Tamed by You (2 page)

Call her crazy, but she didn't believe that, especially in light of Isabella's warning.

"
Except you, Valentine," her mom said
.
"You, I worry about.
"

"Seriously?" She wanted to ask her mom if she'd looked in a mirror lately, but she heard her sister's voice telling her to be gentle, and she exhaled instead. "Why do you worry about me?"

"
T
he number of matches you’ve made since you moved here
is appalling, Valentine
."

"This is what you want to talk about?"

"Yes, of course. What else would there be?"

She didn't know—maybe why her mother looked like she was on the verge of a breakdown?

But she knew better than to say that. Sighing, Valentine repeated the standard reply she always used when this topic came up.
"I'm still establishing a client base, but I made a match a few weeks ago. It was in my report."

"Yes, between the accountant and the photographer."

The way her mother said it made it sound like she was a slacker. She wasn't a slacker—she just wasn't a great matchmaker. But pairing up her friends Marley and Brian had been brilliant.

And Isabella's idea.

Not that she was
about
to admit to her mom that
Isabella had orchestrated all the matches she'd ever made.
She just said, "I
thought i
t
wa
s a good start
in this new location
."

"Yes, it's a start." Venus
put her reading glasses low on her nose and
withdrew a leather-bound notebook from her purse. "But it's time to get you on track."

She watched
as her mom pulled out stacks of printouts
.
She bit her lip to keep from complaining, because her mother looked like her normal self for the first time since she arrived. Instead, she tried to joke.
"You came an awful long way to give me all that
.
You could have just email
ed them to me
."

"I'm not just
giving
them to you. I'm helping you."

Valentine knew that tone of voice, and it never boded well. "What does that mean?"

Venus looked at her over the rim of her glasses. "I've come to help you get on track. You should be producing more matches, Valentine.
"

She shifted her legs. "I told you my first location in San Francisco wasn't the best, and I only moved here to Laurel Heights—"

"Four months ago," her mother said, flipping through her pages. "In that time, you've made one match. I'm
worried.
"

"San Francisco is different than Los Angeles, Mom. I'm still trying to find my groove." She hoped that was enough truth that her mother wouldn't notice the lie.

Venus lowered her glasses. "
You haven't even found someone for yourself
, Valentine
."

"It's like the cobbler's children having no shoes," Valentine said. Except she'd said it so many times it sounded flat even to her own ears.

"It's unacceptable.
Who's going to trust a matchmaker who can't find her own true love? We always find our own matches early. I was eighteen when I recognized your father as my true love, and your grandmother was sixteen when she found your grandfather. Even Isabella, who isn't a matchmaker, found her husband in high school.
" Her mother leaned forward, intense. "
W
e're going to change that."

She stilled. "What?"

"
I told you, Valentine.
I'm here to help you.
We're going to get you established and making money. I don't want to have to worry about you after I die."

"You're not going to die, Mom." She rolled her eyes. "And if you do, I doubt my fate will be of much concern wherever you end up."

"I'll
always
worry about you." Her mother's face lit with the fierceness of a mama bear. "Although I have no idea how I could worry about you more than I already do. Really, Valentine, I don't understand why you aren't embracing your fate as a matchmaker. Your grandmother would be devastated if she knew how you were floundering."

Valentine’s gut twisted with that feeling she always got as a child when her mother was disappointed in her. Now though, resentment wrestled in there with all the inadequacies, because she’d never asked to be a matchmaker—it'd just been expected of her. She bit her lip against the words on her tongue. She couldn't be sure whether they were apologies or rantings.

"And as we get the business rolling," her mom continued, "we'll also work on finding you your own special someone. A matchmaker who can't find a mate for herself isn't worth her weight in candied hearts."

She could just picture the kind of guy her mom would set her up with. A banker. Or—worse—a marketing exec in a blue button-down shirt and khaki pants.

She hated khaki. It was a non-color.

Smiling benignly like she was trying to calm a potentially dangerous creature, she shook her head. "I appreciate the concern, Mom, but—"

"Of course I'm concerned. I'm your mother. I'll do w
hatever it takes.
"

"That's sweet, but you can't rush love." When in doubt, always regurgitate your mother's own words. "It can take time."

Venus lifted her chin, a determined light in her eyes. "With two of us working on it, we're sure to make headway."

"What if it takes a long time? You can't stay here that long. Can you?" she asked faintly, fearing the answer.

"It'll be difficult being apart from your father, but we decided for you we could do it."

"What does that mean?" She frowned. "Are you and Dad okay? You're never apart."

"Your father and I are fine," her mom said unconvincingly.

Were they having trouble? Panic rose in her chest at the thought. Her parents were the best couple ever. They still held hands and kissed in public. If their relationship was on the rocks . . . Valentine shook her head. Wouldn't Isabella have said something?

"This isn't about me, Valentine. This is about you.
We're going to get you on track, and I'm not leaving until we do."

"How 'on track' does my life have to be?" she asked hesitantly.

"Ten new clients," her mother said instantly. "And one good-quality match."

Valentine
blinked.
"Not that you've thought about this or anything."

"It's what your grandmother would have wanted." A shimmer of tears filmed Venus's eyes, and the steel seemed to leach from her spine. "If she were still alive, she'd be here sitting with me, and the three of us would make this right."

Her heart broke, seeing her mother’s open heartache. She hated her mom interfering in her life, but seeing her so upset was even worse. Valentine reached out to hug her, to try to offer some small condolences even though she couldn't possibly know what she was going through.

Her mother stayed stiff in Valentine's arms, sniffling occasionally. Then she withdrew and grabbed a tissue from the box on the table.
"
It's right for me to be here. I had doubts on the way here, but now I'm sure."

"You are?"

"Yes. This is good." Her mom blew her nose and then gave her an
I mean business
look. "
I'm not leaving until your life is straightened out
, Valentine
."

T
here was no doubt in
her
mind that that was a threat
, and with the way her life had been going lately, it meant her mother was here to stay for a
very
long time
.

Chapter Two

Ethan lifted the mouthpiece to the light to inspect it.
More solid than the last one he'd made, due to the Kevlar he'd added to the compound.

But how it looked didn't make any difference. The true test was whether it'd be effective.
So he turn
ed
around. "
Bull
, put this in."

His friend, who was flipping through the
Playboy
he'd brought with him, got up from the couch and joined him in the dining room–slash–workshop. Bull
took it without question and stuck it in his mouth. His brow furrowed as he tried moving his jaws. "Eh err errid."

"What?"

Bull
popped it out. "It feels solid. What's it made of?"

"A Kevlar blend."

"Does it work?"

"Put it back in."

Bull
shrugged and popped it back into his mouth.

Ethan stood up. "Is it in?"

His friend gave him a thumbs-up.

Lifting his hands to his shoulders,
Ethan
jabbed, quick and sharp, right at
Bull's
jaw.

With a muffled
oof
, Bull
's head snapped backward and right back into place.

"Did it work?" Ethan asked.

Bull spit the mouth guard out and pouted. "Dude, that was low. You could have warned me."

"I barely tapped you. You got worse last week w
hen
you fought Jimenez."

Kelly "Bull" Torres's
face lit up. "Did you watch the bout? I tromped his ass and handed it back to him."

Ethan hadn't been able to watch the match
, but h
e knew enough about
Bull's
fighting style to know that he’d been
hit
a number of
times before he unleashed
. His friend was a great fighter, but he needed permission to take out his opponent. For
Bull
, that meant he let his opponent get in
enough
shots to make him angry enough to pummel him.

Ethan had had a completely different style of fighting.
The less you got hit, the longer you were in the game.
But he tried not to think about it anymore. Sometimes he was
actually
successful.

He held out his hand for the mouthpiece. "Did it absorb the
impact
of my jab?"

Bull
scrunched his face. "I don't know. I need to feel it again."

Only
Bull
would
volunteer to
be punched. The man was insane. What else would you ca
ll
a man who got a UV tattoo across
a quarter of
his face and filled his apartment with black light
to highlight it
?

"This is what you've been holed up in here working on?"
Bull
asked, lifting one of the white tubs on
the dining room table to read
the label.

Ethan nodded.
"A Kevlar mouthpiece to absorb the shock of a
hard
punch."

His friend
set the tub down and looked at him with the intelligence most people didn't credit him with. "It's not going to bring back your career, you know."

It could, if he developed a strong enough guard that absorbed the shock of a heavy blow, keeping it from reverberating through a person's head. Then he could fight again without worrying that the next punch could end his life.

One punch, after the bell. One lousy, ill-timed punch as he was turning his head to go back to his corner ended a career that could have been as great as Sugar Ray's.
He had no one to blame but himself, for dropping his guard too soon.

Pushing aside the tide of anger that threatened to choke him, he focused on the mouth guard. He lifted a magnifier to inspect the material.

Damn it—this one cracked, too. It was fine—a
minuscule
hairline—but his punch barely had any power behind it. With a massive hit, much less a dozen, the material wouldn't hold. "Damn it." He threw it at the garbage can.

"No?"
Bull
l
eaned over
the trash.

"No."

"You can't keep living like this,
Predator
."

"Don't call me that." The nickname brought back everything he'd lost in sharp relief.

But he was determined to get it back. He just needed
to come up with the right compound.

"Dude, you need a life. Or a shrink."
Bull
pulled a chair from the table, turned it around, and straddled it, his arms resting across the top. "This is no way to go through life. You need to let go of what happened and move on."

"No
."
Ethan grabbed his notebook and looked at the measurements of the
chemicals
he'd mixed.

"That glare's not going to work on me, dude. I'm impervious to your surliness. Besides, I know how you fight." H
is friend
looked around the space. "I can't believe you left
my house
to live in this place."

He'd moved in with
Bull
to recuperate after his injury. He couldn't go home—he'd been the small-town boy who
'd
made good. He didn't think he could stand the pitying and disappointed looks
, much less his mother's fretful hovering.

But after a couple months living with
Bull
and
his
constant stream of parties and people, Ethan had known without a doubt that if he didn't leave he'd kill someone, and there was a definite possibility it'd have been
his friend
. "I like this apartment."

"It's small, and the walls are pink."

"They're called cream puff." At least that was what Eve, the woman who'd rented the apartment to him, had said.

"Dude,
you're
the cream puff."
Bull
made a disgusted face. "Do you hear yourself? Are they absolutely sure there wasn't any brain damage after your injury?"

They
'd
said it was a miracle that there hadn't been. As it was, he'd been in a coma for two weeks
. T
hey'd told him one more solid punch could turn him into a vegetable
, or worse
.