***
After changing into clothes a little more appropriate for Chicago in the grip of winter, Mica cautiously stuck her head out the front door. As promised, Mason’s sedan was sitting at the curb at the end of her freshly shoveled walkway, condensation drifting slowly from the rear of the vehicle as it idled and warmed. Standing in the doorway, she couldn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat, so she stepped out and ducked a little, peering from her front porch, trying to see through the tinted windows better. “Are you ready, babe?” came Mason’s voice from behind her inside her house. It startled her and she turned swiftly, losing her balance on the icy residue on the cement porch. His arms came up quickly and gathered her to his chest for the second time that day, rescuing her from an ungraceful tumble down the two steps to the walkway.
“How did you get behind me?” she asked breathlessly; his arms were like iron bands around her back, holding her closely and firmly to him.
Mason chuckled. “I was sitting in the chair in the hallway, when you ran out of your bedroom like seven hells were after you and approached the front door like it was evil incarnated. You didn’t seem to see me, oddly enough, but I saw you. Babe, I see you. Are you ready to go? Got your purse, phone, everything you need?”
Closing her eyes briefly, Mica pressed against his chest with her flattened palms, pushing away from him. “I can drive myself, Mr. Mason; that’s what I was going to tell you. I’ll go get my car now. Thank you, again. The sandwich was good. I put the pan in the sink—not that I think you should have, but I didn’t want you think about it or wonder later. I’m okay. It’s all good…yeah…” Her voice trailed off at the last word as he slowly released her, making sure her feet were solidly beneath her before letting go all the way.
“I’m driving you, Mica. Your car is shit in snow, and you know you need new tires. So, tell me now—do you have what you need for this trip to pick up your brother? Let’s get in the car, or we’ll be way late.” Mason spoke slowly, not as if she was a child, but like he realized her brain was not working quite right yet and needed a little more time to absorb things.
“Okay,” she nodded, sliding her purse over the shoulder of her Carhartt jacket and pulling her door closed behind them, “let’s go then, but I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done, Mr. Mason.” A slight smile curled her lips, and she smoothed her hands over her jeans. “This is above and beyond the scope of a good neighbor, and I thank you.”
“Could you thank me by calling me Davis instead of Mr. Mason, then? Or how about just Mason? That would work, too. You are making me feel old, babe, calling me Mr. Mason all the time.” He shrugged a little as they walked down to the car, his hand firmly at the small of her back, watching for places that the salt and sand had not yet melted.
“Mason,” she said agreeably, nodding her head as he opened the car door for her.
“I can live with that,” he responded, smiling down at her as she slid into the seat.
3 -
By firelight
Mica sat on her back porch watching the squirrels chasing each other up and down the many trees available for their aerobatic antics. In her favorite jeans and thermal shirt, she had her feet propped up on the fire pit. A modest fire kept the chill of the late spring evening away, and her e-book reader would let her read past sundown.
Picking up her tumbler of clear liquid, she gauged the amount of tequila she’d had to drink so far, and thought it might not be quite enough yet. Grinning at herself, she sipped and picked up her reader, flipping pages with her thumb until she was back at the beginning of the current chapter. She hated starting in the middle of things, and if it meant she had to re-read a few pages, it was worth it for the story’s continuity.
Michael was sitting in the house watching TV; he’d been staying in almost all the time since he came to stay with her several months ago. She occasionally got him out to Jackson’s, but he really was trying for peace in his head and drinking fuzzied that peace.
Shifting her legs, she rolled her head against the back of the chair, thinking back to bringing him here from the airport. Mason had been so good to her and helpful that day. She grinned as she remembered Michael’s mistake, thinking Mason was her boyfriend. The look on Mason’s face was priceless, and she’d quickly stepped into the gap to explain they were just neighbors.
It had been interesting getting to know her twin again; they’d been apart for so long. Even before they weren’t able see each other physically; they’d been emotionally apart forever. Michael was thrilled she’d gone on and graduated college, and she showed him pictures of her commencement ceremony.
He asked her if it was awkward not having any family at the ceremony; you could always trust Michael to dig to the quick when he thought he saw a wound. Smiling, she told him about the group of strangers who stood cheering and whistling for her, and how it had made her day. She mused that it was probably an alumni group who found out which students didn’t have any reserved seats for family. It seemed like something nice to do for graduates, and she had appreciated it. That was also the first time she’d gone into Jackson’s bar, which was another really great memory, and a good portion of the reason it was her favorite hangout.
Lifting her head, she listened and recognized the sound that was getting louder; Mason’s bike was headed down the street. It was still too chilly to ride much, but he got it out every day that offered sunshine. Laying her head back down, she looked up at the stars she could see through the early leaves of the trees. Work was good; they’d signed a couple of new clients, and she thought things might get busy enough to hire another developer. She and Jess could do lots, but each project deserved a certain level of focus that they were having difficulty providing anymore. She knew it was only a matter of time before there was too much work for the two of them.
Taking note first of the throaty, rumbling roar of the bike, and then the quiet as it was shut off, she closed her eyes, listening to see if Mason would come over and sit by the fire. It had become a kind of comfortable ritual; if she was already outside when he got home, he’d first grab a beer from his garage and come sit with her—no pressure to talk, just sharing space—but talking was okay, if they wanted to and had something to share from their day.
There. She heard his even stride coming towards her, confident and surefooted, even in the deep dusk fading to darkness. “Hey there, neighbor,” she offered, tilting her head to look up at him.
“Babe,” came the expected single-word response, which triggered a wide grin from her. Looking at her as he dropped into his usual chair, he asked, “Was your day good?”
Sighing, Mica said, “Best part of my day is right here—sitting right here, right now.” When she heard the intake of breath, she realized he might think she was talking about him. Smiling again, she thought to herself; Let him, because it wasn’t entirely wrong.
4 -
Better to know
“Mischy, you there?” the boy’s voice called quietly, but even with that volume, the sound echoed through the barn. Sobs filtered from the last stall on the left, now empty of an equine occupant. “Mica, I’m here. Mamma told me what happened.” He walked down the wide run between the rows of stalls, naming the remaining horses in a litany in his head as he went, already knowing which ones were missing and had been loaded into the trailer earlier in the day.
“Oh, Mike, why did he have to sell Spirit?” He slid down to sit next to her against the stall wall, and she leaned over, crying into his shoulder. “We had really good run times posted in the last few heats at Playday last weekend. He was coming around in training and was going to be a good’un,” thirteen-year-old Mica said, knowing that everything on the ranch had to make money in some way or it would be discarded, but she would never understand it when her dad cut what he saw as losses so early in the game.
“When is the auction, Mike? Do you know which one they are taking the horses to this time?” Mica’s thoughts ran amok in her head. She f
irst considered the amount of cash in her savings account from training and selling foals and calves; it was pretty healthy. Then her mind was mulling over which of the older boys from the rodeo club might be able to get their hands on a truck and trailer. That way, she could get her horse back home after she bought him from her own dad at the auction. Then Daddy would see how serious she was about this horse. She knew Spirit was the real deal and would take her all the way to Vegas for Junior National Finals, but she realized that Mike wasn’t answering her, so she asked again, “Which auction, Mike?”
“Not an auction house, Sis. Sorry, he’s headed to the east coast and the sales.” Mike hung his head, knowing the mental plans Mica was making had been smashed to the ground by his words. The sales were where horses went that had no further use, where they were parted out for manufacturing components, or for overseas food sales.
Horses don’t come back from the sales, ever, and Spirit would never be coming back to his stall. Their father had broken his promise to Mica again, and stripped her of a horse that she had allowed herself to get emotionally attached to, even though she knew it was a big no-no on a ranch like theirs, where everything had a purpose and a reason for being, even if that reason was to bring in cash from the sales.
Her breath stopped in her throat, and squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she hiccupped out a single, last sob and then stilled with some effort. “Well that is that, then.” She drew in a huge breath through her nose, and then slowly let out a big sigh through pursed lips, calming herself as she’d done so often in the past. “I got chores to do; I better get on ‘em, or I won’t get dinner tonight. ‘If you don’t work, you don’t eat’ like Daddy says.” Mica was as emotionally practical as someone twice her age; she was not a romantic by nature, and knew when things were stacked against her. In a small voice, she ended with, “He sure was a good’un, Mike. I’m sorry Daddy didn’t see the potential. Spirit wasn’t just a hay burner.”
Standing and brushing the straw off her seat, she reached down and gave her brother a hand up, pulling him to stand beside her with a hardened and calloused hand, her nails all bitten down to the quick. “How are you so much taller than I am?” she asked him, asking a familiar question to change the topic and punching his shoulder lightly.
“Dunno, just special I guess,” was his pat response as he searched her face for any lingering plots or dangerous thoughts. “You okay, Mischy?”
Moving out of the stall and flipping her plaited hair over her shoulder, Mica said, “Yeah, Mike, it is what it is. I’ve got the Jamison’s two-year-old colts coming in tomorrow; they are pasture green and barely halter broke, so I’ll be starting from the ground up with ‘em. That’ll keep me busy, for sure. Plus, I have to be ‘spectacular’ with them Daddy said.” The Jamison family had lived around here for a long time, and Mica knew if she did well with their colts, they could recommend her and her dad to their friends.
Grabbing a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow, she moved up the alley to the first occupied stall on the right-hand side. Mike walked a bale of straw to between that stall and the next, withdrew a folding knife from his pocket, and snipped the ropes in two that held the bale together. He turned to leave the barn, knowing he had his own chores to complete by dinnertime. “Thanks, Mike. It’s better to know, right?” came softly from behind him and he responded in kind, “Yeah, it’s always better to know for sure.”
5 -
Reality strikes
Mason looked at the lights shining out from the house next to his, casting shadows across the browning grass and bare trees. His eyes flickered from window to window until he saw what he was looking for, and he stilled, looking through the window at Mica. She was standing with her back to the window seat, her hands raised shoulder height in front of her in a warding motion, leaning slightly forward in an aggressive stance, at odds with her hand gestures.
His eyes narrowed as he looked past her into the room and saw Michael standing with his arms straight down at his sides, hands clenched into tight fists. His long, blonde hair was swinging into his eyes and laid across the back of his neck. Standing like this, his face was red and his mouth was wide as he yelled down at his sister.
Mason sighed; in the long months Michael had been living with Mica, this had come to be a common and uncomfortable sight. Mason hated it for her, because he knew she wanted things to be better between her and her brother. They might have the same deep, green eyes, but that was the only thing in common between them.
He shrugged and turned to head into his backyard, where his friends were already gathered for a grill party. He had been going to ask Mica if she wanted to come over, but he knew the futility of that request, since she and her brother were arguing again. That argument would go on for a while, and was probably about booze or money, or both. It was a common theme with Michael.
Mason had been inviting her over for years and wanted her to know she was always welcome at his house, no matter what. Not that she ever took him up on the invitations, she’d been trying off and on to keep him at arm’s length since the day he had seen her at what she felt was her vulnerable worst.
For a while, he thought he’d found an in with her by sitting with her in the evenings. She’d light a fire in her pit and he’d go sit, but she didn’t talk, and wouldn’t let him in emotionally. They’d sit and he’d tell her things about the bar or one of the other businesses, and she’d listen to him ramble on, her face going soft in the firelight.
He knew that soft look on her face didn’t survive reentering her house, but it was good to see her relaxing, even if it was for a short while. She’d close her eyes and he could drink in her features, watching the firelight play across her face. God, he loved those nights, but even more satisfying was watching her unselfconsciously stretch, letting her shirt ride up and expose a couple inches of skin on her belly and hips.
Michael had fucked that ritual though; he’d come out one night and ridiculed Mica’s friendship with Mason. He’d accused her of being Mason’s biker club fuckbuddy, and derided her as worthless. Mason had been on his way over and had heard it all from where he stood inside his garage. He bit his lip, thinking Mica would put Michael in his place, but she had stood without saying a word and threw the cover on the fire pit, retreating quickly into the house. That was the last night she’d made a fire, and when he saw her a couple days later, Mason knew right away what the problem was, because Mica had slammed a solid barrier back between them.
Because of that self-imposed distance, she wound up not knowing he believed she needed a friend a helluva lot more than a fuckbuddy. He wanted to be that friend for her, but she didn’t seem to want anything from him now. “I don’t know why the fuck I keep trying,” he muttered as he closed the gate behind him, shutting out the sight of her once happy home, and moving towards his friends, “but I do.” He remembered the day she moved in, the second time he had seen her.
6 -
Moving day
Mason looked up at the noises, shading his eyes with one hand, leaning his hips on the fender of the Chevy truck in his driveway. He’d been working on it for one of his brothers all day, and was elbow-deep in grease, mysterious fluids, and dirt that collected on the engines of older vehicles. There was a moving truck backing up to the front door of the house across the alley, leaving deep wheel ruts on either side of the walkway.
Two guys got out of the truck and opened the back door, exposing a wall of boxes, and blanket-wrapped furniture before they went into the house. A few seconds later, a car pulled up in front of the house nearby. Mason hadn’t even known the house was vacant; the last he knew, there was a teacher who lived there. Bitch hadn’t liked him much, but who the fuck cared?
The car door opened, and a woman stepped out, her face shielded from the sun and his sight by the brim of a ball cap. Her heavy, dark hair swung out and down across her back as she leaned into the car for her bag. Dressed in jeans and hiking boots, she had on what looked like some band’s t-shirt over a long-sleev
ed thermal, with the sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms. He watched her walk over to the ruts in the yard and imagined she was frowning, but then he laughed at himself, because he couldn’t even see her face yet. She turned and stomped towards the house, and he grinned, thinking, Oh, yeah, she is pissed, all right.
Turning to put his ass against the fender, he settled in for what he hoped would be a good show. Sure enough, she came back out with one of the guys from the truck, still stomping, swinging her arms and pointing to the ground. He heard voices on the wind and couldn’t make out the words, but he knew she was giving that guy the fucking shit. He grabbed a rag and started walking their way, wiping his hands ineffectually, focusing on the swinging hair and gesturing hands of the woman in the yard.
When he got close enough to see her face, his step nearly faltered, because she was ‘oh, God’ pretty. She had a stubborn jaw that he figured meant she usually got what she wanted, and that was paired with the greenest eyes he had ever fucking seen. Those eyes were blazing at the man—nope, at the boy—in front of her. Her eyes flicked over to Mason, and then back to the boy, clearly not relishing the distraction as she tried to get her point across.
“No, see, I realize that it’s done now, but you need to have someone from your company on the phone now so I can discuss how they are going to fix this damage to my yard!” She was not yelling, but it was a near-thing. He took her in, up and down, eyes skating across her rounded figure, so desirable and mouthwatering. With a soft noise in his throat, he let his eyes move to her breasts, round and waiting for his mouth, and then back up to her face. That face was reddening now as she stopped speaking when she caught him looking at her—and her ball cap. What the shit? Dallas fucking Cowboys?
Mica (Rebel Wayfarers MC) Page 3
