Scarlet smiled for a moment, both of them thinking back to the happier times where painting, surfing and being in love had been the center of their lives and their marriage. Then her smile slowly faded and she rubbed absently at her cheek. “I’d better get in the shower,” she said.
“I’ll take Luna,” he offered. “Where’s Carroll?”
Scarlet handed the baby over to him and he noticed just how careful she was not to touch him in the process. He supposed that was his own fault after the way he reacted the night before. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to touch her. He wanted that more than anything. Kissing her last night had relit a fire inside him that he’d tried unsuccessfully to squash the last few months. If he didn’t walk away then, he knew that he would want to touch her, make love to her...and then where would they be? He wanted Scarlet; he just knew that he shouldn’t want her. Even then, he couldn’t help but feel slighted by her avoidance.
“She has the flu. She got the medicine, but the doctor said she’s contagious for another twenty-four hours, so she’s staying with her sister. She’s hoping she’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. The day after at the latest.”
Whether it was good or bad for Scarlet’s situation, he had to admit he was relieved that she was okay caring for Luna. Mason wasn’t entirely sure what he would do in this scenario if the nanny was sick and he had to take care of the baby on his own. He had been thrown into the deep end of the parenting pool without warning or a life preserver. Scarlet was all he had to cling to in a time like this and he was very grateful for her help.
“It sounds like you deserve a treat. How about after your shower, we go to Rico’s for dinner? That’s still your favorite, right? We can relax, have some good food, a nice night out just the three of us.”
Scarlet looked at him curiously before nodding slowly. “It’s still my favorite. Are you sure you want to do that, though? We could just as easily order takeout. We’ll have to play the public couple if we go out and run into someone we know.”
That was true. They really hadn’t had to try since the funeral. Carroll didn’t seem too interested in their business at home. “To be honest, we’ve been apart for such a short time compared to how long we were together, it’s easier to pretend to be a couple than to try to be apart. Unless you mind...?” He stopped, waiting for her to say she didn’t want to be seen in public with him.
“No, I don’t mind.”
With a sigh of relief, he smiled. “Then go get ready.”
“Okay.” Scarlet smiled and disappeared up the stairs to the master suite.
Mason watched her climb the staircase, her cutoff shorts creeping higher with every step. His mind easily made the leap to running his hands over her smooth skin and wrapping those legs around his waist. He’d missed that. Missed her.
Then Mason looked at Luna and cursed silently. He didn’t know what he was thinking, fantasizing about Scarlet like that. Just because she had warmed up to Luna didn’t mean that they were on their way to being one big, happy family. Scarlet still wanted and needed her own family. They were just pretending, and when Jay was gone, they’d both go back to living their own separate lives.
The wheels of their divorce continued to turn, no matter how attracted they might be to each other or how natural it felt to be in the same house again. They were miles away from raising Luna together.
And it was his own fault.
Five
“Do you want dessert?”
Scarlet looked at him and shook her head. “Not only am I full enough to burst, but this one is about to pass out in her high chair.”
They both glanced over at Luna. Her eyes were getting heavy and she was weaving steadily in her seat. It was a late night for her. Dinner had been nice, but it hadn’t been a fast process. He hadn’t really considered that when he chose this place. They’d never attempted to come here as a family before with Evan, so time hadn’t really been a factor he’d considered. Thankfully, Luna hadn’t fussed once. She was happy in her chair with a bottle, some finger nibbles and her favorite stuffed bunny.
“I bet she’s going to be asleep before we leave the parking lot,” he said. “If she lasts that long.”
Mason paid the tab and, when they were ready, lifted Luna up out of her high chair. She curled against his chest, resting her head on his shoulder. On instinct, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. She had that baby smell he remembered from giving Evan baths—a distinct mix of milk and baby shampoo.
It reminded him that he hadn’t really spent that much time caring for Luna. Carroll was doing most of the work, with Scarlet filling in for her while she was sick. Thank goodness Scarlet had stepped up. A nanny was nice, but they couldn’t be there every second, as this bout of flu had proven. Scarlet had been the one to take on most of Evan’s care while he worked long hours expanding his business into Florida. He didn’t know a thing about babies, really. He didn’t know what he would’ve done without her.
Hopefully, Carroll would continue on with him once they moved to his place in the Hills, but he would need to work on a secondary backup option, as well. Scarlet wouldn’t always be there to bail him out. He might be doing okay with a happy, sleepy baby, but a cranky one, a fussy one, or basically any other ailment that caused a baby to scream or spew fluids...he’d be thoroughly clueless.
He stopped just as they reached the front door and found Scarlet watching him with a curious look on her face. “What?” he asked. “Is she drooling on my lapel?”
“No, your suit coat is fine. You two just look sweet together. She’s so comfortable there that she’s already fallen asleep in your arms,” Scarlet said as she propped open the door and they stepped outside the restaurant.
“I always had a way with the ladies.”
“You put them to sleep?” Scarlet asked with a grin.
“Pretty much. You stayed awake, though, so I married you.”
Scarlet opened the car door so Mason could fasten Luna into her car seat. “So, that was the determining factor, eh? I thought it was my sparkling personality.”
Mason shut the door and turned to look at her. Scarlet was leaning against the driver’s-side door with her arms crossed, surveying him. Her wavy hair was loose around her shoulders, covering the bare skin that her flimsy strappy top exposed. For some reason, she looked younger tonight. More like the girl he’d fallen in love with at the beach. That Scarlet never looked at him with disappointment in her eyes the way his wife Scarlet did.
It took everything he had not to reach out and touch her. He wanted to brush a strand of dark hair from her eyes, run his fingertips down her bare arm and kiss her against the side of his Range Rover until she was breathless. His brain just couldn’t seem to convince his body that she wasn’t his any longer.
“Your sparkling personality certainly helped.” He leaned into her, bracing his hand on the roof of the car. “So did the fact that you were beautiful, talented, smart and yet stupid enough to be attracted to me. I had to jump on that before some other guy snatched you up.”
Scarlet smiled, then reached out to touch his face. It was a simple, casual touch, and yet it made his blood heat in his veins until he was forced to loosen his tie.
“I’ve missed you, Mason.”
Mason couldn’t think of a smarter response in the moment while she was touching him, so he opted for honesty. “I’ve missed you, too.” He had. More than he ever expected to. Every night he had to convince himself not to call her. She couldn’t move on if he didn’t get out of her life.
“What happened to us?” she asked. “I would’ve told anyone who would listen that you and I would be together for the long haul. And here we are, on the verge of finalizing our divorce. Sometimes I look around our empty house and wonder what the hell went wrong.”
“I let you down,” Mason said. “That’s what happened.”
“You let me down? Are you serious?”
Mason flinched at her words. “Yes, I’m serious. You and I both know that our problems started when I couldn’t give you the children you wanted.”
Scarlet’s hand moved from his face to his chest, where it pressed insistently. “You stop right there. We’ve already had this fight ten times, but you don’t ever seem to listen to me when I tell you that I don’t blame you for that. Yes, I wanted children, but you certainly didn’t let me down. It’s out of your control. Life doesn’t always work out the way you expect it to, Mason. You’ve got to roll with the punches.”
“And our attempt at adoption was certainly a one-two punch to the gut.”
Scarlet sighed and shook her head. “We had some bad luck, that’s true. I’ll admit that it scared me enough not to want to try adoption a second time. But again, that isn’t your fault. You know that, right? There’s nothing we could’ve done to convince the judge once Evan’s birth mother changed her mind. I feel like I’ve been talking to a wall for the last year and nothing I say or do has any impact on you aside from just pushing you further away.”
She might not blame him, but he certainly blamed himself. “You aren’t pushing me away. I left all on my own.”
Scarlet’s hand dropped to her side, stealing the warmth of her body from his chest. “I know. You’ve made that clear, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. Tell me the real reason why you left me because I still don’t understand.”
Mason looked Scarlet in the eye, but the pained expression on her face stole the words from his lips. She looked tired, older in that moment, like the last few years weighed as heavily on her shoulders as they did on his own. He hated that he was the one responsible for it.
She did deserve an answer, though. They’d never really had this fight. Not exactly. After everything happened with Evan, they’d just drifted apart until they were two people moving around one another in the same house. Their conversations never seemed to stray beyond what they would have for dinner and when the trash needed to be taken to the curb. That wasn’t a marriage and he knew it. He just didn’t know what to do about it.
“I told you before. I left...to give you a chance at happiness.”
“Bullshit.”
Scarlet’s sharp words startled Mason from his next response. “What?” he asked instead.
Her face flushed as red as her name as she shook her head. “Don’t you dare walk away from our marriage and then have the audacity to tell me that you did it for me. This is not what I wanted. This is not what I asked for. Yes, I wanted a family, but until you walked out that door, Mason, you were my family. Now I have nothing. No baby, no husband.”
“But you have the hope of something better than what I could give you. A month, a year, even two years from now, the right man could walk into your life and give you everything you wanted.”
“And what if all I really wanted was to be happy?” she asked. “With you.”
Mason was at a loss for words. He had a hard time believing she really, truly felt that way. She might now, but in fifteen years when her opportunity had passed, she would resent him. He didn’t want his wife to harbor animosity toward him, now or in the future.
“If I thought I could make you happy, I’d tear those divorce papers up in a heartbeat.”
Scarlet stood silent and still as she watched his face. He couldn’t tell whether she was hoping he would call off the divorce or was terrified by the idea of it.
“But I don’t think I can,” he continued, watching her face fall and her gaze drop to the ground. “I think being back together for this short time has just confused things between us. Pretending to be married, raising Luna together... I worry that this situation will make us think we’re feeling things again when we really aren’t.”
Mason thought he was saying the right things, but the look that formed on Scarlet’s face told him otherwise.
She put her hand back on his chest. “So when I feel your heartbeat speed up when I touch you...I’m not really feeling that?”
“Well, I...”
Scarlet’s hand traveled down his stomach and located the desire he’d tried hard to hide from her. “And this?” she asked. “Am I imagining that, too?”
“No.” There was no sense in arguing that. “I’ve never stopped wanting you, Scarlet. Our divorce has never been about that. It’s been—”
“Stop,” Scarlet said. “Stop saying things that you and I both know don’t really mean anything. You’re letting your mind get in the way of how your body feels. I know what it wants. And I know what I want. At least for tonight. Forget about the divorce and what you should or shouldn’t do right now. Tonight, show me how you feel about me, Mason, and kiss me.”
Scarlet’s palm pressed hard into the fly of his suit pants, and what little restraint he had left vanished. Lunging forward, he captured her face in his hands and pinned her body back against the side of the car. The night before, their kiss had been almost like that of teenagers, getting a feel for new territory. Tonight, they were old lovers reunited.
The way her tongue grazed along his...the way her back arched and pressed into his body...the way she gave herself to him in every way he demanded... That was like coming home. His whole body responded to the familiar stimuli, his nerves lighting up and demanding more.
And if he was honest with himself, he wanted more. He wanted everything he’d missed out on since their relationship disintegrated in his hands. If he set aside all the reasons why they couldn’t be together, just for tonight, he wouldn’t be able to stop from claiming her as his own. But he didn’t want to do it in a restaurant parking lot with Luna asleep a foot away. As much as he hated to, he pulled away, giving himself some distance and perspective. It was possible that the moment would pass and he wouldn’t get this opportunity again, but it didn’t matter.
Scarlet looked up at him with the sleepy, passionate eyes that he recognized from their years together. She wasn’t finished with him. Not even close. “Now take me home, put Luna to bed, and let’s finish this properly.”
* * *
Scarlet was thankful that Luna slept like a rock. They carried her inside, changed her into a clean diaper and pajamas, and put her down in her crib without her so much as squirming or making a cry of complaint.
They shut the door of the nursery and found themselves standing at the bottom of the staircase together.
It was now or never.
She might regret this later, but right now she didn’t care. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made love to Mason. Things had been so strained. Even if this was the one and only time they gave in to their desires for each other, she was okay with that. But she was going to burn tonight into her memories forever.
Reaching out to him, she took his hand and led him upstairs. In the bedroom they’d once shared, she walked over to the wall of windows and opened them up to let the sea air and night breezes blow through. Outside, the sky was as inky black as the sea with the moonlight highlighting the crest of the waves as they washed ashore. In the distance, the lights of ships were visible as they disappeared into the horizon.
As she watched the water, she felt the heat of Mason’s body come up behind her and envelop her. She leaned back against him, letting him snake his arms around her waist and pull her close. Scarlet had always loved the feel of being in Mason’s arms. She’d never been the daintiest or most graceful of women—at five-ten and with a solid build that inevitably weighed more than anticipated on the scales, she’d been envious of the petite women with their tiny shoes, tiny clothes... Any man could lift them into his arms and carry them into the bedroom to make love to them.
/> That wasn’t ever the case with Scarlet. At least before she met Mason. He was six-one with a large, strong build, and when he’d held her, he’d made her feel feminine and delicate for the first time. And on their wedding night, he had carried her over the threshold of their home, something she never thought would happen to her.
“I’ve missed this,” he said as he swept her hair over one shoulder to expose the line of her neck. “I’ve missed touching you. Kissing you.”
Scarlet closed her eyes to fully experience every sensation as his mouth ran from her shoulder up to the hollow behind her ear. It felt like sparks flickering across her skin, the heat making her shiver despite the warm night air. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since he touched her like this, but she wanted to remember this moment for as long as she could.
Mason slipped the flimsy straps of her top off her shoulders along with her bra straps. She held her breath in her lungs as she waited for his touch. Her breasts ached to be held again.
Mason didn’t disappoint. He unsnapped her bra and let it fall to the floor along with the top, which slipped over her hips and gathered at her feet. His large hands immediately covered her bare breasts, his warm touch making her nipples pebble against his palms.
The air rushed out of her lungs on a pleasurable sigh. She melted into him, rolling her head back over his shoulder and exposing her throat and chest for Mason to do as he pleased. He pinched and teased at her rippled flesh, knowing just how to ride the line between pleasure and pain and drawing a cry from the back of her throat.
As he held one breast firmly in his left hand, Mason’s right hand strayed down her soft belly to the waistband of her skirt. He slipped beneath it, moving aside her panties to find her silky center with his fingertips.
Scarlet gasped and arched into his hand. “Mason...” she whispered.
“It’s been too long,” he said. “A woman like you isn’t meant to go without a man’s touch. You’re already ready for me. I guess that means we can save a long night of foreplay for another day.”
The Baby Favor Page 6
