by Amy Brent
She was playing hard to get, and I loved the chase.
My phone rang in my hand, and I smiled. I knew she would call me back. They always did.
“Well hello there, Sarah.”
“It’s Tony, you idiot. Where are you?”
“Um, cruising down the road,” I said as I cranked up my car. “Where are you?”
“At the hotel. I thought we were meeting to go over the next phase of this interview bullshit we’re doing?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry man. I’m headed there now. Listen, are you hungry or thirsty? I could pick something up on my way.”
“That actually sounds awesome. What about that Italian place on the corner? I hear their pasta’s homemade in the back,” he said.
“Oh, you’re talkin’ my language. I take it you want some of that sweet tea shit?”
“Yes, I do. The largest they’ve got. Grab a gallon of it, if they sell it in those kinds of containers,” he said.
“You’re becoming an addict,” I said.
“And you were sitting outside of that woman’s studio.”
“How the hell did you know? Was something said in the media?”
“Nope. Just know you. I figured Sarah Williams would be a tough one to crack for you, especially after the breakup she went through last month.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Her ex was caught sucking face with her now ex-host.”
“Oh, shit. What about the other one?” I asked.
“The other what?”
“Boyfriend. She said she had two terrible exes.”
“When did she say this?”
“Never mind. Spaghetti and a tub full of sweet tea for the addict?”
“Yep. I’ll see you when you get here.”
“Oh! Hold on. Question. Can you do some digging for me?” I asked.
“I’m not researching Sarah Williams for you.”
“Good idea but no. Figure out the name of her assistant. Well, the assistant she just fired.”
“You got her assistant fucking fired?” he asked.
“Why’d you assume it was me?” I exclaimed.
“Because it’s always you, Mason. I can figure out her name. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know, offer her a job or something. See if she’s a good fit somewhere. Do we have jobs in Dallas?”
“No.”
“Then make a job in Dallas and give it to her. I feel like shit. I didn’t mean to get her fired.”
“Is that compassion I hear?” he asked.
“No, fucker. It’s business. I got her fired for a lie I told, and that was my heat to take. I’m making it right. Like I always do. All right, I’m pulling up to get food now. See you in a bit.”
“See you soon,” he said.
Chapter 5
Sarah
I couldn’t believe my assistant was stupid enough to dole out my personal fucking information. What the hell was she thinking? I didn’t give a damn if the President himself asked for my fucking number. Mason had the resources to find it if he wanted it. I needed to surround myself with people who protected my privacy, not people who just doled out my shit whenever they were schmoozed by a handsome man in a tailored suit.
“Sherry!”
“Yes, Miss Williams?”
“Pack your shit,” I said.
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“You’re fired.”
“What? What did I do, Miss Williams?”
“Cut the bull. You gave my personal information to Mason Baker when he came in here flapping his handsome jowls and dazzling you with his emerald eyes. I need people I can trust with my information, and I can no longer trust you. Pack up your shit. It shouldn’t be much anyway.”
“But he told me he wanted to call you because—”
“I don’t care if he was calling because a nuclear bomb was headed right for Dallas. I didn’t call him for a reason, and you blew my trust. Get. Out.”
Even as she packed up the few things she had and ran down the hallway crying, he kept blowing up my phone. It would ring and I would silence it, and he’d leave a voice message. Then it’d ring again, I’d silence it, and he’d leave a voice message. I had half a mind to change my fucking number altogether and only give it out to Emma, Angie, and the crew. I had half a mind to block his number and have the security guards watch out for him.
The nerve of that handsome fucker.
I put up with his relentless calls all day, and I was getting tired of it. He wasn’t getting the hint. Not one bit. And I was getting tired of my phone ringing off the fucking hook. So finally, just as I was leaving to go home, I answered his call.
“What the fuck do you want?” I asked.
“I want to take you out.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Not a chance.”
“It’ll be fun,” he said.
“I’ve got no intentions of being photographed out on a date with you,” I said.
“Good, because I’ve got no intentions of parading you around photographers,” he said.
Wait. Seriously? Why the hell not? He was Mason fucking Baker. It’s what he did.
“It’s just dinner. I’ll pick you up, we’ll cruise around, we’ll go get dinner somewhere obscure where no one will find us. Hell, I’ll rent out a restaurant just to get us some privacy. Then I’ll take you home, maybe back to my place.”
“We’re not going anywhere near your place,” I said.
“So I’ll pick you up tomorrow night?”
“What?”
“Tomorrow night, say around seven?” he asked.
“When did I agree to a date with you?” I asked.
“The moment you answered your phone.”
I could hear his smug fucking grin through the phone. I wanted to bash his head in and simultaneously kiss his beautiful lips. I sighed, thinking about how monotonous my life had become. If there was anyone who understood the intrusion fame had a tendency to become, it was Mason Baker.
And it was just one dinner, right?
“Fine. I’ll go out with you. Once. To dinner. Just dinner. Tomorrow night,” I said.
“Wonderful. Shoot me your address, and I’ll pick you up at seven. Wear something that makes you feel breathtaking.”
“So, my bathrobe and pajama pants?” I asked.
“Whatever works for you works for me, beautiful. Talk to you soon.”
He hung up before I could get a word in edgewise, and I’d wondered if I’d made the right decision. I thought about it all night and about the trouble this could spiral into, the pictures that could possibly surface, and how this could completely backfire on me with what just happened a month ago.
But I was intrigued. I hated that I was, but it was the truth.
I was intrigued as to the kind of time I might have with the Mason Baker.
I woke up Thursday morning incredibly nervous. I wasn’t really sure what I was nervous about, but getting through my show was a nightmare. I had to diffuse lavender into my room and drink chamomile tea just to calm my mind down. I was interviewing an elderly couple who had opened up their own bar right in the heart of downtown Dallas and was pumping out their own original cocktails and crafting their own wines. It was a heartfelt interview, and I could see the love radiating between these two.
They didn’t make people like them anymore. Women were too wrapped up in how they looked, and men were too wrapped up in the legs of other women to see the prize that could be a hardworking, independent woman anyway.
But once the interview was over, I found myself rushing back home to get ready.
I’d never been this nervous going out on a date with someone before. I was always confident, and I always knew what I was getting myself into. I prided myself on my ability to read people, and Mason Baker was as topical as they came. Playboy. Rich. Flaunted his money and had no issues talking to the press. He loved the attention, the glamor, and the women he attracted with his mon
ey. He was just that type of person.
That type of man.
But then there was the tension. The sexual tension that permeated between the two of us when I was interviewing him. The sly, barely-there winks and the underhanded sexual comments that had me deep breathing while he was answering my questions. My attraction to him was purely carnal. A blood-in-the-nostrils affair. But there was that one looming issue.
The issue that I didn’t trust men.
Maybe it was the fact that my exes had all driven me into the ground. Maybe it was the fact that I was ripped from my family when I was twelve years old because my father was peddling drugs out of our garage. Maybe it was the fact that every single man I ever thought was supposed to love me only ended up doing things to drive me away in the end, showing me I was always second-best to something else, to someone else, to anything else.
“Calm down, Sarah,” I said to myself in the mirror. “You’re not getting serious with this guy. It’s just a date. It’s just dinner, something to get your toes wet again and see how it makes you feel.”
I smoothed my hands down my dark green dress before I slipped into my heels. I hung my sparkling earrings from my ears before I piled my black hair on top of my head.
“If it goes well, make it a fling. You could use the stress relief, and you know he’s packin’,” I said to myself in the mirror.
The idea of seeing what was underneath those clothes sent a shiver cascading down my spine.
Right at seven, a buzz rang out into my apartment. I knew that was the front desk alerting me to the fact that Mason was here, and I didn’t even think about meeting him outside. I lived in a complex that was known for its privacy, but the people coming in and out of the complex didn’t have to abide by the same rules.
“Yes?” I asked.
“You have a visitor downstairs,” the front desk said.
“A male visitor?”
“Yes, ma’am. Shall we send him up?”
“Tell him I’ll meet him at his car.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I took one last look in the mirror before I grabbed my purse and locked the door behind me. I took the elevator down and scurried across the lobby, trying to avoid people’s gazes as I looked around for Mason.
There he was, in all his swagger and cocky confidence, leaning against his beautiful red convertible with that dastardly grin on his face.
“When I said breathtaking, Miss Williams, I didn’t mean in a deadly way,” he said.
“Uh huh. Flattery gets you nowhere,” I said as he opened the car door for me.
“Ah, but it’s so much fun to watch your milky skin color with that telltale blush.”
My eyes widened. He had seen it during the interview. He chuckled as he shut my door, and I watched as he walked around and got in. He rode us out of town before he dropped the top of the car, and I took my hair down so it could blow away in the wind. I sat there with my eyes closed, breathing in the scent of the countryside as we traveled up the barren highway that skirted along the farmland.
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
We pulled into this little shack of a place that sat right on top of a rolling hill. Not a soul was in sight except for a waitress who sat us at our seat and a chef in the back. A bartender was sitting at the bar, waiting for our drink orders, but all I could do was gawk at the view from our seat.
It was nothing but grass, trees, rolling hills, and sky, and I was absolutely mesmerized.
“I found this little place while I was joyriding my first day in Dallas,” he said.
“I had no idea this place existed. It’s incredible.”
“Wait until you try their steak,” he said, grinning.
There were two glasses of red wine set in front of us, and I quickly picked it up and put it to my lips. I felt like he was trying to peel back my layers with nothing but his gaze. I knew his end game would be sex. It always was with men like him.
The question was, though, was that my end game, too?
“So, where do you go after Dallas?” I asked.
“Ah, here and there a bit. We’re almost done with the interview part of this process.”
“What process?”
“Rehabilitating my image or some such nonsense,” he said. “But enough about me. Have you always lived in Dallas?”
“Yes,” was all I offered.
“Is your family from around here?”
“Yes. Where’s your family from.”
“Oh, here and there,” he said.
He was being guarded, and it was painfully obvious. He wanted to know all about me without offering up a bit of detail about his life. I was not about to break down my walls for some playboy and tell him my own personal sob story while he sat there and tried to be some sort of shoulder while my emotions poured forth from my broken soul.
I wasn’t playing into that hand tonight.
The dinner was pretty stunted with neither of us opening up to one another. The conversation was light, painted with topical conversations like the weather and places we wanted to visit someday. Apparently, he didn’t want to visit anywhere. He wanted to buy an island and make it a place people visited.
Fucking shocker there.
But at the same time, there was this overwhelming desire. Even though I offered up absolutely nothing about myself personally, his eyes sparkled every time I spoke. His foot kept scooting closer and closer to mine like he was trying to get as close as he could. Maybe it was my third glass of wine talking or maybe it was how lonely I realized I’d been for quite some time now, but I realized what my end game was.
I realized if he offered up his home, I’d go back with him.
“Tell me, do you have plans after this dinner?” he asked.
“You mean going home and sleeping so I can prepare for tomorrow’s interview? Yep.”
“Sounds so boring. You don’t strike me as a boring woman,” he said, grinning.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked.
“Well, I wondered if you would reconsider my offer.”
“What offer?”
“The offer to accompany me back to my house,” he said.
He was leaning forward like he was anxious for my answer. I lost myself in his piercing green eyes and his chiseled jawbone. I could cut glass on the slope of his cheek, and suddenly, I couldn’t take my eyes off the veins bulging in his neck.
“I think I would enjoy reconsidering that offer,” I said, grinning.
“Wonderful.”
Chapter 6
Mason
I had her right where I wanted her. It took a damn bit of work, but I finally got her to cave. I took her to my vacation home in Dallas that I kept off the radar from the press, and I could tell she was shocked the moment we pulled up to it.
“Wait a second, I thought you were visiting Dallas?” she asked.
“I am. I don’t live here permanently. Our headquarters is stationed in Los Angeles.”
“So, whose house is this?” she asked.
“Mine,” I said, grinning.
“So, you have a house in a place you don’t frequent much?” she asked as I opened her door for her.
“Who says I don’t frequent much?”
“Quit with the shit. Why are you staying in a hotel when you have a house here outside of Dallas?” she asked.
“It’s a newly acquired home. I’ve always enjoyed Dallas. I’ve got a bit of family in the area.”
“Really? Who?” she asked.
“Well, we’re estranged now, but I bought this home in the hopes of trying to repair things between us. Consider it a hope-based purchase.”
That was all I offered, and it was more than I’d offered over dinner. The curious look she sent me told me she was wondering what might’ve happened to my family, who they were and why I was estranged from them.
I ushered her through the front door of my country home, and she took it all in as she entered. It looke
d like most of the plantation houses in the area. White with dark shutters. A wrap-around porch. The hardwood floors were new, but a lot of the old character of the place had been preserved delicately.
“It’s a beautiful home,” she said.
“Only because you’re in it.”
She whipped around at the sound of my voice and I nodded for her to follow me. I was holding two wine glasses and a very expensive bottle of red wine. I knew it wasn’t smart of me to have any more alcohol, but I wanted to relax her as much as possible before the festivities began.
“Care for another glass?” I asked.
She sat down next to me on a cozy little couch near a window that overlooked the backyard. Sprawling acres of land draped heavily in the darkness of the Dallas countryside. The stars came out to play, twinkling as I pressed a full glass of wine into the palm of her hand.
“To good times with beautiful sights,” I said.
“To reparations with families that don’t deserve us,” she said
We clinked glasses, and I studied her intently. I crossed my leg over my knee as my eyes danced all over her body. She kept her sight trained on the window, probably wondering why in the world I had a couch facing it. But I was more interested in her toast and where the statement had come from.
