by Amelia Wilde
With his much longer legs, he closed the distance between them easily. Soon he was close enough to hear Lark’s swiftly drawn breath, to catch the whiff of wood smoke and flowers that clung to her clothes.
“Lark, stop!” he begged.
“Go away,” she panted, picking up her pace.
“I just want to talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you!”
“Well, I have a lot of things to say to you,” Mason said, reaching out to catch her upper arm between his fingers.
His touch was light—he’d seen too many men rough up his mother to even think about using his strength against a woman—but Lark pulled away like he’d captured her in a vice grip. The jerk of her arm was so intense, it threw her off balance, sending her tripping over her feet and falling to the ground.
Mason was moving too fast to catch her, too fast even to stop his own forward momentum without losing his balance. He froze, arms reeling, falling forward a second later, landing with an oomph on top of the only girl he’d ever loved.
Their legs tangled and their stomachs brushed and Lark’s breath stirred the hair hanging into his face. Their eyes met, and for a moment all the anger and misery and uncertainty vanished, leaving only longing in its place.
She still wanted him; he could read it in her eyes. It was darker out here than under the lanterns, but the moon was half full. There was more than enough light to see that Lark still felt the electricity that had always flared between them.
She wanted him, and God, how he wanted her. He’d never wanted anyone or anything as much as he wanted Lark. He’d fantasized about her so often during his last year in medical school that he’d had trouble sleeping most nights. He couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like when they were finally together, when he could undress the girl he loved piece by piece until she was completely bared to him.
“Get off of me,” Lark whispered, but the heat was gone from her tone.
“Will you let me talk?” Mason asked, not moving a muscle. He didn’t want this to end just yet. He wanted to stay this close to her, close enough for her warmth to penetrate his clothes, for the familiar smell of her to swirl through his head, bringing back so many memories of this girl, his girl, the one he never should have left behind.
“I’m not interested in anything you have to say,” Lark said, eyes darting back and forth, refusing to meet his.
“How can you know if you don’t give me a chance?” he asked, gently.
“Just…I…” Her breath rushed out as she brought her hands to his chest and pushed. “Give me some space. Please.”
Mason pulled away, sitting back on his heels in the grass, feeling the loss of her closeness like a punch in the gut. For all he knew that might have been the last time he’d ever touch Lark.
He had been worried about her being with someone else—which might still be the case, though he didn’t see a ring on her finger—not that she would hate him so much she wouldn’t even give him a chance to explain. The Lark he’d known was a forgiving person. She didn’t hold a grudge. She didn’t even get mad that often, and when she did, her anger passed like a summer storm, in and out in an afternoon, leaving the air cleaner and fresher when it was gone.
But this wasn’t the Lark he’d known, he thought, as he watched her sit up and brush the grass off her dress. This was the Lark he’d left behind, and she might be a different woman altogether.
The realization made him sad, sadder than he would have imagined he could be sitting this close to the one person who had always made him smile, even on his worst days.
“Listen, Mason,” Lark said, curling her legs beneath her and smoothing her dress. “I don’t know why you’re here. I know Lisa didn’t invite you. At least she better not have invited you because if she did I swear I—”
“She didn’t. I came as Lana’s plus one,” Mason said.
“Lana Tate?” Lark’s eyebrow arched. Lana had gone to school with Lark and was one of the few people on Lark’s Undesirable list. Mason thought it had something to do with Lark’s younger sister, but wasn’t exactly sure.
“I ran into her at the Fill Up Stop this afternoon and she asked what I was doing tonight,” Mason hurried to explain. “Then she mentioned the wedding and I knew I’d see you here and I thought…”
“You thought what?” Lark crossed her arms and scowled, but Mason could see the panic in her eyes.
She was so far from happy to see him that it would have been laughable if his heart weren’t being ripped in two.
“I made a mistake. A terrible, stupid mistake,” he said, words rushing out. The sooner he told Lark the truth, the sooner she could at least consider forgiving him. “I never should have left. I mean, I never should have proposed to you in the first place, but I really never should have—”
Lark let out a strangled sound, somewhere between a laugh and cry of pain, and struggled to her feet.
3
“Wait,” Mason said, cursing himself for being unable to find the right words.
She lifted her chin. “I don’t want to wait, I want you to go away.”
“Please, that came out wrong.” Mason took her hand and held tight. “I shouldn’t have asked you to marry me because I was too mixed up to promise the rest of my life to another person. After all the stuff with my mom and my uncle…I just… I wouldn’t have been able to make it work in the long run, no matter how hard I would have tried.”
Mason paused, encouraged by the slight softening around Lark’s eyes.
“My baggage weighed more than I did,” he continued. “We didn’t have a chance back then. But…”
He took a breath, fighting for the courage to be honest with Lark. “I’ve been working on myself a lot since I left. It was slow going at first but… I’ve tried my best to become a better man, a stronger man, a person worthy of someone like you.”
“You were always worthy,” Lark whispered, tears filling her eyes. “I…I loved you.”
“And I loved you,” Mason said, pulse racing as he took her other hand in his. “I still love you. If you’ll give me another chance, Lark, I swear I’ll prove it to you. I promise I’ll make you happy.”
Lark blinked, sending twin streams of water rolling down her flushed cheeks, but she didn’t say a word. Not a word, for a moment so long and strained Mason’s throat began to ache.
“Please,” he said. “You’re the only reason I came back here, the whole reason I took a job with a practice in Atlanta instead of somewhere else. Just give me a chance, Lark. I swear I won’t let you down this time. I swear it.”
Lark shook her head, and gently, but firmly, withdrew her hands from his.
“Is there someone else?” Mason asked after a moment, beginning to feel stupid on his knees. He stood stiffly, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“No.” Lark sniffed and swiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’ve dated a few people, but nothing serious.”
“Then can’t you at least try to forgive me?” Mason asked.
“Forgive you?” Lark laughed beneath her breath. “It’s been four years without a word, Mason! Without a phone call or an email or a letter or anything. For all I knew you were dead.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry, but—”
“No, I do know.” Lark lifted her chin, staring him straight in the eyes. “If we’d had this conversation a few weeks after you left, or even a few months after you left, things might have been different. You don’t know how many times I dreamed of you saying everything you just said to me back then.”
She stopped, licking her lips and pressing them tightly together, obviously fighting for control. “But it’s too late now,” she went on in a softer voice. “Too much time has passed, and I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t believe in happily ever after. At least not for you and me.”
Mason swallowed. Hard. “What about second chances? Do you believe in those?”
Lark lifted one bare shoulde
r, one bare, beautiful shoulder Mason would never press his lips to again if he couldn’t convince her to change her mind.
“Maybe, in certain situations, but this…” She sighed. “It’s too painful, Mason. I can’t go there with you. I don’t want to, and even if I did, I’m just too busy. I have my family and a new niece and a business to run. This coming week will be the first time I’ve taken a vacation in over a year. I just don’t—”
“You’re leaving town?” Mason asked.
That would be his luck, booking a weeklong stay at a motel in Summerville during the one week Lark wouldn’t be there.
Lark shook her head. “I’m staying here. I’m exhausted, and tonight has only made me more exhausted. I just want to go home and sleep for two or three days and forget this conversation ever happened.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Mason agreed, her words sparking something inside of him. “You should go home and rest, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at six.”
Lark blinked. “What?”
“Let’s forget this conversation ever happened,” Mason said. “Let’s forget everything that’s ever happened between us. Give me one week to remind you why we should be together.”
“Mason, I can’t—”
“One week, seven dates. Seven dates where you really give me—us—a chance,” Mason said, thoughts buzzing as he prepared to lay down his bet. “And if by this time next Saturday you still want nothing to do with me, then I swear I’ll leave Summerville and never bother you again.”
“And if I say no?” Lark asked, cocking her head. Her mouth had a hard set to it, but something in her eyes told him she was considering his offer.
“Then I’ll keep begging,” Mason said, stepping closer, until Lark was forced to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. “I’ll send you flowers and follow you around town on my hands and knees like a stray dog. I’ll sleep on the sidewalk outside your house, and wake you up every morning with love songs I wrote for you on my guitar.”
Lark’s lips curved on one side. “Don’t suppose your singing voice has improved in the past four years?”
Mason shook his head. “Nope.”
Lark sighed, looking past him to where the wedding reception was still in full swing, her expression wistful. An upbeat song had just given way to a slow song, an old country ballad about forever love that made him want to pull Lark into his arms to dance. But he couldn’t. Not yet, maybe not ever, unless…
“Do we have a deal?” he asked in a hushed voice.
Lark sighed again before shifting her gaze back to his with a businesslike nod. “Pick me up at my parents’ house. Tomorrow night at six.”
Mason couldn’t stop the smile from breaking out across his face. “Thank you. I promise you won’t be—”
“Seven days,” Lark interrupted. “One week. That’s it, and when I tell you to go next Saturday, you go, and you don’t ever come back and do this to me again.”
“Unless you tell me to stay.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lark said. “I told you, Mason, I’m not the same person, and from the sound of it, neither are you.”
And then she turned and walked away, before he could ask what she meant with that parting remark, before he could promise her that he’d always bet on her.
Always.
4
Date One
“This is crazy,” Aria said over her shoulder as she wrangled another bite of smashed carrots into her baby’s mouth.
Feeding Felicity was a skill only her mama and grandmama had mastered. When Lark tried to feed her eight-month-old niece, she inevitably ended up with way more baby food on her shirt than Felicity did in her stomach.
“It’s not crazy, it’s romantic!” Melody swirled through the room, her chiffon dress with the pink flowers flaring around her, making the baby laugh.
Melody’s boyfriend was picking her up at six-thirty. She had asked Brian to swing by her parents’ place, instead of her apartment, so she could provide moral support to Lark while Lark waited patiently for Mason to arrive.
While Lark paced the floor and chewed her nails down to nubs is more like it.
She couldn’t ever remember being this nervous. Never. Not even the first time she’d gone out with Mason, when he was twenty-four and in med school, and she was just a nineteen-year-old community college drop out working at the diner in downtown Summerville.
She had known of Mason since she was little—known he had a rough home life, but was smart as anything, played first string on the basketball team, and was going to college in Atlanta—but it wasn’t until he started coming in for breakfast at the diner every Saturday that Lark really got to know him. To know his unique mix of humor and intensity, the way he could make her laugh out loud one minute, then steal her breath away with one of his magnetic stares the next. To know his easy smile and good heart, the one that made him really listen when people told him about their problems.
He was the one who had convinced her to go to culinary school instead of taking her dad up on his offer to manage one of the family BBQ shacks. Mason had been positive she could make her dream of working as a chef at a fancy restaurant a reality.
Her dreams had changed over time, but she might still be working at Donut Time Diner if Mason hadn’t come into her life. As much as he’d hurt her, he’d also helped her. She told herself that’s why she had said yes to his bargain, out of respect for the times he’d been there for her.
It had nothing to do with the way her pulse leapt when he touched her, or the way her lips tingled when she said his name. Nothing to do with the way her entire body had felt like it was catching fire when he lay on top of her in the field last night.
She had given up waiting for marriage a few years ago, when she began to suspect marriage wasn’t going to happen for her, at least not anytime soon, but she’d never felt half as turned on by sleeping with another man as she felt lying fully clothed with Mason.
He was…electric. He always had been. Kissing him was like being shot through with lightning and loving every minute of it.
“Well, I think she should have told Mason to go straight to heck and rot there,” Aria said, pulling Lark from her dangerous thoughts. “And if that didn’t work, she should have applied for a restraining order.”
“It’s Mason, Aria. He would never hurt Lark,” Melody said.
“He’s already hurt her,” Aria said, meeting Lark’s eyes across the living room. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she added in a softer voice. “We can call Uncle Jim and have him and the cousins come over and escort Mason back to his hotel, or wherever he’s staying while he’s in town.”
Uncle Jim was their go-to for parental-type intervention at the moment. Mom and Dad March were out of town on a two week cruise, a last minute trip Lark suspected was spurred more by Mom’s need to get away from Aria than her profound longing to see the Alaskan wilderness.
Mom loved all her daughters, but she and Aria had been butting heads since Aria moved back home. Mom loved having Felicity around, but her eldest daughter’s sour attitude rubbed Sue March the wrong way. Mom was like Melody, a romantic who believed life was a beautiful adventure waiting to be twirled through.
Mom was the one who had refused to let Lark wallow in despair when Mason left. She had insisted Lark think of something she was dying to do and then helped her daughter become so immersed in her new project that Lark had no time for moping or sourness.
That project had been Ever After Catering.
Only Lark knew the name was completely sarcastic. Or had been at the time. After Mason left she’d had about as much faith in happily ever after as the tooth fairy.
But now…
But now, nothing.
You can’t trust him. He proved that.
If you fall for him again, you’ll just be giving heartbreak a handwritten, engraved invitation.
“Well?” Aria asked, reaching for her back pocket where her cell phone always lived. “A
m I calling Uncle Jim?”
“No.” Lark shook her head. “It’s only seven days. I can put up with anything for seven days, and then he’ll be out of my life for good. No more surprises.”
“A life without surprises…” Melody sighed and sank into Dad’s overstuffed armchair. “That sounds like the worst kind of life there is.”
“There are lots of worse kinds of life,” Aria said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes that made Felicity laugh again. “Like life with cancer. Or war.”
“Life with leprosy,” Lark added.
“Life with chronic body odor,” Aria countered.
“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing sore on your face,” Lark said, ignoring Melody’s insistence that this game wasn’t funny.
“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing face sore and a shriveled arm stump that smells like beef jerky,” Aria said, making Melody moan and Lark laugh until her side hurt.
She was still laughing when the doorbell rang, and smothered her happiness like a blanket over a fire.
It was six o’clock. Mason was here.
5
Fifteen minutes later—after Mason received a warm greeting from Melody, a squeal of approval from Felicity, and a cool “have her back by ten” from Aria—Lark was out the door, tucked into Mason’s shiny new car, and headed toward downtown Summerville on her second, first date with Mason.
It was…surreal.
The car was so new it still smelled like plastic and chemicals and the dashboard gleamed like the cockpit of a freshly detailed racecar. It was so different from the old pickup Mason used to drive that, when Lark first slid inside, it was almost possible to believe she was going out with a different person.
But then she caught a whiff of his Mason smell—that spicy, soapy, pine tree and seashore smell that had always made her feel warm all over—lurking beneath the new car stink and the memories came flooding back. Smelling the place where Mason’s shoulder met his neck used to be enough to make her dizzy, to make her entire body ache with wanting him closer.