Page 16 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door (Love in Maple Falls #5)

CLéMENT

M arcy stands in profile, a single step off the gravel path.

She’s illuminated by the lights overhead and she glows like a heavenly being.

Her hair is swept up, though a few strands have escaped.

Her dress shimmers with movement, but it’s her expression that catches me.

That fierce, calculating gaze slightly dimmed, like the armor she wears is tiring her.

I’ve been to galas before. In New York. In Paris. In Geneva, where even the napkins wear cufflinks and the chandeliers cost more than most people’s mortgages.

But this corner of a garden, tucked beside the arena and lit with string lights, is quiet and unpolished. Music is drifting through the air, and for me, this night is already magical.

It’s her.

She thinks no one notices. She’s wrong.

I take a step closer to her, but I don’t speak. I just reach up and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers graze her temple, and the contact is so slight, so careful, I feel like I can’t breathe.

She exhales, a soft, fragile sound that feels like it belongs to another version of her. One who doesn’t hold the world together with binders and deadlines.

Her shoulders dip slightly. Her defenses don’t drop, but they waver.

I’ve never met a woman like her. French women flirt like it's performance art. But Marcy doesn’t perform. She observes. She calculates. She holds her ground like it’s sacred, and maybe that’s why I haven’t stopped thinking about her since the moment she told me I wasn’t supposed to be there.

I’m starting to think I was destined to be there.

“ Tellement belle ,” I whisper.

So beautiful.

It slips out before I can stop it. And when her eyes meet mine, I let her see it—every unguarded thought I’ve kept tucked away. The awe. The ache. The way I’ve been quietly rearranging my entire sense of direction since the moment she scowled at me in her blazer.

“You say that to all the girls?” she asks, but there’s no venom in it. Just a thread of self-protection.

“No,” I say. “Just the ones who make me forget I ever said it to anyone else.”

There’s silence, and then she crosses her arms across her body.

I could tell her she’s not what I expected. That I thought I came to Maple Falls for a career and a fixer-upper. That I never thought I’d find someone who’d show me all my dreams could come true.

But I don’t say any of that. It’s too soon. She wouldn’t believe me even if I know to my core it’s the truth.

I step closer instead. Her breath catches.

My heart is pounding like I’ve just blocked a penalty shot. But I stay still. Let her decide .

Her gaze drops as her hand slowly lifts and lands over my heart. Her palm is warm through my shirt. Her fingers curl there slightly, like she’s not sure she should touch me, but can’t help it.

I don’t breathe, I don’t dare.

Her lips part, just a little, and for one suspended moment, nothing else exists. No gala. No lights. No world beyond this garden.

Just her.

Just us.

Just the space between a heartbeat and a decision. I lean in?—

BANG.

The doors slam open with the force of a stage cue gone rogue and the entire moment shatters.

My arm flies around her waist without thought.

“Look out!” I call, pulling her back into me as the doors swing.

She stumbles into me with a soft “oh!” as she lands flat against me. Her heart hammers nearly in time with mine.

“Sorry,” I say softly, my voice rough in my throat. “I didn’t mean to?—”

She shakes her head quickly. “No, it’s… I mean, thank you.”

Her cheeks are flushed, her hands still on my chest. Neither of us moves.

In the doorway stand Carson and a woman I’ve seen around town. They laugh like they’ve just escaped a burning building.

“Sorry!” Carson calls, one hand raised, the other carrying a single stiletto heel like a trophy. “Bailey lost a shoe as we stepped out. It’s not as dramatic as it looks?—”

“It is exactly as dramatic as it looks,” Bailey says behind him, grabbing the shoe and swatting his arm. “We almost collided with a dessert cart.”

Carson’s eyes flick to my hand on Marcy’s waist. Then to Marcy. Then to me again. A slow grin spreads across his handsome Southern face.

“Well, well,” he says. “Who’s the lady you were shielding like she’s state property?”

Marcy straightens. I can feel her pulling on the armor again—chin up, eyes alert.

She steps out of my arm before I can even think of how to answer. “Marcy Fontaine,” she says, offering her hand. “Accountant. Not state property.”

Carson shakes her hand like she just offered him a lottery ticket. “Carson Crane. Left wing. Big fan of accountants.”

Marcy narrows her eyes slightly. “Really.”

Carson winks. “Y’all keep us out of tax prison. We don’t thank you enough.”

Beside him, the woman’s eyes crinkle with interest as she smiles at Marcy.

“Oh!” I exclaim as I put two and two together. “ This is Bailey !” That sounded far less normal than I expected, and I cringe a little. I hope Carson doesn’t hold it against me.

Bailey, for her part, just laughs. “You don’t know how much I’ve heard that tonight.”

I shrug. “ Touché . It’s a pleasure to see you,” I say with extra emphasis.

She might not get the joke, but we’ve been wondering for weeks if this so-called Bailey was an actual person or a convenient figment of Carson’s imagination.

He would bring her up when it suited the moment.

But not only is she real, she’s delightful.

“Now that we’ve cleared that up…” Carson, starts but then he looks at me with a smirk that immediately makes my stomach jump .

Because Carson has heard me talk about Marcy in those early days. Too much. I may have described her as “scary smart with a perfect mouth and the ability to melt steel with her sarcasm—a woman I have to win over.” Which means Carson is also connecting dots.

I shoot him a look. The universal male signal for:

Don’t. You. Dare.

He raises both eyebrows like, What? Who, me?

I subtly shake my head. One sharp motion.

He tilts his head innocently and I narrow my eyes.

He smirks. I widen mine slightly.

It’s a silent battle of eyebrow archery.

Marcy watches us, arms crossed, head tilted. “Do you two need a whiteboard?”

Bailey bursts out laughing. “I was just about to ask the same thing.”

Carson claps a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll have to forgive us. Too many practices and we communicate mostly through interpretive dance now.”

“That was interpretive dance?” Marcy deadpans.

“Trust me,” I mutter, “you don’t want to see the actual choreography.”

Marcy turns to Bailey. “Can you read them any better than me?”

Bailey shrugs. “Not even a little.”

Carson chuckles. “It’s true. And Clément here? Real romantic. You should see the way he?—”

My elbow finds his ribs before he can finish.

He grunts, laughs it off, and nods to Marcy. “Pleasure meeting you, Miss Fontaine. If you ever need someone to interpret more hockey-player nonsense, I’m fluent.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says, but I hear the coolness enter her voice again .

They disappear through the doors, and I turn to find Marcy watching me with a look that’s somewhere between amused and suspicious. “You’re not buying the interpretive dance excuse, are you?”

“Not even a little.”

“Thought so.”

She studies me. “What did you tell him?”

I give her my most innocent smile. “Only that you were a deeply respectable woman who terrifies me a little.”

The corners of her mouth turn down and my stomach drops. I can’t tell her that at first I thought of her as a mission, a game to be won. That would only push her farther away.

I may have just survived a cupcake choking incident, nearly kissed her, and physically blocked an incoming couple flying through doors…

But the disappointed frown on her face is the worst thing that could’ve happened tonight.