by Emma Hart
Instead of hitting the door, I hit Mason.
At least it wasn’t in the face.
“Good morning to you, too,” he said dryly, eyes sparkling with laughter.
“Well, that’s what you get for opening the door when I’m about to knock.” I sniffed. “Grandma made enough pancakes to feed the five thousand, even though church is canceled.”
“Since when did church get canceled? Is God all worshipped out for the week?” He put the trash bag he was holding into the can at the side of the house.
“Apparently, the pastor is sick.”
“Don’t they have a deputy for that?”
“I have no idea. Do I look like I go to church?”
“In your little pink pajama shorts and no bra? No, but I think you’d make church a lot more interesting if you did.”
I pursed my lips. “Do you want these pancakes or not?”
“I want to know why there’s a ladder against my house pointing at my bedroom window. Can I have both?”
With a sigh, I walked into his house ahead of him. “Fine. Is Maya awake?”
“Maya’s outside with Dolly.”
“Dolly? Do you have another child hidden I don’t know about?”
“She’s the puppy, smartass,” he muttered. “Coffee?”
“Please. I was woken up by Grandma singing Another One Bites the Dust.”
“The Queen song?”
“Yeah. She checks the obituaries every week to see if anyone she knows has died and plays that song if they have. She says it’s a reminder that she could be next so I need to get married.”
Mason paused for a moment. “And there’s nothing morbid about that first thing on a Sunday morning at all.”
I gave him a tight smile and a small nod of agreement. It wasn’t always the best way to start the day, I had to admit.
Or ever the best start.
I knew.
More of my days had started like this than I wanted to admit.
“Here.” He slid a cup of coffee my way. “One sugar.”
“You remembered.” Why was I so shocked about that?
“Imogen, I’ve made you more cups of coffee than anyone else. I think I can remember something so basic.”
“Mm.”
He motioned for me to sit at the island, which I did. He leaned on the counter opposite me and wrapped both of his hands around his mug. His blue eyes were unfairly bright, and his dark hair was just the right amount of messy.
Unlike mine.
I bet his stomach wasn’t doing somersaults, either.
“So,” we both said at the same time.
“The ladder,” Mason said quickly. “Any reason you were trying to climb into my room last night?”
I held up a finger. “Well, for one, I was doing nothing of the sort.”
His lips tugged to one side. “Then, by all means, explain.”
“That freakin’ clown thing you sent me.”
“Ah. I should have known that had something to do with it.”
“Grandma’s a nosy so-and-so who knew which window was your bedroom.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Probably. You don’t know what she says about the ninety-seven-year-old man across the street.” I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, I was going to put the little shit on your window to scare you the same way you almost killed me.”
“The clown or the old man?”
“How would I get a ninety-seven-year-old man up a ladder and attach him to your window?”
“I don’t know. Both would be terrifying first thing in the morning, to be honest.”
“I know. I live with an eighty-year-old.”
“Does she look better or worse than you right now?”
“I’m not sure anyone can look worse than me, Mason.” I sipped slowly from my coffee. “But if you keep talking, you will.”
He grinned, his whole face lighting up with laughter. “All right. So you tried to pay me back and failed. I put the ladder back in your backyard by the shed.”
“Thanks.” I sighed. “I’m not taking this lying down, by the way. I will get you back for that. You scared the ever-loving shi—”
“Hiya!” Maya ran in with a tiny brown ball of fluffiness that was basically a walking cotton ball. “This is Dolly!” She reached down and hauled her up, arching her back so she could hold her.
“Okay!” Mason rushed over and retrieved what was apparently a puppy from Maya. “I think Dolly needs some food and a nap now. Why don’t you go draw a picture of her for Mama?”
Maya’s face lit up, then dropped as soon as she saw the pancakes. “Did Mrs. Jen make those?”
Mrs. Jen? Oh, Grandma.
“She sure did. Fresh this morning,” I said. “Would you like one?”
She looked from me to Mason with hope all over her face. “Cand I?”
Mason nodded. “Let me feed Dolly and I’ll heat it up for you. If you’re lucky and your room is tidy, I might even bring you one with whipped cream and strawberries.”
Maya gasped, slapping her hands against her little pink cheeks. “Das my favorwit!”
“I know.” He nodded.
She turned on her heel and ran off, then did a u-turn and barreled into me. “Fanks, Miss Immy.”
I froze for a second as she squeezed my legs so tightly I thought they might temporarily go numb, then smiled and gave her a gentle hug back. “Thank Grandma next time you see her.”
“I will.” She beamed up at me. “I tidy now.”
Just like that, she was gone.
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable being an accessory to bribery,” I said, following Mason with my gaze as he moved through the kitchen with ease.
“Sucks for you,” he replied, taking a pancake with a half-grin flashed my way. “My mom told me something the week Maya was born, and it’s stuck with me: ‘Ninety percent of parenting is bribery, and the other ten percent is hoping they never get smart enough to figure it out.’ Then she said she’d get me a coffee if I took Maya for half an hour so Fran could sleep.”
I blinked at him.
And waited.
“Did you?” I said after a moment.
“Well, yeah. We’d been up all night, and I wanted a coffee and Fran wanted sleep.”
“It’s gone right over your head, hasn’t it?”
“What has?”
“She said that and bribed you right after. With coffee.”
He peered over his shoulder at me for a moment, and I could almost see the cogs turning in his brain as it occurred to him that his mom had proved her point within seconds of her words.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, putting down a knife. “You’re right.”
Bless him. “How did you graduate law school if you can’t even recognize bribery from your own mother?”
“I slept with my professor, obviously.”
I gave him a flat look.
“He was seventy. It wasn’t all that enjoyable.”
Rolling my eyes, I stood up and took my empty mug to the sink. “And that’s enough of you for today.”
He laughed, turning around and meeting my eyes. “Oh, come on. I can see you’re enjoying talking to me again.”
“I’d rather cuddle a coyote.”
“I bite on request.”
“Mason.”
“Imogen.”
I folded my arms across my chest and stared at him. “What?”
“Would it kill you to say the last twenty minutes haven’t been so bad?”
“It might. Why risk it?”
“What’s life without a little risk?”
“Safe, secure, and probably a lot less deadly, for a start.”
He laughed and pulled Maya’s pancake out of the toaster to let it cool for a second. “Also, a bit more boring, less exciting, and potentially vindicating for me, because if you don’t admit it, I know it’s true.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What if I do say I enjoyed talking to you? How do you know I wasn’t lying?�
��
He planted one hand flat on the counter next to me and leaned forward ever so slightly, just enough that I could smell the coffee on his breath and see flecks of blue-black in his irises. “Because your eyes are sparkling.”
“Eyes do that. It’s thanks to a little thing called tear ducts.”
“Don’t be awkward, Imogen.”
“‘Don’t be awkward, Imogen.’ At what point in all the time we once spent together did you think I would ever not be awkward?”
“I can think of plenty of times you weren’t awkward. Granted, you usually had your legs around my waist and your nails raking my shoulders to shreds, but you weren’t awkward.”
Heat flushed to my cheeks. That was not how my morning needed to continue. “Stop talking like that. It’s in the past.”
“Memories last forever.” He pushed away with a shrug and went to the fridge where he pulled out a can of whipped cream and strawberries. “You said the past brought back memories for you. It did for me, too.”
“It brought back memories of how you hurt me, not how hard you screwed me on a Saturday night.”
He snorted, but it quickly turned into a cough that made him back up from Maya’s pancake before he coughed all over it. “And a Monday, and a Tuesday, and a—”
“All right, all right. Feed your child before she starts a mutiny.”
His laugh sent a shiver down my spine, but he turned and quickly sliced two strawberries. After placing them on the pancake, he added some whipped cream and cut it into four pieces.
He tossed a wink my way before turning around and disappearing through the door, Maya’s plate in hand.
I slumped against the counter. What the hell was I doing here in his house? Talking to him? Enjoying it?
I was going to kill Grandma for making me bring pancakes. The woman was a mastermind, I swear. She knew what she was doing when she decided to make pancakes this morning, and I was going to find out if church was actually canceled or if it was her being a heathen.
I was willing to bet on the latter at this point.
I rubbed a hand down my face and straightened up. I’d showered last night after my fight with the grass, but I felt like I needed another one. Showering helped get my thoughts straight, and right now, I desperately needed that.
“Huh. I thought you would have left while you had the chance.”
“Damn it. I missed my chance.” I turned around and looked at him. “I was considering whether or not I wanted to try being friends with you.”
“And?”
“It was going well until I caught sight of that.” I pointed to the fucking clown that’d given me a heart attack yesterday. “Now you can fuck yourself.”
He laughed. It took him mere seconds to cross the room and reach me, leaving only a few inches of space between us. “If you’d done that to me, you’d think you were a genius.”
“Moot point.” It took everything I had to control my breathing so he didn’t see how affected I was by his closeness. “You almost killed me with fear. It’s unforgivable. You’re lucky I opened it before I started my class, or you’d have killed my students, too.”
“Always dramatic,” he murmured, fixing his gaze on mine. “If you’d almost died, you’d have tried to kill me by now.”
“Maybe I’m biding my time.” My voice was quiet. “I have access to knitting needles and paintbrushes.”
“And I’m sure you are positively terrifying wielding those at the old ladies who buy them.”
“No idea, but I’m sure they’d be great to shove six inches inside your rectum.”
“That’s the poshest way anyone has ever told me to shove something up my ass.”
“Oh, I’m not telling you to do it. I’ll do it for you. Really wedge them up there. If you’re lucky, I’ll pierce your brain, and you’ll stop getting so close to me.”
Mason tilted his head to the side, his eyes still focused on mine, his lips oh-so-slowly curving upward. “I don’t think so.”
“I guess I’ll need some longer knitting needles, then.”
“See, here’s what you’re not noticing, Immy.” He dipped his head, sliding one hand across the counter so his lips were close to my ear. “You’re the one who stepped closer to me a second ago, and you didn’t even realize it. You say you can’t stand to be near me, but when I offered you a coffee, you said yes. You could have said no, handed me the pancakes, explained the ladder, and left.
“Yet, here you are. Practically touching me, and you haven’t tried to move away once. So while I hope—and I cannot express this enough—that you don’t try to shove anything up my ass, knitting needles or otherwise, it doesn’t really matter.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because I’m even closer to you than I was ten seconds ago, and you still haven’t tried to push me away.”
I drew in a deep breath. He was right. Inches seemed so big when there was nothing but mere millimeters, nothing more than a hair width, separated you. His breath darted across my skin, making me shiver.
I wasn’t going to do this.
I was going to be a big girl and control myself.
Yup. I was. I swear.
I took a deep breath and stepped back from him. “I need to go.”
Turning around, I bolted out of the house and pulled the door shut behind me. My heart was beating entirely too fast for my liking, and I could still feel the remnants of the shiver that had just wracked my body. It was like thousands of tiny needles all pricking my skin and sending goosebumps all over me.
I swore I could hear him laughing, but I honestly didn’t know if it was just my memory at this point.
I disappeared back into my own house and slammed the door shut, leaning against it. I blew out a deep breath and closed my eyes, tilting my head back.
“What’s wrong?”
I opened my eyes and looked at Grandma.
“Didn’t he like the pancakes?” Her eyes widened innocently.
Too innocently.
I pushed off the door and paused at the bottom of the stairs. “You know damn well he likes them.”
Her sly grin gave her away. “I bet that’s not all he likes.”
“I told you. Stop it,” I huffed, storming up the stairs. Her cackling followed me up, echoing off the walls, and I could even hear it after I’d shut myself in the bathroom in pursuit of a toothbrush.
I picked up the toothpaste and stopped.
I could switch his toothpaste for shaving cream.
But how the hell did I get to his toothpaste?
CHAPTER TEN – MASON
When Past And Present Collide
I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d forgotten that puppies will shit anywhere and everywhere on their pursuit of an empty bowel.
I wrapped the last of the wire around the holder on the carpet cleaner my mother had insisting on giving me for Christmas and pushed it back through to the utility room. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever been grateful for it—until now.
The thing was a lifesaver.
“Uh-oh,” Maya said, looking at Dolly, who was sitting outside on the porch staring through the sliding glass doors.
“Uh-oh indeed,” I said. “She can stay outside for twenty minutes. She’s fenced in and she won’t get lost.”
“I play ball?” She looked at me with her blue eyes wide and pleading.
I wavered on it for a moment. Dolly was outside to do her business, but it wasn’t like she was actually doing it anyway.
“Fine, okay. Go play with her.”
“Yay!” Maya jumped off the sofa and ran to the back door, stopping to grab a bright pink tennis ball from the floor on the way. She slid open the unlocked door and ran outside, instantly throwing the ball so Dolly could catch in. In her excitement, Dolly went ass over head and fell off the patio with a tiny yelp. Before I could get to her, she bounded back up and chased after Maya.
I shook my head and shut the utility room door. I needed to order more puppy pa
ds to save the rest of my carpet and some stronger carpet cleaning solution.
With Maya amused outside with Dolly, I took advantage of the silence to get some work done. My home office was nowhere near ready, so I settled at the kitchen island, turning the stool around just enough that I could keep half an eye on Maya and Dolly.
My email was bursting, and I never thought I’d say it, but I would be glad to get back to the office properly. It was hard to take work calls when I was constantly asked for a snack or some water or did I know where that broken orange crayon was because she absolutely had to have that one and no others would do.
Thankfully, half of my email appeared to be spam mail and some out of office replies. After handling all the spam, I set to work working my way back from all the ones that had come in since three o’clock yesterday when I’d last done this.
With that handled—and a snack for both Maya and Dolly out of the way—I wrapped up a report with my recommendation on a custody case that’d dragged out for over a year now and sent that off to where it needed to be.
I took a break for some coffee and a snack of my own. It’d been such a long time since I’d typed that much and my fingers were screaming for a break. While the coffee machine turned on, I checked on Maya and Dolly. They were curled up together on the sofa under Maya’s favorite blanket.
I smiled, slowly backing out of the room so they could continue their nap.
The coffee machine was done when I re-entered the kitchen, so I fixed myself a drink and looked out of the window.
Specifically, at the yard next door.
Immy was sitting on the porch, and I could tell from her position that she was drawing. She was all hunched up, knees bent—curled into a little ball with just enough room left to move her pencil across the page.
I’d watched her sit and draw like that more times than I could count. It was always accompanied by the biggest look of peace on her face, a peace that was only broken on occasion by her poking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth.
Like she was doing now. It was just the tip, curved upward as if she were licking her top lip in just one place. She held that position now as I watched her.
