Page 39 of The Match Faker

“Sorry.” I clear my throat. I’ve never sounded less like myself. “Can you remind me again of your siblings’ names?” I flip open the binder again and click my pen, the tip hovering over blank lined paper.

We turn off the main road and wind through residential streets. Some houses still have their Christmas lights up and almost every driveway has a hockey net against the garage.

“Alex is married to Robert,” he says. “Miranda to Jake. Claire is married to Philip. Charlie is marrying Rashida next summer.”

“And this is in birth order?”

“Yeah.” By his tone, it’s obvious he’s smirking. I’ve learned that much about him already. Still, I peek over at him to confirm what I already knew: for some reason, that question amuses him.

“And Charlie is younger than you, right?”

Nodding, he fiddles with the knob on the radio.

“Their children’s names?” I ask, my pen poised over the paper again.

The houses are fewer and farther between now, set back from the road with miniature streetlamps flanking the long driveways. Nick turns onto a gravel road reduced to single track with car-high snowbanks on each side. Between the trees, I catch glimpses of a lake, the snow cover blindingly bright then disappearing in irregular intervals.

“The only kid you need to know about is Tilly.” For the first time in at least an hour, he sounds relaxed. It’s oddly comforting, but I’ll take that to the grave.

“Is Tilly the only one?”

“Tilly is the only one that matters,” he says definitively, one hand on the steering wheel.

“Are you saying that Tilly is?—”

“My favorite? Absolutely, I am.” He grins over at me. “Listen, I love all my nieces and nephews. Every one of them is wonderful and sweet. But Tilly—Alex’s daughter—shelovesme, and I love her. She’s my goddaughter. She made me an uncle. It’s nothing personal.” He shrugs, his cheeks turning pink maybe from his enthusiasm, or maybe because he’s embarrassed by that enthusiasm.

Jade and I have half-siblings we’ve only stalked on social media, but even if I did know them, I don’t think there’s anyone in this world I could love more than I love her.

“I get it.”

“I used to sing Beatles songs to her when she was a baby. She’d fall asleep to ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.’”

My heart squeezes, making it momentarily hard to breathe. That’s cute. And a bit homicidal.

His levity slowly fades, his expression dulling. I grasp for something I can say to bring his good mood back. We can’t both be freaking out at the same time and right now I have reservedall of the freaking out energy for myself. Because, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is about this man that turns me on so fucking much.

It keeps coming back to one explanation: the matchmaker, and her miracle algorithm, was right.

“We’re here,” he says, like a doctor might saytime of death.

My butt, which has fallen asleep, is relieved. Otherwise, this announcement ratchets up my nerves even more.

“Here” is a long, winding driveway lined with more of those miniature lampposts that disappears behind a hillock and a copse of ice-covered trees. The snow is even deeper here, but the paved driveway is professionally cleared by Jim’s Snow Removal at the turn off. Finally, as we crest the hill and slowly navigate through the pines, Nick’s parents’ house comes into view.

When he mentioned he’d grown up in Muskoka, I was expecting a suburban home. When he said he grew up playing hockey, I assumed he meant at a public arena. And the pool he mentioned? Perhaps a local community center. Anaïs and Butch have a cottage that’s about an hour from here. It’s nicer than any home I’ve ever lived in, with an attached garage, shiny wood paneling, and a fire pit on the waterfront. Some of the neighbors have pools despite the lake access.

But even those cottages are nothing like this.

The three-story home is lined with windows with clear views all the way through to the lake on the other side. A two-car garage stands open with luxury vehicles in the bays and I’ll eat my secondhand booties if there isn’t a boathouse on the water. Nick’s family’s home has a bigger footprint than most McMansions.

I look from Nick to the house and back. “Are you related to any NHL players?”

A laugh bursts from him, but he quickly schools his expression, like he’s surprised it got the better of him. “No, but I drove the Zamboni in tenth and eleventh grade.”

“It seems like a beautiful place to grow up.”

Nick’s smile dims, turns wistful. He squeezes the steering wheel. “It could be,” he says quietly.

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