Scoring a Fake FIANCÉE: Mr. Match Book 2 Read online

  Scoring a Fake FIANCÉE

  Mr. Match Book 2

  Delancey Stewart

  Get early releases, sneak peeks and freebies from Delancey Stewart!

  Join my mailing list here and get a free Mr. Match prequel novella!

  Prologue

  MR. MATCH INTAKE QUESTIONNAIRE

  INSTRUCTIONS

  Gird your loins and grab yourself a snack, lonely heart.

  This form is going to take you a while to complete. And should you lose faith in the process while you're digging up your answers to these questions, just remember that Mr. Match has successfully matched more than eight hundred happy couples in the San Diego area since our inception just under two years ago.

  So hang in there, it could be worth it.

  That said, remember that you aren't guaranteed a match. Or anything at all.

  You are guaranteed to spend almost twenty dollars a month to remain part of the Mr. Match universe, making you a potential match for the other hopefuls who take the time to complete this form in its entirety, but that's it. You may never actually hear from Mr. Match again except when we make our monthly withdrawal from your bank account. It's a gamble of sorts, but isn't the potential of meeting your perfect match worth it? The twenty-two thousand people who've already signed up believe it is.

  Got a comfy chair? Let's get rolling.

  Name: Trace “God of Goalies” Johnson

  Date of Birth: 4/23/1993

  Place of Birth: Los Angeles

  Delivery Method (Vaginal or C-section): Not a damn clue

  Length of Labor: Seriously?

  Blood Type: A Pos

  Vaccinations on Schedule: Yes __X__ No _____ (If no, please detail variations from CDC schedule found here) DUDE…I have all my shots.

  Number of siblings and separation in months from your date of birth: One sister. Twin. 4 minutes apart. (I’m the baby).

  Parents' dates of birth:

  Mother __?___

  Father __?___

  Were your parents married at the time of your birth? OMG

  If yes, are your parents married to one another now?

  If no, date of separation/divorce/death: ____________

  How many times did you move between the ages of four and seventeen: __________

  Did you have childhood pets? If yes, species and YOUR age at the time of their inhabitance of your household: _____________________

  Grade point average in elementary school: ______ high school: ___________ college (if applicable):

  Number of sports played at the varsity level in high school: __________

  Number of sports played at a non-varsity level from ages 10 - 17: ____________

  Number of musical instruments attempted between ages 10 - 17: ____________

  Number of musical instruments mastered currently: _____________

  Do you have any allergies: Yes ______ No _________

  If yes, detail here - allergy and severity:

  Political party affiliation: _______________

  Do you prefer odd or even numbers? _____________

  What is the optimal number of floors for an urban apartment building, in your opinion? ______________

  (Page 1 of 16) << Next >>

  Chapter 1

  Co-Dependency is a Lifestyle Choice

  Trace

  "Erica, this is ridiculous." I got up from the computer for the seventeenth time to pace the living room. My sister was forcing me to fill out the stupid Mr. Match profile, and the damned thing wanted to know literally everything about me. "I'm pretty sure its gonna ask me to jizz into a cup and then take a whiff and categorize the aromas any second here."

  "That was definitely not one of the questions, Trace. I'd remember," she said from the couch, where she was watching some house-related HGTV show. House porn, basically. Ever since she and my team's striker, Fernando Fuerte, had hooked up, she'd become weirdly domestic. I hated it. I missed the old version of my sister from a couple months ago, the one who was always game to go grab a beer or some wings, the one who was pretty much always around. Now I rarely saw her, and when I did she was with Fuerte and pushing me to find the same kind of romantic bliss she and Fuerte had.

  "Just sit down and go through it question by question. You can take breaks," she said. "But it's totally worth it."

  "Yeah, if you want to spend the rest of your life making out with Fuerte in public and forcing everyone else to practice not throwing up."

  "I'm pretty sure that's just you. And you're not going to get matched with Fuerte. He's mine." Erica smiled in a way that challenged my gag reflex.

  Don't get me wrong—I liked seeing my twin sister happy. I'd spent most of my life trying to accomplish exactly that. We hadn't had it easy growing up. Our dad had taken off before we were born, Mom had died when we were eight, and we’d been through a string of foster families after that. So we had become a team—looking out for each other, sticking together, having each other's back.

  So I should have been happy when she found love, I knew. Maybe I should have been relieved. It was like those guys on Game of Thrones—my watch had come to an end. Only I wasn't dead, and I didn't have to wear a huge black cape crafted from crow feathers or stand on some wall made out of ice. We lived in San Diego, so the odds of white walkers bursting from a frozen lake were pretty slim, really. Though I wouldn't have minded seeing a dragon or two around.

  "I'll be retired before I manage to finish this, sis. It's like a horrible test. I've never been good at tests. And this has all the family stuff . . ." I draped myself over the back of the couch, blocking her view of the television.

  Erica pushed at my head, which had landed on the pillow in her lap so I could whine more effectively, and she heaved a frustrated sigh, rolling her eyes at me. "I know the family part is crappy, but you've always totally underestimated yourself in the test-taking department. Go finish this."

  "I just want to drink scotch, play soccer, and die alone. Why won't you let me?" My back was starting to hurt from being draped sideways over the couch, so I slid all the way down, landing in a reclined position next to my sister, my head still on her lap looking up at her.

  "Get off me."

  I swung my legs down and sat up. "I don't need a match."

  "You're driving me nuts, you need to grow up, and one day I want to be Auntie Erica."

  "I feel like it’d be weird if I called you that.

  “Oh my God, seriously. You need a girlfriend."

  “Why? I have you. And Fuerte.”

  "I'm not your match, I'm your sister. And we have to live our own lives."

  I knew she was right, but it still hurt to hear her say it. I knew it was immature and ridiculous to be pouting over my twenty-seven year old sister talking about moving out, but I couldn't help it. I didn't want her to go. I tried refusing to allow her to date Fuerte in the first place, but that didn't go very well. Plus, he's a good guy, and I actually like him a lot. Of all the guys on the team she could have picked, he's probably the one I would have chosen for her.

  And while I'd dated a little in the past, I'd never been serious about anyone. And those women I might have gotten serious about could have potentially been scared away by Erica's dominant presence in my life. We were probably the definition of co-dependent, but Erica had taken great strides recently in changing all of that. And now she was forcing me ahead, too. The whole relationship between her and Fuerte surprised me a little bit—she made it look easy. But for me, the idea of putting yourself in front of someone and asking them to love you was terrifying. Maybe because that’s what we’d been forced to do over and over as kids, and no one ever had.

  E
rica picked up the remote and turned off the television. "Fine," she said, standing and walking to the dining table where the laptop sat open. "Want me to help you?"

  I pushed out my bottom lip and made my best sad puppy face. "Yes please," I said.

  She sighed again, and began typing. She didn't even have to ask me half the questions because she already knew the answers, and she knew what to put in the ones about our parents. I tried not to think about that stuff, but she knew their names, their birthdays, everything. I didn’t want to know—they’d never wanted to know me. Or at least Dad hadn’t. I kicked back on the couch and made myself comfortable, switching the television back on and turning it to watch FOX Soccer Plus.

  As I watched, I rolled the shoulder that had been bothering me all season and thought about my life as a soccer player. Not a lot of guys were willing to sacrifice themselves to keep their team in the game, which was why I was a good keeper. I'd been kicked in the face, kicked in the junk, dislocated a shoulder, and smashed my head into the goalpost—all in the name of saving the ball. But I was one of the best goalies in the league, and that was something I was effing proud about.

  At the moment, it was critical I kept demonstrating my value at work. Marissa, the ex-owner’s ex-wife, had ended up with ownership of the team in their very messy split, and she was making a lot of noise about selling us. New owners meant new ideas, and new ideas could mean new players. I wanted to stay a Shark, and I needed to stay on my game to ensure it.

  Soccer was pretty much my life. Well, being there for my sis, and soccer. And if Erica was insisting on the whole ‘next phase of adulthood’ thing—if she really thought it was time we looked after ourselves—then I was going to be sure as hell that the soccer part of my life worked out. Because if I lost that? I'd have nothing.

  Chapter 2

  French for “Faking out Maman”

  Magalie

  "Maman, non," I sliced my hand across my chest in a definitive motion as I spoke to my overbearing mother on the phone, though I realized she could not see me from France. I spoke with my hands whether I was on the phone or not. I couldn't help it, and I needed my mother to hear how seriously I did not want her racing around the world to visit me after I’d been here less than six months. Not yet.

  "But Magalie," she said in French, "I know you are going to change your mind anyway, and if I can come there and help you change it just a little bit quicker, then you will not have wasted so much time. These are your productive years—the best ones for children. I don't want you to wake up one day, old and dried out, and regret your barren womb."

  This was classic Maman. She tossed off mentions of my "barren womb" without a second thought, but when it came to being supportive about my accomplishments, it was like pulling teeth. "Maman," I said, my voice rising in an effort to practice patience with the woman who was more capable of driving me to anger than anyone else in the world. "Maman, I know you don't agree with my choice to move, but in many ways you forced me into it."

  My mother made an aggravated little noise in the back of her throat. I stared out my sliding glass doors at the vineyards marching over the hills behind the building where I rented my apartment. The sun was just beginning to reach purple and red fingers over the horizon to the east, and my heart settled as the familiar landscape out my window began to appear. This was the right place for me. Among the vines, doing the work I loved, with a real chance to build a career and a life. I’d found a position where I could lead winemaking for a small winery, which was working to establish itself through old world-style wines, and September was smack dab in the middle of the crush. This would be my first season in the lead as we blended and bottled wines for the coming years.

  I would have liked to have done it in France where I grew up, but she had made that virtually impossible because there was no place in France far enough away to avoid her controlling nature, and she would not hear the word no from me. "Maman, I'm happy here for now. I'm establishing myself, and building a reputation."

  "You should be building a family," she sniffed.

  "There will be time for that." I said the words, not knowing if they were true. My mother’s idea of family wasn’t quite the one I had. Hers involved a marriage that made good practical sense and children to carry on the family name. It had little to do with the heart, and that didn’t feel right to me. We’d never agreed on this.

  My mother's greatest fear in life was to be alone, and I didn't share her worry. My greatest fear wasn't solitude—it was that nothing I did would ever matter, that I’d never be allowed to find out what kind of strength I had. Maman had a habit of arranging everything for me. And while I would have liked to meet a man, have a family perhaps, it wasn't my first priority. And Maman’s urgency to marry me off had very little to do with what I wanted, or with love, and everything to do with answering her own fears. "Maman, listen, I need to get ready for work. I will call you tomorrow."

  I could hear my mother sniff, offended that I would end a call with her so suddenly. "Very well," she said tightly. "J'taime, ma petite."

  "J'taime, Maman." I slid my phone onto the round table next to the window and let out a long breath, rubbing my hands over my face. Talking to my mother was challenging at the best of times. Since moving to Temecula, where we were nine hours behind my home in France, I had found the only time I had to speak to her was early in the morning—before work, sometimes before coffee. And that was the ultimate challenge.

  But I was keen to get dressed quickly and hurry to Chateau Le Sec to face the next part of my day, which would be far more fulfilling.

  I dressed quickly—work clothes for me were jeans and a tank top with a loose flannel thrown over the top for the cooler mornings—and pulled my hair into a messy bun on top of my head. I slathered on sunscreen and finished my coffee. I was in the car a mere fifteen minutes after my frustrating conversation with my mother, and stepping through door at Chateau Le Sec ten minutes later.

  Chloe Tennyson was already inside the tasting room, organizing things and dusting the long tasting counter as the first beams of true sunlight flooded the arched windows overlooking the patio outside and the Temecula Valley beyond.

  "Bonjour,” I sang out, stepping into what was quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the world.

  Chloe turned with a huge smile, her blond hair in wild tendrils around her face, and sang back, "Magalie! Bonjour!” She pulled the coffee carafe from behind her and poured us each a cup, sliding mine across the counter to me.

  Coffee had become our morning ritual, and I'd become addicted to the delicious American coffee they favored here. It more than did the job, and while there were some things about American cuisine that had been hard to adapt to, coffee was not one of them. I'd already been planning to set up some kind of underground coffee trade once I went back home.

  "How is the harvest looking?" I asked Chloe as I took the first sip. I knew they'd been pulling grapes in over the past few days and was eager to get to work. Bringing in the grapes wasn’t something I’d been involved with, though I’d offered.

  She smiled. Chloe had been an exchange student from France when she'd met Adam Tennyson, the owner of Chateau Le Sec. "The fruit is perfect," she said. "I cannot wait to see what you and Adam do with it this year."

  I sipped my coffee, excitement for work roiling inside me. I was making wine, I was among new friends, and I was free of the entanglement my mother had pushed me into in France, when she had basically arranged a marriage for me without my knowledge or consent. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to see the text. My heart sank.

  Maybe I wasn't free of my mother's plans for me, after all.

  "What is it?" Chloe asked, putting down her cup as concern wrinkled her forehead.

  "My mother," I said, reading the text a third time as shock trickled through me. "She's bought a ticket. She's coming in a month. And she's bringing Henri. She will not give up!"

  Chloe sucked in a sharp breath and then
whispered, "You don’t want your mother here?"

  I shook my head. “My relationship with my mother is . . . impossible.”

  “How do you mean? And wait, who is Henri?”

  We switched to French—I had more words to describe exactly how frustrating life with Maman had been. “Maman is trying to force me into a marriage I don’t want—to Henri, and she doesn’t think I should be focusing on a career. She says I should marry someone capable and smart who will want to take care of me and worry about everything else later.”

  “How romantic.” Chloe shook her head, her mouth drawn into a frown.

  “Maman’s ideal relationship is the opposite of romantic. In fact, she’s always told me not to trust my heart, that love is to be avoided.” I told Chloe a little about how my mother had manipulated my whole life, and how her latest effort had resulted in me reaching out to California wineries and ultimately ending up here. The man she’d tried to make me marry, Henri, was a friend of the family, a winemaker in Avignon. Maman had set up an "internship" for me there, leading me to believe she was actually supportive of my desire to be a winemaker. In truth, she had promised my hand in marriage to sweet, kind Henri—who was absolutely not my type and just enough older for it to be slightly creepy—and sent me there under false pretenses.

  That had been almost a year ago. I thought I'd set Henri straight, but my mother made it sound like they both still harbored hope that I'd somehow change my mind. It had been the impetus for finding a job here and moving as far away from home as I could.

  "I was clear enough that this wasn’t going to happen," I said. "I told her I wasn’t marrying him and then I moved halfway around the world, isn’t that clear?"