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.
It’s six o’clock.
Mason is here.
Chapter 5
Lark
“I’ll be back later!” I grab my purse and bolt, knowing better than to let Mason get sucked into sister drama.
I wrench open the door, ignoring the way my stomach flips at the sight of him looking as gorgeous as ever—there really should be a law against ex-boyfriends being this cute—and jab a finger toward the street. “Let’s go.”
“Have fun, you two!” Melody calls out sweetly. “So good to see you, Mason! Well, sort of see you, anyway.”
“Have her home by ten and don’t be a jerk,” Aria shouts as I hop out onto the stoop and shut the door behind me.
“Ready?” I breathe.
“So ready,” he says in that husky voice that makes me think about kissing again.
Already. Argh! I’ve got to get a grip or I’m doomed.
“Good, then let’s go.” I circle around him, giving every delicious inch of his yummy self a wide berth as I head down the walk to the shiny new car parked at the curb.
It’s a fancy sedan with leather seats so different from the old pickup Mason used to drive that when I first slide inside, it’s almost possible to imagine I’m going out with a different person. But then I catch a whiff of his familiar Mason scent—that mixture of clean laundry, man, and freshly toasted bread that always made me feel warm all over—lurking beneath the new car smell and memories come flooding back.
Sniffing the place where Mason’s shoulder meets his neck used to be enough to make me dizzy, to make my entire body ache with wanting him. And when he left, I slept with the tee shirt he’d left in my car after a trip to the lake for weeks, pathetically clinging to the smell of the boy who’d broken my heart.
“So, where are we going?” I ask, clearing my throat as I push the troubling thoughts away.
I’m not going to think about how much I want—wanted—Mason or how much he hurt me. I’ll make polite conversation, catch up with a man who was once a good friend, and then go straight home—do not stop on the front stoop to say goodnight, do not make end-of-date mouth mistakes.
That’s what kissing Mason would be—a mouth mistake.
I decide to start calling it that, even in my own head. Whatever it takes to keep this evolution from bitter exes to casual friends on track.
“You’ll see,” Mason says, with a glance my way. “You look beautiful, by the way.”
“Thanks.” I smooth the skirt of my wrap-around jean dress down over my thighs, swallowing the “so do you” on the tip of my tongue. I don’t want to encourage Mason, and he hardly needs any assurance that he looks wonderful.
Even in a simple pair of dark blue jeans and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to show his muscled forearms, he’s stunning.
It’s disgusting, really. I am repulsed by his flawless man beauty. Flaws are good. Flaws help to reassure the people we love that nobody’s perfect.
A person really ought to have a few flaws, just to be polite.
Sadly, however, other women do not share my perspective. When Mason parks the car at the east end of Main Street and walks around to get my door, all female heads in the vicinity turn to take him in. One pretty woman in a tight black sundress and high-heeled sandals actually stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk to give Mason a once over and drool into her basket full of farmer’s market goodies.