She found her name card at last. Mom and Candace had fought like cats and dogs over a family table, and it was evident that Sasha’s sister was the one to prevail. Mom and Larry were together at one table; the older relatives were at another. Teddy and Sasha were at tables next to one another, and Mason was all the way on the other side of the room. Candace was sitting with Booker in a circle of their friends at the bride and groom’s table. Larry wasn’t the only one who had gotten into the champagne. Booker had the dazed look he always wore when he imbibed too much.
Candace had also been the winner about the clergyman for the sham ceremony. Mason still hadn’t arrived when the Elvis impersonator came in to do the honors. Leaning back in his chair, Teddy said to Sasha, “And they worry that my suit will destroy the solemn dignity of this affair.” Mom glared at them from her table.
It appeared that the freeway accident had trapped a fair number of people, empty seats scattered through the big room and two tables entirely unoccupied. The ceremony began without them. The oldest of the great-aunts squinted through her bifocals and said in an excited, quavering voice, “That’s Elvis up there! Oh, I thought he was dead!” Everyone roared with laughter, even the impersonator.
The vows were given, the rings exchanged, and the door opened as everyone clapped. Sasha didn’t recognize the man coming in. Tall, dark, and chiseled, he was in his mid-twenties and wearing a fine suit.
He smiled as a couple of heads turned to him. That familiar smile hit her with a jolt.
Mason.
Chapter Three
She hadn’t seen him since he was thirteen years old. The cute boy had turned into a very handsome man. He slipped to the nearest table, which happened to be the one with his name card, and took a seat. He was the only one there to have arrived.
Waiters flooded into the room to deliver the first course. Finding it beyond the pale that Mason should have to sit alone, Sasha excused herself and wended her way through the tables to him. He noticed her approach and blinked. Then his eyes widened. He hadn’t recognized her either. She smiled and he stood up to greet her.
He offered his hand. “Hey, Sasha.”
She bypassed his hand to hug him tightly. “Hey. It’s good to see you.”
They sat down together, a waiter dropping off two salad plates. Sasha felt like she was a girl again, her heart beating too fast and her tongue twisting in his presence. Everything clever and witty to say flew out of her mind and left her struck dumb but enchanted.
“How are you?” Mason asked. “Teddy tells me you teach now.”
“Fourth grade. It’s only my first year,” Sasha said. She liked that age: old enough to tie their shoes, but not old enough to give her too much lip. “I have no idea what you do.”
“About to graduate from medical school.”
She stared at him in astonishment, loathing the family blackout on everything to do with Mason. “Are you serious?”
“One hundred percent.” Puzzled, he added, “You didn’t know? I told Dad when I was accepted.”
That didn’t mean Larry had told anyone else. “I want to come to your graduation ceremony!” Sasha exclaimed.
“You don’t have to.”
She didn’t want to go because she had to. It was because she wanted to. Graduating from medical school was a huge accomplishment! “I’m going, Mason,” she said firmly. She’d call in a substitute teacher for a few days and take Teddy with her. Now that he was eighteen, there was no way her mother could stop them.
Both of them were ignoring their salads. She was also studiously looking away from her mother’s table. Seeing that she wasn’t going to budge on this, Mason nodded. “Please come then. It’ll be nice to have you there.”
She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then Teddy got up to visit another table, the pool noodle crooked over his shoulders and everybody staring at his bare feet and snug swim trunks. Mason chuckled quietly at his brother. His eyes skirted around the room as he took in all the gaudy decorations. Candace loved teal and Booker loved orange, so that was the color scheme. It was a jarring combination. The centerpieces were vases of peacock feathers and around them were bowls of their favorite candy. Up at the front, the fake Elvis was entertaining a table full of older women with his pelvic moves. “Wow,” Mason said. “Just wow to all of this.”
“Not how you envision your wedding? Or are you married and no one bothered to tell me that either?” Sasha asked, feeling guilty for not pushing Larry for information. But still, he wasn’t likely to have given her direct answers about anything to do with his elder son.
“Not married,” Mason said. “And not how I’m going to be married.”
“Oh, you’ve got it all planned out?” she teased.
“Not planned. Just hopes. Some of my friends had all-out weddings a few years back, and all but one wishes they had just spent the twenty to thirty grand on a better honeymoon trip or a down payment on a house instead. That made me think about it. I’d really rather get the house. I’m tired of dorm rooms and crappy apartments.”
Sasha would prefer to split that twenty grand between a cruise and a home herself. “And the last friend?”
“She’s a princess. Just had to have her special day. Jack said she was so obnoxious during the wedding preparations that he almost got cold feet. She calmed down afterwards, but he’s never looked at her in quite the same way and he worries what will happen when it’s time to have a baby.”
“You’ve got really honest friends.”
“They’re the only kind to have.”
Spoons tapped on glasses and people shouted, “Kiss! Kiss!” Booker looked around dumbly like they could have been talking about someone else. Then Candace got him by the tie and planted a big one on his lips. Everyone hooted.
“I was really surprised to get the invitation,” Mason said. “First that I got one at all, and then that it was for Candace. She’s only twenty-two.”
“It’s true love,” Sasha said with a straight face. She wasn’t too oversensitive about her little sister getting married first. Especially since the man she was marrying got confused by time zones and thought he was going to be a rock star one day. He couldn’t even sing or play the guitar.
Then everyone was tapping on the glasses again so Larry could give a toast to the happy, no-longer-so-new couple. He laughed at his own joke and Mom looked embarrassed to have it pointed out despite everyone already knowing. She noticed Sasha sitting with Mason and stiffened.
Larry rambled for five or six minutes as the waiters stood by to clean the salad plates. At last he sat down, and Mason said, “I don’t mean to keep you from sitting with the others. Are you here with a boyfriend?”
“No,” Sasha said. “And I’m at a table with a bunch of people I barely know. I’d rather sit with you.”
Mason sniffed the air and his brow furrowed. “I smell hot dogs and fries. That must be coming from the hotel restaurant.”
“Chili dogs,” Sasha said. “It’s the main course. Bet you wish you’d stayed at school.”
He smiled. “Then I wouldn’t have gotten to see you.”
She blushed a little. Their salads were replaced with plates piled with fries and giant chili dogs. She had only finished half when Mom came to the table. Giving Mason the cold shoulder, she said, “Sasha, the photographer wants to take pictures now before the sun sets any further. Come on outside.”
“What about Mason?” Sasha asked.
“It’s all right,” Mason said quietly. “Just go.”
“I’ll come right back.” Reluctantly, Sasha stood up and followed her mother out the door.
It was hard to stand there outside the gazebo and smile for the pictures like they were a normal, happy family. The second it was done and the photographer asked for the bridesmaids to step up, Sasha practically sprinted back inside. Mason’s seat was empty. Figuring that he had stepped out to the restroom, she sat down and waited.
He didn’t return. It must have been too much. H
orrified that he had left, she quit the merriment to see if she could catch him at the parking lot. Even though none of it was her fault, it still felt that way. She was the one who had gone to the slumber party. She was the one who had let herself get talked into playing One Minute in Heaven with her friend’s older brother. And she was the one who went home crying, where Mason found her. He had only tried to comfort her.
Sasha was halfway to the parking lot when she saw a dark head on a decorative bridge over the stream. Turned away from her, Mason was looking down to the trickling water. She hurried through the garden’s winding paths and climbed onto the bridge. Leaning on the railing beside him, she said, “It’s the reverse of when we met. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Mason said. “Used to it.”
“I wish this hadn’t happened. I never should have asked you to kiss me.”
“Oh, Sasha, if it hadn’t been that, your mother would have found something else to use to pack me off to boarding school. What happened between us was just a means to an end for her. She wanted me gone. Besides, I liked you a lot. You certainly didn’t have to trick or coax me into kissing you.”
Her laugh was bitter. “It doesn’t say much for public school sex ed that I actually believed I’d lost my virginity from that guy tongue-kissing me and humping my leg. I was so embarrassed to tell you what happened, but you explained everything.”
“I said it then and I’ll say it now: there is something very weird about a high school junior wanting to play that game with a bunch of twelve-year-old girls.”
“There’s also something very weird about a grown woman throwing her thirteen-year-old, straight-A, very polite stepson out of the house and pretending since then that he doesn’t exist. I wish I’d fought harder for you.”
Mason looked at her with surprise in his lovely hazel eyes. “You did fight. Don’t you remember?”
“Not really.”
“She walked in and saw us kissing, and screamed that I was a child molester and she was going to call the cops. You screamed right back at her that I wasn’t and hadn’t forced myself on you. She kept insisting that that was what was going on and you let her have it with both barrels.” He grinned, but Sasha didn’t. “You refused to let her reframe it the way she wanted to and you knocked the cell phone out of her hand when she began to dial 911. I think you were the only reason I didn’t get arrested that day. You were such a quiet kid when we lived together. That was the first time I’d seen you scream.”
“It happens.” What she remembered most was after Larry had dragged Mason out of the room. Her mother was still spluttering that Sasha was a victim, and Sasha came clean. She had fallen in love with Mason when she was six. She was still in love with him. She was thrilled to know that he liked her in return. Then Mom exploded, smacking her viciously around the head and shoulders and bellowing that she was a pervert since he was her brother and had been for a couple of years. But Mason hadn’t ever become that to Sasha.
A warm hand came over hers. “You look upset. We can talk about something else,” Mason offered.
“No, it’s all right,” Sasha said, despite the roiling in her stomach at the memories. “The biggest problem in our family is how no one talks about what matters. God, you must hate my mother so much.”
He squeezed her hand. “No. It didn’t work out so badly for me.”
“You were kicked out of your own home!”
“And that was difficult at first, but I ended up having a great time in boarding school. I made a lot of friends and I had a lot of really good teachers. On vacations, I stayed with my aunt and uncle. They threw open their front door and welcomed me in. After a while, I didn’t want to walk around being angry with your mother all the time. She’s messed up and it has nothing to do with me personally. So I let that go.”
Sasha wished she could let it go. “What was harder, actually,” Mason said, “was forgiving my father for letting me be sent away. For choosing his new wife over his own son. I had a hard time with that for years.”
“How did you forgive him?”
“My uncle helped me to understand. Even when they were kids, he said, my father always felt compelled to placate the person who screamed the loudest. That’s just how he works, a weakness in him. He wants to make peace so badly that he’ll do cruel things and not even recognize that he’s being cruel. But if I wanted his attention, that was how I had to get it. And I thought about it and decided no, I’m not going to kick and scream, have a tantrum like I’m a toddler to get him to look my way. I want to move forward, not back.”
He took his hand away. To lose the warmth of it saddened her. They were quiet for a minute, and then she said, “I wish I was in the place you’re in.”
“It just takes time.”
“I don’t know. I think that day broke something in me.”
“Sasha, don’t say that. It was just a bad day. Don’t carry it around with you.”
“I wish I didn’t, but I can’t get it off my shoulders. It affects everything.”
“Like what?”
She paused. “Never mind.”
He turned to her. To be so close to him made her body prickle. “Please don’t tell me that one kiss ruined things so badly for you,” Mason said in concern.
“It wasn’t the kiss.” That had been the sweetest moment of her life. “It was everything that happened after it. I can’t . . .” He waited for her to finish her sentence. Closing her eyes briefly, she spat it out. “I can’t be with guys. Get over the hump, if you will.”
His eyes filled with sympathy. “Have you seen a counselor?”
“No.”
“What happens?”
She flushed. “They start wanting sex and I just panic. I don’t know how else to explain it. The guys are nice, the mood is there, but instead of going ahead, I pull away. I’m going to die a virgin. I’m frigid.”
“You are not frigid.”
“My first kiss was that horrible older boy and I can’t even remember his name. It made me ill. He was slopping his saliva all over me. Then my second was with you, and . . .”
“I truly hope I did not slop saliva all over you, but a thirteen-year-old has not mastered much by way of technique.”
“No! It was perfect. But then Mom walked in and had a meltdown.”
“You had a few early, negative associations with being close to guys. Those aren’t insurmountable problems. A counselor could help you with that. You could ask your doctor to recommend someone.”
“You’re a doctor. Almost.”
His smile took her breath away. “Almost. Do you want me to find someone for you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to be able to do it.”
“But you might have to talk about it first to do it.”
A muscle between her legs throbbed urgently. She couldn’t go on like this forever. Recklessly, she said, “Do you still like me, Mason?”
“I’ve never stopped liking you.” He caught on to the subtext of what she was asking. “But I don’t want to add to your problem.”
“We could make a deal. If I can, then great. If I can’t, then I’ll talk to someone.”
The breeze tossed a lock of her hair into her face. Before she could brush it away, his hand came to her cheek and pushed it back. The throbbing grew sharper at his touch. She didn’t want to go back to the reception. She wanted to find a private place and try this again.
“I’ll have to check into my room first,” Mason said.
“I have one,” Sasha blurted. “All to myself.”
He offered his arm. And without hesitation, she took it.
Chapter Four
First they had to get upstairs to her room, and that took fancy footwork. Some of the family was entering the lobby from the front doors just as they were about to enter it from the back. With one quick move, Mason whirled them to the side and out of sight. Sasha snickered against his chest. They were acting like teenagers about to get in trouble. Her heart w
as racing, and her mind was at war between trepidation and excitement. The latter was winning, at least for now.
Mason peeked around the corner. “Now they’re standing in the lobby and arguing about something.”
“They’re always arguing about something. There has to be another door,” Sasha whispered. It was a big hotel. There couldn’t possibly be only two doors to go in and out. Mason seized her hand and she followed him with a laugh down the path that ran along the first floor rooms. Rounding the corner, they gasped and slipped back around the wall. Hoisting up their lingerie gowns, Candace and the bridesmaids were giving coy looks to the camera as the photographer captured their bare asses for posterity.
“There’s a door only ten feet away,” Mason said. Just then, Candace called to the photographer and all of them started in Mason and Sasha’s direction.
They fled for the back doors, Sasha feeling both ridiculous and ridiculously happy at the same time. The family was gone from the lobby, so they rushed inside and hustled down the hallway to the elevator. Sasha jabbed the button three times in rapid succession. Then she cast a nervous glance back down the hallway, expecting her mother to barrel around the corner at any second. And with a shriek of outrage.
For God’s sake, Sasha was twenty-five. Her mother could scream all she wanted, but she was relatively impotent now. All Sasha had to do was go into her room and lock the door.
The elevator doors slid open. They almost leaped inside. Then the elevator began its plodding ascent up to the third floor. “Do you think there are cameras in here?” Sasha asked.
Stepbrother Romance: The Complete Box Set Page 4
