by Dani Wade
Mason tried to ignore it. He really did. But Daulton Hyatt had no compunction about slandering the Harringtons in a public restaurant. At all.
“In my opinion, there’s a reason God lets people be born with no money. Everyone has a station in life. That’s an indicator. And a predictor of future behavior.”
The bright flush radiating from Bev Hyatt’s cheeks was almost painful to see, but Mason noticed she never made an attempt to quiet her husband. She simply worried the edges of the cloth napkin beside her plate. Laurence’s remarks must have been more moderate in tone, since Mason couldn’t make out the words, but whatever he said seemed to spur Daulton along.
“Those Harringtons don’t even know what to do with a horse, much less a stable of them,” he said loudly enough to turn a few heads from the tables around him. “You mark my words,” he said, adding emphasis by shaking his steak knife, “they’ll be a complete failure within a year.”
Kane was on his feet two seconds quicker than Mason expected. He followed, eager to provide backup.
“I’m not sure I heard you correctly,” Kane said. “Did you mean we’d be as much of a failure as you were?”
The older man straightened, obviously unused to being challenged. “I am not a failure.”
“Really?” Kane wasn’t backing down...and he chose not to lower his voice either. “Because your stables were in bankruptcy when we bought it. Was that from mismanagement? Lack of knowledge? Or sheer laziness?”
Oh boy. Kane was dangerously calm as he went on. “You mark my words, old man. We aren’t afraid to fight dirty, so I’d pull my punches if I were you.”
Daulton Hyatt turned to his companions. “Listen to how they talk to me. Guess their father was as inept a parent as he was a businessman.”
Mason quickly sidestepped to force his body between Kane and the table. Otherwise, Mr. Hyatt would have been counting his broken teeth. Unconsciously, he reached for his own form of ammunition.
“That’s a strange attitude for you to have, considering your daughter is working for me now,” Mason said with a deadly quiet reserve that he knew wouldn’t last for long. Unlike Kane, he enjoyed yelling.
He could see the surprise knock Daulton back a little, but he never looked away. Bev glanced across at Laurence with wide eyes. Whatever she saw there made her swallow hard.
“My daughter would never betray me by working for you,” Daulton blustered. “She got a job at the library.”
“Sure about that?”
Daulton must not have liked what he saw in Mason’s eyes. “EvaMarie is a good girl. Too good for the likes of you. Or did you somehow trick her into doing this like you tricked us out of our house?”
Now it was Kane’s turn to restrain his brother. His hand on Mason’s arm was the only thing that kept Mason from slamming his palms on the Hyatts’ dinner table. “You know, EvaMarie is a good person, a good woman.”
His emphasis on the last word did not sit well with EvaMarie’s parents. Their eyes widened, full of questions. Questions that Mason would never stoop to answering.
“It’s amazing that she’s turned out as well as she has,” he went on, “considering the overbearing, manipulative father she’s put up with all her life.”
“Overbearing? Dear boy, that’s the last thing I am.” Daulton’s chest puffed out. “I made sure my child learned right from wrong, how to be a true lady and how to conduct herself with respect. Which is more than your father ever taught you.”
Kane’s deliberate removal of his hand from his brother’s arm signaled exactly how hard that blow hit. But this time, Mason used words instead of fists. He leaned onto the table, getting close to Daulton’s face even though he didn’t lower his voice. “My father was more of a man than you’ll ever be. He cared for his family instead of browbeating them.” He shook his head, driven to break through the man’s steely facade. “He would never have completely erased a son from his life simply because he had the gall to die on him.”
“Mason!”
Jerking around, Mason found himself facing EvaMarie. The flush of her cheeks and slight sob to her breath told him if she hadn’t heard everything, she’d heard more than enough. But it was the accusation in her eyes, the betrayal in that look that cut past his defenses.
For once, it was more than deserved.
Eight
“How could you disgrace us by working for that man?”
The Harringtons were barely out the exit before the interrogation started. A quick glance around at their fellow diners only reinforced EvaMarie’s wish that her father would lower his voice. After all, she was only across the table from him.
With few other options, she modeled a lower tone. “That man and the job he offered me—a great paying job along with room and board—are helping us get through our...situation,” she insisted.
“I don’t see how,” Daulton said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. It was a stubborn pose if ever she saw one. A pose she’d seen him adopt often in her lifetime.
She knew, just looking at her father, that Mason’s outburst wasn’t his fault alone. Her father could provoke the calmest of people. And right now, her own anger was rising hot. Anger at Mason. Anger at her father. It was threatening to crackle the paint off her inner walls, walls that had locked away years’ worth of emotions and kept her calm and collected for far too long.
She leaned forward, crowding over the table. “You can’t afford to live in that facility, Dad. I know you’d rather not face it, but that’s the reality.” Her heavy sigh might seem mild to most people, but was a risky move with her father. “When are you gonna face how life really is, Dad—for you and for me?”
As her father’s expression closed off even more, her mother joined the conversation for once. “But to tell Mason those things—personal things about us...”
Sadness and guilt mingled within EvaMarie as she watched her mother clutch her cardigan together at the vulnerable hollow of her throat. Compassion softened her response. “I’m sorry, Mother. Mason found me clearing out—” she choked slightly, still unable to speak her brother’s name in front of them “—the room. I gave an explanation. It never occurred to me—”
“That he’d use it as ammunition?” her father interjected. “How naïve are you, EvaMarie? That’s the kind of man he is.”
Laurence nodded. As much as EvaMarie wanted to argue that Mason wasn’t like that, that she’d seen him laugh with and support his family, show compassion even to her when he probably didn’t feel like she deserved it, she’d heard his accusation herself.
“How could you lie to us, darling?” her mother asked. “We thought you were working at the library?”
“Shocked me too,” Laurence added.
With a quick sideways glance, EvaMarie mumbled, “You aren’t helping.”
But Laurence wasn’t backing down. He loved stirring the pot. “Honey, you weren’t born to clean barn stalls.”
The surround sound gasps told her he’d gotten his point across. That was the problem with Laurence...always had been. He was only willing to further his own agenda.
“No daughter of mine—” her father started.
The smack of her palm on the table sounded impossibly loud to EvaMarie. No one else in the restaurant even looked in their direction, but she felt like she suddenly had a 1000 kilowatt light shining right on her.
It was always that way when she dared defy her father.
“Yes, I will.” She enunciated clearly, hoping she could get her point across in one try. The quiver in her stomach told her the chances were iffy, but at least a numbness was starting to creep over her raw emotions, giving her a touch of distance as she delivered what was most likely her long-needed declaration of independence.
“I will do whatever I’m told by Mason. I’m n
ot a princess, not anymore—face it, Dad. I’m a worker bee.”
The breath she drew in was shaky, fragile. “This is my life. One I am struggling to resurrect out of the gutter after years of trying to keep us afloat. What did you think would happen when you left me to clean up the mess you left behind? I’m doing the best I can with what I have to work with here.”
Shocked silence was a new response from her parents. A novel one, in fact. Thank goodness, because she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to withstand any dictums to sit down and shut up. Instead EvaMarie stood, palms firm on the table to keep her steady. “I thought you’d be proud of me, Daddy. After all, you’re the one who taught me not to argue with authority.”
The reality of what she’d said didn’t honestly hit EvaMarie until she was on her way home. Then she had to pull the car over until she could get her shaking limbs under control. How could she have talked to her parents like that? But then again, every word had been honest.
Though her father regularly wielded his honesty like a sword, EvaMarie had never been allowed to own hers.
Her emotions were in turmoil, overflowing until she didn’t know how to contain them. Especially when she ran into Mason on the upstairs landing. Suddenly she had a target for her deepest emotion: anger.
“How dare you,” she demanded, stomping across the landing to crowd into his space.
He straightened, withdrawing only an inch before staring down at her intently. EvaMarie felt her emotions go from hot to supernova.
“Your dad was deliberately pushing my buttons,” Mason said, for once the calm one in the situation. “You should have heard what he said before you got there.”
She shook her head, her mind a jumble of thoughts and questions, but one stood out from the rest. “Why would you talk to him in the first place?”
His incredulous look didn’t help matters. “How could I not? He made sure he spoke loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear.”
Well, that did sound like her father. “That’s no excuse.”
“Actually, it’s enough of an excuse. I’m not gonna sit by and let him malign my family and keep my mouth shut.”
“But it’s okay to retaliate by throwing his dead son in his face?” She stomped closer, close enough to feel Mason’s body heat. “I trusted you with that information—something I’ve never done with another living soul. Why would you turn around and tell it to anyone? Much less use it as a weapon against my father?”
“I got angry,” he said with a shrug. “Kinda like you are right now, only you’re much cuter.”
EvaMarie wasn’t sure what happened. One minute they were facing off. The next the knuckles on her right hand burned and Mason gripped his left arm. She’d...oh man, she’d hit him. Her whole body flushed.
When Mason pushed forward, she instantly retreated. Standing her ground wasn’t something she’d ever been good at, especially when she was afraid. If he decided to retaliate, she certainly deserved it.
Then her back met the wall. His body boxed her in. She looked up into his face, fear gripping her stomach, only to have his lips cover hers.
This wasn’t a teenage kiss. It was rough, powerful, and had EvaMarie’s body lighting up all on its own. Leaving anger far behind, she wanted nothing more than to drown in the hot rush of need that overtook her in that moment.
Suddenly his teeth nipped the sensitive fullness of her mouth. Her gasp gave him free access. He pressed in, those vaguely familiar lips giving her a good taste of what he was capable of as an adult. This was no innocent exploring. Instead he conquered. With every brush of those lips, every stroke of his tongue, her body bowed into his without compunction.
Without thought, she pressed her palms against his sides, her fingers digging into his rib cage to urge him closer. Images of his body covering hers forced tiny mewling sounds from her throat. How had she lived this long without having him again?
Suddenly he pulled back. Bracing his hands over her head on the wall, he rested his forehead against hers. The sound of their rapid breathing was loud in her ears. No, please don’t leave.
She should be embarrassed by her need, ashamed to want a man who had set out to make her life miserable. But she couldn’t find the self-preservation to care. It was hidden somewhere beneath the desire that had lain dormant in her body for fifteen years—and was now clamoring for fulfillment.
Then his hand pressed up on her chin, forcing her to face him. By sheer will, forcing her to open her eyes and see the man behind the touch.
“I know I’m a safe outlet for your anger, EvaMarie. Much safer than your family,” he said, still struggling to get his own breath under control. That gave her more than a hint of satisfaction. As did the deep timbre of promise that resonated in his words.
“But remember, that doesn’t mean I won’t retaliate.”
* * *
Mason awoke the next morning with the taste of EvaMarie on his lips and the scent of her in his head.
Still.
That fresh taste of guilelessness with a dark undertone of desire was like rich chocolate, igniting Mason’s hunger for more. But there was too much history. Too many complications.
Yeah, he just needed to keep telling himself that—no matter how many times his body reminded him just how soft she’d felt, how much fuller she was as a woman, with intriguing curves that he ached to spend a night exploring.
Nope. Not gonna happen.
Grabbing a pair of jeans, Mason dressed quickly and headed downstairs. He could hear the faint sound of workmen from the basement. But there was no EvaMarie in the dining room, family room or kitchen, and no fresh coffee either. He made quick work of getting it set to brew, and stared broodingly out the window.
He shouldn’t want to see her, but here he was searching around every corner. What was his problem?
Jeremy called to him from the hall. “Morning, Mason. Hope we didn’t wake you.”
“Nope. That basement has great soundproofing.”
His friend grinned. “Good thing, considering the sound system you guys want installed.”
“Oh yeah.” That was gonna be fun.
Jeremy nodded toward the hallway. “Wanna take a look at the wall treatment going in the formal dining room? It’s about halfway done.”
“Sure.” Mason paused long enough to fill a coffee mug, then followed. “When are the new floors going down?”
“Two weeks.”
He grinned. “I’ll make sure I’m absent that week.”
“I don’t blame you,” Jeremy said, then presented the room under construction with a hand flourish worthy of Vanna White.
After admiring all the improvements Jeremy had gotten done in a very short amount of time, Mason finally got down to what he really wanted to know. “Have you seen EvaMarie this morning?”
Jeremy nodded. “Sure. She was in the barn when we got here this morning. She came over to let us in, then she went back.” A frown marred his young face. “Looked like she’d had a rough night. You haven’t been making her clean out more stalls, have you?”
Mason paused, eyeing his friend over the rim of his coffee mug. “Told you about that, did she?”
Jeremy eyed him back. “That was not nice.”
And Mason wouldn’t be allowed to forget it. “I know. Of course it won’t happen again.”
Jeremy looked skeptical but let his line of questioning dry up.
As soon as he could escape, Mason dragged on his boots and headed for the barn. Jim’s truck was in the drive, which made EvaMarie’s presence in the stables that much more of a mystery.
As he stepped into the cool darkness of the large building, he heard the faint murmur of EvaMarie’s voice. Just like the other day, all his senses stood up and took notice. The farther he walked, the clearer the words became until he reali
zed she was singing a lullaby. As he walked past Ruby’s stall, the mare had her head out of the box, ears pricked forward as she stared down the aisle toward the source of the soothing tones. Apparently Mason wasn’t the only one entranced.
The sound originated from the double stall down on the far left. As he reached the half-door, Mason couldn’t see EvaMarie’s upper body because the mare had crowded over the half-door to her stall to rest against EvaMarie’s shoulder as she sang. He could see a delicate hand resting on the horse’s neck, the flash of blunt-cut nails as she lightly scratched in time with her song.
An ache shot through him, so strong his knees went weak.
Swallowing hard, Mason watched that hand—so graceful yet so capable—until the horse pulled back to glance into the stall behind her.
Jeremy had been right—EvaMarie was a mess. He’d go so far as to say she looked worse than when she’d cleaned the stall. Almost as if she’d slept all night on the barn floor.
“Yes,” she crooned at the animal, unaware of his observance. “You have a pretty, pretty baby.”
“That she does,” Jim said, appearing from the other side of the stall door. “Very pretty indeed.”
A baby. The mare had foaled during the night...which explained a lot about EvaMarie’s appearance. Jim grinned when he saw Mason standing there.
“She delivered about two hours ago,” he said, bringing EvaMarie’s attention his way. Mason wanted to grin as she suddenly smoothed a hand over her hair, then plucked out a piece of straw, but figured she might not appreciate that he found her disheveled state cute.
“Why didn’t you come get me?” he asked instead. “I could have helped.”
“She’s not your horse,” EvaMarie replied, quiet but firm. “Besides, Lucy did the work. We were just here in case of trouble.”
The reserve he heard in her voice was clear. Mason just wasn’t sure if she was still angry with him, or embarrassed by their confrontation the night before. He couldn’t resist teasing her to find out.
“Sure looks like you worked hard to me...all night long.” He let that grin slip out. “Jeremy accused me of making you clean out stalls again.”
