by Tina Leonard
Mason stopped her talking by kissing her. When he estimated he’d enjoyed about thirty seconds of silence, he said, “See? I’m just as good as always.”
“No, you’re not. Your face is purple in spots and pasty in others. Actually, it’s fairly Frankensteinish, with that zigzag of stitches. What did Nanette say about your beauty treatment?”
He resisted the urge to run his hands under her nightgown. After all, his daughter was in the bed, and that just wouldn’t do. “She doesn’t care what I look like. She’s only interested in my personality, not my looks,” he teased, but Mimi didn’t smile. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m sorry for dragging you into this dangerous profession.”
“You’re a pushy broad, Mimi, but I do what I want to do.” He looked at her and saw worry in her blue eyes; he could feel tension in her body. “What are you afraid of?”
“Losing you,” she said softly, sending a spear into his heart.
“You mean to some bad guys?”
She nodded.
“I guess there’s no one hundred percent chance that might not happen,” Mason said, “but I’m pretty tough, Mimi. You can’t go through life being scared.”
“I have,” she said, “and so did you.”
He pulled back to frown down at her, puzzled.
“And it’s influencing our choices now,” Mimi said.
“I don’t get it.
“Maybe we’re just reaching out to each other now,” Mimi said, “because it’s what we know best.”
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I plan on getting to know you a hell of a lot better. I didn’t realize I’d never seen your bare nipples until I caught you in that lacy thing. They’re cute, Mimi. Sexy and kinda sassy, like your whole personality.”
“Mason!” Mimi buried her head against his chest. “I’m trying to be practical for once in my life. So would you listen?”
“I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
Mimi laid a fingertip over his lips. “We’ve waited this long. We have plenty of time to make certain we’re doing everything for the right reasons.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to be scared anymore. Do you?”
“Listen, Mimi, fear is when your lady thinks she’s a superhero and tries to open up a can o’whoopass on two fellas who outweigh her by at least fifty pounds and are carrying a large piece of wood. Hell, you did open up a can o’whoopass. Where’d you get pepper spray?”
“It was actually hair spray,” Mimi said. “All my friends work in a salon, and they taught me everything I know about self-preservation. However, I’ve always carried pepper spray because my father insisted. It just wasn’t needed for those weenies.”
“Oh, jeez,” Mason said, “I think my heart’s gonna give out.” He dramatically laid a hand over his chest and rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “If I’d known my woman was shaking down bad guys with a can of Dippity-do, I would have lost it.”
“Not Dippity-do,” Mimi said, giving him a pinch. “It was Sweet and Strong. Guaranteed by the Union Junction girls to keep every single strand of hair from moving in even the strongest Texas tornado.”
He rolled over and put his lips on her neck to give her nips and kisses. “You don’t wear hair spray. But I like the name, Sweet and Strong. It’s just like you. And you felled those buggers like they deserved. I like a woman who knows how much I love my truck.”
She gave him a play slap on the back. “Get off of me, you oaf.”
“Mimi,” Mason said, looking down into her eyes, “don’t say you’re afraid of being with me anymore.”
She hesitated, and in that time, it seemed his heart stopped. Forgot how to beat. Lost its rhythm.
“I can’t help it,” she said. “I seem to be afraid of so much right now.” Her blue eyes welled with tears. “But I love you, Mason. I really do.”
“That doesn’t sound like I win the prize,” Mason said. “It sounds like I get runner-up or something.”
“Go back to sleep,” Mimi said. “In a little while I’ll bring you breakfast.”
“A little hemlock? Perhaps a dagger?” Mason asked, trying to tease, but the words fell flat. “Mimi, I don’t need a nurse. I need you to let me hold you. Of course, if you want to wear a nurse’s uniform, I won’t say no. I’m not picky, but—”
“Mason, go to sleep,” Mimi said. “I’ll see you in a while.”
But she didn’t. In fact, when he awakened with a splitting headache, Mimi and Nanette had gone.
Chapter Sixteen
Mason packed a bag. Hawk had called and told him Mimi and Nanette were taking a sabbatical up there on his mountain, so not to get steamed up. Mason had appreciated the call. Mimi was just feeling crowded, and she needed to clear her head. He could handle that.
Though he didn’t like being left. There were moments when the fear he’d felt as a kid, after finding his father’s goodbye letter, returned to gnaw on him. Mimi hadn’t left a note, but she’d just run to a friend’s. She hadn’t run far, and that was a good sign.
Hell, everybody had a little run in them at some time or another. Even he’d left the ranch for a while not long ago. It wouldn’t matter in the end. Those were his girls, and it was always going to be that way, because Jefferson men didn’t give up on their people. If they did, folks—especially Mimi—would have given up on him a long time ago.
He knew he’d put her through the wringer over the years. She was entitled to a little healthy doubting, especially since he really did look like Frankenstein, and she clearly was rethinking whether she wanted to be Frankenstein’s bride.
On the other hand, Mimi was going to have to accept that fear did not equal inaction, at least to his way of thinking. She was going to be his bride, despite her attack of cold feet.
He knew just how to warm them.
“Where you headed?” Sheriff Cannady asked Mason on his way out.
“First, I’m going to go down and visit our incarcerated friends. Want to get out of them whether they were just in a foul mood and deciding to cause a bit of trouble, or if they were up to something more sinister. Then I ship them into the city.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Mason stood. “Then I’m going to go call on your daughter. She’s escaped me for the moment.”
Sheriff Cannady grinned. “No one ever said this would be easy, Mason.”
“No, they didn’t, sir.”
“And you are pretty banged up. If I was Mimi, I might be having second thoughts myself.”
“Well, I’m not going to let her have them too long. I heal very quickly.”
“Glad you have a plan. I’m ready to go whenever you are.”
“Sheriff,” Mason said suddenly.
“Yes?” The older man turned to look at him.
“I’d like to ask you for your daughter’s hand in marriage, sir. I promise to take very good care of her.”
The sheriff grinned. “I thought you’d never ask, son. If you can catch her, you can count on my blessings.”
Mason nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
“And if you can’t catch her…well, Mason,” Sheriff Cannady said, “you still have my blessings. You’re like a son to me.”
“I will marry Mimi,” Mason said, knowing that if he had to go to the ends of the earth to win her he would.
SHE WAS VACATIONING—Mason refused to use the word hiding—in a place so remote that he would never have found it without a map. He could easily envision his brother Ranger rolling down this chasm into the Native American graveyard filled with totems and beautiful drawings as he had a few years back. Hawk kept this arid, secret place free of highway debris and vagrants. In a way, Hawk’s land reminded Mason of Anasazi ruins he’d once seen in a book his father had shown him. This mountain area was deserted, mystical and filled with the fabric of ghosts from the past, which suited Hawk just fine.
On top of the tree-shrouded hill and far from the ruins, Hawk had built a house.
It reminded Mason of a tree house. From inside, pretty much all that could be seen was the sky and the surrounding forest and then down into the chasm. Hawk had night-vision goggles, a telescope and fine binoculars, which kept him in tune with his surroundings.
Right now, he loaned his binoculars to Mason. “Down there,” he said. “You’d think they were at the beach. Nanette is picking up rocks and old pinecones.”
Mason’s heart thudded with gladness when he saw his family, even through the distancing glass eyes of the binoculars.
“They keep mostly quiet and to themselves,” Hawk said. “And Nanette doesn’t touch anything I ask her not to.”
“Do you worry about snakes? Bears?”
Hawk pulled out a long-range sniper’s rifle. “No. And Mimi’s packing.”
The hair practically stood on end on Mason’s head. “Mimi’s packing? Are you crazy?”
Hawk laughed. “She’s packing something called Sweet and Strong.”
Mason relaxed fractionally. “I don’t think hair spray is going to dissuade a snake from striking or a bear from ripping them to shreds.”
Hawk nodded. “But you can’t protect a person from everything. And sometimes danger is mostly in the mind, you know.”
“That sounds like mumbo jumbo to me.”
“Only because you’re closing the door to your powers of perception. Why do you hide from what you really need to know?”
Mason stared at his friend. “I have no powers of anything. Except those I’ve had since I was born.”
“Which are?”
“Strength. Determination. Stubbornness.”
Hawk pointed down to Nanette, who was tugging at her mother’s dress and showing her an arrowhead she’d found. “Strength you developed because your parents fed you well and made sure you had everything. Determination you learned because you had no one to rely on but yourself after they were gone. Stubbornness is not always a good trait, but again, it is self-developed to keep the bears of disappointment and snakes of sorrow away.”
Mason frowned. “So you want me to hone some flighty part of myself?”
Hawk nodded. “Might do you good.”
“All right. You sound like you want to tell me something, but you can’t because Mimi doesn’t want you to.”
“Right,” Hawk said with a grin.
“She wants me to be convinced of my feelings for her, because she thinks she’s led me to want her because of Nanette. She also thinks that she may end up like her mother, if she ever allows herself to slow down and get bored for a second.”
Hawk nodded.
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
Hawk looked at him.
“So what do I want to do about it?” Mason restated.
Hawk raised a brow.
“The antidote to boredom is action,” Mason said. “Right now, we’re very active in our feelings for each other. Mimi needs to test a slow phase in order to feel more secure.”
Hawk smiled.
“I’ve never known Mimi to have a slow speed. She’s always traveling fast,” Mason continued.
“Change is what is required in a relationship. Mimi knows this.”
“Whoa,” Mason said, “are you sure we’re talking about my Mimi?”
They looked down into the gully. The girls were returning, and Nanette looked delighted with her basket of trophies.
“When you looked down,” Hawk said, “all you saw was danger. Ugliness. Worry. Bears and snakes. That’s no way to exist. I saw beautiful trees, beautiful people and a totem collection it is my privilege to guard.”
“Bull,” Mason said. “That’s why you have a high-powered rifle with a sniper’s sight on it.”
Hawk laughed. “Being careful and prepared is not the same as living with fear. If one person in a relationship is always afraid, the other person eventually has to leave.”
“And Mimi’s afraid of many things right now, like me being sheriff.”
“Yes.” Hawk frowned. “I have some special things to put on your face that will help it heal so you don’t bear that scar forever.”
“Any scar will be a reminder to me not to let fear rule my relationships in life,” Mason said. “I probably could have used that knowledge earlier.”
Hawk grinned. “Mason, you couldn’t have listened. You were raising twelve boys. Parents tend to be afraid at times.”
“I’ve been afraid ever since Dad left,” Mason admitted, shocked by the knowledge spreading through his mind like mist.
“I know. So how does Mimi know you won’t one day leave?”
“Because I’m not my father,” Mason stated.
“Maybe you are your father. Your father became ill,” Hawk said sternly. “If you can imagine raising twelve boys in a remote location with little help, you can probably envision any normal human being suffering without his chosen spirit partner.”
“I meant, I would never leave any family of mine,” Mason said.
“Spoken from fear of abandonment,” Hawk said. “And Mimi was just as abandoned. You share the same life experience. Which means you must go slowly with each other and build bonds of trust. It can’t be done just using the tools you named—strength, determination, stubbornness.”
“It’s all I have,” Mason said.
“Consider this,” Hawk said. “In life, why does the ugly, skinny boy sometimes win the most beautiful, smart girl that all the neolithic guys with money are chasing?”
Mason stared at his friend.
“Great sex,” Hawk said, laughing.
“Oh. I thought you were asking me some kind of deep question,” Mason said sheepishly.
“I was,” Hawk said, “because first the nerd had to get there. How did he do that? He listened to what she needed,” Hawk said, walking down the hall as Mimi and Nanette came in the front door.
Mason straightened, anticipating his first glance of Mimi. She was going to be surprised to see him. Hopefully not angry. Maybe he hadn’t given her enough space.
Nanette jumped into his arms, and when Mimi looked up and saw him, she smiled. Through his fear, Mason felt incomprehensible arrows of love pierce his heart.
He was never going to get over this woman. He was his father’s son.
So I’d better make damn sure I listen to what she’s really saying, which isn’t going to be easy because I don’t like to sit still. Action keeps me from thinking.
But I can. For her.
Chapter Seventeen
Mimi was glad to see Mason. While she hadn’t expected him to come, she felt better knowing that he understood that her ambivalent feelings weren’t completely about him.
She loved Mason. She always had. And she would never try to keep Nanette from her father. But how to explain the feelings of fear inside her?
“I’m glad you’re here, Mason.”
“Me, too.”
“Nanette!” Hawk called down the hall. “Do you want to go visit Uncle Jellyfish and Uncle Tex and Aunt Cissy? On the boat?”
“Can I?” Nanette asked her mother with big eyes.
“Ask your father,” Mimi said.
“Have a good time,” Mason said. “Take your sweater.”
Nanette kissed them and ran off.
“Take your sweater?” Mimi asked.
“It can get chilly on the river at night,” Mason said.
“I think you just wanted to sound fatherly.” Mimi smiled at him.
“Do I win points for sounding fatherly?”
“Maybe.” Mimi went out onto the porch, which wrapped around the house. Mason followed, and they sat in wooden chairs Hawk had made. “It’s beautiful here.”
Mason nodded.
“Thank you for not being upset with me.”
Mason shrugged. “I understood.”
Mimi nodded and looked away. “I know I said this before, but I really think we’re rushing things.”
“I agree.”
Mimi turned to look at Mason. “You do?”
�
�Absolutely.”
“Oh, good.” Mimi felt so much better. “I’m not sure why we were in such a rush.”
“Me, neither. Except I like being with you.”
She smiled. “It’s like we were trying to compress a meaningful relationship into a month, when we’ve lived next door to each other all our lives. There’s just some things that can’t be rushed.”
“As much as we know about each other, our relationship wasn’t romantic,” Mason said.
“Exactly,” she said. “There could never be anyone else I’m as close to. But I need to trust myself more. I need time to adjust.”
“It’s almost a good thing I got hit upside the head, because it’s making us slow down,” Mason said, eager to go along with the listening and empathizing scenario. “Face our fears.”
She laughed. “You don’t have any fears.”
Sure I do. Losing you. “I’m a badass,” Mason said agreeably. “But even badasses have their softer side.”
“So you’re fine with waiting?”
If she was talking about sex, absolutely, he could wait. It wouldn’t be fun, but if it mattered that much to her, then sure. “Not a problem,” he said magnanimously.
“Thank you,” she said, beaming.
“You’re welcome,” he said, feeling like the skinny kid who’d just won the girl.
“So maybe by Christmas, we’ll both feel better about everything,” Mimi said with a smile. “And while I’m here, I realized I owe you a more heart-felt apology.”
Trying to listen while holding back a need to grab her, Mason shrugged. “For what?”
“I should have told you sooner about Nanette. I’m sorry, Mason. It was very wrong of me.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve always been so afraid of losing you.”
“I was angry, but I’m not now,” Mason said. “Although in the future, I hope we can be more open with each other.”
Mimi nodded. “I’m going to try.”
“I will, too.” There. Had he been sensitive enough? Allowed her to speak her thoughts? Had he listened?
“I don’t want to be married to a sheriff,” Mimi whispered. “As odd as that sounds, I understand myself better now. All my life, I thought my father was a hero. My daddy could do anything. Now I understand that every day, he put his life on the line for other people. I’m scared.”
