Page 55 of Matched By Mistake
He arched both eyebrows at her.
“You wanted to believe that somehow I was all the horrible things you were brought up to believe about the Del Rio family.”
He shook his head. “I never thought of you as one of those manipulative Del Rios.”
“Then why? And don’t say you didn’t know. I thought... I thought what we had was more than some contracted dates just to help out Misha and your brother.”
Jericho shoved his hands through his hair. “Yeah, I had started to believe it, too. But I’m not sure if that was real.”
Fucking hell. What was wrong with him? Why was he so afraid to just admit how he felt for her?
He had even been scared to admit that he loved her to Marcus earlier this evening. He wasn’t ready to admit that those emotions were real. He wasn’t even sure they were. He knew that he was a mess right now.
“Okay, then. We’ll finish out the last few dates and then go our separate ways. I’ll have the stuff you left at my place couriered back to yours. See you at our next contracted app date.”
She walked past him and he was tempted to let her go. Hadn’t he just hedged until this was the only option she had left? But he didn’t want her to go like this.
Did he want her to go?
He started to reach for her and she stepped back so quickly she stumbled and then righted herself.
“Please don’t touch me,” she said.
It was then that he realized how much he’d truly screwed this up. He’d been looking for some sign that the feelings he had for Maggie were love. That they were real and that they’d last a lifetime. But he hadn’t been able to find it until this moment.
When she was shoving him away and telling him in no uncertain terms she wanted nothing to do with him.
“Maggie.”
“No, I can’t. I know you want to hash this out and maybe become something like friends again, but I can’t. I didn’t think this was false and maybe that’s on me. I decided to trust you and to believe the man I thought I saw,” she said, then took a deep, gulping breath and he knew how hard she was struggling to keep her emotions in check.
“Maggie—”
“Stop. You’re making this worse. You don’t love me, fine. We gave our word and signed a contract. You’ll get two more dates and then I never want to see you again. Goodbye, Jericho.”
She walked away and all he could do was watch her go. Was this what he wanted? He’d been so afraid to let himself be vulnerable, never realizing that he’d had no control over that. He wanted her. His life would be colorless without Maggie in it.
“Wait. Why were you so cagey about what you were doing tonight?” he asked her.
She opened the trunk of her car and pulled out a large, flat wrapped package. She walked over to him and handed it over. He could tell it was a canvas of some kind. She didn’t wait for him to open it. She just got in her car and drove away.
He took it to his car and opened it and stood there for a minute. It was a landscape of the Winters Expo Center with him and Maggie walking out of it. He could tell that it had been freshly framed and the artist’s initials in the corner were Piper Holloway’s.
Sixteen
Maggie told her assistant she was going out of town but instead headed for her brother Preston’s ranch. She needed time away to think, and nothing soothed her troubled soul like riding the horse she kept stabled there. Also Preston just let her be.
Her mom was understanding and suggested that Maggie “run her emotions out” but running had never really worked that way for Maggie. Running was a chore and didn’t get her to that mindless state the way horseback riding did. Her father had texted her—something he never did—just to say that he loved her and he hoped she was okay.
Which meant more to her than she wanted to admit. But as she rode over the fields around Preston’s property, she wasn’t escaping her thoughts. Instead she was confronted with the landscape that very much mirrored the property where the Winters Expo Center had been built. And as she rode, she couldn’t help but remember how effortlessly Jericho’s well-designed convention space had melded into the landscape, seeming to be a part of it.
Which made her stop Dusty, her paint, and get off. She let the horse graze, knowing she wouldn’t go far with her lead on the ground as Maggie herself walked toward a small copse of trees and sat down under it. She had brought her sketchpad with her and as she leaned against the trunk of the scrub oak, she started drawing. She always figured her life out in her sketchbook. It was easier to see things when she literally drew them.
So she did it this time. She drew Jericho as he’d looked at her when she entered the sheriff’s office. She took her time recollecting his face and the lines around his eyes. The slight downturn of his lips that she had in the moment thought was anger but, as she went back over his face in her mind, might have been sadness.
Or was she once again trying to see in him something that wasn’t there?
Her memories of them together at her studio on the painting night. When she’d been so on fire for him, wanting to touch him but determined not to let him win... She pulled out her phone, which had no reception on this part of Preston’s ranch—another blessing—and thumbed back through the photos until she found that one someone had snapped of them and put online.
