“Unless you ask me to stick around,” I add, knowing she wouldn’t have said yes if there weren’t at least the ghost of chance she’s open to being us again.
Us.
God, it sounds so good it makes my bones itch with hope.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lark says, firmly. “I told you, Mason, I’m not the same person, and from the sound of it, neither are you.”
And then she turns and walks away.
But that’s okay. I’ll see her tomorrow night.
Because I’m always going to bet on her.
Always.
Chapter 4
Lark
Date One
“This is crazy. You should be committed.” Aria wrangles another bite of smashed carrots into her baby’s mouth, tossing her encouraging words over her shoulder from the kitchen, while I marvel at her technique.
Feeding Felicity is a skill only her mama and grandmama have mastered.
When I try to feed my eight-month-old niece, I inevitably end up with more baby food on my shirt than Felicity does in her stomach, and the floor around her high chair looks like a vegetable garden has been brutally murdered.
“It’s not crazy, it’s romantic!” Melody twirls through the living room, her pink chiffon dress flaring around her, making the baby laugh.
Melody’s boyfriend is picking her up at six-thirty. She asked Brian to swing by our parents’ place, instead of her apartment, so she could provide moral support while I wait patiently for Mason to arrive.
While I pace the floor and chew my nails down to nubs is more like it.
I can’t remember ever being this nervous.
Ever.
Not even the first time I went out with Mason, when he was a twenty-four-year-old med school hottie, and I was a nineteen-year-old community college dropout working at the diner in downtown Bliss River, who couldn’t believe the hottest guy she’d ever met in real life actually wanted to take her out for ice cream.
I had known of Mason since I was little—known he had a rough home life, but was smart as anything, played first string on the basketball team, and was going to college in Atlanta—but it wasn’t until he started coming in for breakfast at the diner every Saturday that I really got to know him. To know his unique mix of humor and intensity, the way he could make me laugh out loud one minute, then steal my breath away with one of his see-through-me stares the next. To know his easy smile and good heart, the one that made him really listen when people told him about their problems.
He was the one who convinced me to go to culinary school instead of taking my dad up on his offer to manage one of the family BBQ shacks. Mason was positive I could make my dream of working as a chef at a fancy restaurant a reality.
My dreams have changed over time, but I might still be working at Donut Time Diner if Mason hadn’t come into my life.
As much as he hurt me, he also helped me.
I tell myself that’s why I said yes to his bargain, out of respect for the times he was there for me. It has nothing to do with the way my skin tingled all over when he touched me, or the way my heart jerked in my chest when he said my name. Nothing to do with the way my entire body began to sizzle when he fell on top of me in the field last night.
I gave up waiting for marriage a few years ago, when I began to suspect it wasn’t going to happen for me—at least not soon enough to spare me from being the oldest, most sexually frustrated virgin on the continent—but I’ve never felt half as turned on by being naked with another man as I felt lying fully clothed in the grass with Mason.
He’s just…hot as hell. Always has been. From our first kiss to our last, kissing Mason was like being shot through with lightning and loving every minute of it.
“Well, I think she should have told Mason to go straight to The Bad Place and rot there,” Aria says, pulling me from my dangerous thoughts.
I can’t think about kissing Mason. If I think about kissing Mason, there’s a chance I will actually kiss Mason in real life, and that’s a recipe for disaster. I’m giving him a week to see if we can be friends. Or at least end things in a way that will allow both of our damaged hearts to heal.
I’m not seriously considering getting involved with Mason again.
Not even a little bit.
Liar, liar, pants on fire…a little voice whispers inside of me. But thankfully Aria pipes up again.
“And if that didn’t work,” she says, “Lark should have applied for a restraining order.”
“It’s Mason, Aria,” Melody says, rolling her eyes. “He doesn’t need to be restrained. He would never hurt Lark.”
“He’s already hurt her.” Aria catches my gaze as I turn to pace back toward the kitchen. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she adds in a softer voice. “We can call Uncle Jim and have him personally escort Mason back to his hotel, or wherever he’s staying while he’s in town.”
Uncle Jim is our go-to for parental-type intervention at the moment. Mom and Dad are out of town on a two-week cruise, a last minute trip I suspect was spurred more by Mom’s need to get away from Aria than her profound longing to see the Alaskan wilderness.
Mom loves all her daughters, but she and Aria have been butting heads constantly since Aria moved back home. Mom loves having Felicity around, but her eldest daughter’s sour attitude rubs her the wrong way.
Our mom, Sue, is like Melody, a romantic who believes life is a beautiful adventure waiting to be twirled through. Mom is the one who refused to let me wallow in despair when Mason left. She insisted I think of something I was dying to do and then helped me become so immersed in my new project that I had no time for moping or sourness.
That project was Ever After Catering.
At first, even the name of my business had stung me a little. Yes, it was a great name for a wedding caterer, but after Mason left I had about as much faith in my own ability to find happily ever after as I did the tooth fairy.
But now…
But now, nothing. You can’t trust him. He’s proven that. If you fall for him again, you’ll just be giving heartbreak an engraved invitation to RSVP.
“Well?” Aria reaches for her back pocket where her cell phone always lives. “Am I calling Uncle Jim?”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s only seven days. I can put up with anything for seven days, and then he’ll be out of my life for good with no more surprises.”
“A life without surprises…” Melody sighs as she sinks into Dad’s overstuffed armchair. “That sounds like the worst kind of life there is.”
“There are lots of worse kinds of lives,” Aria says with an exaggerated roll of her eyes that makes Felicity laugh again. “Like life with cancer. Or war.”
“Life with leprosy,” I add.
“Life with chronic body odor,” Aria counters.
“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing leprous sore on your face,” I say, ignoring Melody’s insistence that this game isn’t funny.
“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing sore and a shriveled arm stump that smells like beef jerky,” Aria says, making Melody moan.
I’m still laughing when the doorbell rings and smothers my happiness like a blanket over a fire.