by Dani Wade
“Seriously?” Mason asked. “That guy is still around?”
EvaMarie tried to hide the exhaustion that was now starting to weigh her down like a heavy blanket. She just wanted a shower and her bed. If she didn’t get inside soon, the shower wasn’t happening. “Laurence is a friend of the family.”
“But not part of the family? Bet that’s a disappointment to your father.”
He had no idea. The only thing her father continued to badger her about these days was Laurence. Though he wouldn’t say it explicitly, Daulton saw Laurence as the answer to all of his problems. No matter where that left EvaMarie.
Too tired for more politeness, she headed for the door. Mason could follow or not. “There’s a great many things I do that are a deep disappointment to my father,” she mumbled.
Her choices had always been wrong—ever since her brother had died. The smiling, applauding father had long ago turned into the disapproving dictator. Illness and age had quieted him, but not mellowed him. “Anyway, Laurence is just looking out for me.”
“Don’t you mean looking out for his investment?”
She skidded to a stop on the tile in the foyer. “What?”
“Well, he’s put a lot of years into pursuing you. Wouldn’t want all of that effort to go to waste.”
“Effort isn’t even a word in his vocabulary.” If Mason thought any different, he didn’t know Laurence at all.
But she might have underestimated Mason. He quirked a brow as he said, “Ah, I see you’ve gotten to know him quite well. Took you a while.”
No, she’d always known how Laurence was. Only no one had trusted her to make the right choices, only the easy ones. They’d expected her to give in to her parents’ demands and marry the man they wanted for her. She might have given up a lot in her lifetime, but that choice was not one she was willing to let go of. She did have boundaries, even if no one else bothered to see them.
Or respect them.
Wearily she made her way up the stairs, her feet feeling like lead weights. If only she could pull on the banister for support, but she had a feeling her hands wouldn’t appreciate the pressure. “Good night, Mason.”
“Wait. Why are you stopping for the night?”
Because I can. She didn’t answer at first, just kept on going with all the energy left inside her.
When she reached the landing, she finally repeated, “Good night, Mason,” and dragged herself to her room.
That man was like arguing with a brick wall.
Six
Mason winced as he bumped into the banister in the dark, then wondered why on earth he didn’t turn on the lights before he fell down the back staircase.
Nightlights were placed at intervals along the hallway, but didn’t help him with the unfamiliar spaces and shadows. Lightning from the thunderstorm beating the house from outside lit up the nearby arched window, giving him a chance to locate the light switch. The hanging chandelier lent its glow upstairs and down, allowing him to make better progress on the stairs and in the hallway.
As he approached the family room, he heard a noise. Looked like it was time for a little midnight tête-à-tête with his roomie.
As he made his way through the darkened family room into the kitchen, with only a faint light burning above the stove, the muffled sounds he’d heard morphed into husky curse words that were creative enough to raise his brows. Apparently the princess had gotten herself an education while he’d been gone.
This should be interesting.
Flicking on the overhead lights, the first thing he noticed was legs. Bare legs.
EvaMarie stood next to the bar in a nightgown that barely reached midthigh. Beside her were open packages and what looked like trash strewed across the counter. She blinked at him in surprise...or maybe it was just the bright lights.
Mason stepped closer. “Problem?” he asked, unable to keep the amusement from his voice.
If she’d been a kid caught with her hand in the candy jar, she couldn’t have turned redder. Her body straightened; her hands slid behind her back.
“Nope. Everything’s fine.”
Right. Her shifting gaze said she had a problem, just one she didn’t want him to know about.
He stalked to her, even though he knew being close to all that bare skin wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had. But seeing the first-aid kit in the midst of all the wrappers, he realized this wasn’t the time to play.
“All right. Let’s see it,” he said, his tone no nonsense. “After all, we don’t have time for you to be off duty.”
Those dark blue eyes, so thickly lashed, couldn’t hide the wash of tears that filled them. Alarm slammed through his chest. He could handle a lot of things, power through just about every situation. But put him in the vicinity of a woman’s tears, and he was hopeless.
Luckily she blinked them back, but then murmured, “It’ll be fine.” Her lashes fell and skimmed the flushed apples of her cheeks. “I’ll be fine by morning. Just go back to bed.”
Even Mason wasn’t that self-centered. Gentling his voice, he said, “Just let me have a look, Evie. Okay?”
Her eyes connected with his. He saw his own surprise reflected there. He hadn’t called her that name in too many years. But it worked, because her hands slipped from behind her back, as though she instinctively trusted that connection.
For once, he refused to use it against her. She didn’t need that right now.
Or ever, his conscience chastised him.
Pushing his conscience aside to deal with later, he cupped her hands in his and turned them over so he could see the palms. “Holy smokes, EvaMarie. Why didn’t you wear gloves?”
He could feel her stiffen and try to pull back. Her fingers curled as if to protect the wounds from his judgment. “I did,” she insisted. “The only pairs I could find were all too big. They kept slipping against my skin.”
Alarm mixed with a darker emotion, deepening his voice. “I can see that. Looks almost like you have carpet burn on your palms. Let me have a better look.”
As he led her over to the stove so he could get some direct light, she said, “I cleaned them as best I could in the shower, but the soap burned—”
“I bet.”
“My wounds weren’t that dirty. The gloves kept the dirt out for the most part. But I think they need to be wrapped.” She glanced over her shoulder at the mess on the bar. “Only it’s kind of hard to do one-handed.”
And it hadn’t occurred to her that there was now someone else in the house she could ask to help her. Why should it? His conscience flared up again. He’d proved pretty well so far that his job was to make her life harder, not better.
He cradled one of her hands in both of his, bending closer for a good look. Memories of holding her hand abounded, but he couldn’t remember if he’d ever examined her there in this much detail. He was pretty sure those calluses on her palms and fingertips hadn’t been there before. The skin along the back still felt silky smooth and smelled faintly of lilacs. Was that still her favorite scent?
And when he noticed the faint outline of curvy, muscled legs down below the bar, his body went a little haywire. The mix of past and present was throwing him off balance.
For a moment, he could almost understand her father’s protective nature, the desire to shelter her from harsh reality—though Mason could never forgive the lengths her father had gone to achieve that aim. No one deserved to have their life ruined like that, not Mason, not his father.
As he surveyed the abraded skin, the damage done by his own selfishness, a strange compassion kicked in. One he almost resisted, almost ignored. Man, it sucked to realize his brother had been right. They’d been joking with each other, but Mason had done a bad thing.
“Let’s get these wrapped up so they don’t get dirty. I thin
k they’ll heal in a few days, but we don’t want infection getting in where the skin is broken.” He turned back to the bar, breaking their physical connection. The cool air he drew into his lungs cleared his head. The sound of the rain outside ignited thoughts of starting over.
As long as he didn’t let himself get too close, get drawn into the attraction that flirted behind the edges of his resentment. Therein lay the real danger he needed to protect himself from.
“Then how about I make some hot chocolate?” he asked, remembering it as her favorite drink. “That’ll warm us up before trying to sleep.”
“So you have learned to cook?” she asked, cautious surprise lightening her voice.
“No, but I make a mean microwave version.”
* * *
EvaMarie held herself perfectly still.
Her insides jumped and shivered with every touch of Mason’s fingers against hers, but she refused to let it show. Part of her wanted to relax into his newfound compassion. After all, she remembered an all-too-nice version of Mason that she wished would come back.
But the bigger part of her couldn’t forget his behavior since his return. Better not to trust that this version would last longer than it took to feed her hot chocolate and send her to bed like a child.
Maybe that was the key—treating her like a child. After all, he didn’t seem to care for the grown-up version of her too much.
His touch was amazingly gentle as he applied a thin coating of antibacterial ointment to each palm, then set about wrapping her hands in gauze and tape. Memories of other times he was gentle, like the night she offered him her virginity, pushed against the barriers she had erected to block them out of her brain. What good would it do to relive those times? After all, he hated her now. Thinking about it would get her nothing but grief.
But she’d pulled out the memories of their loving often over the years. Mason had been her first, and best, lover. Her one experiment in college to replace those memories had proved a disappointment. So her time with Mason was all she had to live on during the long, lonely nights of her adulthood. But she had learned one lesson from that lackluster experience in college: settling for something less than what she’d experienced with Mason wasn’t worth the trouble.
Which had kept her from making several stupid choices that would have easily gotten her out of this house years ago. Like marrying the man who had pestered her to do so since she’d turned eighteen.
EvaMarie’s suspicions grew as Mason deposited her at the nearby table, cleaned up all the wrappers and discarded bandages, then went to search in the pantry. Some food had been delivered on the same day as his furnishings and personal items, but she didn’t remember any hot chocolate mix. But sure enough, he pulled out a round brown canister with gold lettering: a specialty chocolate mix, her one indulgence.
The awkward silence in the room, broken only by the sounds of Mason and the rain outside, urged her to do the polite thing and speak. But what subject wouldn’t be fraught with unexploded land mines? As she studied the expert wrapping on her hands, she knew she had to try.
“So I suspect that your purchase of the estate is the talk of the town, or will be soon,” she said, her voice hushed in deference to the night and the storm outside. For some reason it just seemed appropriate, even if a touch too intimate. “It’s really incredible, Mason. I’m proud of you and Kane for being so successful.”
And she was. Her one visit to the Harrington farm when they were dating had shown her just how different their lifestyles were. Mason’s family hadn’t lived in poverty, but their situation had probably been what EvaMarie now knew as living paycheck to paycheck. Mason’s dad had cooked her a simple meal of homemade fried chicken, and macaroni and cheese from a box. It had been good, and the atmosphere around the table had been friendly and welcoming.
Mason hadn’t been able to understand when she said it was the most comforting night of her life. He hadn’t understood what life was really like for her...and she hadn’t wanted him to know the truth.
“I know your dad must be too,” she added.
Mason turned away from her as the microwave dinged. “Actually, my father’s dead.”
“Oh, Mason. I’m so sorry.”
He was silent for a moment before he asked, his voice tight, “Are you?”
“Yes. He seemed like a nice man.”
“He was. He didn’t deserve the lot he had in life. Constantly undermined and unjustly ridiculed by people who didn’t even know him, but who had all the power.”
The spoon Mason used to stir the hot chocolate clanked against the side of the cup with a touch more force than necessary. EvaMarie winced, knowing that he was talking about her father, and his father’s former employers. She held her breath, awaiting a return of the snarky, condescending man he’d shown her since his return. Instead, he crossed the kitchen and set the mug before her without comment.
She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she remained quiet. The steam from the cup drew her. She wrapped her aching hands around the outside, letting the heat slip over her palms into the joints, then up her arms. So soothing... “So he left you an inheritance?” she asked, hoping to steer him away from the touchy subject.
“Actually, it was my mother.”
EvaMarie nodded, though she’d never heard much about the woman before. Lifting the cup close, she breathed in the rich chocolate scent. The comforting familiarity cloaked her in the very place where familiarity seemed to have gone out the window. This was her kitchen, the one she’d drunk hot chocolate in all her life, but it wasn’t hers anymore. And the man next to her wasn’t hers either.
“We moved back to Tennessee where she was from, though my grandparents on her side wouldn’t have anything to do with us for the longest time. My grandfather never did come around.”
“Why?” She couldn’t get out more than a whisper and found herself grasping the mug just a little tighter.
“They were high society, lots of money.” His glance her way said sound familiar? “They never approved of the marriage, or the fact that their daughter died after he took her away.”
The level of Mason’s resentment after all these years was starting to make a little more sense. “They wouldn’t come see her?”
Mason shook his head, his hands clenching where they lay on the table. “My father even sent a letter after receiving her diagnosis. He knew it was bad. My grandmother later told him her husband refused to allow her to open it. They didn’t see her before she died.”
A stone-like weight formed in EvaMarie’s chest. “How awful.”
“My mother had a sizable trust fund created for us. Over time, my father managed to grow it out of proportion to what she left us. But he never touched it.”
Considering how much they had struggled after his father lost his job, EvaMarie couldn’t imagine that kind of sacrifice. But she daren’t mention it for fear it would make Mason angry again. This small moment of civil conversation was a gift she didn’t want to squander.
“He told us about it after his first heart attack. Helped us decide what to do and taught us how to manage it. It was—” he paused, shaking his head “—is still amazing to me.”
“That’s an incredible gift,” she said.
“Yes. And he was an incredible man.”
Indeed. To have taken such care with his wife’s gift for her sons, even when it made his own life harder than it had to be—that was a true father. EvaMarie struggled not to make a comparison to her own father, to the lack of foresight he’d exercised, but her heart remained heavy.
As she sipped, the downpour outside quieted to a light, steady rain, soothing instead of boisterous. The ache in her palms had subsided some beneath the warmth and care of her bandages. And Mason had surprised her. They hadn’t talked, truly talked, in many years. She shouldn’t be enjoying it this much.
Her eyelids drooped. The day had been a long, hard one. And she’d start an even busier one tomorrow on even less sleep. As much as she wanted to savor this truce while it lasted, it was time she headed back to bed.
Standing, she glanced across at Mason, only to catch him surveying her bare legs. Almost as quickly he looked up, but she pretended not to notice. “Um, I think it’s time I headed back upstairs,” she said. Then trying to smooth over the awkwardness, she asked, “Is your room set up all right?”
“Yes, thank you, EvaMarie.”
She tried to squash the glow that blossomed at his words, but couldn’t. Tomorrow, he’d kill the glow soon enough.
“Well, good night. Thank you for the hot chocolate and, well...” She nodded toward her hands.
Mason stood, as well. “It’s the least I can do, EvaMarie.”
She took a few steps back, then paused. “Until tomorrow.” She turned and made quick progress toward the hall. She’d almost made it when she heard him behind her.
“EvaMarie.”
Heart pounding, though she knew it shouldn’t, she glanced back. “Yes?”
“You have a storage building already, correct?”
And just like that, they were back to boss and employee. Why did tears feel close all of a sudden? “Yes. I promise all arrangements have been made and the moving guys will be here on Wednesday to have everything out in time for the renovations to start.”
He stepped closer, looking mysterious as the darkness hid his expression. “Actually, a moving crew will be here tomorrow to help you. All you have to do is direct.”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach like she’d taken a fast-moving elevator. “What?”
He didn’t move, didn’t speak for a moment. Then he let out a deep sigh...one she’d almost mistake for regret. “Just consider it hazard pay.”
