Page 107

“Fucking hockey players,” I whisper again.

He chuckles but I’m too busy trying not to cry to put any real effort into my curse.

Because there’s also a plate with cake, a bottle of champagne, and two glasses.

He strides forward, rounding the edge of the blanket and gently setting me down on top of it.

“What did you do?” I say softly as he sits down next to me and opens the champagne.

“You’re amazing, baby,” he says, pouring some into the two glasses. “And I wanted to show you how much that means to me.”

And I feel it inside me—the ice giving way.

The fire I deny I have sputtering, the flames going out.

Leaving just…me.

Falling. No.

Fallen.

“I just did what anyone else would have,” I whisper, heart pounding as the certainty of what I’m feeling and how incredibly screwed I am pulses through my veins.

I’m in love with Ace Ambrose.

Fucking hockey players.

“Look at me, princess.”

And I’m so shocked by what I’ve discovered, what I’ve done to myself that I allow my gaze to drift to his. To hold.

He touches my cheek. “You. Are. Amazing.” It’s firmer, and though I shake my head, I accept the flute he holds out…because champagne.

“Stubborn,” he mutters.

I sip. “You were right beside me, helping fix the things that went wrong today. Noble did too, and Beck and Lex.” Though the last did it minimally and with much complaining. “Even the Laurents chipped in.”

“Yes,” he says. “Because you made it happen.” A beat. “But I wasn’t talking about saving the wedding from certain disaster or handing the Laurents or corralling my parents. I’m not even talking about pancakes or football or cooking competitions, or spa days or scavenger hunts or right hooks”—his smile is so beautiful it’s hard to breathe—“I’m talking about you.”

“I—”

“I don’t give a fuck that what’s between us started as a job, that I forced you to pretend to be my fiancée so I could get the deal with Maison Étoile sewn up. I don’t give a fuck that your brothers are the Conrads and will probably murder me on the ice when the season comes around just because they’re assholes who want to make everyone around them as miserable as they are—including you and me if we can make this work between us.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “I care that you’re you. That you’re a survivor. That you’re smart and funny and I love the way you dress—though I hate that fucking bun. I care that you love your heels and romance novels, and you have a DoorDash night and that your heart is so damned big it includes a ten-year-old kid and your assistant, a billionaire and her husband, and a mom who isn’t the best but who tries, and that trying is enough for you. I care you’re sexy as shit and you seem to like me back despite my asshole ways, and I care because…you’re the most talented matchmaker I’ve ever known.”

“I’m probably the only matchmaker you’ve ever known,” I whisper, heart pounding.

He cups my cheek. “You’re right about that, princess. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are—bar none—the most amazing woman I have ever met.”

Then he lifts his own flute and sips from it, as though everything he just spoke of is the most normal thing in the world to say.

It’s not normal.

Not for me.

And it’s beautiful.

And…I want to cry again.

Which is so not me.