I felt honored that Sarah wanted to open my gift last. I had actually gotten her two things and wrapped them in separate boxes, only to rewrap those together in one. Sarah seemed thrilled to get to unwrap more once she opened the outer package.
“You got her two things?” Mason hissed accusingly in my ear.
With a triumphant grin, I tossed my hair. “Of course.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Suck up.”
“You know it.” I nudged my knee against his and winked.
Dawn probably thought I was the devil when she helped Sarah open the first. “It’s…oh, my.” She shot me a quick glance and in a small voice mumbled, “A makeup kit.”
I could see on her face, no way in hell was she letting Sarah wear any of it out of the house, but maybe we could still put it on when I was babysitting, or if I had my way, in about thirty seconds.
The music notes charm for her bracelet—to remind Sarah of the first night we’d danced together—had a much better reception from Dawn. But in Sarah’s eyes, I think it tied with the makeup. Her entire face gleamed with pleasure and thanks when she looked at me.
As her mom helped her put the new charm on, I turned my attention to the guy lounging beside me. “Do we make a good present-giving team or what?”
I lifted my hand to fist bump with him.
Giving in to a reluctant smile, he obliged me. We were in the middle of clashing our knuckles together when the front door blew open.
“Woo hoo. I heard there was a birthday party here today.”
A huge box, wrapped in Mickey Mouse paper, crowded the entrance before it lumbered inside and turned to the side to the reveal Mrs. Garrison.
My cheerful smile died a tragic death.
This was the first time I’d seen her in daylight. I was expecting something totally different, maybe leathery, wrinkled skin from tanning too much, gaudily applied makeup, and tight leopard print spandex. But this woman was classy. Elegant. Her capris and blouse were stylish, conservative and age-appropriate. And, oh, my God, she had a Burberry purse hanging from her shoulder, the very design I’d been drooling over on eBay for, like, ever.
Now I really hated her.
Mason’s thigh, which was pressed against mine, tensed. I wanted to reach for his hand and give it a supportive squeeze, but I was a little too shocked by the stranger who entered behind Mrs. Garrison.
Leaning in close, I breathed, “Who’s he?”
“No clue.” Mason shook his head slightly, his confused gaze settling on the man.
But Mrs. Garrison quickly doused all our curiosities. After setting the oversized box on the floor in front of Sarah, she introduced him. “Everyone, I would like you to meet my fiancé, Ted. Ted, this is Dawn...”
As she dragged him over to Mason’s mom, I snuck a quick glance at Mason.
I swore to myself I wouldn’t hurt him if he appeared to be jealous in any way of the landlady’s new man. But by God, if he looked jealous in any way—
He didn’t. Honestly, he looked shocked as he gawked at Mrs. Garrison’s fiancé. Then he turned to me, and I saw relief and excitement in his eyes. “Thank God,” he mouthed the words even as a smile lit up his face.
I squeezed his leg and grinned back. “Guess you won’t be needing my protective services today.”
“And Reese,” Mrs. Garrison called, breaking into our moment. “I had no idea you’d be here today. Hello, again.”
“Hey, Mrs. Garrison,” I said, smiling sunnily at her.
Damn, I was such a good actress, though really, it wasn’t all that hard to act happy to see her when I was so ecstatic to learn she wouldn’t be messing with Mason ever again.
She had a fiancé now. Woot, woot!
After Sarah’s reaction to both Mason’s and my gifts, the opening of her last present was anticlimactic. But she graciously told Mrs. Garrison thank you when Dawn pulled an enormous stuffed bear from the box for her to see.
Mrs. Garrison looked at Dawn and puckered her face. “What did she say?”
Narrowing my eyes, I leaned forward. “She said thank you.”
The landlady sent me a quick, glacial glance, and I swear in that brief look, she wanted to scratch my eyes out. But then her lips pursed into a tight, gracious smile. “Oh.”
She didn’t bother to look at Sarah again. Turning away from me, she looped her arm through Ted’s and struck up a conversation with Dawn.
Sarah had tossed her bear aside and was staring longingly at her makeup, so I took this as my cue. Popping off the loveseat, I abandoned Mason and approached the wheelchair.
“So, Brittany, Leann and Sorcha,” I called. “Do you guys want to help me put this makeup on Sarah? I think I have the perfect color combination that would look so boss on her.”
Makeup and thirteen-year-olds always got along, so the three classmates readily agreed and crowded around me. With their help, and Sarah’s input, we dolled her up just right. Even her new friends looked awed by the outcome.
“Wow. You’re so pretty,” Leann cooed, sounding startled by Sarah’s beauty.
Tickled by their praise, Sarah wanted to put makeup on all three of them next. When no one objected to that, we beautified the other three teens. I mostly oversaw the event as the girls jabbered and discussed what would look best on each other.
Just as I finished putting eyeliner on Sorcha, I lifted the mirror for her to examine herself. She smiled, pleased, and thanked me. Then she spotted something on the floor next to me and yelped. “Eww! A spider!”
Not to be outdone in the presence of an eight-legged creature, I had to scream louder.
“Where? Where?” When I spotted it, I jumped onto the couch to escape, my shriek gaining volume. “Oh, my God, it’s huge. Mason!”
I put on such a show I had all three of Sarah’s classmates scrambling and squealing, hopping onto the sofa cushions with me to get away from the arachnid.
“Someone save Sarah!” I cried, too petrified to wheel her to safety myself.
Thank God, Sorcha latched a hand around her chair and yanked her away from the huge, hairy spider that leered up at us as if he wanted us all for dinner.
“What the hell?” Mason detached himself from the landlady, who at some point had stolen my empty spot on the loveseat and was sitting by him—oops, I guess I sucked in my protective duties. He leapt across the room to the rescue. “What’s wrong?”
The four of us on the couch pointed, and Sarah tried to point with her overactive arms.
“Oh.” Mason straightened, looking relieved as he spotted the beast. “It’s just a wolf spider.”
Just a wolf spider? My mouth fell open. Was he seriously serious?
“I wasn’t asking what kind it was,” I roared. “Kill it!”
He laughed. Yes, the bastard laughed as if spider murder was some kind of joke. He had no idea just how much peril his life was in for laughing at me. Honestly, have you ever been so freaked-out scared that you could bawl and commit murder in the same breath because someone thought your fear was funny? Well, I had jumped off the high dive and was swimming in a whole vat of that kind of crazy.
One more laugh, and Mr. Lowe might as well pick out the flowers I'd be leaving at his grave.
“It’s harmless,” he reassured. “Jeez, Reese. I thought you would be more of a humanitarian than this.”
“Not when it comes to gross, hairy, eight-legged freaks. That thing is bigger than me.”
He rolled his eyes. “It is not.”
Now he was shaking his head as he chortled over my phobia. My claws extended and I was about to pounce on him for finding amusement in my terror when the spider saved his life by distracting me.
I screamed and nearly tackled Brittany in my frantic lurch to leap away from the edge of the couch. “Oh, my God! It moved. Kill it, kill it, kill it.”
I certainly knew how to lead an upheaval because the girls started shrieking—even Sarah—begging Mason to exterminate the spider.
He sent me a vexed f
rown that seemed to say, look what you started.
I didn’t care. The spider was still alive and that was not cool.
“What am I supposed to kill it with?” he demanded, looking harassed.
My hysteria rising to titanic proportions, I shrieked, “With your big freaking foot, you idiot. You have what, like, a size twenty shoe. Smash that thing.”
“I wear a size twelve.” He scowled, clearly insulted.
“I don’t give a flying flip if you wear a size two, just step on it before it gets away.”
And so the chant started, quickly gaining followers…and volume. “Smash it. Smash it. Smash it.”
Mason started laughing. He shook his head with resigned humor and stomped his foot down over the wolf spider.
“Did you get it? Did you get it?” I clutched Leann’s arm, probably cutting off her circulation as I held my breath in tense anxiety.
Mason lifted his foot and showed me the big black smudge on the carpet. “Handled,” he reported proudly.
I screamed out my joy. “Oh, my God, thank you.” I really hadn’t planned on launching myself at him, but one second I was standing on the sofa, too relieved to think properly, the next, I was flying through the air, arm opens as I tackled my best good gigolo friend.
He barely caught me, a grunt of surprise gasping from him as I knocked the wind out of his lungs. We stumbled backward a few steps before he found his footing and latched an arm around my waist to brace me against him. Grateful, I hugged him hard and buried my face in that comfortable little nook at the base of his neck.
He was solid, and real, and warm, and smelled amazing. As soon as I hugged him, I realized how much trouble I’d just gotten myself into. I liked pressing against him. Too much. I didn’t want to let go. But we were standing in a room full of people, one of which was his mother, another of which paid him money to have sex with her.
Awkward.
I cleared my throat and pulled back just enough to grin up at him, thinking quick to keep the situation funny instead of utterly uncomfortable. “Mason Lowe,” I sighed out in a dreamy voice, purposely overdramatizing my words as I fluttered my lashes like a B-rated actress. “You’re my hero.”
He rolled his eyes and cracked out a laugh. Putting a hand to my forehead, he nudged me off him. “You’re such a dork.”
I shrugged and thankfully didn’t have to respond because all the girls who’d been shrieking on the couch with me leapt off behind me so they could hug his waist too and praise him for saving them from the mean, scary spider.
After he accepted the praise from them, he turned to Sarah and bent down to hug her. “You’re…my…hero…too,” she told him in her halting voice.
He looked like he might start bawling. Cupping her cheek, he grinned at her and murmured, “For you. Always.”
Damn. Now I wanted to bawl.
But really, did he have to be so utterly sweet when it came to his sister?
Without wanting to, I fell a little bit further than a mere crush. I was already halfway in love with this man.
~$~
After all the spider drama, Sarah wanted to dance. It was all her idea, I swear.
With Dawn’s permission, I pulled up LMFAO on my phone and blasted “Sexy and I Know It,” from the tiny speakers. The other girls loved how I flipped Sarah’s wheelchair to manual and twirled her around the kitchen floor. They all wanted to take their own turns giving her a spin.
Mason had followed us back to the kitchen and stood just inside the opening of the hall to watch. Though he folded his arms over his chest much the same way they’d been folded when I’d first arrived to the birthday party, he at least looked relaxed, as if he might actually be having fun.
When I caught his gaze, I wrinkled my nose at him. He grinned back and rolled his eyes.
Spinning away, I bumped my hip into Sorcha’s, and we boogied together while Leann spun Sarah.
“Mason,” Sarah called. “Your turn.” She waved him to her.
He wasn’t the type to deny his little sister anything, so he pushed from the wall and strolled forward. As the two of them began to “dance,” I backed away from the scene so it wouldn’t get too crowded. I’d just rested my back against the very doorjamb Mason had been using when I felt a presence at my side. I looked over to find Mrs. Garrison, sans her fiancé.
Wow, were he and Dawn still talking about plants in the front room together? Once she and Ted had begun, they’d fallen deep into a heated discussion over perennials.
“Hi again,” I said, trying to be cheerful when I just wanted to escape the woman who’d turned Mason into a prostitute. Well, okay, I wouldn’t mind chopping off her hair and stealing her purse first and then escaping, but…you get the drift, right?
“Hello, Reese,” she murmured with a regal nod to me before turning her attention to Mason.
I shivered from revulsion as I saw a predatory gleam enter her expression, as if she truly believed she owned him.
A fissure of fear worked up my spine. When she’d introduced Ted to us, I’d been so sure that meant she was done with Mason. But the way she watched him now, I knew she wasn’t.
“Nice…nose ring,” she said, her eyes still on him.
I cleared my throat and played along. “Thanks. My cousin talked me into getting it.” Totally pissed that she wouldn’t release him from her gaze, I added, “You know, you have the perfect shape of nose to get one too.”
Finally, she glanced askance at me and laughed. “Oh, sweetie. I’m way too old to be getting something like that.”
I think she was trying to cut me down and make me feel immature, but…I didn’t fall for her intimidation tactics so easily. Besides, I loved and embraced my immaturity.
I cocked my head to the side and gave her an innocent smile. “Really?” Sounding intrigued, I played with a piece of my hair that was so much younger and healthier than her frizzy, old mess full of split ends. Okay, fine. I didn’t see any frizz or split ends on her, but she totally deserved both. “I didn’t take you for the type to let a little thing like age bother you.”
Directing my gaze to Mason, I made my meaning obvious. When I turned back to her, she went still and her face drained of color. A muscle in her jaw twitched and her eyes narrowed and hardened.
Ooh, the bitch didn’t like me knowing her little secret.
Score one for Reese-meister, the contender. Boo-yah.
“Hmm.” Turning on her heel, she strolled back down the hall to the front room, where the rest of the older adults still were.
Ending his dance with a kiss to Sarah’s cheek, Mason stepped backward to stand beside me.
“I don’t know what you said to scare her off,” he said from the side of his mouth, “but I think I love you for it.” His eyes glinted a warm pewter as he grinned at me. Then he flashed forward to dance with Leann.
I stared after him, too affected to respond. I knew he’d been teasing. But the l-word coming from him sounded so darn amazing. It made me tingle from head to toe.
I was still glowing like a love-struck idiot when his pants rang.
He let go of Leann to dig his hand into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. When he read the ID on his screen, he sliced me an awkward look. Swiftly turning away, he murmured, “Excuse me,” and hurried into the back bathroom before he answered.
Acid swirled through my veins. There could be only one reason he wouldn’t want anyone to hear his conversation.
He was speaking to a client.
I tried to shrug it off—honest—but I couldn’t.
What he’d said to Dr. Janison in the library on Thursday must’ve been a complete lie, because he hadn’t stopped scheduling clients at all. He was setting up a meeting with one right now. And he’d almost gotten caught by a husband last night.
Heartache cramped my chest. My throat went dry and my eyes moist.
Why I kept doing this to myself, letting the hope grow up like weeds around me and choke out all my common sense, I didn’
t know. I could never be anything more than just a friend to Mason Lowe.
Since it was beginning to get dark outside, and I’d been freaked out since my mom’s phone call the night before, I took this as my cue to leave. I wanted to be home before the sun set with all my doors and windows locked and my Taser and mace strapped to both of my hands.
Besides, Eva might still be waiting for me. She needed me. Mason obviously did not.
I didn’t wait for him to get off the phone. I hugged and kissed Sarah goodbye, waved a friendly farewell to her friends, and slipped out the back door, hurrying to my car before anyone could stop me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I hated homework. Always had.
Before I had started kindergarten, my older sister, Becca, had told me my teacher would give me a homework assignment if she thought I was dumb. And sure enough, at the end of my very first day of school, my teacher, Miss Zeigler, had clasped her hands together cheerfully.
“For homework, I want all of you to go home and practice writing the letter A.”
I’d promptly stuck out my bottom lip and burst into tears, thinking I was the ultimate epitome of stupid.
Through the years, I’d slowly overcome homework apprehension and had yet to bawl over another class assignment. However, the urge to sob like my old kindergarten self bubbled to the surface the next Tuesday morning when my General Virology professor gleefully doled out eight pages of research questions and then announced we’d go over the answers the next time class met.
That gave me forty-eight hours to look up and find fifty responses that were in no way easy or simple to uncover.
That evening, I had two textbooks flipped open and three handouts spread across the table in front of me. Around me, the college library stayed fairly quiet, yet every scrape of a chair, shuffle of paper, or cough from a passing patron distracted me.
The guy sitting next to me, leisurely rubbing the toe of his shoe up and down my shin, didn’t help matters either. I wanted to tell Bradley to scram, but he was a part of my Tuesday evening study group, though I wasn’t too sure why he was a member. He didn’t seem too interested in the whole concept of actually doing homework. I figured he must’ve joined hoping to get the answers solved for him.