Chapter Nine

 

~ FREYA ~

 

Mason stands at the front of the side room of O’Toole’s, a Sam Adams in his hand, and a new award pinned to his chest. I think it’s how I’ll always remember him.

His bottle raised, he’s toasting his comrades, the ones who are here, the ones who are stationed elsewhere, and the ones who have fallen. Always a toast for the fallen at these gatherings, I’ve noticed, and it makes my heart pinch every time.

This time it hurts a little more, just because I don’t feel the security of knowing that Mason will always be on the other end of the phone for me. “Just four hours away” was how he had put it, and it isn’t really a fact when some of the time he’ll be away in training, or on missions doing God-knows-what.

I glance around the bar, a sea of khaki uniforms. The last time I was at one of these things, I had a date. It was a post-game celebration when a group of wounded former servicemembers played ice hockey at the Academy—easily the most inspiring game I’d ever seen in my life. And within arm’s reach of Mason the whole night was the woman he’d been dating at the time. I think her name was Chloe. Or something chipper like that.

While I’ll readily admit that I’ve always found Mason wildly attractive, I’ve never felt this sense of longing that I do right now. A longing to turn back the clock and see what might have happened between us if I hadn’t been dating what’s-his-name and he hadn’t been dating what’s-her-name. It’s not exactly regret I feel, because I still think that if we had dated, we never would have developed the kind of friendship we now have. And where would my book be, in that case?

To hell with my book, I suddenly think. Where would I be? Where would I be if I hadn’t had Mason in my life the past two years?

And what will I do if something happens to him while he is away?

As the crowd raises their drinks when Mason finishes his toast, then erupting in applause, I watch him flash that smile that is so familiar to me. His teeth look positively lickable, all radiantly white and lined up like little Sailors in their dress whites. And like always, the image of him inspires words to coalesce in my head as I reach for my phone to tap them in:

 

Genevieve watched his smile curving upward, and wondered how those soft, supple lips would feel tracing along her most sensitive skin, the whisper of his breath tickling her as he stroked his tongue along her—

 

“Hey, Freya.”

Holy crap.

Snapping back to reality, I lock the screen on my phone and tug my gaze away from the magnetic image of Mason at the other end of the bar. My eyes feel like they’re crossing as they try to focus on Harris, who’s sidled up to my stool.

Harris could pass for Mason’s brother, although I could say that about at least half the men at O’Toole’s tonight. There’s something about those uniforms and closely cropped hair that makes them all look a little related.

“Hi, Harris.”

“How’s the book going?”

I shrug. I don’t normally talk about the book to most people simply because it makes me feel a bit like a failure every time they ask and I have to confess that I haven’t even gotten an agent yet. But I’d told Harris one night at a party at Mason’s apartment. Harris is an easy guy to tell things like that to. He should have been a shrink or a chaplain or something. As it is, he does something on subs—something that I really haven’t got a clue about.

“It’s okay. I got some interest from an agent again. She just wants some edits and she’ll take another look.”

“Hey, that’s great Freya.” He hugs me as if it’s really something to celebrate. And it’s sweet—the support he seems to be offering me. Not to mention, I’d have to be dead to not notice when he’s got me in his fleeting embrace that his arms seem to be molded from steel. Clearly the guy takes his morning PT seriously.

I should take more of an interest in him. But the truth is, I can sense Mason nearby as though we are connected somehow, and his eyes on me send a prickle up my spine.

“We’ll see if anything comes of it.” I glance in Mason’s direction and see a curious look on his face. Curious—because it almost looks like jealousy.

In the two years of knowing him, most the time with one date or another at my side, I’ve never seen jealousy on Mason’s face when he looks at me. Protectiveness, yes. But jealousy? Hell no.

“Oh, it will. Just a matter of time.” Harris glances down at my beer, which is borderline empty. “Let me get you another,” he offers, and touches my elbow slightly. I follow him toward the bartender and he orders one for me.

“How’s Patrick?” he asks when he hands me a fresh bottle.

I laugh. “Yesterday’s news,” I confess.

“His loss.” His eyes glint with flirtation as he says it.

I drink my beer and listen to him as he talks. He’s nice. Seriously nice. And he looks like a recruiting poster in his uniform, square jaw and deep-set eyes that look friendly right now, but I imagine could look deadly when pissed off.

But I somehow feel awkward talking to another man with Mason in the same room. It makes no sense.

About ten minutes into our conversation, my phone chirps in my purse and I can’t resist reaching for it. I glance down, expecting to see another unintelligible text from my mother, and am surprised to see the name of the agent that requested that I turn my SEAL into a shifter six months ago.

It seems a little late for an email to come my way from her, but I remember she’s in Los Angeles, so it’s not closing time yet there.

My heart is in my throat.

Don’t read it now, I command myself. Not now, in a crowded room, standing next to a cute Navy guy who has no clue just how significant this email could be in my life.

Not now, when bursting into tears would cause a scene.

But wait—if it’s good news…

I picture it for an instant—being able to share with Mason the news that all of our hard work was worth something. I can see it now so clearly in my head—me walking up to him with a colossal grin.

“We did it,” I’d say.

“Did what?” he would ask, and I’d simply hand him my phone in reply. Then he’d read it, and whisk me into his arms to congratulate me. Sticking two fingers in his mouth, he’d let loose one of those loud whistles that I’ve never been able to master—the kind you need to successfully hail a cab in midtown Manhattan during rush hour.

“Just one more toast,” he’d call out to the crowd around him. “To my friend Freya, who just got an offer of representation from a literary agent.”

My eyes would tear up as I watched everyone raise their glass to me. “To Freya,” they’d say, and I swear I can hear them in my head right now, so clear that I can’t resist the pull of that email on me.

“Just a sec,” I tell Harris. “I have to read this. Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” he answers amicably, and reaches into his own pocket to retrieve his cell and check for texts himself.

Biting my lip, I tap in my password and swipe the display.

I touch her email and it opens up before my eyes.

My heartbeat echoes in my ears as I read silently:

 

“Ms. Hansen, thank you for resubmitting your manuscript to me. Unfortunately, I have taken on a number of new clients that require my attention, and I will be unable to read the changes you made. I wish you the best of luck in your pursuit of representation.”

 

My shoulders sag as I lean against the bar, the wind sucked from my lungs.

She never even read the changes?

My eyes glance upward, searching for the one face in the crowd who always grounds me. But to no avail.

Six months, and she never even read them?

My blood simmers. I poured my heart into those changes, tapped every ounce of creativity I had in my soul to change my character into a damn shifter like she wanted.

I had to re-write every scene in the book to make it believable. Or somewhat believable, considering SEAL shifters require some suspension of disbelief.

My head shakes, remembering the nights I spent with high-octane coffee keeping me awake so that I could get it rewritten quickly, even though I had to open the bookstore in the morning. Remembering the hours sitting on my ass in the middle of the woods along the banks of the Severn at Greenbury Point with ants in my shorts pounding out new text on my laptop. Remembering the weekends that I stayed holed up in my apartment trying to make it perfect before I finally was ready to send it off to her in all its shifter-glory.

Then my mind drifts to the months after that I’d waited, clinging to hope.

Six months, I waited. And now she tells me that she won’t even be able to read it?

I force a smile to Harris and excuse myself to the restroom, nodding slightly to his suggestion of meeting for coffee sometime.

In the restroom, my hands plant themselves on either side of the sink as I let the tears fall from my eyes momentarily. I bite back a curse. As many times as I’ve been rejected by agents, this shouldn’t sting.

And I realize that it wouldn’t bother me as much if she’d just said she didn’t like it. Rejection has gotten more customary to me than a handshake.

But to request it and then not even read it?

It’s as though the futility of my efforts has slapped me across my face.

My thoughts drift to the scenes I tapped out on my computer these past few days that had my character tied to a bed. Or when I had made my hero into a cowboy, or stealthily slipped in his billionaire status.

How many more times would I change my book for some agent who would not have the time to read it?

Why did I bother? Why do I bother?

A couple women join me in the restroom and I wipe away my tears quickly as they disappear into the stalls. Feeling claustrophobic, I need to get out of here. The bathroom. O’Toole’s. Maybe even Annapolis. I should move into DC or Baltimore like all my college friends and get an eight-to-six job. There is nothing holding me in Annapolis.

Not even Mason.

When I emerge from the bathroom, I spot Harris back at the bar talking to a sultry blonde. No loss there, I think, because the only person I want to talk to right now is across the room. My eyes rest on his image now, and like always, it somehow fortifies me as though when I don’t have any more energy to deal with the futility of life, he somehow lends me some of his own strength simply by being near.

Looking at him now, I realize that the only thing I have to show for all the work I’ve put into my book is this thing I have with Mason.

And for just half an instant, it seems enough.

I swallow hard, glance at my watch, and walk toward him.

“That was a great toast you gave,” I tell him, not wanting to mention the email right now. Tonight is about Mason. Not me. And certainly not about my fruitless efforts to get an agent.

He grins and ducks downward to brush a kiss to my cheek. I’m not sure where that came from, but I savor the feel of it just the same. The caress of his lips against me only lasts a moment, but it makes my breath quicken. He smells a bit like whiskey, and I’m betting he downed a couple shots with his friends while I had escaped to the bathroom.

“You inspire the writer in me,” he says. The compliment warms me, because I feel the same way about him. And with just one look, it’s as if I never opened that stupid email, as if it doesn’t even matter why I wrote my book in the first place because it brought this man into my life.

My friend.

My friend. I’m trying to remember that right now. But standing here with him so close, without a date at his side, and another date at mine, I feel something more than just friendship between us.

Mason is the only man who could piece together my shattered ego with a single look or a few kind words. I’m intrigued in a different way by this connection that’s always been between us, wondering what it would be like to truly be connected to him in the way that every cell in my body desires right now.

Having him in my life somehow makes it all worth it. All the rewrites and revisions and rejections. I can’t even be mad at some agent for not wanting to read the latest version of my book because I created it with him. I had fun doing it, and I’m not going to let her take that away from me.

My lashes flutter as I look at him, somehow feeling a surge of hormones that I can’t deny because I know that I’m going home alone and so is he.

And this time, I don’t want it to be that way.

“Party’s breaking up,” I say.

“Yeah. It’s a busy work day for these guys tomorrow. An admiral is coming for a visit.”

“Bet you’ll be glad to not be around for that.”

He shrugs. “Ya seen one Four-Star and you’ve seen ’em all,” he chuckles.

“I should probably get home, too.”

“I’ll walk you,” he offers.

“You don’t need to do that.” The words are forced because I can’t ignore how much I want him to walk me home tonight, only so that I can invite him in and see if I’m the only one of this twosome who’s been feeling this spark between us.

“Of course I do.”

With that, he casually rests his arm on my shoulder and steers me toward the door.

It’s not like I haven’t walked by his side like this before, feeling him snug at my side. But it feels different this time, as though my body will go on strike if he pulls away from me. Lucky for me, he doesn’t.

Annapolis is humming with activity tonight, even though it’s a weekday. With the first breaths of summer upon us, the tourists are out in droves.

Only a short walk from O’Toole’s, a new flowered wreath greets us at the door to my building. Mason gives it a sniff. I don’t blame him. The smell of the roses in it is intoxicating.

“Your landlord’s been at it again,” he notices.

“Yeah.”

“Never known a man to be into wreath-making.” He says it in a tone of nothing more than observation, not a judgement.

“His wife used to do it. But when she died, he took up the hobby just so that her tradition wouldn’t die along with her.”

“That’s sweet,” he says thoughtfully, and I have to agree. I can’t imagine someone loving me so much that he would take such care to make sure the traditions I held dear never ended.

He follows me up the staircase to my door. “I should let you get some sleep. Thanks for coming tonight.”

He turns his broad back toward me and I know I can’t let him leave. Not this time.

“You can come in for a drink, if you want. I’m not working till tomorrow afternoon.” I know he won’t take the statement as some kind of come-on because he’s been in my apartment plenty and nothing’s happened between us, minus one kiss enjoyed in the name of “research.”

What he doesn’t know is that I want something to happen between us. And I’d tell him up front if I wasn’t a spineless loser.

“Sure,” he answers, following me inside the door. “Got any leftover chicken parmigiana from the other night?”

The lock clicks behind us and I blush at the reminder of the night he had me tied to my headboard. How can I not? I’d love to recreate that scene right now with him—this time, naked and panting. “No. Didn’t you eat anything at O’Toole’s?”

“Nah. Too busy talking to people. You know how it goes.”

“Life of the party,” I reply, laughing. “No, actually I have no clue how that goes.”

His smile is lazy as he looks at me. “True. You’re a bit of a wallflower at these things,” he answers, adding, “Cutest wallflower I’ve ever seen though,” when he sees my face fall slightly.

My eyes widen at the compliment. “You’ve been drinking too much.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because that’s the only time you compliment me like that.” I walk toward the kitchen and pull a beer out of the fridge. No need to ask him what kind he wants. I already know, like I know so many things about him.

But for all that I know, I still can’t even imagine how he’d feel inside of me. And ever since I felt his lips on mine a few days ago, I can’t help wondering.

“So, if you’ve got tomorrow morning off, do you want to go across the Bay Bridge one more time, for old time’s sake?” His smile teases me as he says it.

“For an omelet at Marigold’s? You know I’ll never pass that up. If you’re driving,” I specify, not that I have to.

He sits at my small kitchen table as I bring him a beer.

“You don’t want to sit on the sofa?” I ask, wondering how the hell I can seduce him sitting at a kitchen table. Because that’s what I’m planning tonight, I realize, the idea of it heating me from the inside out.

Seduction in the first-degree.