“You don’t believe me,” he said, his face and voice revealing absolutely nothing.
“Of course I don’t believe you,” she snapped. “Mason, on Friday your brother had to practically beg you to talk to me. And today you’re telling me you want me . . . sexually?”
Mason tried to bite back a grin at the quaint phrasing and the hushed way she said sexually, like the word was dirty and forbidden. He shouldn’t have said what he did, but her wholly accurate assessment of his personality had sent him into defense mode, and he had lashed back with a truth that he knew would make her uncomfortable. He had also known she wouldn’t believe him for a second. Still, to have that knowledge confirmed was annoying as hell. He wanted her to believe him, tell him she wanted him back, and then he wanted them to go upstairs and have hot, raunchy sex. The kind that was wet and steamy and dirty and left you wrung out and strung out afterward.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” he said, injecting a healthy dose of sangfroid into his voice. He didn’t want to scare her off completely.
“Well, I’m telling you I don’t believe you, and I told you before, I don’t appreciate being the butt of someone’s stupid joke.”
This again. He should have known she’d think he was having a bit of fun at her expense. The fact that she knew that Spencer had practically forced him to speak to her on Friday didn’t help his cause either.
Mason knew he was foolish to actually verbalize his desire. Better to stick to the “rules,” no matter how crazy they seemed.
“Sorry I upset you,” he muttered. “I guess I overstepped a little.”
“A little?”
“A lot.” His admission mollified her for a moment, and she took another gulp of wine.
“I should probably get going,” she said.
“You haven’t even had dessert yet.”
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Look, I’m really sorry about what I said. You just . . .” He shook his head and figured a strictly edited version of the truth would probably be his best defense here. “I didn’t like what you said. About me. It hit too close to home. I often feel like an ungrateful bastard because just when something seems perfect, I find a way to deliberately fuck it up. Vashti seemed perfect for me—gorgeous, intelligent, funny—but when she started talking about moving in together, I called the whole thing off. Said I didn’t love her.”
“Did you love her?” Daisy asked breathlessly, and he shook his head.
“I don’t know. Maybe. It felt like I should. I cared about her.” He didn’t know why he was revealing so much. He was telling her stuff he’d never actually even acknowledged to himself. It was unsettling. “How do we ever really know if what we’re feeling is love?”
She shifted her gaze, and the deliberate furtiveness of the movement caught his attention.
“What about you?” he asked. “Have you ever been in love?”
“No.”
“So much certainty,” he observed. “Your ex-boyfriends couldn’t have been very noteworthy.”
“You could say that.” She was hiding something. He could tell from her rigid posture, her averted eyes, and the tension that radiated from every pore. He didn’t like it. What if she still carried a torch for some past lover? The thought of her in love—whatever the hell that meant—with some undeserving bastard didn’t sit well with him at all. What if it was some guy in town, someone she saw every day? How the hell would she get over him if she saw him all the time?
“Are you still in love with one of them?”
She looked startled by his question. “No. I just told you I’ve never been in love. Why would you ask me that?”
“You’re hiding something,” he pressed, and she threw him a disbelieving glare.
“And that’s the conclusion you’ve leapt to?” Her color was high, her eyes huge as they scowled at him over the rims of her glasses, and even her curls seemed to crackle with annoyance. He beat back a smile; she looked like a hissing kitten.
“So what are you hiding?”
“Nothing.”
“Daisy.”
“It’s none of your damned business.”
“Yes, it is. I’m supposed to know this shit. I haven’t been here for thirteen years, everybody else knows your business, and they’ll know when you’ve kept something from me, and I don’t want to be blindsided with the news that you were once involved with a groomsman at the wedding or something.” It was a paper-thin excuse to pry into her business, but it made her pause for thought.
“I wasn’t,” she said, and he clenched his teeth in frustration.
“It was an example.”
“Mason, there is nothing you need to know, no nasty surprises that will be sprung on you unexpectedly. Okay?”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I can.” She pushed her chair away from the table and got up, clearly dismissing the topic. Frustrated, Mason rubbed his hand over his short hair and squeezed the nape of his neck in an attempt to ward off an incipient headache. God, she was infuriating.
She started to stack empty plates and dishes, and he sighed impatiently.
“Leave it.”
“It’s no problem . . .”
“I said leave it,” he growled, and she jumped, nearly toppling the growing stack of dishes in her hands. She pursed her lips and carefully placed the crockery back on the table.