“Why?”
“Because I like caterpillars. I started collecting when I was thirteen, and honestly . . . I think I actually bought only twenty of them myself.” Twenty too many, if you asked Mason. “The rest are gifts from family and friends.” Jesus, there were well over a hundred creepy little people caterpillars in that cabinet. Talk about enabling someone, her family took the cake.
“So where are we going?” she asked, deliberately shifting the topic back to what it was before, and recognizing the stubborn glint in her eyes, Mason allowed it. The caterpillars were a bit out there for him, and he was happy to let it go.
“You don’t want to be surprised?” he asked, answering her question with one of his own, and if her narrowing eyes were any indication, she didn’t appreciate his evasiveness.
“I don’t really care for surprises.”
“You don’t? That’s too bad. What if I told you I had a surprise for you in my pocket?” Her eyes widened, and she made an incredulous half-laughing, half-snorting sound as her gaze drifted south. Mason burst into laughter as she projected her thoughts as clear as a bell. His laughter startled her eyes back to his, and he grinned at her.
“Not the pocket I meant, but I like the way you think,” he teased and watched as her face did that slow burn thing again. He patted his chest, and her eyes were drawn to the breast pocket of his plaid flannel shirt. “This pocket.”
She seemed to forget her embarrassment as her eyes flared with interest.
“What kind of surprise?” she asked, her voice steeped in skepticism.
“The good kind.” Her teeth worried her succulent-looking lower lip while she eyed his pocket with a mixture of wariness and curiosity. God, that lip . . . the more she nibbled at it the fuller, pinker, and more moist it became. He longed for another taste of those plump lips but viciously tamped down the urge to drag her into his arms and kiss the holy hell out of her.
“Show me,” she said, after a great deal of deliberation. He leaned toward her, close enough to smell the fresh fragrance of her shampoo.
“Come and get it.” He expected her to retreat at the challenge, but she surprised him when—after one last nervous nibble at her lips—she reached out toward his pocket. His breath snagged and his heart stuttered in his chest when he felt her questing fingers hesitantly dip into his pocket. The first tentative foray didn’t yield any results, and she dug in a little deeper, creating friction on his hypersensitive nipple. He unsuccessfully bit back a groan, and her eyes snapped up to his, her face so close he could count each individual freckle on her nose and see the pale-blue striations in her gray eyes. He shifted his coffee mug a little to the left in an effort to conceal the growing bulge in the crotch of his jeans and fought to keep his face impassive and his breathing even. Her eyes dropped from his, back to where her small hand was fumbling around in his pocket, and the tip of her tongue crept out as she focused on what she was doing. There was an adorable little wrinkle of concentration between her eyes as she managed to snag what was in his pocket, only to drop it again. She finally managed to get a proper grip on it and dragged it out with a triumphant whoop.
Daisy stared down at the item in her palm in confusion. She still felt hot and flustered by his nearness and that damned delicious scent of his, so her brain was a bit delayed, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was she had in her hand. It looked like an earring, a really ugly earring. It was spherical in shape, weighty, and seemed to be made of lead. She turned it over and bent her head to examine it more closely.
“It’s a sinker.” Mason’s warm breath stirred her hair as he spoke, and she repressed a shiver at the intimate sensation.
“What do you use it for?”
“Fishing.”
“Fishing for what?” she asked stupidly and looked up just in time to catch a grin flirting with the corners of his mouth.
“For fish.”
“I don’t . . .” Her words faded as comprehension dawned and horror replaced confusion. “No.”
“The blacktail are really biting at Kleinbekkie this week,” he said, and his complete butchering of the Afrikaans word, which meant “small mouth,” momentarily distracted Daisy. It was endearing how bad the pronunciation was, and she guessed his grasp of the language was probably as terrible as hers. Kleinbekkie was the smaller river mouth just outside town, and it was a popular local spot for fishing, picnicking, and surfing. “I thought we could catch some for lunch.”
“No. This is why I hate surprises, see? This is the worst surprise ever.”
“It’s actually more an IOU at this point,” he confessed, and she glared at him. He wrong-footed her at every turn, and she had given up on understanding him.
“What?”
“You’re right, the weather is too damned terrible for fishing today. I was hoping it’d clear up a little overnight, but—while I wouldn’t mind going out there today—it’s not ideal for a novice. So I figure we’d take a rain check on the fishing and do it some other time.”
“Try never.”
“Come on, Daisy, you’ll like it.”
“Doubtful. And if you knew the weather was too bad for fishing, why did you drag me out of bed at this ungodly hour anyway?”
“I thought we could do something else.”
“Like what?”
“Dunno.”
“You’re a very frustrating man.”
“So I’ve been told. What do you want to do today? And don’t say go back to bed.”
“Well, I’m awake now, aren’t I?” she pointed out huffily.
“Want to go somewhere for breakfast?”
“Nothing’s open yet,” she groused, and he shrugged.
“Not here, but I know this great place about forty minutes away.”