“I already told you. Nothing conclusive yet.”
“I don’t mean the investigation. What about the staff, how are they handling the changes?” Patrick had taken a personal interest in all his staff, each one handpicked for their position. In their own way they were an extension of his family, and he respected everyone who worked for him accordingly.
“Pretty well. There’s been a bit of confusion but they’re all keen to save their jobs. I had a meeting this week with the core team to discuss options.”
“Without me?”
“Obviously.”
“I should have been there.” She bit her lip, forcing back the words that begged to be spoken. When Patrick had died so suddenly, the staff had turned to her for guidance within the company. With both of them gone it would be like sailing a ship without a skipper. Or, at the very least, with a man at the helm they probably had genuine reason to fear. If it became Mason’s intention to merge the two companies at least half of her staff’s positions would go. Worse, if he found the company was unsustainable, everyone would lose their job. “Are you talking redundancies yet?”
“Hopefully not at all. Once the audit is complete we’ll know better where we stand. Suffice to say, whatever put Davies Freight in the position it’s in appears to have stagnated.” He threw her a telling glance.
“I suppose you think that’s because I’m not there.”
“Looks that way.”
“Evan’s not there either,” Helena hastened to point out, trying to ignore the chill that swept her skin. She’d battled over the past few weeks to find the source of the problem, but it appeared too deeply entrenched in the system. Evan’s flashy lifestyle had pointed the finger firmly in his direction and she was certain he was the culprit. That, combined with his sudden desire to sell after Patrick died, supported her theory. Somehow he’d gotten in too deep and need a large cash influx fast. And now he had it, from Mason.
“Worried I’m catching up to your schemes, Helena?”
“No! When will you understand? It’s not me that’s under question here. It’s Evan.”
“Funny, that’s what he implied about you before accepting my cheque.”
“How can you still believe him over me?”
Mason turned into her driveway and pulled the car up to a halt at her front door.
He sighed and turned off the motor, then rested his fisted hands on the steering wheel. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Helena.”
Finally. A chink in his armour. Helena would’ve rejoiced in his indecision if for one second she thought it would do her any good. Instead, that one small indication of frailty, of uncertainty, made her wonder if she shouldn’t be even more worried than before. Always, Mason had been steadfast. Focussed. Determined. She reached out a hand and rested it on his. The warmth of his skin was instantly absorbed into hers and sent a spreading heat through her arm.
“Believe the facts. Believe the truth.” She squeezed his tightly fisted fingers gently. “Please, believe me.”
Seven
The air between them crackled with tension as her words hovered before fading away to nothing. She’d had absolutely no impact on him if his expression was anything to go by.
Mason listened to the earnest tone in her voice. Any other man would capitulate at this point, he was certain. Any other man but him. He’d been victim to the honeyed suggestions of another lying female before and the fallout had been devastating. It had set him apart from his family and put him on his solitary road to success. His elder brother, Declan, had branched out on his own—away from the umbrella of their father’s company—but even he still had more in common with the old man than he realised. Of course Connor had stayed within the family fold once he’d attained his law degree. He’d been too young, and Declan too knowing, to fall for the attention teasingly scattered Mason’s way by Melanie, his father’s much younger mistress.
No, it was only him. The black sheep of the family. The loner. That was probably what had made him a prime target for Melanie’s manipulation of a teenage boy’s wild crush. For the devastation it had wrought on his relationship with his dad. No, he wouldn’t believe Helena Davies. Not until he had quantifiable proof that she was as innocent as she claimed.
“Mason?” She broke into his thoughts.
“What?”
“Would you like to come in for coffee before you head back?”
“Sure.” He clamped down his surprise at her sudden offer. She’d avoided all contact with him this past week, now she was inviting him inside the house. In itself, that made him suspicious. So he’d play her game. As the saying went, “Keep Your Friends Close. Keep Your Enemies Closer.”
Mason’s shoulders stiffened as they entered through the ornately carved front door and into the tiled entranceway. He almost expected Patrick to come through from the formal sitting room area, booming his welcome. God, he missed him.
“It’s almost like he’s still here, isn’t it?” Helena spoke softly, a thread of tears in her voice. “I feel the same way every time I come through that door.”
“Yeah. He’s kind of hard to forget.”
They walked into the kitchen in silence.
“How did you meet Patrick?” Helena asked.
“He never told you?”
“At the wedding, when I saw you standing there…well, suffice to say I never asked.” Helena bent her head as she filled the jug at the kitchen sink, her hair obscuring her expression.
Mason would have liked to have seen her face right at this minute. He’d lay odds it was a darn sight more expressive than it had been that afternoon when she’d come floating down the aisle of the cathedral, an ethereal vision of beauty. A beauty that belied the bedraggled creature he’d pulled from certain death only hours before. The calm serenity on her face at complete odds with the driving passion of her body as she’d ridden him in the darkest hours of the night.
The memory of that passion stirred him anew, making his skin heat with need and his body tighten with a coiling hunger that whorled deep inside.
“Milk?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Just a bit, thanks. We met when I came out of the army. I responded to a call for owner drivers at the time. I was young, full of balls and bursting to make my own mark on the world.” He laughed, a short harsh sound that had nothing to do with humour. “I didn’t even have my own truck. I rolled up to the depot with nothing but a dream and a plan. Anyone else would have sent me on my way, or laughed so hard their gut would’ve burst, but not Patrick. No, he listened. Then he outlined a plan where I could do exactly what I wanted to do. What I needed to do.”
To his horror, his voice broke on the last words. For a moment he was that defensive young man once more, searching for a means by which he could purge his anger and disappointment. He cleared his throat before continuing.
“Anyway, he made things happen for me.”
“Mason, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“He meant so much to you and I took him from you, didn’t I? If I hadn’t slept with you that night, you would have seen more of him, spent more time with him. Heaven knows, maybe he’d even have listened to you instead of ignoring me when I asked him to cut back on his workload—to start to hand over the reins.”
“And who would he have handed them over to, Helena? Evan? You? It’s no wonder he worked himself to death.” Mason flung an arm out, gesturing toward her home and possessions. “He worked for you, for this. For what you wanted.”
“No. No, it wasn’t like that.” Tears glistened in her eyes.
“Wasn’t it? Until he married you he was happy with less.”
“Mason, you know what he was like. Don’t let your bitterness toward me cloud your memory of Patrick. He was the most generous of men. Look at yourself. Look at what he did for you. Can you honestly say you’d be where you are now if he hadn’t believed in you and what you believed you could achieve? Okay, so maybe you’d have gotten there eventually, but I’d l
ay odds that it wouldn’t have been that fast.” She rubbed at her eyes with a haphazard swipe. Even as she denuded her face of the evidence of her emotion he heard the change of tone in her voice—from soft and cajoling to hard and concise. “Be angry at me, for sure, but don’t take what he gave you away. You both deserve more than that.”
Her words chipped at him like a hammer and chisel, eventually fracturing the shell he worked so hard to build over his wounded heart. The pain of loss swamped him anew, mingled with the anger he’d been harbouring, not only against Patrick for marrying Helena, but also against his father for believing Melanie over him when he’d finally confronted them both. The ensuing argument had seen him become a pariah in his own home, while Melanie had sat like the cat who’d gotten the cream. Smug that her sexual prowess had allowed her to manipulate not only an older man, but his son as well.
That his relationship with Patrick had ended up destroyed as history repeated itself had come as an unbelievable blow. But this time, the responsibility had been his and his alone. He hadn’t been the love-struck teenager of his youth. He’d been a young man on the fast road to success. He could’ve spoken up to stop Patrick from marrying Helena. He’d chosen not to, and then he’d chosen to allow himself to be closed away. His contact with his mentor diminishing each year until they barely saw or spoke to one another anymore in the months leading up to Patrick’s death.
“You’re right.” His voice sounded foreign, strained, even to his own ears.
“Right?”
“Yeah. You took him from me.” He watched as she flinched, her eyes filled with shock at his bluntness. “But worse than that, I let you.”
“I never wanted to come between you. Until I married Patrick I had no idea who you were, or how close you were to him.” He watched as she automatically went through the process of making their coffee, not even aware of what she was doing until a drop of hot water backwashed from the mug she was pouring into and splashed painfully against her hand. She jumped, dropping the mug onto the counter top. As the liquid began to spill across the dark granite surface she reached for a cloth.
“You need to get cold water on that.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Mason rounded the kitchen bench and grabbed her hand, pulling her gently toward the sink and running the cold tap water over her reddening skin. She tried to pull her fingers from his grasp but he held her firmly as the cooling water did its work to pull the heat from the burn.
Helena closed her eyes, compliant at his touch. One minute they were arguing and the next she was the recipient of his care. The paradoxical situation was enough to make her want to weep. But there’d been enough tears. For Patrick, for Brody—and yes, even for Mason. No more. She was wrung out.
“How does that feel now?” His head was so close to hers his breath brushed against her hair, the sensation sending a trickle of awareness like a warning signal down her neck with a shiver.
“Okay. It’s fine. You can let go of me now.”
Their proximity was at once intimate, yet impersonal. His body covered hers from behind, his hips cradling her buttocks. Helena could barely breathe. Every nerve in her body almost painfully attuned to the heat radiating off his body, to the hard-muscled plane of his stomach pressed against her back.
“I—I think that’s enough now,” she murmured. Surely now he’d back off. Stop this mental and physical torment. He was so much bigger than her, so much stronger, although she didn’t feel intimidated as much by his size as she was by her own craving for him. A craving that went soul deep. She prayed he’d back away.
Mason flicked off the tap with his free hand and, still holding her injured one gently in his, reached across for a towel. Helena held her breath, waiting for the sting as he carefully dried the moisture off her hand. But the sting never came.
Instead, she only felt the soft pressure of Mason’s lips. Her fingers curled involuntarily around his, the words she desperately needed to utter—to beg him to stop—stuttered to a halt in her throat. All pain fled as his tongue snaked out and trailed a path along the back of her hand. Her knees turned to water as he turned her wrist and laved his tongue across her pulse point before covering the wetness with his lips.
“Mason?” His name sighed from her, like a plea.
“Yes?”
“Don’t, please don’t. We’re not ready for this. Not now. Not yet.”
“Ready, Helena?” He tilted her chin with one finger so she looked directly up into his eyes, eyes that glowed with a molten heat that seared right through to her core. “When it comes to you, I’m so ready it hurts.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest. This was too much, especially when she was still raw from the painful aftermath of the night when they’d begun to make love, only to have it end with such wrenching desolation. She wasn’t ready. Not for this.
“I can’t. We can’t.”
“Scared?” He bent his head and pressed a kiss against the corner of her mouth before fleetingly darting his tongue across her lower lip.
Terrified was the word that immediately sprang to mind. But for the life of her she couldn’t pull away.
He was like a drug. Once sampled, instantly addicted. Oh sure, she thought she’d conquered this addiction, but twelve years of marriage to a man she’d loved and revered had merely dulled the hunger.
A warning flashed in the back of her mind. Would Mason just use her weakness against her and fling her clawing desire for him back into her face? She had to take the risk, had to give in to the overpowering craving to be with him every way she could.
Mason kissed her again, this time coaxing her lips apart with a pressure that hinted at the power behind his restraint.
“Don’t worry, I’ll hold you.”
She was in his arms and they were ascending the stairs before she realised she’d even so much as whispered the word yes. As he neared her bedroom door she stiffened in his arms.
“No, not in there. Please. One of the guest rooms.”
At her request, Mason strode the short distance down the carpeted hallway, the sound of his footsteps swallowed by the thick pile of the carpet. At the door to the furthermost guest room he slowly lowered her, allowing her to drag against his body as her feet found the floor, making sure she was left with no doubt about his desire for her. His hardness was an insistent pressure against her belly. Knowing she had such an effect on him both empowered and awed her.
This strong, vital man wanted her. He’d wanted her before, that first time, although she had to admit that she had taken advantage of him. Taken his chance to make a choice away from him, almost as she’d taken Patrick away from him. Hearing Mason talk back there in the kitchen finally brought it home to her what a devastating effect she’d had on him. Worse, she’d unwittingly taken from him his chance to be a father to their son.
She owed him—everything—and she had to make it up to him, as much as she could. That making up started now.
Instinctively, Helena reached for the doorknob behind her, turned it, and pushed open the door. She took each of Mason’s hands in her own and, walking slowly backward, she drew him into the room. Mason kicked the door shut behind them. Helena reached for the light switch.
“Don’t.”
“But I want to see you,” she protested softly.
“Leave it off. I want…. I want it to be like the first time.”
“Our first time?”
“Shh.” He grazed her lips with one finger. “No more talking.”
Helena’s eyes hadn’t even adjusted to the dark when his mouth closed on hers, his hand sliding up her back to the nape of her neck and holding her against him as if his life depended on her. She opened her mouth to his assault, and in that moment, opened her heart to him as she’d never allowed herself to ever before. The emotion that turbulently cascaded within her was nothing like the strong secure love she’d shared with Patrick. Love? Was this crazy roller coaster of feeling she went through every time she thought about Ma
son, love?
If it was, she wanted more. More than this moment of lovemaking, this slaking of their lust for one another that even after twelve years burned as hot and vivid as it had that one fateful night. The truth tore through her, sweeping away reason, opening the floodgates of her desire once again.
She lifted her hands to his face, and drove her fingers through his hair, the blunt cut strands grazing against her palms. Every thought, every sensation was heightened. Every particle of her focussed solely on Mason Knight.
Impatient hands pushed at her clothing with scant regard for fasteners or zips. On the periphery of her passion she heard and felt the buttons pop from her knitted top but she didn’t care. She had an agenda of her own—to feel his skin against hers again, as quickly as possible. In moments they were both naked, their bodies aligned against one another. The hard, hot skin of his erection pulsed against her bare belly and a new wave of need radiated through her body from her centre to her very fingertips.
Mason’s hands cupped her buttocks, lifting her hard against him, positioning her so the throbbing tip of him nudged against the slick hot entrance to her body.
A groan tore from his throat, feral in its ferocity. “Protection.”
One word that could halt them in their tracks. One word that should have hammered home its message to her that night in his truck, in the warmth of his comforting embrace. One word she knew she could deliver on this time.
“It’s okay, I’m on the pill.”
For a moment Mason allowed a single stray thought into his head. Patrick had let on one night over drinks that the physical side of his marriage had all but ended. Was it consideration for her husband’s erratic libido, in the belief that he was still fertile, that had her on the pill, or was it so she could keep her lovers without a care for any consequences? He didn’t want to think of that now, now when his body wound ever tighter, demanding release. Demanding surcease from the ever-present tension he knew would only ease if he satisfied his hunger for her. For now it didn’t matter if she had other lovers, so long as he had her.
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