Perfectly Unmatched (A Youngblood Book)

by Reinhardt, Liz

  “Honestly, my Hungarian is pretty crap, mate. Sorry.” I shrug and he switches languages.

  “No worries. My English is okay.” He flips his hand back and forth. “Have you seen a girl? Beautiful, long hair that’s very dark, big blue eyes, very shapely?”

  I shake my head and internally grimace over the fact that his basic description is both completely accurate and not even remotely good enough to describe the girl who just pounced on me and pounced back off too soon.

  “I only wish. She sounds gorgeous.”

  “Oh, she is.”

  The guy’s smile is smug, and, for no reason at all, it irritates the shit out of me.

  “Well, this path twists in on itself.” I point to the boggy swamp area that ruined my best leather shoes a week ago when I got mixed up, trudged on it, and walked too close to the lake. “She could have cut onto the lower path. It’s very private down there, you know, if she was headed somewhere quiet to do some thinking.”

  The look of total confusion on his face lets me know that ‘thinking’ doesn’t occur to him as synonymous with something one actively does. But he nods and thanks me before he heads into the bog.

  I sprint back to the boathouse and open the door slowly. She’s made a pathetic attempt to hide behind an upright canoe.

  “Coast is clear, but Romeo is on the prowl. I’d suggest hightailing it out of here if you want to continue to avoid him.”

  She shimmies from behind the canoe and pulls one hand over all that long, shiny hair, straightening the pieces that flew around and stuck to her face in her fall and subsequent dash to the boathouse.

  “Thank you. I owe you one.” She sticks out a hand, and I shake. She’s got an impressively firm grip. “Benelli Youngblood.”

  “Cormac Halstrom.” I like the way her smile works straight up to her eyes. And, though she’s made it crystal clear that she’s not looking for company, I find my mouth running independent of my brain. “Benelli Youngblood, there’s this little shop up the path that has the most amazing Kadarka I’ve ever had. Ever. In my entire three weeks in Hungary. Would you care to have a glass with me? We can toast the fact that we survived that terrifying collision.”

  I sound like a desperate ass, and I’m positive she’ll find some way to bow out politely, but she exhales a relieved sigh and says, “I’d love a glass. It’s been a really long afternoon.”

  She falls in step next to me, and I can smell that soft honey scent her hair gives off as we start up the trail, side by side. We walk in near total silence for a few minutes, until it seems we’re safely out of Loverboy’s hearing range.

  “Thank you, again.” Benelli tilts her head to the side and gives me a quick, nearly-shy smile. “I’m not usually such a klutz. Also, I usually have a backbone and just tell a guy if I’m not interested. But this guy…” Her words melt into a frustrated groan. “The biggest problem is that there is no problem, you know? He meets every single requirement my family and I have. But there’s no spark. None. So, I guess I’m running because otherwise I feel like he might talk me into saying ‘yes.’”

  That one syllable trembles with a terror too severe for a summer romance gone sour.

  “Yes?” I repeat and narrow my eyes at her. “‘Yes’ to yet another boring date?”

  She shakes her head from side to side, her dark hair falling over her shoulders. “’Yes’ to a marriage proposal.”

  The words shock me.

  Marriage?

  She looks so young. Too young to be married.

  Not, like, too young to be legally married. Just too life-young to be thinking about tethering herself to such a huge commitment.

  She’s younger than I am, for sure, and marriage has only ever flitted across my mind one idiotic time.

  And, considering the outcome of that situation, no matrimonial thoughts will be coming anywhere near my brain anytime soon.

  “I’m sorry.” She swings her hands at her sides. “We’ve known each other for ten minutes, and here I am dumping all kinds of personal crap in your lap. Please ignore me.”

  “No apologies necessary. I think when your first meeting is as violent as ours, you just hop over social conventions.” I stick my hands in my pockets because, for some reason, I feel like I need to contain them.

  Like they may reach out and touch something they aren’t supposed to. Without my permission.

  Ridiculous.

  “Okay.” She hooks her thumbs in the belt-loops that circle her very short shorts. Exquisitely short shorts. “Since you now know all about me and my crazy dating life, can I ask you a question?”

  It gives me an immediate and strange thrill that she’s curious about me. “I’m an open book, available for your perusal, m’lady.”

  Her laugh is clear and gurgling, like a surge of rain water rushing along the curb in London.

  “You speak so proper. And I can’t place your accent. Where are you from?” Her feet are outfitted in a flimsy pair of flip flops. The polish on her nails is a deep purple. I’ve always liked collecting information-based details so I could slide people and things into their allotted places, but this girl is intoxicatingly difficult to characterize off the bat.

  “Nowhere and everywhere.” I nudge her with one shoulder, and I like the slide of my body against hers. “Are you intrigued yet?”

  “Completely.” She bumps me back, and the connectivity of our bodies is cellularly pleasing in a way I try not to think about too much. “So you’re a spy? A diplomat? Raised by wolves? The son of a ship captain?”

  “Impressive!” I wag a finger at her. “I am the son of a captain in the United States Navy.”

  “Ah-ha! So you were never in the same port for all that long and all that?” She blinks and her deep black eyelashes seem to be sending some kind of morse code message to my adrenal medulla, because I have a head-spinning surge of adrenaline so severe, I have to fight the urge to yank her close, and try to content myself with ogling her instead.

  I’m so busy sneaking glances at her impossibly long legs, I misstep, and she grabs my arm to steady me.

  “I guess I never quite lost my sea-legs.” Her laugh is worth the prickle of my humiliation. “But, yes and no, to your question. I grew up traveling a good deal. When my parents were together, we traveled where my father traveled. When I got old enough, I went to the boarding school in England where my mother’s brother is the headmaster. I graduated and went to college in the states, and did a year abroad in Ireland and a summer in Italy. And now I’m here completing a requirement for my graduate work by interning for a local professor who’s one of the foremost experts on archaic Hungarian translations of The Odyssey. So I’ve been everywhere and attempted to speak everything, and if my accent was a dog, it would definitely be a mutt.”

  “If your accent was a food, it would be goulash.”

  Her metaphor unhinges a laughter in me that I know is embarrassingly nerdy, but she laughs along, so I let it fly.

  We’re finally at the uneven cobblestoned road that marks the entrance to the miniscule town, and I lead Benelli to a wrought iron table at a quiet little cafe, then I order the wine and some pastries because I definitely want to do all I can to ensure this drink lasts a while.

  “What is a gorgeous young American girl doing in the hills of Hungary?” I ask as an unsmiling waiter puts our glasses down on the table with a gentleness that’s at odds with his shitty attitude.

  “I am here to find a husband before the summer is over.” She looks pleased with herself as I choke on the first spicy sip of wine.

  “Excuse me,” I gasp, pounding my sternum with my fist.

  She rolls her pretty blue eyes and leans over to repeatedly slam between my shoulder blades with the flat of her hand. “Put your arms over your head,” she instructs.

  “Old…wive’s…tale…” I wheeze, but I do it anyway.

  And my choking subsides.

  She pulls her hand back and takes a slow, delicate sip of her wine. “Better?” she as
ks, and I nod.

  “It’s just, you mentioned it before…er, marriage, that is. On the way here, you mentioned it, and I thought…it seemed like it was your boyfriend who was—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she interrupts firmly, and I pause to enjoy her declaration.

  “Right. Sorry. It just seemed that your, um, admirer was the one more eager to…get married,” I gulp, mixing the word with a swig of alcohol to make it go down easier. “I didn’t realize you were…looking with such, uh, purpose. For a husband, that is.”

  “There’s no reason to panic, Cormac. I’m here to find a Hungarian husband. Off a list my parents made. It’s an extremely specific list, and I’m not remotely interested in anyone not on it, okay? My goal is to find the perfect guy, and he’s somewhere on this list.”

  It doesn’t seem like her tiny shorts have enough fabric in them to contain even a small pocket, but, apparently, I’m a poor judge of pocket size, because she pulls out a slim leather notebook out of one of the tiny pockets.

  It’s slightly startling to see this notebook, which is nearly identical to the one I keep in my back pocket at all times. I use it when I sketch, or to jot down notes for my thesis, or, once in a rare while, in an attempt to get a pretty girl’s phone number.

  She pushes the book my way, and I raise my eyebrows and point with my chin. She nods eagerly, and I open it.

  There are no pencil etchings of trees or disjointed musings on Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and its relation to the current state of civil liberty atrocities in America.

  Benelli’s book is all hard-lined facts and severe tables and charts.

  About men.

  There are names and initials everywhere, and all kinds of complicated pie charts and pictograms and secret codes so fantastically complex, they make my head ache and my throat thirsty for something way stronger than this wine.

  “This is genius. Borderline evil genius.” I thumb through the pages and shake my head at the microscopic footnotes about education levels and work experience and counter-reference points documenting church attendance and criminal records. To think I once fancied my thesis research as complicated. I’ve got nothing on this girl, nothing at all. “Tell me the truth. I swear not to alert the authorities if you do, but do you have potential husbands in cages in some secret laboratory? Because I wouldn’t be remotely shocked if that was the truth.”

  I take the bottle of wine and refill her already drained glass. She draws a fingertip around the rim, her eyes unfocused, her mouth pulled to the side like she’s frustrated, but she manages a laugh even though she clearly didn’t find my joke all that amusing.

  I rush to fix what I’ve already bungled.

  “No need to save my feelings. I know I can be a serious wanker. It truly was only a joke. Unless, of course you really do have a few guys locked away, in which case, I’m not judging. At all. And, can I say, for the record, that I’m jealous of the lucky bastards if there are any locked in your basement? It would be a pleasure to be trapped by a woman as intelligent and lovely as yourself.”

  I slide my hand across the table, but stop before I touch her. I have no business touching her. I take some kind of dessert made with apricots I’m not remotely hungry for.

  “Kifli,” Benelli says, pointing to the little treat. “My grandmother makes the most delicious kifli.”

  I take a bite and hold it out to her. She turns it around so she’s not biting where my mouth touched and nibbles. “Mmm. This is delicious. Not nearly as good as Nagymama makes, but it’s okay for tourists.”

  She’s ragging on me. Which makes all the tension I collected during my clearly unfunny attempt at joking with her melt away.

  “Some day I’ll have to sample some of the amazing Nagymama’s kifli, because I honestly can’t imagine anything tasting better than this,” I lie. Because I’m imagining what her lips would taste like, and I know they would be unbelievably sweet.

  Not that we’re going to kiss.

  We’re not.

  “I’ll bring you by her place sometime. She loves feeding skinny guys.” She pops another bite in her mouth and grins so big at her own joke, it’s difficult for her to chew. After she swallows, she adds, “That is, unless you’re afraid of ending up in a cage in my basement?”

  I press the rest of the kifli her way, and she eats the last bite, not seeming to mind the fact that I bit directly from it. And that cements my undeniable crush on this safely off-limits girl.

  “I will accept that invitation, since I’m clearly in no danger of being entrapped for engagement purposes. I’ve perused your notebook, and, sadly, I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it into the running. I’m too lazy, hardly employed, don’t go to church, and have an arrest record. There are half a dozen straight-arrow, hardworking, pious strapping Hungarian men, probably with chiseled jawlines and swelling muscles, who beat me on all of your charts. Luckily, I’m well aware of my shortcomings, and will be ecstatic if we can just do this once in a while.”

  I’m bluffing.

  Her eyebrows raise slowly, flirtatiously. She calls my bluff.

  “What is this exactly, Cormac?”

  There is a dusting of sugar crystals and a sticky smattering of apricot preserves on Benelli’s fingertips and thumb. She delicately licks all that sweetness away, and I make a heroic effort to breathe and swallow and blink as if I’m a normal man and not some kind of feral animal about to pounce over the table.

  “This is two incredibly witty, fun-loving, rational adults having a nice time in one another’s company over some wine and food. Very progressive stuff.”

  I lean back and she does this little thing where she shakes her hair off her shoulders. It makes all those silky, dark strands catch the sun’s rays and shimmer around her face. For the first time, I get a glimpse of what all those Romantic poets I used to suffer through may have been mooning on about.

  “Maybe I need a progressive friend. I mean, I am the girl with the arranged marriage in the works. You can’t get more old-fashioned than that.” She slides her feet out of her flip-flops and balances her toes on the crossbar under the table.

  “Well, arranged marriages aren’t necessarily regressive just because they have an ancient precedent.” I’m dangerously close to slipping into full-blown, blow-hard armchair philosopher mode, but her singularly cocked eyebrow ropes that impulse back. I clear my throat. “I just mean, you know, I’m not looking down on the way you’re going about this. To tell you the truth, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the way most modern couples jump into marriage.”

  When she tries not to smile, a deep, gorgeous dimple creases the left side of her cheek. She drops her feet to the stones under the table and wiggles her toes like children do when their feet hit sand at the beach.

  “I’m kind of surprised you don’t think it’s unromantic of me to have all these guys divided and dissected like this. You being a poetry student and all.” She slides her fingers under the bowl of the glass and every droplet of moisture evaporates from my throat.

  I dump emergency rations of wine down it to get back some function and try to stay on top of this conversation, but every soft, sweet movement from her dominoes a thousand imagined seductions.

  It’s been way too long since I got laid.

  “I do. Find it shockingly unromantic. And I’m not. Technically, I’m not an official student of poetry. I mean, I am. In part. I got my undergraduate degree in the Classics. I’m working on my graduate thesis, on The Odyssey. So, yes, some poetry, but also lots of good old fashioned tragedy and history and everyday human stuff that’s anything but romantic. Not everyone can be Odysseus and Penelope, after all.”

  The hot afternoon sun is most likely blistering the skin off back of my neck, and I think about how I’m probably developing a god-awful farmer’s tan. Which I don’t care about, except I’ll look like red and white and gangly with my shirt off, like a giant human candy cane.

  Which is a worry that
makes zero sense. One does not have to take one’s shirt off while researching minute facts about Greek to Hungarian to English translations for goat-stew and sirens.

  Benelli’s skin is the exact color of a caramel square, the ones I loved to hold on my tongue and suck the velvety richness off of when I was young.

  “But Penelope found Odysseus again when she was looking through all her potential suitors.” She swirls the dark wine in her glass and drinks, her lips lightly stained at the edges. “Maybe my Odysseus is somewhere here.”

  I’m well aware I’m nothing like the barrel-chested, hard-drinking, hard-playing men she’s lining up to choose from, and that fact doesn’t bother me. But her last words feel like a challenge and an invitation too perfect for me to ignore.

  “If your Odysseus is here, somewhere, he’s probably not on that list.” I tap two fingers on the buttery leather of her notebook. “Remember, he came to find Penelope, not the other way around. He traveled the world over to get back to her.”

  Her blue eyes shadow, and the color morphs to something duller, a silver-gray like the tarnished metal of a suit of armor. “There’s no one who’d come across the world for me.” Her words bite and snap out of her plush, wine-stained lips. “And that’s fine. I don’t want epic. I want everyday.”

  She pulls a few bills out of those incredibly short shorts and drops them on the table. I gather them up, press them back to her, and open my wallet. She backs away, shaking her head.

  “No. Don’t. Just, let me pay. Please. With every other guy…it’s a thing. It’s a point. Please, just let this be easy, Cormac. Please just let me know upfront that this isn’t going to be all awkward and…romantic between us?”

  Her eyelashes cover her irises because she can’t make direct eye contact. Because she’s embarrassed. For me.

  “Paying for the tab is just mannerly, Benelli,” I assure her, but, even though I grit my teeth while I do it, I lay some of her bills back down. “If we’re going to be proper friends, we have to, of course, go Dutch. I’m not looking for romance, but I’m also not sniffing around for a hand-out.”