My mind is blank. Mason Daniel, Mason Daniel, Mason Daniel. I’ve been so focused on Dax Harding that Mason Daniel won’t compute. I force away the mental image of Dax, standing in front of me with his tattooed chest bare and his muscles flexing, and concentrate.
Mason Daniel. The Boston pharmaceutical company, one of my firm’s biggest clients. There’s a big case coming up this week, and Rutger Jones, a senior partner and another supreme douchebag, needed me to assemble the brief. I’d done so, photocopying papers into oblivion, even staying late my last night to make sure it was done.
I type in: I left it on Mr. Jones’ desk on Friday.
A pause. I see the dancing ellipsis, letting me know he’s typing something back. I brace myself for it.
HE DOESN’T HAVE IT. YOU NEED TO GET IT TO HIM.
NOW.
Nice. All caps, so I can feel him yelling at me, even from a few hundred miles away. I wrack my brain, even though shirtless Dax keeps waltzing his way in there, and eventually my mind is playing all sorts of tricks on me because now I can’t even remember going into Rutger Jones’ office at all.
I’d stayed at the office until midnight that night, long after everyone was gone, and I’d been so exhausted I almost fell asleep drooling on my desk. Maybe I’d done all that work and forgotten to put the brief on his desk?
Fear grips me. A lump the size of Texas plants itself in my throat.
I’ll come back and find it, I text back.
Panic. As soon as I finish the text, I open up an internet window on my phone and start checking bus schedules. The only bus depot anywhere near Friesville is in Hampton, the next town over. And shit. It’s Sunday morning, so the bus line is operating at a severely reduced schedule. In fact, there’s only one bus going up there today, in . . . less than an hour.
Still trying to formulate a plan, I shower faster than I’ve ever showered before, throw on one of the other professional dresses I brought with me, my still-quite-squishy wet pumps, and figure I’ll let my hair air dry. Throwing my purse over my shoulder, I race down the hall, staring at the bus schedule, hoping I can find a way to make that all-important Boston bus.
When I’m in the living room, I’m startled by a snore.
I look up, and nearly jump to the ceiling until I realize it’s just my dad. He’s lying on a sheet, on our old flowered sofa, still wearing his running clothes from last night. His face is unshaven and without his glasses, he looks so much younger and more vulnerable.
Is this where he sleeps now?
Suddenly my phone starts to ring. I quickly silence it and my heart jumps into my throat as I realize it’s the same number that called me last night.
Dax.
Why is he calling me? I wonder. I thought, based on the way things ended last night, he’d never call me again. Then I remember he has my car hostage, and this probably has something to do with that.
I duck into the kitchen pantry and close the door. “Hello?”
“Hey,” he says gruffly. “Did I wake you?”
“No,” I say, trying to get a hold of my pulse. Everything happening in Boston suddenly falls away, and I realize my pulse is skittering around in my body at the memory of Dax kissing me, touching me, running his hot tongue down my abdomen . . .
My phone dings again with a message, and all I can think is that it’s got to be Fowler. I check it on the screen and sigh. Good. Let me know when he has it.
No all-caps. Small victory. As much as I want to see where things will go with Dax, I have to get to Boston, stat. “I’m a little busy. Did you need something?” I ask him casually.
“That’s what I called to ask you,” he says. “Did you need your loaner for today?”
I pause, unable to respond. I thought he never wanted to see me again, now that he knew I still had a giant V branded on my forehead. I should’ve realized. This is classic Dax, never doing the expected thing.
And it’s freaking annoying as hell.
“Can you just stop already?” I mutter. “Based on the way you treated me last night, I thought you never wanted to talk to me again.”
I want apologies. I want him to admit he was an asshole. But that’s not Dax. He’s silent for a minute. “So, is that a no?”
Ugh. I gnaw on my lip for a moment, considering my options. I swear, I hate him. Passionately. Too passionately. It was always that way—him getting me incensed and then acting like he had no idea why. I’ve always been shy, but not around him. He pushes my buttons like no one else can.
Before I can reel them in, the words escape my mouth: “Can you get me to Hampton by nine?”
Oh, hell, what did I say that for? My parents will kill me. They can just as easily drive me to the bus station. I don’t need Dax.
“Hampton. Sure. Where at?”
“The bus station. I need to catch a bus to Boston,” I explain, stuffing my bag with granola bars for the trip.