by Inara Scott
Alli looked impressed. “Wow, that’s quite a schedule. I’ve been in school for six years, on and off, but I only work part-time as a nanny.”
“People pay you to take care of their children?”
“I know! Funny, right? But the kids love me, and I love them. I’ve got a couple of kids I nanny for who have seriously cracked parents, and I just want to do everything I can for them. That’s why I’m thinking now about going into counseling.”
Tess grinned at the passion in her voice. “I bet you’d make a great counselor.”
“Tess?” Mason’s voice entered the room as he opened the front door. Wick and Astro ran over to greet him, tails wagging. When he stepped into the apartment his gaze landed first on Tess, then on Alli. “How’d you get in here?”
She counted off on her fingers. “One, your doorman loves me. Two, Tess loves me.”
“She does?”
“I do?” Mason and Tess spoke at the same time.
Alli grinned. “You do. It’s impossible not to.”
“I’m not sure you know what that word means, brat.” Mason set his exercise bag by the door and sat down on an armchair to remove his sneakers. Tess couldn’t help but notice that his damp T-shirt clung nicely to the muscles of his back. “And why exactly are you here?”
“I came to say hello to my dog,” Alli said primly.
“And eat my food?”
“Your food sucks. You’re like some old hippy guy eating nothing but vegetables and whole wheat bread. The last thing I came here for was your food.”
“Sorry, I ran out of Fritos.”
“I like Fritos,” Tess threw out, just to see what Mason would do. “They’re just corn and salt, you know. No sugar. Quite healthy, actually.”
Mason raised a brow. “Healthy? How long has she been here?”
“Long enough.” Alli held out the bag of carrots. “Would you like a delicious snack?”
“No thanks. Tess and I were heading out to lunch.”
Tess furrowed her brow. “We were? I was just getting ready to take out Wick.”
“We definitely were.” He indicated the puddle of brown fur that had formed around his feet. “Alli probably wants to walk her dog. I’m sure she’d been missing having that opportunity.”
“Of course I have. I was actually here because I wanted to tell you that I think I’ve figured out a way to take him back.”
Mason jerked around. “You have?”
“You have?” Tess stiffened in shock.
They spoke at the same time again, and Alli looked back and forth between them. “You guys are kinda cute. Do you rehearse that sort of thing?”
“What’s the story, brat?” Mason didn’t exactly sound relieved. If anything, he sounded annoyed.
“My lease is up in a month anyway, and there’s a group of girls who want our house. Apparently they have a lot of stuff to store, so they’re willing to pay us extra if they can start moving their stuff into the house now.”
“And how exactly does that translate into a home for Wick?”
“I have a friend who has an extra room in her house next year. It’s kind of a dump, but the landlord allows dogs, even big ones. So I can move in with her and use the extra money to cover the double rent payment.”
“Why would you need a house next year in Berkeley? Aren’t you going to have graduated by then?”
Alli glanced at Tess before continuing. “I’m actually thinking after I graduate I’ll stick around in the area and find work in a counseling office. If that’s what I really want to do, I’ll need a graduate degree anyway. I can always go back later to finish up my prerequisites.”
Mason drew back. “Seriously? That’s a ridiculously mature thing to do. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”
Alli shrugged. “It was Tess’s idea.”
They both turned to Tess, who felt her cheeks heat. “Tess’s idea?” Mason said, his voice cracking slightly. “I’ve been trying to get you to get a job for years, and all it took was one visit with Tess?”
“She’s very convincing. And the truth is, I’m getting a little tired of being in school.”
Mason collapsed against the sofa. “Deliver me from all women,” he murmured.
“Hey!” Alli called. “You’re supposed to be proud of me.”
“Forgive me, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Fine.” Alli stomped past Mason on her way to the front door. “I’m going to take Wick for a walk. You two go out to lunch. And don’t worry about looking stupid when you say exactly the same thing at the same time. It’s totally normal and not at all embarrassing.”
Tess’s cheeks were starting to burn, so she turned and pretended to look for something in the fridge while Mason got up to walk with Alli to the door.
“Are you serious about taking Wick back?” she heard him ask. “Because I don’t think it’s good for him to be jerked around right now. He’s getting a lot better on the leash, but Tess is still working on his training.”
“I thought you hated him,” Alli replied.
Tess wanted to keep her head in the fridge, but she figured at some point it might look weird, so instead she grabbed a can of sparkling water and made her way to the dining room, where she opened her computer and logged into one of her classes. To be fair, she was listening so hard she wasn’t sure which one.
“I don’t hate him. I just want to make sure you take responsibility for him. He’s not a toy, Alli. You can’t just have him, then not have him, and then have him again when you feel like it.”
“Thanks, Dad. I appreciate the thought.”
They continued to argue into the hall, and then the door closed behind them and Tess could no longer hear the conversation. When Mason came back inside a few minutes later, his mouth was drawn into a line. “She says she’s serious about it. She should know on Tuesday if she can move into the new place and take Wick with her.”
“Any chance that’s a good thing? She seems to really care about him.”
“She cares about a lot of things for a very short period of time.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I honestly don’t understand her. The rest of us all managed to finish college and get jobs. What happened to her?”
“Maybe it’s hard to be the one who always messes things up. Maybe if you’ve messed up enough things, you don’t want to bother trying anymore.”
“But you did exactly the opposite. You turned your life around.”
“Because I had to,” Tess pointed out. “I had a grandmother who was relying on me. Your sister’s got a whole lot of love behind her, but not a lot of expectations. That’s hard in its own way. How are you supposed to see yourself as competent if no one else does?”
“She was always the clown.” He stared down at his hands as if remembering. “She could always make us laugh. No matter what the occasion. But you can’t be a clown forever.”
Tess deliberated over her words, not wanting to say the wrong thing. After only a few minutes with her, she was hardly an expert in understanding Alli’s life choices. But she couldn’t help but feel empathy for the vibrant young woman, who seemed to have so much energy and passion but didn’t seem to know how to channel it. “Maybe not, but it’s not so easy to change. We all put ourselves in boxes, I think. And sometimes they’re so comfortable, we don’t even notice we’re in them. But once we’re in, it’s really hard to get out.”
It was a moment before he spoke. “What box are you in?”
She pushed away from the table and turned toward him. Though she knew she was different from Alli, she couldn’t help but see similarities between them. “When I was younger, I thought I was in the same box as my mom. I thought I had to make all the same mistakes she did. Even when I’d do something right, it always felt like a drop in the bucket compared to all the things I’d done wrong.”
“And now?”
She gave him a rueful smile. “I know I’m different. I know it. But I feel like I’m still trying to
climb out of that box. Someday I’m going to. I just don’t know quite when.”
“And what box am I in?” There was something almost raw in the question.
She thought about all the things Alli had said about her brother and couldn’t help but wonder if she hadn’t been on to something. “Is it true that no one has ever broken up with you?”
“Did Alli tell you that?”
“She did. She had a theory about you.”
“She’s got a lot of theories. And yes, that is true.”
“She thinks you’ve always been perfect, so you’re scared to screw things up.”
His gaze flickered from her lips to her eyes, and then back. “Maybe it’s easier not to care about things than to risk having them go wrong.”
The conversation had turned suddenly intimate, and her heart thumped. “I’ve tried that strategy. It sounds good on paper, but is harder to execute than you’d think.”
He pulled her to her feet. Their bodies were only inches apart, but Tess could feel every inch of them as if he’d been pressed against her. There was a question in his eyes, and it made her stomach shift. “Can you teach me something about risk, Tess?” His voice was soft, but the ache it aroused in her was anything but.
“I can show you what it looks like when you fail.” Her body was betraying her already, stealing her ability to string together rational thoughts.
“But what about when you succeed, and the risk was worth it in the end?”
“Sorry, that’s not one I can help you with.”
“Maybe we can figure it out together then.”
His words were thrilling and awful in equal measure, yet she couldn’t quite make herself respond. It was one thing to talk about risks in the abstract, quite another to actually take one. “That sounds, um, terrifying.”
“Risks are like that.” He slipped his hands under her shirt and dragged his thumb across her nipple.
“What are you doing?” she breathed, her body combusting in an instant.
“You’re not moving into one of those horrible apartments,” he said. “You’re staying right here.”
“I need my own place,” she replied, trying to keep her voice even. “We both know that.”
“I don’t know that,” he said. “I really don’t know that.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know what she would have said next, because at that moment there was a pounding at the door, and then Alli’s voice broke the stillness.
“Hey! I need some bags. You know, the cleanup kind?”
Tess pushed him away and practically ran to the kitchen, where they had a stash of bags for exactly this purpose. Something about the conversation they’d been about to have terrified her, and relief swamped her from head to toe.
“Just a minute,” she hollered, not looking back at Mason. Grabbing two plastic bags from under the sink, she headed for the front door. The weight of his gaze followed her across the room, but she refused to look back.
“Here you go,” she said to Alli, thrusting them out in front of her.
The girl looked nonplussed at the aggressiveness of the gesture. “Um, thanks?”
“No problem.” Still not glancing back at Mason, Tess grabbed Astro’s leash. “Actually, I was just thinking that you don’t know the area very well. Why don’t I come with you?”
“Ah, okay, I guess?” Alli hesitated and looked over her shoulder toward Mason. “Weren’t you guys going out to lunch or something?”
Tess waved her hand dismissively. “I actually had a late breakfast. I’m not very hungry.”
When she finally did look back, Mason’s arms were crossed over his chest, and he was gazing at her steadily. “I guess we’ll finish this later?” he said.
“Sure.” She stumbled over her words as she bent to put on Astro’s leash. “Much, much later.”
Chapter Twenty-One
They spent the next few days in a sort of emotional truce. Mason tried several times to bring up her staying, and she dodged, evaded, or pushed aside his every effort to draw her in. Somehow, she had a feeling that whatever the conversation would be, it would result in her admitting that she was crazy in love with him, and him saying something along the lines of, “Whoa, I was just wondering if you wanted to move in for a few months. What’s all this business about love?”
Honestly, she was pretty proud of herself for letting things get as serious as they had. After all, she was still here, wasn’t she? Despite all her fears and misgivings, she’d opened herself up this far.
Seriously, she deserved a medal or something. She didn’t need him pushing her off the next cliff before she was ready.
Finally, he shifted tactics completely. For each apartment she found, he managed to dig up some reason why it was completely unacceptable. This one had had a bedbug infestation. That one had a landlord who’d stolen tenants’ deposits. The one she liked best? He’d found a map that showed the location of car break-ins in Oakland, and they all seemed to occur on that block. She had enough money in the bank to afford something nicer, but not for long. And she refused to run down her savings account when she had only just built it up.
Thanks to Mason.
She knew he wanted her to stay with him, for now at least. He obviously did care about her. But even if she did have a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe they could become something more, that only hardened her resolve. There was nothing capable of wrecking a relationship quite like moving too fast. And moving in with Mason was clearly moving too fast. Becoming dependent on him? Even worse.
She could imagine the advice column now: Dear Abby: I’m twenty-six and have no place to live, so I moved in with my boyfriend. He’s really sweet and I’m totally in love with him, but now I can’t tell if he really wants me to stay, or if he just feels sorry for me. What should I do? Signed, Trouble in Paradise.
Dear Trouble: What is this, the seventeenth century? Move out, girl! Women need to be independent. That’s the only way you’ll ever really be free to love each other.
Yep, the more she thought about it, the simpler her path forward became.
She had to sell the land.
She’d been approached by at least six firms already. They left notes with Gracie, or in plastic envelopes on what had been her doorstep. “Contact us if you want to sell,” they announcement. “We buy in cash!”
She needed cash. She needed a lot of it. Building wasn’t an option without a loan, and a loan wasn’t an option without a big down payment and a lot of credit. Neither of which she had.
Which meant she had to sell.
She didn’t want to involve Cece—she would probably try to buy it herself—and really didn’t want to involve Mason. He’d probably come up with some clever reason why she didn’t have to sell, like some weird double-backward mortgage with a half-flip that only MBAs from Harvard knew about.
Screw that. She was going to do this the only way she knew how—by herself.
Except she wasn’t quite stupid enough to do that. Instead, she did something that was either completely crazy or a stroke of genius.
She called Luke.
He’d known about the fire already and sounded sweet and concerned when she told him she needed his help. The hesitation came when she explained that she needed their meeting to be a secret from Mason. He agreed to talk more at a coffee shop in the Mission District, far from Livend’s offices, but also told her as a lawyer and a friend, he couldn’t lie to Mason. If asked, he’d have to tell him that they’d met. Figuring she had little choice, and hoping it wouldn’t be an issue, Tess agreed. When she arrived, Luke was already at a table, sipping from a large cup of coffee and scribbling notes on a yellow pad.
“Hey Tess, it’s good to see you. I’m so sorry about your house, by the way. Mason told us and it sounds terrible.” He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and a worried look.
She smiled and forced herself not to panic and run out the door. “Thanks. And I’m sorry for all the secrecy. I don�
�t want to create any kind of weirdness between you and Mason. This really has nothing to do with him. I just want to make sure it stays that way.”
“If you say so.” His worried expression did not change. “Let’s talk a little so I can understand what’s going on. Can I get you a cup of coffee? Or something to eat?”
“Thanks, but I’ve had way too much coffee already. Maybe just a glass of water.” He got up to fill a glass of water for her, and she sank down into an unused chair. Fingers shaking, she opened her bag and withdrew the flyers and notes she’d received since the day of the fire asking if she’d be interested in selling. When he returned, she pushed them in front of him. “I need to sell the lot where my house was, but I don’t know how to go about doing it, and I don’t want to call some random real estate person who I can’t trust. I thought maybe you could help me. Or tell me who could.” The words came out in a jumble. Nervous energy had her practically twitching in her seat. “I don’t have any money now, but I assume you could take a portion of the sale, right? I want to sell quickly—one of these people who would give me cash would probably be best.”
Luke put his hand on top of hers. “Take a deep breath, okay? We’ll get through this, but maybe you could start by telling me why you want to sell so badly, and what the big rush is all about? And maybe why you don’t want Mason to know?”
He looked so kind, with that crazy mix of pirate and corporate lawyer, that Tess felt her eyes starting to fill. “Shit,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, hang on.” She dug around futilely in her bag for a tissue, looking up when Luke handed her a paper napkin. Gratefully, she took it and dabbed her eyes.
“I guess the short version is pretty simple. There was no fire insurance, and I don’t have a lot of money in the bank. I could survive in an apartment for a few little while, but I’m trying to put myself through school and rent would kill me. And I’m not going to go into debt. It would be worse than stupid to take out loans to pay for rent when I’ve got land I could sell. I think it’s pretty valuable.”
