“Where were you?”
“I told you; I was at home, writing a paper.” Yeah, yeah, that was a total lie. I’d finished that paper last night before my mother had called. But I couldn’t tell him about Eva. She hadn’t even told Alec or her parents yet.
Finding the punch mix sitting in a pitcher in the fridge, I grabbed it to pour it into the bowl as I rattled on. “It’s actually a pretty interesting subject for my Brit Lit class. We had to read Chaucer in Middle English, which totally sucked monkey butt, and then translate it into today’s English. But let me tell you, The Canterbury Tales is not just some sweet, innocent fairytale. I mean, I’m still pissed the rapist ended up in a happily ever after romance, but—”
“I don’t care about your paper, okay.” Mason threw his hands into the air. “My sister is about to cry in there. I wanted this to be the best birthday ever…but she hates it.”
My mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God. Is it your time of the month, or what? I said I was sorry. I honestly lost track of time. And it will be the best birthday party ever. I swear. We just need to get past that first stage of awkwardness and everything will be fine. Trust me.”
Running his hands through his hair, Mason watched me begin to cut the cake. Since it didn’t have any cool design on it, or even an awesome slogan like Happy Birthday, Sarah, I assumed it was safe to cut.
“I’m sorry,” he immediately relented, clutching the back of the kitchen chair and bending forward to blow out a breath. “It’s just…After that thing with Eva this morning, I wasn’t sure if you were going to come. Then you were late, and I thought—”
“Hey.” I paused after sinking my knife into a thick layer of frosting. Keeping my voice gentle, I set the knife aside and reached for his hand, forcing him to look at me. “Don’t worry about Eva, okay? We talked. She isn’t going to go to the police. I swear to you, you don’t have to worry about her.”
His eyes were still slightly bloodshot from his night of gin. They penetrated me with meaning as he squeezed my fingers. “That wasn’t the part I was worried about.”
I frowned, trying to remember what other part there had been, and I realized he must mean the part where Eva had told him he wasn’t good enough for me.
I let go of his hand to slap his shoulder. “Oh, whatever. You know you can’t get rid of me that easily. I’m going to be that annoying friend who never leaves you alone.”
His shoulders relaxed as he watched me return to cutting the cake. But his eyes remained tormented. “Promise?”
I grinned and winked. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
He snorted at my joke, but the tension in his shoulders settled. For a microsecond, anyway. Then he winced. “That’s not all. Mom went and invited our landlady to the party. And she said yes.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I started, scooping up the first sliced piece to wiggle it onto a plate. Then it struck me. I glanced at him. “Wait. Is this the same landlady who was your first—”
I broke off as he seared me with a threatening glare.
“Right,” I finished slowly. “Well…this should be fun.”
I couldn’t wait to meet his cherry-popping, cougar pimp landlady again. Said no one ever.
Mason spun away to pace the kitchen, much the same way he’d paced my living room the night before. He even ran his hands through his hair, making it all sexy and tousled, which wouldn’t do. I so did not want the cougar to see him looking sexy and tousled.
“I hate it when she comes over,” he ranted quietly. “She always manages to find a way to corner me somewhere and talk. It makes my skin crawl.”
Grabbing his arm when he passed, I paused in my slicing duties to pat his hair back into place. He was still too sexy for my comfort, but his locks no longer held that just-rolled-out-of-bed look. Standing passively before me, he let me groom him as his eyes ran over my face.
“Do you want me to protect you from the mean old cougar?” I asked sympathetically.
He dropped his head and leaned in toward me as if he wanted to rest his face on my shoulder. “Yes.”
“Done.” I grinned and licked frosting off the butter knife.
He glanced up and his lips quirked with amusement. “You got a little something.” Stepping closer, he reached out and gently rubbed his thumb slowly—oh, my God, so agonizingly, deliciously slowly—over the corner of my lip. When he withdrew his hand, there was a dab of pink frosting on his finger.
Feeling a little breathless and dazed, I flicked out my tongue to the spot where I could still feel an echo of his touch. I was tempted to dip up a finger full of more frosting straight off the top of the cake and intentionally smear it all over my mouth just so he’d touch me like that again. But I was a good girl. Drawing in a shuddered breath, I watched him stick his thumb into his mouth and suck the icing away.