Chapter Seven
Mason stood looking at his car. Even though the sun was setting, he could see his own mournful reflection in the gleaming blue paint. After all, it was fifty-to-one he would ever see the car again in one piece.
Jasper, Brian and Temple stood looking at it, too.
“Bro,” Jasper said. “Tell me you’re not actually worried about me driving your car back to Dallas.”
Mason surrendered the keys into Jasper’s outstretched hand. “Just try to keep all four tires on the road, okay?”
“Fuck, yeah.” With a smile of diabolical glee, Jasper opened the driver’s side door, dropped into the seat and then stabbed the ignition with the key. The car roared to life like the gorgeous piece of German engineering that it was, and Mason hastened to remind himself that he was heavily insured.
“Coach Winston is going to drive me to Victoria Regional so I can catch the redeye back to Dallas,” Mason said. “I’ll see you assholes tomorrow morning, bright and early.”
“On no sleep,” Temple reminded him. “All I can say is that must be some prime pussy you’re—”
Almost-married Brian shoved Temple into the car. “Guy’s got a big mouth,” he said. “Listen, go have fun with your girl. And don’t worry. We’ve got this handled.”
“Thanks, man.” Mason tapped the hood twice by way of saying goodbye. There were some first-rate body shops in Dallas. If Jasper didn’t wreck the suspension or fry the wiring harness, Mason figured that maybe all it would cost him was a rate hike on his insurance and a new set of tires.
Jasper floored it right up to Cuervo’s first stoplight and then revved the BMW’s engine as though waiting for the starting flag at the Indy 500. When the light turned green, Mason watched him lay down two shrieking rubber tire tracks and bullet toward the far distant highway. As many tickets as Jasper had, it was a wonder they still let him drive.
Feeling weird and naked without his car, Mason started walking the six blocks to the rodeo fairgrounds. Despite his concerns, he knew he’d made the right call. He still had fifteen minutes before meeting Cassidy and Lexie at the ticket booth, so he paced himself, enjoying his trip down memory lane.
There was Connie’s Consignments run by old Mrs. Harris, who always had a bottle of “cough syrup” behind the counter. Was it Tommy Paduski or his brother Jimmy Paduski who’d snuck in there one afternoon while Mrs. Harris helped a nervous bride on with her wedding gown, and swiped it? Mason put his face to the window and cupped one hand over his eyes. Past the expressionless display mannequins, he could see the dingy old register and a thing that looked like a cloth tomato stuck with pins. Same store, same stuff. He pictured Connie Harris, tipsy by noon, blinking owlishly through her glasses.
He paused again in front of the next storefront. “Sweet Dreams” it said in old-fashioned gilt lettering. Was this Maggie’s bakery? With keener interest, he peered inside. The glass display case didn’t have a smudge on it. Pies and frosted cakes and trays full of cookies and brownies made his mouth water. So did the lingering smell of baked bread. There were about six café-style tables, each with a cut-glass vase that held a pink daisy. An Italian-style espresso machine gleamed on a back counter. Impressive, Mason thought before moving on.
This was the land that had bred him and Cassidy, he reflected. To some people, it was a hick burg they couldn’t wait to put in their rearview mirror. To others, it was the taproot of a tree that went deep. But Mason knew what he drew from it. And he couldn’t help but wonder if his parents’ relationship might have lasted if they’d stayed here instead of following him to Dallas. If only he’d been paying closer attention when his dad’s new business folded and his mom started staying out late. But he’d been consumed back then with becoming a starting quarterback. It was all late nights and early mornings. No time to staunch the hemorrhage that had been happening inside his own family.
Mason pushed those thoughts aside. What point was there dwelling on the past? There were regrets, sure. But as his sister, Shari, always said, “When you know better, do better.” He had to believe that was possible, especially with Cassidy.
Now he was close enough to breathe in the familiar rodeo smells—the sticky sweetness of cotton candy and fried Oreos, of doughy, cinnamon-scented funnel cakes that were pure nostalgia to his nose. He could smell the danker odor of livestock and hay and maybe something that could have been tanned leather. Top 40 country music boomed from outdoor speakers. When he turned the corner, he was momentarily daunted by the moving sea of cowboy hats, but as he searched for Cassidy, his heart picked up speed.
He zeroed in on her and Lexie standing next to a patrol horse. There was a tingling in his chest he’d never felt before, and for a moment he gave himself over to the pleasure of looking at her. Cassidy had her hands on the horse’s muzzle, stroking it, while Lexie gave it a few timid pats of her own. She seemed so unaware of him, so in her own world, despite the noisy, jostling crowd. He took a savoring breath and made his way toward her, appreciating the way those jeans cupped her ass, the fit of her tight white T-shirt, the country-girl sexiness of her suede cowboy hat. Christ, what I would give just to kiss her, he thought as the tingling in his chest grew warmer.
“Hey, Mr. Mason!” Lexie said.
Cassidy’s hand froze on the horse’s muzzle. When she looked up at him, it felt as though the noise from the midway receded. All he could see was the expression in her blue eyes, equal parts shyness and boldness, and it damn near knocked him off his feet.
“Hi,” she said softly.
Mason ran one hand through his hair. “You look amazing.”
She smiled up at him archly. “Better than my Artie’s uniform?”
“I like that, too, actually. It’s the skates, I think.”
They lapsed into silence. It might have been awkward if he’d actually noticed they weren’t talking, but all he could think was how beautiful she was. An image flashed through Mason’s mind of Jasper howling like a coyote while throwing the car into fifth gear. That’s how he felt right now, the speedometer ticking steadily upward, every system hurtling toward one thing: her.
“Hello?”
Mason blinked. The midway rushed back and brought Lexie with it. She stood, tapping her foot in nine-year-old scowling disapproval.
“Mom!” she said. “Are you going to act gross like that all night? I need to know so I can try not to look.”
* * * *
Cassidy palmed the baseball and considered her target: a pyramid of milk bottles that must have been made out of lead, because so far she hadn’t been able to drop a single one.
The concessionaire, who stood off to one side surrounded by Sponge Bobs, plush bunnies and stuffed Minions, kept up a steady patter, inviting people to try their luck. He either hadn’t recognized Mason or didn’t care, which made her feel more at ease. There’d been no mob scenes at all, in fact. Stares, sure, but no out-of-towners slinking by in sequined cocktail dresses.
Mason leaned in to help her, but she was all too aware of how her body responded to his nearness, to the smell of his aftershave, to the muscles that rippled in the arm he raised to show her where to aim. She wasn’t even sure what he was telling her anymore because the words slid over her like water off a hot skillet. How on earth was she supposed to concentrate when the most gorgeous man in the known universe spoke softly into her ear, so close that she could feel his warm breath?
“You gotta hit it hard, dead center,” he said. “Otherwise, there won’t be enough force to knock the other ones down.”
“But why wouldn’t you go for the ones on the bottom?” Lexie asked, both hands pressed to the counter, clearly eager to learn.
“They expect you to do that,” Mason replied, grinning. “Common sense tells you that the bottom row is your best bet. But if they weight those things the way I think they do, the only way to topple them is to strike it hard in the middle.”
“You can’t argue with a quarterback.” Cassidy felt his breath on her cheek again and shivered. After Lexie’s remark about how she and Mason were embarrassing her, she’d tried being more discreet, but the sheer novelty of going to the rodeo with a date was enough to make her feel as though she’d woken up in somebody else’s life. Cassidy Roby didn’t date, and when she didn’t date, she most definitely didn’t date men like Mason Hannigan. Plus, the midway, with its million lights and booming music and fried dough smells, just made everything seem even more unreal.
Yet here he was, close enough for her to feel the heat of his body. His black T-shirt skimmed the muscles of his chest and arms and the six-pack abs she’d only gotten a glimpse of. Who knew that a plain cotton T-shirt, worn by the right man, could throw her internal compass into such a tailspin?
Focus, she told herself. Your daughter’s watching.
“Here comes the cannonball.” She wound up for the pitch, put her hip into it, and bam! All six bottles came tumbling down.
“You did it!” Lexie gave her a high-five and then bounced over to the concessionaire to collect her prize.
“Nice shot,” Mason said. “Gun like that, you should take out a license.”
“I thought you said these games were rigged.”
“They are.” Mason’s dark eyes were on her. She could feel the heat of them all the way down to her toes. “But this time, the odds were in your favor.”
“The odds aren’t usually that kind to me,” she confessed.
“Maybe that’s fixin’ to change.”
He said it lightly, but there was a tone to his voice that made her look up. His expression was unreadable, but there was no mistaking the lazy, dangerous look in his eyes or the way he angled his body toward her, as though it was everything he could do to keep from kissing her. The thought made her lips tingle. She felt a little drunk. How was it possible to keep walking around acting normal when all she could think about was touching his smooth hard chest, his warm lips, his soft hair? Maybe it was wrong—sinful, even—to want someone so badly, but not even people’s curious stares had the power to shame her. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from him.
“I was a fool not to come back sooner,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“Maybe you were busy being a national hero,” she said.
“I like winning, don’t get me wrong. But there are other things I like, too. Things that are worth waiting for.” His gaze deepened and she went dizzy again, feeling as though this were a different game of chance she played—not with him, but with life. Was life finally ready to deal her a high card or two?
“I picked the unicorn,” Lexie said, sauntering over to present it. “I remember you saying that Aunt April’s birthday was coming up, and you know she loves unicorns.”
Cassidy inspected the stuffed unicorn with its glittery horn and look of perpetual surprise. “We’d better give it a name.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Mason asked Lexie.
“A girl,” Lexie said. “I’m gonna name her Nora.”
Mason frowned, considering, and Cassidy loved him for playing along. “Okay,” he said, “But why not Lexie? That’s a good name, too.”
Lexie wrinkled her freckled nose. “No, it isn’t. People call you ‘Dyslexia,’ especially when you’re me and you can’t read very fast.”
An icy hand closed around Cassidy’s heart the way it always did when someone was cruel to her daughter. “Who calls you that?”
Lexie shrugged. “I dunno. People.”
“Who?”
“Mom, please don’t make a big deal about it.”
Cassidy studied her daughter’s face, especially the downturned mouth that was clearly at odds with the brave front. But she also forced herself to shut up, knowing she would find a way to get Lexie to tell her later. It was hard not to hate kids who said things like that. If it had been up to her, she would have put them all in detention for a year.
Lexie roamed a few feet ahead while she and Mason trailed behind her, taking in the blinking lights on the Tilt-A-Whirl and the big swinging pendulums of the Hammer. Mason stopped to watch as the gondola paused upside down at the top before hurtling down again, its passengers shrieking in terrified delight.
“I’m too scared to go on the Hammer,” Lexie said, gazing at it raptly.
“Wanna know a secret?” Mason replied. “So am I.”
“No, you’re not.” Lexie grinned up at him. “You’re not scared of anything. Right, Mom?”
“Don’t look at me,” Cassidy said. “I hate those things.”
Mason tugged playfully on Lexie’s braid. “Tell you what. Let’s you and me go ride that thing, just to show everybody that we did it. Deal?”
Cassidy saw Lexie’s eyes practically bug out with excitement, and her heart ached a little to think what her daughter had been missing all these years. Fathers did fun things with daughters that were completely different from what moms considered fun. They had adventures with you and taught you how to hunt for mushrooms and how to throw a baseball so that years later when you were a grown woman at the midway with a man you’d been in love with for most of your life, you could knock down a few unfairly weighted milk bottles and impress everyone, including your own daughter. Lexie didn’t have any of that.
“What if I barf?” Lexie asked Mason excitedly.
“What if I barf? That’s going to look a lot worse.”
Cassidy put her hands up, but couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m standing clear.”
“I heard that a kid went on the Hammer once and stood up when he wasn’t supposed to and died,” Lexie said, dragging Mason to the back of the line.
“I’m pretty sure that’s an urban myth.” Mason looked back at Cassidy. “What do you think?”
“I think certain people have to be tall enough to go on that ride.”
Lexie craned her neck, searching for the “Must Be This Tall To Ride” sign. When she found it, she rushed over and cleared it by at least four inches. Her smile looked so gleeful, Mason and Cassidy both laughed.
Cassidy watched Mason and her daughter get swallowed up by the line of people waiting for the ride. Some of them recognized him at once and stared, hand-over-mouth, in disbelief. A kid wearing a Lone Stars jersey with Mason’s number on it exchanged a few words with him that Cassidy couldn’t hear, but the boy’s manner was polite and respectful, and by the time he turned back to his dad, his face was all smiles. It made her wonder what Mason had said, and her shy, nervous heart took another painful step in his direction.
Mason looked for her and when their eyes met, something unspoken passed between them. It made it hard for her to swallow or breathe or even think. Her nipples grew hard, proof of the effect he had on her, so that she crossed her arms in embarrassment. My God, what is happening to me, she thought. I’m falling to pieces, like that old Patsy Cline song. She darted a glance around. Probably the whole world knew at this point.
She watched as word traveled that Mason Hannigan was waiting at the back of the line. Lexie was clearly delighted when the crowd parted and she and Mason got whisked up to the front. Cassidy waved to her, craning her neck to see if the roustabout attached Lexie’s shoulder harness before positioning the lap bar. Lexie would have been so annoyed if she’d known how worried her mom was. But hey, that was her heart that was about to get tossed around up there.
“She’s growing up,” came her mother’s voice behind her.
Cassidy whirled around. “Mom!”
Priscilla held her arms out and Cassidy fell into them, surprised by how good it felt to get a hug from someone who probably knew how confused and unbalanced she felt right now. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for Maggie and your father.” Priscilla patted the back of her bright red up-do. “Okay, I might’ve snuck in early to have one of those fried Twinkies,” she confessed. “The devil’s own dessert, if you ask me. There’s no point in letting Maggie see me eat a Twinkie. All she’d do is lecture me about what they put in those things.”
“It’s Lexie’s first time on a scary ride,” Cassidy said.
“Nervous?”
“For a thousand reasons.”
She caught her mother’s probing look but pretended she hadn’t. The gondola containing Mason and Lexie clicked up, up, up, carnival lights flashing. By the time the rotating arm started flinging them around, Cassidy already felt sympathetically queasy.
“Did Mason let himself get talked into that?” Priscilla asked. “That is one love-struck young man.”
Cassidy went squirmy, along with queasy. The relationship—if she dared to call it that—seemed too new, too uncertain to be commented on, even by her mother.
It was too dark to see Lexie and Mason, but she could hear screaming as the two arms of the machine whipped past one another and the gondolas rocketed into the night sky. She’d been on her own emotional Hammer, she realized. Would Lexie get along with Mason, could she, herself, handle the whispers and the staring, would Mason just decide the whole single mom thing was too much trouble? Even more to the point, would her uncontrollable need for him cause her the kind of public humiliation she had already been through and feared the most? Then those parts of her that had been asleep for so long, parts that were now painfully awake and alive, might just shut down permanently, out of pure heartache. The thought of it sent a prickle of dread down her spine.
Mason and Lexie were practically on top of her before she looked up. Lexie’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, her eyes sparkling, and even Mason looked less green around the gills than she expected him to be.
“Grandma,” Lexie said, bursting with obvious pride, “We rode the Hammer!”
“What’s next?” Priscilla replied. “Skydiving?”
Mason leaned down to kiss Priscilla’s cheek, a sweet gesture that made Cassidy’s heart throb with gratitude. “First, combat training with hand grenades, then skydiving.”
Lexie looked at her as though she weren’t completely sure Mason was joking.
“There won’t be any hand grenades,” Cassidy told her firmly.
“Now listen,” Priscilla said, joining arms with her granddaughter, “I’ve got a real hankerin’ to go on that Drop Tower, but I need a brave girl like you to go with me.”
Cassidy handed Nora the Unicorn to Lexie. “The Drop Tower? You hate those rides as much as I do. Last time, you said—”
“Doesn’t matter what I said last time,” Priscilla insisted. “All I need is the right partner in crime. So what do you say, Lex?”
Lexie gave Mason an apologetic smile. “It that okay, Mr. Mason?”
“Of course.” Mason tugged on Lexie’s braid again and then watched her walk away with Priscilla.
Now it was just the two of them, alone, with the blaring music and the racketing generators and the screams and the concessionaires calling out from the midway stands and the burnt motor oil smell coming from the machines. But when Cassidy looked into Mason’s eyes, she had to remind herself where she was.
“I have a confession to make,” he said with a hint of amusement in his deep voice.
“What’s that?”
“When I look at you, I feel like I’m still on that ride.”
* * * *
“That was for our benefit, wasn’t it—your mom kidnapping Lexie?” Mason asked as they walked past a family trying its luck at the clattering Skee-Ball games.
Cassidy tried to picture her mother on any ride that went faster than a senior citizen navigating a parking lot, but came up blank. “If I know her, she probably got my dad or Maggie to do it. No way is she going to mess up her hair.”
“What a family you have, Cass. Lexie, too. I wonder if you know how lucky you are.”
Cassidy smiled up at him. She knew. She also knew that right now, in just this moment, happiness had curled around her like a warm cat. The fairgrounds were a blur of lights and sounds and smells, but the moments that reached her the most intimately were the ones of incidental contact—Mason’s hand on her waist, guiding her through the crowd. His knee brushing hers when they sat down to eat. The time when they were laughing, and tenderly, he lifted a few tendrils of hair away from her face.
An hour ago, they’d stopped to talk with some of Mason’s old teammates from his Cuervo High days: Tommy Lavelle, a former running back who’d married Angela Hooten; Rodney Kemp, who worked in a real estate office at nearby Port Lavaca; and Austin Greeley, who fixed cars in Beeville. Angela actually mouthed the words, “Way to go” to Cassidy behind Tommy’s back, which made her toes curl inside her boots because she felt so intensely shy and proud all at the same time. It pleased her to see that everybody managed to act perfectly normal. No one asked for autographs or even talked about football.
Afterwards, she and Mason petted baby lambs in the 4-H tent. They ate roasted corn on the cob, turkey legs and a slice each of Peggy Blackburn’s blue-ribbon olallieberry pie. Peggy’s pies were tart and sweet, bursting with fat blackberries that she grew in her own backyard. Cassidy dabbed a corner of Mason’s mouth where the juice ran and then felt herself flush with embarrassment. What was she thinking, touching him out here where everyone could see?
When Mason couldn’t talk her into going on any of the “white knuckle” rides, he finally asked, “Well, what’s the scariest ride you will go on?”
“Do bumper cars qualify as scary?”
“No.”
“How about the baby rollercoaster?”
“That’s not a ride. It’s a lawnmower on train tracks.”
They stopped in front of a big wooden façade with pictures of ghouls painted on it. A double door slammed open, saloon-style, belching out a car full of noisy teens that lurched to a stop in front of them.
Cassidy said, “I know it’s not what you’d consider scary, but I love haunted houses.”
Mason gazed down at her with the restless, almost brooding expression she’d seen on his face earlier. Every cell in her body hummed with an awareness of his masculinity, his physical strength, the penetrating quality of his dark eyes.
Her fingers ached with the need to touch him.
Mason Hannigan was King of the Alpha Males, yet humble in a way that surprised her. In the fundamentals, he’d never changed from the boy she knew in high school, the one who opened doors and pulled out chairs and never rushed her into a sexual relationship, even though she’d dreamed about him constantly and had drawn his initials and hers inside big flowery hearts before balling up the paper in red-faced shame and sailing it into the trash.
But now things were different. She was different. True, she wasn’t a kid any longer, but it was more than that. Except for her one time with Parker, she hadn’t been with anyone since. Ten years of keeping a tight lid on her sensuality, of turning down dates with men whose only crime was not being Mason. Ten years of telling herself it was all for the best, that Lexie needed her, that men were a distraction, that good mothers didn’t. Meanwhile, her sex drive was driving her out of her mind.
Maybe no one had inspired her to pry that lid off until now. But as she tilted her head back to look at Mason, she could feel the walls she’d painstakingly erected fall away and a kind of dreaminess steal over her, as though she were moving through water, and nothing was real or important anymore except her and him and this wild urgency to discover where those feelings might take her.
Mason swept one arm out to indicate a rattling, paint-flaked gondola. “Your chariot awaits.”
She climbed in and he got in after her. The ride operator tipped his baseball cap at Mason, gave her a wink, and then threw the lever for the ride. Two plywood doors flew open and the gondola jerked forward, or maybe it was her heart that jerked forward. They passed into a dark room with flickering black light.
“You’re going to be so scared,” she said. “Just wait and see.” But it was hard to even concentrate because his denim-covered thigh was about half an inch away from hers, and they kept bumping into each other.
The next room echoed with the sound of diabolical laughter. It wasn’t so much the laughter that gave her the creeps as it was a story she’d heard about locals breaking into the haunted house and really scaring people. What if they were here? She inched closer to Mason, close enough to smell his woodsy aftershave. Suddenly, a mechanical clown popped out of a hidden door. The effect was silly, but a ripple of pleasure and relief at Mason’s nearness washed over her. “I know it’s stupid, but I hate clowns.”
“My childhood nightmare was guys in hockey masks. Good thing I can’t skate and I don’t play hockey.”
But he could, she thought loyally. Mason was smart enough, talented enough to do anything. The gondola slid through another set of doors where a trio of zombies pawed at them from about ten feet away, although one did have brains dripping out of his mouth and the eyes looked real enough. Cassidy thought about the mischief-making locals and squeezed closer to Mason. Where their thighs touched, all her nerve endings stirred and tingled.
The gondola gave a rusty wheeze and then wobbled to a stop. “The scariest thing about this ride so far is the fact that we’re stuck,” Mason said.
Cassidy barely noticed. All she saw were his muscular forearms, so different from her own, and the big capable hands that rested on his knees.
Her nearness must have affected him, too, because he went quiet.
They were alone for the first time in their lives, protected by walls, away from prying eyes. Maybe the black light played tricks, but she could tell to the second when that same realization moved across his face, and all at once her heart started pounding so hard she thought it might smother her.
Mason’s eyes were hot, hungry, keen. Cassidy had no idea where she ended and he began but made a sound of desperate yearning just before his lips descended to hers.
Desire for him came roaring out of the place she’d kept it locked away for so many years, a wave of living fire. It burned through her veins and muscles and laid waste to whatever shyness she may have felt because her tongue met his tongue in a dance of delirious longing.
Mason wrenched off her hat and dropped it on the floor of the gondola. His hands grabbed fistfuls of her hair, pulling her closer. She wanted to be closer, wanted him inside her, but all she could do was let him pull her roughly onto his lap. He was already hard. She could feel him through her jeans, and a mournful cry, a cry of thwarted longing, sounded in her throat.
“Cassidy,” he muttered against her lips, “Baby, you’re killing me.”
He rode her desire with a hard bit, skimming her lips with his teeth, his tongue. Innocent as she was, Cassidy knew his mastery came from experience, but none of that meant anything now. She was being consumed from the inside, her sex glutted and swollen with unspent need. The hands clenching her bottom were as hot as branding irons, pushing her against him, and still he wouldn’t stop kissing her. Her own hands needed to feel him everywhere at once—his thick dark hair, his granite shoulders, his hard chest. All her pent-up feelings were rampaging like bloodthirsty marauders, her own zombie apocalypse that had nothing to do with the room they were in.
She had no idea a man could be so big. He throbbed dangerously against her inseam and God help her, she ached for him, wanted him bad enough for the wanting to bring tears to her eyes. Now his hands were on either side of her face so he could plunder her mouth more forcefully. Easy, confident Mason Hannigan was no more. He, too, had unleashed a beast. She sensed how he fought for control, that for him, too, the years had been long and many. He strained against her even as she pressed against him, but there were clothes in the way, and in her delirium she couldn’t be sure the car wasn’t moving again.
“I didn’t know,” he muttered hoarsely. “Jesus, baby, I just didn’t know.”
“Please don’t stop,” she said.
And then she was drowning again, as her craving for him drew her deeper into the vortex. His tongue tested hers before coming back to trace her lips with a slowness that devoured her self-control. She tried to summon the words to tell him how badly she wanted this, wanted him, but then she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.
Dizzy, breathless, she lifted her head to see what it was.
They had come to a stop outside, directly in front of the ride operator. Behind him stood a crowd of people, no doubt curious to see Mason emerging from the haunted house.
If that wasn’t enough to throw the icy cold water of shame and humiliation on her, there was one person in particular who made Cassidy wish the earth would just open up and swallow her right there.
It was Parker’s sister, Kayla. And her eyes were murder.