by Karen Rock
Julie glanced up at Mason. “What’s going on?” She pitched her voice low, the way he preferred. Funny how, until they’d begun dating, she hadn’t noticed how loud she spoke in public places, especially at movie theaters...
“Patience. Patience.” Mason’s blue eyes viewed her with the familiar chiding and indulgent expression he seemed to reserve for her. He brushed a hand over the meticulously cropped blond hair that framed his round face. “It’s a surprise. And I wouldn’t do this to you if it wasn’t such a big one. I want it to be special.”
Julie’s wine burned down her esophagus, the alcohol and lack of real food making her light-headed. She detested being caught off guard. Mason knew that. What could this be?
The relentless clanging had finally quieted the boisterous group—only the soft jazz versions of Christmas tunes weaved through the room. Mason flashed his boy-next-door smile.
“First, I’d like to thank all of you for being here to celebrate the happiest moment of my life.”
Cheers broke out and Julie’s gut twisted. A glass of wine had not settled her jitters and her chance meeting with Austin hadn’t helped matters, either. After attending to her mother, she’d put off the seating chart once again and collapsed in her room, hoping to banish memories of boyfriends past. Boyfriend, she corrected herself.
“To kick off our wedding countdown, I want to present Julie with a very special gift in front of all of you.”
Julie grew warm as thirty or so pairs of eyes studied her. Did she look excited? Happy? Not as if someone had just scrambled the meager contents of her stomach? At a gentle, under-the-table kick from her mother, Julie forced her mouth into a smile, the rest of her face numb.
Please, oh please, let it be something she liked. She was the absolute worst at faking.
“Darling, would you stand?”
Julie drained the last of her wine, rose and gripped the table’s edge.
Mason draped an arm across an easel behind them, an empty canvas covering something framed. She’d noticed it earlier but assumed it belonged to the restaurant. A painting they had yet to hang.
Could the present be something as innocuous as a picture? Her chest loosened. Possibly. Mason referred to his condo as a bachelor pad. Maybe this was his way of bringing her eclectic style into the austere space. Still, without her opinion, how would he know she’d like it? The instant the question occurred to her, she answered it.
He usually jumped in and chose for her when he saw her waver, unlike Austin, who’d always insisted she make up her own mind.
A loud crash sounded behind her and everyone jumped as a blushing waitress bent down to pick up the overturned easel.
Mason quickly moved between them, blocking Julie’s view. “Just a second, folks,” he remarked, his face still wreathed in an excited smile.
“I’m so sorry!” cried the young woman.
“It’s fine,” Mason assured, his tone confident, He always made it easy to follow his lead since he seemed so certain of what was best...especially when she never could be sure what she wanted. Lately, though, it’d begun to grate as the choices grew more important, his will more vocal. Of course, they wanted the same things...but should he always assume as much? He seemed to think her approval was guaranteed.
No. Taking a while to make up her mind didn’t mean others could race ahead and decide for her. But she’d let that happen with Mason. And it had to stop.
Finally, with a flourish, Mason ripped off the covering to reveal a real-estate picture of a near replica of her parents’ house. Colonial blue, though, instead of white. The word Sold was scrawled across the top.
What?
She glanced between her beaming father and an expectant Mason.
“This is our new house, Julie. Where we’ll raise our family. Soon, I hope.” He winked and squeezed her cold hands.
“But how?” she managed to say, her mind hurtling through thought after thought, too fast to make sense of it all. The room exploded into cheers and applause. Mason’s disabled veteran brother, Michael, punched the air with his remaining arm and circled it, whooping.
A bit of light faded from Mason’s eyes, but his smile stayed strong. “I found it around the corner from your parents’ house after Thanksgiving. The owner’s Mrs. Beele. You know her, right? She was struggling to wrap garland around her banister, and when I stopped to help, she mentioned this would be her last year decorating since she planned to sell. I got ahold of her real-estate agent, made an offer and the rest is history.”
“I didn’t know Margaret was selling,” Dianne said in a low voice to her husband, her eyes narrow. “Did you put him up to this?” she hissed under her breath, her voice barely audible.
“Mason came to me and asked that I keep it quiet until now.” Julie’s dad slipped his arm around his wife’s rigid shoulders. “Julie, I know how much you’ve always loved our house, and since this one is so similar and you’ll be in the same neighborhood, well, I knew you’d be happy with this surprise. No risk at all,” crowed her clueless dad.
Julie looked down at her hands, hiding behind her eyelids. Wasn’t that exactly the problem, though? No risk. Nothing unexpected. Of course this would be her home. The predictability should comfort her. No unknown variables in this equation.
Yet she took a step back from the picture and dropped Mason’s hands. The sounds in the room grew muffled, the tapering applause snuffed out by her drumming heart.
She didn’t want this.
The thought squirmed in her spine, poked her up from the carpet. No equivocation. No what-ifs. She did. Not. Want. That. House. Her certainty startled her—the shock felt like a splinter jamming under a nail.
“Julie. Are you okay? Would you like some water?” Mason sounded concerned as he leaned close, his musk overwhelming.
“No. Not okay,” she mumbled, her voice tamped down to a whisper. Austin would have insisted she have a say in their future home. And as much as she would have struggled with making such a difficult choice, she would have preferred it to this. Another traitorous thought.
“I don’t understand. It’s what we always talked about. Exactly what you said you wanted.” Mason rubbed her bare arms exposed by her sleeveless black dress.
Had she? Mason must be right, but at this moment, she couldn’t agree. Her gaze ran over the Cape Cod–style home, a red maple tree in the front yard, a curved walkway up to the stone entrance steps. A colorful grapevine wreath hung on the welcoming door and a brass mailbox rested beside the doorbell.
She could have drawn this home in her sleep. She fast-forwarded through her life with Mason in her mind. A couple of years when she decorated the house and they took exotic vacations, the eventual decision to start a family, her struggle to raise the infants then toddlers alone while Mason worked, and the loneliness when the children went to school and Mason grew increasingly preoccupied with his demanding schedule. Day after predictable day. The weight of her future crushed her as she saw how it, and she, would turn out.
She studied the photograph. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Not to her. There was a danger to knowing how it all ended.
Her gaze swept to the French doors and windows along one wall of the restaurant. The dark night outside was just the escape she needed.
“I’m so sorry. Excuse me. I need air.” She turned, but Mason’s hand halted her flight.
He ducked in front of her and led her outside, his hand on the small of her back. The arrival of tiramisu diverted the open-mouthed guests, covering their flight. Nevertheless, Julie sensed her mother’s eyes following her. What must her parents be thinking? She couldn’t disappoint them...but she wouldn’t be untrue to herself, either.
This rejection of the house was the first absolute decision she’d made in a long time and it felt right. But it went deeper than that. She didn’t want the life that
went with it, either. Did that include Mason? It seemed impossible to separate the two.
Outside, the cold wrapped its frosty fingers around her and made her shiver, the night sky clear and frozen and smelling of pine.
“Julie. What happened in there? I thought you’d love it. Do you want another house?”
She jerked away when Mason pulled her close.
“No.”
His fair brows crashed together. “So you want the house?”
“No.”
“No,” Mason repeated. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, his eyes searching the stars. “No, as in you don’t want me to buy another house? No, as in you don’t want me? Don’t want to get married?” His voice broke.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, each word sawing through her. What was she doing? She had to take this back before she threw away another chance at happiness.
“This is nerves,” vowed Mason. “You’ve always trusted me before. Believe me now.” He pinned her with a pleading look. “This is the life you want. I’m the one you chose. I’ll devote every day to making you happy and you’ll never worry about a thing. Ever. I guarantee it.”
“That’s the problem. What if I don’t want guarantees? What if I’d rather not know every day will be perfect?” she blurted out, cringing at her ridiculous line of thinking. Who wouldn’t want to know they’d be happy? Yet a tectonic shift had rocked her foundation when she’d glimpsed the picture. It shook her notion that familiar was better.
Mason closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell as he breathed. “I’ve worked hard to give you the life—and the love—you deserve. Don’t you love me, Julie?”
When his lids lifted, she met his tortured gaze. She was looking at a stranger. One she’d known all her life. How odd, but there it was. She’d grown up with the bright, optimistic boy who’d followed her to school on his bike every day to make sure she arrived safely. Had met him, anew, when he’d returned from medical school as a confident, assured young man. Stable. Ready to put down roots. Everything she’d desired at the time, only...now that she had seen the picture—physical, tangible proof of the life they’d planned—she wasn’t sure she wanted it, after all.
“Julie? Do you love me?” he repeated, his voice husky and heavy, as though he spoke underwater.
She backed away, her hand on the railing, ruffling the lighted garland wrapped around it. “I’m sorry, Mason. I don’t know about anything right now. I’m a mess.” A sucking feeling filled her chest, like water draining.
He reached for her, then dropped his arms, hands swinging at the wrists like deadweight. “You’re confused. Under pressure. Just tell me what you want. Anything.”
“Space. Time. I—” She glanced behind her at the stairs leading down to the parking lot. “I need to get away. Okay?”
Mason’s shoulders sagged. She’d never seen him look so frightened. The hot spot of pain in her chest expanded. She’d hurt him and she hated that, but it was important to figure out what she wanted before she hurt a good man even more.
“Okay.” He shrugged off his jacket and handed it to her along with his cell phone and car keys. “Take care of yourself. Precious cargo.” His strained voice distorted their old joke.
“I will.” On impulse, she kissed his cheek, her gut aching, before racing down the stairs and into the dark. Time to start taking care of herself. Make her own decisions. Had this first one been a colossal mistake?
She jogged to his Saab, then stopped. Sitting in his car wasn’t the distance she really needed. She paused, thinking hard.
“Julie?”
At the familiar voice, she turned and nearly dropped the cell phone. Austin. Twice in one day. Under the replica gaslights, shadows pooled beneath his high cheekbones. His slanted brows knitted as he gazed steadily down at her.
“Are you okay? I saw you up on the deck.” His eyes dropped and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “You looked upset, so I thought I’d wait and make sure.”
“Yes. Fine. Peachy. Couldn’t be—”
He pressed a finger to her mouth, stopping her hysterical torrent.
“No you’re not. Who can I get for you?”
Julie imagined her mother and father, confused and worried when Mason returned without her. They adored him. Would only talk over her until she gave up again and let others call the shots in her life.
Claire?
Julie could knock on her friend’s door but knew Claire had put her overexcited daughter to bed early.
If only Alexis hadn’t missed her plane. She knew Julie better than anyone...the person who’d battled her doubts and overcame some of them while at college. Where had that version of herself gone? It’d been too easy to give up the fight once she’d returned home and retreated into the comfort of her old, predictable life.
Austin cupped her chin and lifted it, the feel of his strong hand calming the aftershocks trembling through her.
“What can I do for you?”
“Nothing. Please go.” She raced into the ground-floor lobby and stopped at the front desk with no real plan in mind.
Noelle slipped on her coat as another clerk took her place behind the counter.
“Would you ring room 22B and tell my, I mean, tell Mason Stanton that his coat and phone are down here?”
The young male clerk stared at Julie until Noelle brushed by him and efficiently bundled the items and set them on the counter behind her. “Is there anything else we can do for you?”
At the woman’s kind expression, Julie’s eyes grew damp. “Please tell my mother I’ll be back soon.”
“You’re not going out without a jacket,” exclaimed Noelle. She pulled open a door behind her, then returned with a long wool coat. “This has been in the lost and found for over a year. Take it.”
“Thank you.” Grateful, Julie slid her arms in the sleeves, buttoned up and stepped outside, unsure how far she’d get in her heels. Still, the crisp air revived her. Slowed her racing heart. Maybe she’d just circle the facility until she was sure her parents and Mason had given up and gone to bed.
Two steps out the door and Austin was beside her.
“You’re still here,” she exclaimed.
Austin let out a long breath. “Can’t think why.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Doesn’t look that way to me.”
Her stomach grumbled and suddenly she knew what he could do for her. They’d been apart eight years. Surely, like her, he didn’t harbor old feelings...
“Do you know where the nearest fast-food place is?”
His lopsided smile appeared as he took in her fancy attire. “You’re a little underdressed, but I’ll take you. I’m headed in that direction anyway—I need to reset the alarm at the luge facility. Come along if you like.”
There it was. A choice. She could go back to her red rice cake, jazz music and lovely Mason, or join the man who’d once broken her heart and gorge on an artery-clogging meal.
She hesitated.
Before she finished considering, the answer leapfrogged over her doubts. A jump into the unknown. At last.
“Yes.”
CHAPTER THREE
AUSTIN ENDED HIS call with Security, resisting the urge to look back at the warming shed, where he’d left Julie. He peered up at the steep luge run, a chilly gust stinging his cheeks. In the sky, the enormous moon hung white and luminous. The visibility assured him nothing haunted the track but the wind. It whistled along the white pipe that wound from the top of snow-covered Mount Van Hoevenberg and ended at the spot where he sometimes crouched, radar gun in hand.
With the world championships coming up in a couple of months, the team had been pushing hard. Their world was measured in minuscule increments that amounted to monumental variations. A hundredth of a second meant the
difference between international acclaim and obscurity. And he wanted each of the lugers to earn that chance.
But life guaranteed nothing.
Most of all, love. His nightstand drawer had once guarded an engagement ring and a nearly memorized proposal speech. Each time Julie promised to join him in Switzerland, he’d removed both. When she gave another excuse, he returned them to the darkness of their hiding place, his hopes banished with them—until finally they left him altogether.
Yet he’d never stop taking risks when it came to the rest of his life. Would always throw himself headlong into whatever came next. Not knowing what loomed around the bend made living in the moment exciting. If only Julie shared that philosophy. He’d begged her to join him for over a year, before he finally heard her postponements for what they were: rejection. She didn’t want his gypsy life.
Snow rose above his ankles as he approached her. She sat on a bench outside the warming hut, white and dazed looking. He couldn’t look away. Why had she fled the lodge? From what, or from whom, did she want to escape? Not that it was his business. Yet the time between them fell away when he was near the woman he’d once loved. Broken promises or not, he wanted to help. Figure out what changed since he’d encountered the bride-to-be on the trail. Sure, she’d looked preoccupied. But he’d assumed she was uncomfortable seeing him. Now he suspected the problem went deeper.
“All set?” Julie swallowed the last bite of a cheeseburger—her second—and stood. She always ate more when stressed, he recalled.
“Looks fine. Just the wind triggering the motion detectors. How about you? Ready to go back?”
Her bag of empty fast-food containers swung at her side and the moon turned in her eyes. In the crackle-cold air, she resembled an ice carving of herself. Brittle. Frozen. Chipped away one shaving at a time.
A bright white silence floated down the mountain, too big for him to burst. He tamped down the questions rising inside and waited for her to speak.
“No. Not ready,” she whispered at last, her voice snuffly. Long, dark strands whipped across her oval face, obscuring her expression. The aroma of pine, balsam and holly berry floated on the arctic current swooping from the north.
