived here was not a good idea. I didn’t need one more thing pulling me back.
Rose sat close at my side, the red sequins of her dress glinting and reflecting the light around us. Her long legs were crossed beneath the tall table, and the curve of her calf made me want to reach down and caress it, maybe let my hand slide up a bit higher, feel the strength of her thighs, maybe hear her moan. But I was getting ahead of myself.
“Tell me something that’ll surprise me,” I said, and the way her pretty lips dropped open and her eyes widened told me that was not the expected first conversational salvo.
Her mouth closed, those pretty red lips pressing together, and then she spoke, and her voice was creamy rich coffee and quiet dark nights in front of a fire. “I’m not a fan of birds.”
That wasn’t exactly expected. “No?”
“No.” A little smile lifted one corner of her mouth. She was flirting, and I loved it. My body was humming with anticipation—not of anything that might happen between us per se, but of her next words, her next breath. Just being next to her was the most exciting thing I’d experienced in a long, long time.
“It seems unfair to rule out all birds just like that. What about Big Bird? He seems like a good dude. And penguins? They’re so cute and waddly. And how about that one in the hand, and the ones in the bush? Useful, no?”
She was giggling, leaning forward over the table and shaking her head. “Waddly is not a word. And the bush, really?”
“Too soon for bush jokes?” I leaned in, loving the way her dark eyes flashed with amusement.
“Definitely too soon.” She picked up her drink and took a sip, the long column of her throat moving as she swallowed. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. She put down the glass lightly. “City birds—like pigeons, and maybe seagulls—they have a weird thing for me. Like they know I hate them, so they wait for me outside my office building and then try to kill me.”
“Pigeons try to kill you when you leave work?”
“Yes. All the time. They dive bomb me and follow me around, and they try to hit me with their… you know.”
“Have you been pooped on, Rose?” I grinned at her.
She pressed those perfect lips into a frown, and all I could think about for a split second was what the red lipstick she wore might look like, rubbed off on me if she were to wrap her lips around certain parts of my body. “I have. And it was awful. I’m scarred for life.”
“Well, despite the scars, you look okay to me. Actually,” I paused. How much was too much here? “You’re beautiful.”
She held my gaze when I said that, and my body heated as she watched me, everything inside me tightening up. Other women would blush or drop their eyes at a blatant compliment. But not this one. God, she was sexy.
“Thank you, Ash,” she said. “So tell me about Alaska. I’ve never been there.”
“Well, in my line of work, there are a lot of birds,” I began, hoping to see her smile again.
“Crab fishing, right?”
I confirmed this with a tilt of my head as I sipped my whiskey.
“It must be gorgeous up there. And pretty heart-pounding work, I’d guess.”
“Both are accurate.” I considered her. Every other woman I’d dated asked if it was dangerous and cringed when I confirmed that it was. But not Rose. She seemed to understand on some deeper level that it wasn’t about the danger—it was about finding something that reminded you, minute by minute, that you were alive. “It’s like nothing else in the world. As soon as we’re out of the harbor, you get this feeling like you’re just on your own, being tested. You against nature.”
“I imagine you’ve had some close calls. How long have you been fishing?”
“I joined my first crew at about twenty-five. Bought my boat last year.”
“You’re a captain,” she observed.
“I am.”
“But you grew up here? What made you leave San Diego?”
“My mother, mostly.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into all the details of my family and their ridiculous expectations.
“She’s still here?”
“She is,” I said, and thinking of Mom required a very large swallow of my drink.
“And you live in Alaska full time?”
“Yeah. Even in the off season I usually stay up there. It’s easier than going back and forth, trying
to split my life in two.” I didn’t say any more about it being easier than being here, trying to fend off my mother’s attempts to make me into the man she thought I should be.
But Rose was smart. “You don’t like being in San Diego.” She was frowning at me, looking for answers.
“It’s not about like,” I said slowly. I sighed. “My dad died about ten years ago. He had cancer, so he sold his company, set us up to live well in his absence.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose said.
And I was too. My parents hadn’t been happy, and he didn’t want to leave everything to her. I inherited everything, and I basically give my mother an allowance each year. None of which was polite conversation. “Mom just depends on me more than I wish she did,” I hedged.
“Oh,” Rose said, “that’s complicated.”
“It is,” I agreed. Mom was terrified that I’d get killed fishing, that she’d be destitute. “My mother is very focused on the material things. She worries about losing her lifestyle, her big house.”
“Sure,” Rose said, and I could see in one instant that none of those things mattered to her. She looked sad, and her next words proved what kind of woman she was. “So you’re not close with your mother?”
“No,” I said. “Not since I was little. Back then taking polo lessons and going to cotillion seemed normal. But now, being forced into slacks with ducks all over them and made to sit at dinners with fourteen forks so my mother can marry me into even more money just doesn’t really suit me.”
Rose was looking at me, her eyes narrowed. “You’re Ashton Saint,” she murmured, and I knew she was thinking of my father, the first Ashton Saint, the man who owned half of the buildings in downtown San Diego. “You’re actually the landlord of the space my company rents,” she murmured.
“Remind me to reduce your rent,” I joked.
A hoot erupted from the other side of the room where the dance floor was set up, and we both looked over to see one of the Sharks players—Trace Johnson, I thought—doing the worm on the dance floor, his white tux shirt picking up every mote of dirt and dust as he flailed from one side of the hardwood to the other. A beautiful woman in a silver dress with dark hair was standing at one side of the space, her arms crossed. She looked pissed, and when he finally got up, a wide grin on his face, she said loudly, “You promised!” There was murder in her expression, and for a split second, I felt sorry for the guy—she was clearly wearing the pants in that relationship, and she was not pleased.
Scoring a Holiday Match (Mr. Match) Page 2
