“Nonsense, we’re headed that way anyway.” Daisy clambered into the seat gracelessly, and when her half-frozen fingers fumbled with the seat belt, he reached over to help, enveloping her in his warmth and masculine scent. As he fastened it for her, Peaches’s wet little head popped out from beneath Daisy’s coat, and she took a nip at Mason’s fingers while he clipped the belt in.
“No!” he growled at Peaches, and her dog reconsidered her attitude and licked his knuckles instead. He raised his startling green eyes to hers, eyebrows raised quizzically. “Is this thing really a dog? It looks like a half-drowned hamster to me.”
“Sh,” Daisy hissed. “You’ll hurt her feelings. She’s a toy Pom. Give her a break; she’s drenched and not looking her finest right now.” The same could be said for her owner, and his eyes seemed to warm with laughter as he acknowledged her unspoken words.
“Coop’s wet too,” he pointed out. “And he still looks like a dog.”
“Well, Coop has natural good looks; sadly it doesn’t come that easily to Peaches.”
“Well, she’s a feisty little thing, so hopefully she knows that a big personality is as attractive as all the other surface fluff.”
Daisy wasn’t at all sure they were discussing the dogs anymore, and she wasn’t comfortable with the perceived subtext. She loathed being told that she had a good personality, and that was what it felt like Mason was doing here. Girls with “good personalities” never got the guy. They were never the romantic leads. They were always just the comic relief and the best friend. Daisy was so sick of being that girl, and she would rather not hear that Mason Carlisle saw her in the exact same light as everyone else.
Then again, she could be reading too much into his words, and he could just be talking about Peaches.
“She’s cold,” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “We should get her home and dried off.”
“Of course,” he said after a weighty silence. “We’ll have you home in no time.” He pulled away from the curb, and the short drive to her house was conducted in silence. When he slid to a stop in front of her gate a couple of minutes later, she smiled at him.
“Thank you so much. In this weather, it would probably have taken us much longer to get back home.”
“Always a pleasure.”
“We’re lucky you came along.”
“I’m sorry about splashing you back there; I wasn’t expecting any pedestrians out in this downpour. I wouldn’t have seen you if not for all that pink.”
“Why were you out in this?” She couldn’t contain her curiosity anymore, and the question just slipped out.
“Cooper and I went for a run on the beach. We would have gone earlier, but I decided to wait until the rain let up a bit.” He went jogging in this weather? On the beach? Who did that? Even if it wasn’t raining, it was still cold and windy. Conditions weren’t ideal.
“Jogging on the beach? But it must have been pretty rough out there.”
“Yeah, there’s a helluva storm surge. I cut our run short because I was concerned Cooper would try to take a dip and be pulled out to sea.” Daisy shuddered at the thought. “He stayed well away from the water’s edge, though. I mean, he usually loves the ocean, but I think it freaked him out today. Still, I wasn’t going to take the risk, so we left just before this downpour started.”
“Well, Peaches and I both thank you for your timely rescue.”
“Coop and I are always happy to rescue pretty damsels.” She screwed up her nose at that.
“Cooper’s been hiding from Peaches since the moment we climbed into this car,” she pointed out, glancing back at the dog. He was pressed as far back as he could get and giving her some serious whale eye. As if sensing his fear, Peaches poked her tiny black nose out and kept up an unrelenting series of kittenish growls. Poor Cooper looked terrified.
“Peaches, behave,” Daisy admonished. “I’m sorry, she’s usually a lot friendlier than this. She loves other dogs and loves people, but she must be in a bad mood because of the weather or something. I’ve never seen her behave like this before.”
Mason looked skeptical but refrained from commenting.
“So, I’ll pick you up tonight at seven?” he suddenly said, and Daisy blinked at him for an uncomprehending moment.
“Uh . . .” She was aware of her mouth opening and closing and knew she probably looked like a fish out of water. “About that . . .”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he interrupted, his voice mild despite the profanity, and her mouth snapped shut. “No backing out, Daisy.”
“But it . . .”
“Seven. Let’s see how tonight goes and reevaluate after that, okay?”
“It was a stupid idea.”
“Maybe. But I’m still happy to do it and make it convincing. If nothing else, we’ll have a nice evening out and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Okay.” It was far from “okay,” but she’d set this whole stupid thing in motion, and now it felt like a runaway train that was building momentum as it headed toward a brick wall.
“Great.” He watched while she climbed out of his stupidly high car. “See you later.”
He continued to observe as she walked up the path and unlocked the door, and when she turned to wave at him, he drove off with a cheerful honk of the horn. It was only when she was inside that she realized that she should probably have insisted on driving herself tonight. That way she would be in control of what time she left.
Just another stupid mistake to add to the long list of colossal mistakes that she had made over the last twenty-four hours.
After blow-drying Peaches and taking another shower to warm herself up, Daisy finally succumbed to the inevitable and called Daff back. Her sister’s messages hadn’t let up at all, and having her phone buzz every five minutes was aggravating.
“Daisy?” Daff sounded out of breath when she answered her phone, and Daisy frowned.
“Are you jogging?” What was it with people running or walking in this weather today?
“What? In this, are you crazy?” Her sister was still puffing slightly.
“So why are you out of breath?”
“I was doing Pilates. Stop trying to distract me and tell me what happened between you and Mason Carlisle last night.”