by Anthology
“I think it’s so great that you’re here.”
Mason’s eyebrows rose. “Do you?”
“Of course.”
“Why is that?”
The song changed, almost without them noticing. They continued moving without interruption to their steps or their conversation.
“Yes, definitely. You’re going to add such legitimacy to the project.”
“What do you mean by legitimacy?”
“If you decide to invest, the other guys will surely think harder about it.”
He frowned. “How do you figure that?”
“Well, there’s the fact that you graduated when you were sixteen. You were a genius then, and I doubt you’ve gotten any dumber. Not to mention all the things you’ve accomplished since you left. And you’re a hometown boy like them. They have as much reason to support it as you do.”
Mason leaned in a little closer. “I’m not sure I’m really a hometown boy.”
She looked at his earlobe instead of in his eyes. “Of course you are. You grew up here. You graduated from here—”
Mason pulled her up tightly against his body, eliciting a soft ooph from her and stopping her words.
“You know exactly what I mean, don’t you, Adrianne?” Mason asked quietly. “You did my profile.”
She looked at him. She could lie. She could try to ignore what he was talking about, avoid the discomfort. But she felt herself nod.
“I wasn’t anything special here. I was different but not special. Until the other day when I got the letter. Now they need me…and want me. How could I not come and check it out?”
“And how does it feel?”
“Right now, I’m feeling really good about being back.”
Adrianne didn’t think that they could get any closer together, but Mason somehow pulled her up against every available millimeter of his body. His gaze was hot on her and yet she felt goose bumps all over.
“Oh?” she managed weakly.
“Definitely.”
Yeah, she was feeling pretty good too.
The second slow song ended and the tempo kicked up into a country swing.
They stood, plastered against each other, staring at each other until another couple bumped into them. Mason’s only response was to lift one corner of his mouth, and she saw the knowing look in his eye. Then, without warning, he spun her out away from him, and pulled her back in, but the twirling of the country swing was too upbeat and quickly changing to allow anything more than their hands to connect.
She caught his eye and opened her mouth to say something, anything that might tell him how glad she was that he was here.
But then he was accosted. By a bunch of men.
Adrianne found herself shoved out of the way as five men pushed in and started gushing all over Mason.
“I thought you were dancing with Mason,” Phoebe Sherwood, her best friend, said as Adrianne took the chair next to her at a table on the near side of the dance floor.
Adrianne frowned. “I was.” And wished she still was.
She’d met the guy like a minute ago and she already missed him. Yeah, that was normal.
“You looked like you were having a good time.” Phoebe gave her a wink that said she knew exactly how much Adrianne had been enjoying herself.
Unfortunately, Adrianne was never going to be a champion poker player. She had a hard time keeping her emotions to herself.
“He’s…a good dancer.” It was so stupid that she wanted to say more than that. He was a lot of things. She was sure of it. But that was stupid. She didn’t know the guy at all. Her experience with him was fifteen minutes long. The fact that she felt a connection to him was…stupid.
“He’s a good dancer,” Phoebe repeated with something in her voice that made Adrianne suspicious even though she couldn’t define it.
“Yes. He’s a good dancer,” she said again. She watched Phoebe twirl one of her tight red curls around her finger nonchalantly.
Except that Phoebe was rarely nonchalant. She was nosy and bold and outspoken.
“Grant Hanson is a good dancer.”
Adrianne proceeded cautiously though she couldn’t pinpoint why. “Yes, Grant’s a good dancer.”
“You’ve danced with him a number of times.”
“Two or three,” Adrianne agreed.
“Lance Corbert is a really good dancer. You’ve danced with him too, right?”
There were always weddings and anniversary parties and street dances going on in Sapphire Falls. The people were dance crazy and it was simply easier to join in than fight it. Plus, she liked dancing.
“Yes, I’ve danced with Lance.”
“How about Tim Gordon? He’s a good dancer.”
Adrianne sighed. “Do you have a point?” She knew Phoebe did. She just wondered how long it would take to get to it.
Phoebe leaned in, elbows on the table, and pinned Adrianne with a direct look. “You’ve never looked at Grant, Lance or Tim the way you were looking at Mason while you danced with him.”
Adrianne knew exactly what Phoebe was talking about. And it was stupid.
She decided not to play dumb. Instead, she groaned and slumped down in her chair. “I know.”
“Is it safe to say then, that Mason is a little more than a good dancer?”
He was. In fifteen minutes, the guy had managed to get to her like no one ever had.
It wasn’t like Mason Riley was the first guy she’d looked at like that. It had happened twice before. Because she’d been in major lust. Twice.
“This is really, really bad,” she said, dropping her voice to a loud whisper. “And impossible. I just met him.”
“Chemistry is like that.” Phoebe sat back and took a long drink of her rum and Coke.
“Chemistry?” Adrianne narrowed her eyes. “You know about chemistry?”
Phoebe was single. Had been single as long as Adrianne had known her. She dated. But she was most definitely single.
“Of course I know about chemistry.” Her eyes focused on something, or someone, over Adrianne’s shoulder and Adrianne turned.
Matt Phillips was leaning against the bar directly in Phoebe’s line of sight.
She spun to face her friend. “Matt?”
Phoebe didn’t look all that happy as she shrugged. “You can’t help who you have chemistry with. It just happens.”
“But haven’t you always been friends?”
“Since fourth grade,” Phoebe confirmed.
“And you’ve fallen for him?”
“Since I was a sophomore in high school.”
“Does he know?” Adrianne asked.
“If he does, he’s not doing anything about it.”
“Are you?”
“Doing something about it?”
“Yeah.”
Phoebe swallowed the rest of her drink. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Timing is everything.”
Adrianne sighed. “Yeah. So true. I almost said something stupid to Mason right before the guys cut in. Glad they saved me. And now he’s talking to Hailey, so I’m safe.”
Phoebe’s eyes widened. “What did you almost… Hailey’s talking to him…what…wh—?” She craned her neck, trying to find Mason.
Adrianne laughed at Phoebe’s obvious frustration with not being able to follow both trains of thought at once.
“She found him?” Phoebe finally demanded. She sat straight in her chair and scanned the room. “How long ago?”
“Found him?” Adrianne repeated. “She was standing right there when he made that ridiculous three hundred dollar offer to dance with me.”
“Yeah, but she couldn’t get to him while you were dancing with him. Where are they now?” Phoebe lifted her butt out of her chair a few inches, trying to see over the people at the bar.
“Right after the guys interrupted our dance, she pulled him over to the bar. They’ve been sitting there ever since.”
“Holy shit, Adrianne. We can’
t let her do that.”
Adrianne frowned and swirled the water in her glass. “This is Hailey, remember? Everyone lets her do whatever she wants. Even me. Especially me.” She was Hailey’s assistant after all. “Basically, my entire job description can be boiled down to letting Hailey do whatever she wants. That and clean up the messes she creates.”
“Why do you let her do that stuff?” Phoebe asked—for the millionth time since Adrianne had moved to Sapphire Falls. “Stand up to her.”
Adrianne knew that it could seem that Hailey walked all over her. It drove Phoebe crazy.
But it wasn’t a big deal. Usually.
In her past life, Adrianne would have never let someone order her around and dump all of the work on her. She’d had twenty-two people reporting to her at one time and she’d been on top of each one of them. She was certain at least eighteen of them had regarded her as a demanding bitch. The other four hadn’t liked her but had wanted to be her. All twenty-two had respected her.
And she was over it.
Here in Sapphire Falls, things were small and simple. There weren’t millions of dollars at stake. There wasn’t a family reputation riding on anything. Her own self-respect wasn’t wrapped up in sales figures and new accounts and getting all the credit so her superiors thought she was worthwhile.
Here, the most pressing matters were if they should replace the stop signs on Main or if it could wait for the next budget year, what color to paint the new fence around the soccer fields and, now, Sapphire Hills.
She loved that. She had a stress-free schedule, a beautiful view of Main Street out her window and an office chair that heated up and massaged her back with the press of a button.
And coffee and donuts on advisory-board-meeting days.
Life was good here.
Adrianne could put her foot down, demand Hailey say please more often, but why? Adrianne liked her job. It even had its rewarding moments. She took pride in a job well done, even if no one knew she was the one who’d done it.
And Hailey was mostly harmless.
At least, until it came to Mason Riley.
“Well, we’re going to prevent this pending mess.” Phoebe was texting someone as she spoke.
“What do you mean?”
She hit send on her phone and then focused on Adrianne. “Honey, we have to keep Hailey and Mason as far apart from each other as we can.”
Adrianne shook her head. “What are you talking about? Hailey invited him here.”
“Yeah, I wish you’d told me that.”
“Why would I have told you that?”
“You’re not from here. There are lots of things, history and stuff, that you don’t know. You should really tell me everything.”
Adrianne snorted. Phoebe would love that. She was the high school English teacher, and Adrianne was stunned by the things that she found out at that school. But she didn’t quite know everything.
“I can’t tell you everything.”
“Well, anyway, we can’t let her spend time with him now that he’s really here.”
“But he probably came because she was the one that invited him, or at least came with the expectation of seeing and talking to her.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Phoebe said.
Matt slid into an empty chair at their table. “They’re at the end of the bar.”
As his comment seemed in response to some inquiry, Adrianne guessed he was the recipient of Phoebe’s text of a few seconds ago. “Hailey and Mason?” she asked.
Matt nodded. “And they made plans to meet at the building site tomorrow morning at ten for a private look at the plans.”
Phoebe scowled. “What’s she drinking?”
Matt hesitated. “Mojitos,” he said, almost apologetically.
Phoebe’s hand met the top of the table with a sharp smack. “Okay, we have to intervene. Now.”
“Mojitos mean something?” Adrianne asked.
“Flirting. She always drinks mojitos when she’s flirting,” Phoebe said.
Adrianne gave Matt a puzzled look but he nodded in affirmation. “It’s true. She drinks red wine with girlfriends, light beer when she’s hanging out at parties or barbecues and mojitos when she’s flirting.”
Adrianne couldn’t believe that they knew that. Or that it was true. And how had she missed it? Probably because she’d never cared, or hadn’t known she needed to care, about what Hailey drank.
She couldn’t help it. She craned her neck to find Hailey and Mason. Hailey had stolen Mason away from the guys who had stolen him from Adrianne, but Adrianne told herself that they were high school acquaintances. It made sense that she would greet him. Her enthusiasm was directly proportional to the amount of money he could potentially donate to Sapphire Hills. It all made sense.
The flirting not so much.
“Why do we…” She caught sight of Mason’s dark head above the others at the bar. Then someone shifted and she could see his face.
And the way he was looking at Hailey.
“Crap.” She slumped back down in her seat and wished for more than water as she tipped her glass back. Hailey might be flirting with Mason, but he was looking at her with what Adrianne almost had to label as affection. Double crap. Her stomach felt heavy and sick.
“What?” Phoebe asked, looking over her shoulder. Her back was to the end of the bar where Hailey was perched on a high stool next to where Mason leaned on the bar. He was facing the room and Adrianne. Phoebe could only see the long mane of blond hair against Hailey’s bright red, tight dress, but there was no mistaking that was her. Adrianne knew that hair toss. It was Hailey’s signature.
“He likes her.” Adrianne knew she sounded dejected and knew that was ridiculous. She barely knew the guy and he and Hailey had a past. She could hardly expect him to ditch Hailey to hang out with her. Plus, there were plenty of other people clustered around chatting and laughing. It was a reunion. He was a part of that. He was from here.
Adrianne wasn’t.
“He does like her,” Phoebe agreed, looking almost as unhappy as Adrianne felt. “That’s the problem.”
Adrianne agreed it was less than ideal. For her. But why did Phoebe care?
“Do you have a thing for him?” she asked.
Phoebe looked confused. Then she laughed. “For Mason?” She glanced at Matt. “No, not for Mason.”
“Did you date him in high school or something?”
Phoebe was even more amused by that. “No. Mason didn’t date anyone. And that’s not why I want to keep them apart.”
“Then why?”
“They have a history,” Matt inserted. “Not a good one.”
“They seem to be getting along fine now,” Adrianne muttered, tipping an ice cube into her mouth and chewing hard.
“It won’t last,” Phoebe said. “Which is why we have to keep them apart.”
“I’m confused,” Adrianne said, watching Mason smile at something Hailey said.
“Hailey will flirt with him just long enough to get what she wants. Then she’ll tell him that they should stay friends, Mason will get mad, pull his donation and we’re screwed. It’s better if he has nice feelings for her, but not too much contact.”
“How do you know she’ll only want to be friends with him?”
Looking at him, Adrianne could think of at least sixteen really good reasons Hailey might want to see him again, and his broad shoulders and heart-tripping smile were just two of them.
“Because she had more than one chance with Mason in high school and always kept him very much at arm’s length. Everyone knew it. If there was any doubt, there was one pretty public denouncement that I remember.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you that story sometime,” Phoebe said. “But right now we have to run interference here. Seriously. We can’t let her get him all worked up and then break his heart. We need his money and we have a better chance of getting a real check in the bank if we keep them simply saying hi on the street and not
hing more.”
Adrianne hated, irrationally, that Mason’s heart was at risk with Hailey.
But Phoebe wasn’t known for being melodramatic. She was a straightforward, smart, funny woman who had lived in Sapphire Falls her whole life and who Adrianne liked a lot. Adrianne had absolutely no reason not to believe her.
The problem was that Mason had given Hailey more than one chance in high school and he was here now looking at her like she was incredibly interesting. “But how do we do that?” Keeping Mason away from Hailey seemed like a great idea at the moment. Really any moment Adrianne could foresee in the future too. “If he wants to spend time with her—and vice versa—there’s not much we can do about it.”
“Oh, we’re gonna do something about it,” Phoebe declared. “I have a plan.”
Adrianne crunched on the last ice cube from her glass. “Whatever. Go for it.”
“I need you.”
Adrianne looked at Matt, but they were both looking at her. “Me? For what?”
“To step in.”
“For?”
“Hailey.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Someone has to fill him in on all of the plans, and how great Sapphire Hills is going to be and how much we need his help.”
“That has to be me?”
“You know the plans even better than Hailey does. You’d do a better job selling it anyway.”
That was completely true. It wasn’t even arrogant to say it. It was a fact. Adrianne was great at sales. Especially when she was passionate about something. She was passionate about Sapphire Hills.
“But he agreed to meet her. How do you propose we change that?”
“Hailey’s not going to be able to make it. We can’t leave the poor guy out there all alone, and he does need to know the plans. So you’ll meet him instead,” Matt said.
Adrianne wasn’t sure she should ask the next question, but she heard herself say, “Why can’t Hailey make it?”
“Something’s going to come up.”
“Something?” Adrianne repeated.
“Some…mayoral emergency,” Phoebe said.
Matt winked at her and Phoebe grinned.
“A mayoral emergency in Sapphire Falls?” Adrianne asked. “That she won’t need her assistant for?”