I force a smile. “Ready.” I glance back at Aria. “See you later, Aria.”
“Not if I can help it,” she says.
Lark frowns, but before she can turn around, Aria closes the door with a firm thunk.
Lark sighs. “Sorry about that,” she whispers as we start down the walk toward my car. “She’s just…protective. And cranky. Crankily protective.”
“It’s all right. I understand. Sounds like she’s going through a hard time. I can be patient… Wait for her to come around.”
Lark hesitates at the end of the walk before turning to me with a panicked expression.
Before she can speak, I cup her face in my hands, brushing my thumb across her lips to keep her protest from entering the world. “We’re going fishing, and I’m going to answer every question you can think to ask me,” I say softly. “And then we’re going to talk about what I need to do to start regaining your trust. Think it over while I drive. Whatever you need, I’ll do it. I’ll learn to stand on my head and juggle flaming bowling pins if that’s what it takes.”
Her lips part. “All right,” she whispers. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” I smile.
“I’m not saying I’ll come up with an answer, let alone an easy answer,” she warns. “Certainly not something as easy as upside down fire juggling, but…”
But that’s a step in the right direction, I think as I help her into the car and trot around to the driver’s side, ignoring the redhead peering out the March’s front window with a frown on her face.
I’ll have to win Aria over eventually—the March sisters are closer than most and I don’t want to be a source of friction between them—but for now I’m focused on Lark.
If she can’t get past what I did, it doesn’t matter if the town of Bliss River declares me a hero and holds a parade in my honor, I’ll still be out of luck.
Chapter 9
Lark
It’s a beautiful day—hot enough for the breeze to feel delicious, cool enough that the sun warms without summoning a sweat. Spring is my favorite season in Georgia, but I know perfect spring days like this are numbered. Soon, it will be so hot and humid that my neck will be perpetually damp and my hair frizzed into a blond fluff ball until cooler weather comes back around in the fall.
I lie in the plastic recliner Mason has rigged into one side of his old boat, the sun warm on my legs, a bottle of lemonade cold in my hand, and the crisp mineral smell of the water a sweet prickle at my nose.
If anyone else were sitting across from me, I’d be drifting off into a catnap with a smile on my face, thankful for a little taste of paradise.
Instead, my body is humming, every inch of my skin sizzling with awareness as Mason’s eyes move between where his red and white float bobs in the water, and my bikini clad self. I hunted for one of my old one-piece suits, but the only thing I found was a two-piece from when I was nineteen and still living at home.
I threw it on and dashed, not wanting to leave Mason alone with Aria for too long for fear of bloodshed. But now I wish I’d taken the time to hunt down that one piece I know is hiding somewhere in my old room.
There’s a lot more of me for this bikini to wrangle into place than there was six years ago. I’ve gained twenty-five pounds and gone up a cup size since then, and the top of the suit is downright scandalous. I also have a pooch below my belly button that wasn’t there before—a testimony to my love of cheese in all its wondrous forms—but Mason doesn’t seem to mind that there’s more of me to love.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
The look in his eyes is enough to make my heart race.
He’s not looking at me like a unicorn princess anymore. He’s looking at me like something he wants to taste, to savor, and, eventually, to devour. His eyes skim down my body from my lips to the tips of my toes, setting every inch of me on fire. I swear I can feel that look, like soft, hot lips trailing over my skin, leaving me breathless and wanting more.
It’s that darned almost-kiss that’s done this to me, made it impossible to think about anything but how much I want to pounce on Mason. I’m sure his kisses can’t be nearly as wonderful as I remember.
But then…what if they are?
Stop thinking about kissing, psycho!
I shift my legs, trying to ignore the ache building between them; Mason makes a pained sound low in his throat and jerks his attention back to the water.
“So?” he asks, his voice rougher than it was a few minutes ago, making me think he’s finding all this “not touching” as torturous as I am. “Anything else you’d like to ask me?”
I take a long, cold drink of lemonade, hoping it will clear my head. We’ve already talked about the girls he dated in New York while he was in med school. If he’s to be believed, there were three total, all of whom he only dated for a few months each, and none of the relationships evolved beyond the friends-with-benefits stage.
Learning Mason has been intimate with other women wasn’t easy to hear, but it wasn’t a surprise either. He wasn’t a virgin when we met. He never pressured me to do more than I was comfortable doing when we dated, but I knew how much he wanted things to progress to the next level. I wanted the same thing, but years of promising my mother I’d wait until marriage had left their mark on my psyche. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with sex before marriage, personally, but I can’t stand lying to anyone, let alone someone I love and respect as much as my sweet mama.
Still, there were nights, back when Mason and I were dating, when it wasn’t easy to tell him to pump the brakes. Nights when I wanted to pull him close and beg him to floor it. To keep going until we were as close as two people could get.
I almost suggested we take that final step the night he proposed, in fact.
Instead, I went home to tell my family, and thank God I did. It was hard enough dealing with Mason’s abandonment as things stood. If I’d lost my virginity to him the night before, it would have been even more soul-crushing.
I hum low in my throat and take another pull on my lemonade.
“Is that a thinking hum or a ‘no more questions’ hum?” Mason asks.
“A thinking hum,” I say, shifting my legs again. Not even memories of the morning Mason left town are enough to kill the ache building inside me. I’m going to have to do something drastic to divert my thoughts, to keep from imagining Mason’s big hands circling my waist, his lips hot on my bare stomach as he—
“I’m not a virgin anymore,” I blurt out because apparently I really suck at not thinking—and talking— about sex right now.
“Oh.” Mason blinks. “Well, I… That’s good.”
“Is it?” I challenge.
“Well, no. I mean, I hope it was good…for your sake,” he says, clearing his throat awkwardly.
“It was acceptable. Could have been worse.”
He nods and the knot forming between his brows gets knottier. “Right. Well, I wish it had been better.” He clears his throat again and moves his tackle box to the other side of his seat for absolutely no reason. “And I mean, of course I wish I…” He swallows. “But you’re twenty-five. It makes sense that you would have crossed that bridge.”