The ringing stopped her cold.
One of the sweet, romantic things Mason had done was personalize his cell for her calls. Not a generic ringtone that could come from anybody’s phone—a snippet of a song he’d said reminded him of her. One he’d played while dancing with her in his living room. One he’d sang in her ear, late at night while lying in bed. For several seconds, those sweet, meaningful lyrics filled the air.
On her end, the call went to voice mail. She looked from his closed office door to Cara. The girl’s eyes were wide, her mouth open in the shape of an O. Andie hit redial. This time, silence from Mason’s office. Still no answer on the line. Her heart sank as Cara’s lips curled upward in a smug smile.
In the parking lot, she slumped over the steering wheel. Questions and scenarios knocked around in her brain. If his phone had rung with the second call, and if Cara hadn’t looked so guilty, Andie would’ve thought he’d simply forgotten his cell before going out. She wanted that to be true. God, she wanted it to be true. For Cara to be a conniving, jealous twit and Mason to be out taking a much-needed break. But it didn’t mesh with the evidence, or with the pang of doom in her stomach.
She’d barely settled in to her surveillance spot up the street when Mason drove away from the clinic. She started the car, put it in gear. What the hell was she doing? The problem with falling crazy in love with somebody—it made you crazy. Whatever was going on with him, whatever caused him to lie and avoid her…she wouldn’t let it turn her into a psycho girlfriend. Too much. She engaged the parking break and hit send on his cell number again. Yes, that was a little bit psycho, but at least she wasn’t tailing him right now. Weaving lane to lane and staying two car lengths behind to avoid detection. She had complete control over her urges. Uh-huh.
Still no answer. His deep voice instructed her to leave a message. This time, she did.
“Hi, it’s me. I stopped by your office to check on you, but you were,” she bit her tongue, for now, “out for a walk. Call me when you get a chance. I have some things to tell you.” There, a crazy-free message. One he’d reply to as soon as he got home, with an explanation and a huge apology. She hoped.
Chapter Sixteen
“You shit-for-brains dickwad coward.” A girly slap in the face followed, courtesy of Andie’s best friend.
The guys around Mason roared. A couple wolf-whistled, because hell, Lasha was as hot as she was feisty. Black leather covered the essential areas and not much more. Long legs ended in wicked high heels. She had chin-length dark hair that would’ve been cute on another woman, but combined with her shocking pink lips and heavily made-up eyes, looked the furthest thing from it. Not his type, but he got why his teammates had their tongues on the floor. The fact that she had her arm around another smokin’ hot
female
only added to the appeal.
“I’ll take whatever you’re dishing…” Mason rose from his seat on the patio. Nodded outside the gated-off area. “But let’s do it away from the crowd.”
“Why? You don’t want your little baseball buddies to hear what a prick you are?”
More hooting from the table. He leaned into her space to answer, rather than raise his voice. “Actually, I had Andie’s privacy in mind.” Yeah, that took Lasha down a peg or two.
She recovered quickly enough, kissing the redhead full on the lips in front of a table full of guys hopped up on beer and testosterone. “Baby, I need a couple minutes with this douche of an excuse for a man.”
“I’ll keep his seat warm,” Red said, sliding into the vacant spot and smiling demurely at the men. Nobody at that table would give a shit about anything he and Lasha discussed now.
“I hate sadistic players like you.” One pointy finger jabbed at his chest, over and over. “Andie wasn’t looking for something serious. She wanted to keep things casual. But it was more fun to fuck with her head and her heart, wasn’t it? To convince her that you love her, that you wanted to be part of her life, to have a,” Lasha’s fingers made air quotes, “
real relationship
. Then, once you had her head over heels for you, willing to do anything, risk everything, you drop her stuff on the doorstep and dump her with a note. You total piece of shit.”
Yeah, it’d been a brutal way to end things. If he’d had to see Andie’s face, or even hear her voice, he couldn’t have done it. Lasha was right, he was a coward. And a piece of shit. But he was not a player. Not with Andie. Lasha had that part all wrong.
“Everything I said to Andie was legit. My half of the relationship was completely honest.” His crossed his arms over his chest before Lasha dug a hole clear through to his back. “And while it’s nice of you to jump to her defense, I think she’ll be fine.” Probably already was.
“Why? Because she hasn’t come crawling to your door, or cried into your answering machine, begging you to change your mind? Because she hasn’t been texting you and emailing you, telling you how much she loves you? It’s a good thing you’re pretty because you sure are dumb.” She snorted in disgust. “You don’t know Andie at all.”
* * * * *
Andie clapped softly as Dylan crossed home plate. No screaming or jumping up and down. She glanced at the man to her right. Even Scott was outdoing her in the cheering department tonight, and that said a lot.
She’d agreed to come to the game together. Dylan had asked her to, and he never did that. So he and dad could cheer her up, he’d said. Sweet boy. Over a week had passed since she told her son that he wouldn’t be meeting her boyfriend because she no longer had one. She’d been careful not to cry or act melancholy around him, but Dylan was a perceptive kid. No, a perceptive young man. He matured a little more every day—intellectually, emotionally and physically. Seeing how wonderfully Dylan was turning out only made the maternal longings worse. Damn Mason for stirring them up. Damn him for a lot of things.
“You’re unusually reserved today,” Scott said as he resumed his spot beside her on the bleachers.
“That should please you immensely. I know how much my exuberance embarrasses you.”
A thin line took the place of Scott’s lips. “Not once have I ever said that.”
“No, never in those words. But asking me to tone it down, or suggesting I pick something more appropriate to wear—all of those thousands of times—same thing.”
“I’ve always appreciated your whimsy. But when you’re the wife of a respected professional, and when your last name is Finch in this town, there are expectations, And.”
This wasn’t the place for an argument, but he started it, so… “I solved the first issue with a divorce. Changing my last name just jumped to the top of my to-do list.” Angry heat bubbled under her skin. That reserve Scott mentioned was slipping fast. “And, for the millionth and last time, I hate being called And. Not that you’d remember this, but I’m a woman. I am not a conjunction.” If it weren’t for Dylan, she’d harrumph out of there fast as her peep-toe pumps could take her. Trapped on the home-team bleachers, she settled for crossing her leg over her knee and bouncing one heeled foot hard enough to cause a breeze.
Scott knew her well enough to give her a full two minutes to calm. “Don’t change your name.”
“Dylan won’t have a problem with it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t considering Dylan for the moment. It pleases me that you’re still using my name, that we’re still connected.”
His
name. Didn’t the fact that she’d been a Finch most of her adult life make it her name too? Ugh. “We’re connected by our son and always will be. But that’s all.”
“After you’ve had your…free time…you’ll want more of a connection than that. What we had before, the comfort and ease of our family life. Nobody knows you better than I do. I might ask you to change your dress or laugh a little quieter, but at least you always know where you stand with me. No surprises, no disappointment.”
The speech seemed like a bunch of backhanded digs, not words from Scott’s heart. Coming to the game as a family unit was a mistake. Scott took any tiny act of togetherness as a sign they’d get back together.
“I think you should drop me off at home after the game. The three of us going out for dinner isn’t a good idea.”
“Dylan will be disappointed. And worried about you.”
She must have buttons visible only to Scott.
Push here for guilt
, in doses from gut-churning low to heart-ripper maximum. “Fine.”
“We’ll get our usual booth. Like always.”
Like always? It’d been over two years since they’d gone out for supper together. There was no
usual booth
for them anymore. She shook her head. Scott just smiled.
But Scott wasn’t the only one with insight. The smile on his face didn’t fool her—it was victorious, not genuinely happy. She stared as if her eyes were glued to his face. For years she’d loved this man. With all her heart, she’d thought. Now there was…nothing. Only the tiniest shred of warmth remained. Without Dylan tying them, she’d forget about those years with Scott as easily as she forgot her shopping list every Tuesday. The memories of kissing him, touching him, the other things she’d done with him… She shuddered.
“You should’ve dressed more appropriately,” Scott said, putting his arm around her shoulder. The words, his sermonizing tone, his fingers on her bare shoulder…a ball of vomit crawled up the back of her throat. For her son, she forced it back down.
* * * * *
Mason scanned the small bar area. No sign of Logan yet. He grabbed an empty seat and nodded at the bartender. “The darkest you have on tap, large.”
“Getting tanked tonight?” Katie snagged his keys from the bar, then hopped onto the neighboring stool. “Thanks for being on time. Punctuality’s one of your
better
qualities.” She leaned over the bar and ordered sparkling water before swiveling to face him. “I sent the text from Logan’s phone. Sorry to trick you, big brother, but we need to have a little chat. Now that I have you face-to-face and unable to escape,” she jingled his keys in front of his face before shoving them into the front pocket of her painted-on jeans, “you’re going to say more than four words about your major screw-up with Andie.”
Shit. This conversation would require more than a schooner of beer. “Looks like I’ll be running a tab,” he instructed the bartender when the first twenty-ounce glass arrived. “And as long as
she’s
here, keep ’em coming.”
Katie lifted her bottle. “He wants to pay for my drink as well.” Then it was guns loaded and aimed at his head. “I had a magazine picture to show Andie, a sleeve detail for my wedding dress, so I dropped by her place earlier. Unannounced.”
He gave a so-what shrug and let a wave of lager roll down his throat. Maybe he should order a shot of Jack Daniel’s to speed things along.
“It took her forever to answer the door. When she did, well…she’d obviously been crying. For days, judging by the puffy redness.”
“I’ve seen her when she’s upset, Katie. She gets that way after five minutes. I’m sure she’s fine, whatever it was.”
“Moron.” Practiced fingers flicked him on the temple—hard. “
You
broke her heart.”
“No, I didn’t.” Was going out for a couple of beers on a Friday night suddenly cursed? The episode with Lasha last week, and now this week with Katie. Both of them on his case about Andie. He took another swig of beer, savoring the coolness. A few seconds’ relief from a heated female tirade. “I realized we weren’t going to be compatible long term. Andie already knew that.”
Katie made an indignant, squeak-like noise. “After all the times you told her that the age difference didn’t matter? Shame on you!”
“No…fuck. Is that what she said?”
“She didn’t say
anything
. You never noticed those big walls she has up?”
Yeah, he’d noticed. Plenty of times. As sexually uninhibited, fun and warm as Andie was, she tended to clam up when it came to the deeply personal stuff. He’d assumed she held back because she wasn’t that invested in their relationship.
“I don’t have to be her BFF to get how wrecked she is over the breakup.”
Damn, why did that make him feel better, instead of shitty? “I miss her, Katie-Kat.”
“So why’d you give her the Dear Jane letter, you big dummy?” Katie stopped his hand from lifting the beer to his mouth. “Talk to me, big brother. You know I’m on your side, even if you’re royally screwing things up.”
The beer went back on the bar. She’d be relentless if he didn’t talk. And part of him wanted to unload. Getting it off his chest might help clear it from his mind. “It was a douchey move, but I knew if I tried to end it face-to-face, I wouldn’t be able to.”
“From the looks of both of you, that would’ve been a good thing.”
“Long term, I did what was best for everybody.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Turns out I want the whole house including the picket fence and she only wants the bedroom.”
“Oh.” Her hand touched his arm. “That might change.”
He opened his throat and downed the remaining half glass of beer. “She doesn’t love me, but she loves her son, and I’m sure as hell not going to be the guy who keeps their family apart trying to serve his own purposes.” A fresh draught appeared in front of him. Good man. “Thanks. You have any decent tequila behind that bar?”
“Don Julio,” the bartender said. “Eight bucks a pop.”
“Hit me.” This talk required something harder than beer. The tequila shot left a warm trail all the way to his stomach. Much better.
“I think you’re way off base about…” Katie’s protest died on her lips. “Oh shit.”
Mason followed her sightline to the door. Fucking awesome. This night just kept getting better. He rapped his knuckles on the glossy hardwood to get the bartender’s attention. “Another tequila.”
“What’s
he
doing with them?” The way Katie clucked her tongue in disgust was a perfect copy of their mother. Any other time, he would’ve teased her about it mercilessly.
But now, Mason sat very still and quiet. As if that would keep Andie or Scott from noticing him as they followed a hostess to a table. “Having dinner, by the looks of it. With his family.”