Scoring a Holiday Match (Mr. Match), Delancey Stewart [classic novels TXT] 📗

how I’d lost control of the plan here. “I’d like that,” I said. And then I leaned toward him, and Noah met me halfway, brushing his lips lightly across mine and sending sparks exploding overhead.

One of the sparks actually landed on Noah’s hand and he leapt to his feet, cursing.

People around us were shrieking and jumping up from tables, and the place was generally erupting in chaos as the strand of twinkle lights above us sparked and then ignited into a line of flames.

My mind spun as Noah yanked me away from the overhead blaze, and we watched as the waiters brought out wet dishtowels and threw them over the top of the strand while another one shimmied up the nearby tree and detached the end from the trunk, letting it fall across the patio in a blackened strand. As we watched the employees dispatch the faulty lights, I realized Noah had his arm protectively around my shoulders and I was pressed firmly into his broad firm side. It was warm and felt safe. I liked it. A lot.

“Apologies, senors and senoras,” said a little man who came out in a huge fancy sombrero. “We have this problem now and then, you see. It is only Hector. He plays tricks on us.”

Noah and I were not the only people looking at each other with confused expressions.

“He will eat anything,” the man explained, his hands spread wide and his tone apologetic. “Rubber gloves, wallets… he chews the lights in the trees.”

“Sounds like Hector has more issues than a newsstand,” Noah said under his breath. I burst out laughing.

“And now, Hector, he brings his son,” the man went on, getting comfortable now with this divulgence of Hector and his family’s odd proclivities for eating inedible objects. “And I worry that soon we will be serving fried raccoon.” The man looked sad, and Noah and I exchanged a glance full of equal parts amusement and confusion. Raccoon?

The man shrugged and looked around. “One drink on the house for everyone! On Hector!” He called out, and Noah and I returned to our table, figuring that if Hector was buying us a drink, we’d better accept it.

“So,” I said slowly, looking up into the trees arching over us in the warm breeze. “Hector is a raccoon, right?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

I leaned back in my chair, chuckling. “I thought the sparks we’re just from the kiss.”

Noah shot me that heartbreaking lopsided grin again. “Let’s go with that. Way hotter than raccoons living on the edge.”

Laughing, I took another sip of margarita, feeling the cold liquid running down inside my throat as every other part of my body warmed with Noah’s smile. I was happy. This date was working out, and I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t congratulating myself for knowing as well as or better than Mr. Match himself. Max never should have doubted me…math isn’t everything.

“So can I take you surfing tomorrow?” Noah asked me, taking my fingers in his own on the table top and fixing me in that doubt-dissolving chocolate gaze.

“Yeah,” I said.

At that moment, I thought maybe I’d let Noah take me just about anywhere.

Chapter 11

Holy Mother of Penguins

Noah

Tallulah Jeffries.

My match was Tallulah Jeffries… And as I drove home from Old Town, replaying the night in my mind, I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

I wasn’t a huge women’s soccer fan. It’s not like I set the DVR for the Stars games or anything (though I would now, for sure).

But I’d heard of Tallulah, even before we were matched. Because Tallulah wasn’t exactly a shy little flower around town. She’d been in the news. Lately, especially.

Tallulah was both the new face of Mr. Match—which I fully intended to quiz her about—and she was the most outspoken advocate for women’s athletics outside of Megan Rapinoe. She fought for equal attention, equal respect, and equal pay for the Oceanside Stars and all pro women’s teams. And while the fans and the league might not have fulfilled all her demands, she’d rallied the other players for sure. There was a new billboard over the 805 freeway featuring Max Winchell, Fernando Fuerte and Trace Johnson (key players for the South Bay Sharks, San Diego’s male pro soccer team) advertising the Oceanside Stars. The teams had linked themselves, and they were co-promoting events all over town. It wasn’t at all unusual to see the Stars all sitting in the front rows at Sharks’ games and vice versa. And Tallulah made that happen.

I waited at the beach, two surfboards stuck in the warm sand about a quarter mile from the pier at Ocean Beach. Tallulah appeared on the berm near the parking lot, her blond hair pulled into a high messy bun, and her athletic body poured into a wetsuit that highlighted every curve and muscle, even from a hundred yards away. She was tiny, but man was she hot. I forced my mind to consider things that would distract certain parts of my anatomy from the way her body looked sheathed in that suit because my own wetsuit wasn’t much good for hiding a raging boner.

Electric eels, I thought. Shit, no. Eels are pretty phallic. That didn’t work at all.

The Yankees. I’d heard lots of guys tell me they ran baseball stats when they needed to, ah, calm down. But I actually didn’t know much about baseball stats. I was a casual fan. I did hate the Yankees though. Still, it didn’t help.

Wombats? I knew they produced square poop and I’d read that they liked to stack it in towers to attract the opposite sex.

That did it. Square poop.

The only problem was that I was giggling about wombats and making poop towers by the time Tallulah reached me, and she probably thought I’d lost my mind.

“Hey you,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “You laughing at me and my complete awkwardness in this tight-ass suit?”

I sobered. “Definitely not. You look amazing in that suit.”

She absorbed the compliment and her