Dating Dr. Dreamy: A Small Town Second Chance Romance (Bliss River Book 1)

by Lili Valente

  Lark lifts one bare shoulder, one bare, beautiful shoulder I will never press my lips to again if I can’t convince her to change her mind and shakes her head. “It’s too painful, Mason. I can’t do this with you. I don’t want to, and even if I did, I’m 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, and I can’t imagine—”

  “You’re leaving town?” I ask. That would be just my luck, booking a weeklong stay at a motel in Bliss River the one week Lark won’t be here.

  She shakes her head. “No, I’m stay-cationing at home. I’m exhausted, and tonight has only made me more exhausted. I just want to go home and sleep for twelve hours and forget this conversation ever happened.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I agree, her words lighting a spark of inspiration. Maybe a second chance isn’t the right way to think about this. Maybe we need a completely fresh start. “Why don’t you go rest, have a relaxing day at home, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at six.”

  Lark blinks. “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s forget this conversation ever happened,” I say, praying she’ll go along with my spur-of-the-moment plan. “Let’s forget everything that’s ever happened between us. Pretend I’m an interesting stranger you met at a wedding who’s visiting Bliss River for the week and is dying for you to show him the sights. Give me one week to remind you why we should be together.”

  “Mason, I can’t—”

  “One week, seven dates,” I beg. “And if by this time next Saturday you still want nothing to do with me, I’ll leave Bliss River and never bother you again. If that’s what you want.”

  Lark sighs, looking past me to where the wedding reception is still in full swing, her expression wistful. An upbeat song has just given way to a slow one, an old country ballad about forever love that makes me want to pull Lark into my arms to dance.

  But I can’t.

  Not yet, maybe not ever, unless…

  “What do you have to lose?” I ask in a hushed voice. “Except two hundred pounds of annoying ex-boyfriend once the week is over?”

  Her lips quirk, a tiny sign of hope that nevertheless sets my pulse to racing.

  “I’ll buy you pancakes every day,” I add. “Unlimited pancakes and unlimited Chinese from The Great Wall. I’ll bring enough takeout for your entire family. Your dad can eat his Moo Shu Pork off my back while he kicks me repeatedly in the spleen.”

  “You know better than that,” she says, her gaze still fixed on the dance floor. “If my dad got a hold of you, he’d aim for a vital organ.”

  “As he should. I’m willing to beg his forgiveness, too. Just give the word.”

  Lark sighs again before shifting her gaze back to me with a businesslike shake of her head. “No. No more begging necessary. You can pick me up at my parents’ house tomorrow at six.”

  A smile explodes across my face. “Thank you, Lark. Thank you so much. I promise you won’t be—”

  “Seven days,” she interrupts, holding up seven fingers. “One week. That’s it, and when I tell you to go next Saturday, you go, Mason, and that’s the end of this.”

  “Unless you ask me to stick around,” I add, knowing she wouldn’t have said yes if there weren’t at least the ghost of chance she’s open to being us again.

  Us.

  God, it sounds so good it makes my bones itch with hope.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lark says, firmly. “I told you, Mason, I’m not the same person, and from the sound of it, neither are you.”

  And then she turns and walks away.

  But that’s okay. I’ll see her tomorrow night.

  Because I’m always going to bet on her.

  Always.

  Chapter 4

  Lark

  Date One

  “This is crazy. You should be committed.” Aria wrangles another bite of smashed carrots into her baby’s mouth, tossing her encouraging words over her shoulder from the kitchen, while I marvel at her technique.

  Feeding Felicity is a skill only her mama and grandmama have mastered.

  When I try to feed my eight-month-old niece, I inevitably end up with more baby food on my shirt than Felicity does in her stomach, and the floor around her high chair looks like a vegetable garden has been brutally murdered.

  “It’s not crazy, it’s romantic!” Melody twirls through the living room, her pink chiffon dress flaring around her, making the baby laugh.

  Melody’s boyfriend is picking her up at six-thirty. She asked Brian to swing by our parents’ place, instead of her apartment, so she could provide moral support while I wait patiently for Mason to arrive.

  While I pace the floor and chew my nails down to nubs is more like it.

  I can’t remember ever being this nervous.

  Ever.

  Not even the first time I went out with Mason, when he was a twenty-four-year-old med school hottie, and I was a nineteen-year-old community college dropout working at the diner in downtown Bliss River, who couldn’t believe the hottest guy she’d ever met in real life actually wanted to take her out for ice cream.

  I had known of Mason since I 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 I really got to know him. To know his unique mix of humor and intensity, the way he could make me laugh out loud one minute, then steal my breath away with one of his see-through-me 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 convinced me to go to culinary school instead of taking my dad up on his offer to manage one of the family BBQ shacks. Mason was positive I could make my dream of working as a chef at a fancy restaurant a reality.

  My dreams have changed over time, but I might still be working at Donut Time Diner if Mason hadn’t come into my life.

  As much as he hurt me, he also helped me.

  I tell myself that’s why I said yes to his bargain, out of respect for the times he was there for me. It has nothing to do with the way my skin tingled all over when he touched me, or the way my heart jerked in my chest when he said my name. Nothing to do with the way my entire body began to sizzle when he fell on top of me in the field last night.

  I gave up waiting for marriage a few years ago, when I began to suspect it wasn’t going to happen for me—at least not soon enough to spare me from being the oldest, most sexually frustrated virgin on the continent—but I’ve never felt half as turned on by being naked with another man as I felt lying fully clothed in the grass with Mason.

  He’s just…hot as hell. Always has been. From our first kiss to our last, kissing Mason 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 The Bad Place and rot there,” Aria says, pulling me from my dangerous thoughts.

  I can’t think about kissing Mason. If I think about kissing Mason, there’s a chance I will actually kiss Mason in real life, and that’s a recipe for disaster. I’m giving him a week to see if we can be friends. Or at least end things in a way that will allow both of our damaged hearts to heal.

  I’m not seriously considering getting involved with Mason again.

  Not even a little bit.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire…a little voice whispers inside of me. But thankfully Aria pipes up again.

  “And if that didn’t work,” she says, “Lark should have applied for a restraining order.”

  “It’s Mason, Aria,” Melody says, rolling her eyes. “He doesn’t need to be restrained. He would never hurt Lark.”

  “He’s already hurt her.” Aria catches my gaze as I turn to pace back toward the kitchen. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she adds in a softer voice. “We can call Uncle Jim and have him personal
ly escort Mason back to his hotel, or wherever he’s staying while he’s in town.”

  Uncle Jim is our go-to for parental-type intervention at the moment. Mom and Dad are out of town on a two-week cruise, a last minute trip I suspect was spurred more by Mom’s need to get away from Aria than her profound longing to see the Alaskan wilderness.

  Mom loves all her daughters, but she and Aria have been butting heads constantly since Aria moved back home. Mom loves having Felicity around, but her eldest daughter’s sour attitude rubs her the wrong way.

  Our mom, Sue, is like Melody, a romantic who believes life is a beautiful adventure waiting to be twirled through. Mom is the one who refused to let me wallow in despair when Mason left. She insisted I think of something I was dying to do and then helped me become so immersed in my new project that I had no time for moping or sourness.

  That project was Ever After Catering.

  At first, even the name of my business had stung me a little. Yes, it was a great name for a wedding caterer, but after Mason left I had about as much faith in my own ability to find happily ever after as I did the tooth fairy.

  But now…

  But now, nothing. You can’t trust him. He’s proven that. If you fall for him again, you’ll just be giving heartbreak an engraved invitation to RSVP.

  “Well?” Aria reaches for her back pocket where her cell phone always lives. “Am I calling Uncle Jim?”

  “No.” I shake my 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 with no more surprises.”

  “A life without surprises…” Melody sighs as she sinks into Dad’s overstuffed armchair. “That sounds like the worst kind of life there is.”

  “There are lots of worse kinds of lives,” Aria says with an exaggerated roll of her eyes that makes Felicity laugh again. “Like life with cancer. Or war.”

  “Life with leprosy,” I add.

  “Life with chronic body odor,” Aria counters.

  “Life with chronic body odor and an oozing leprous sore on your face,” I say, ignoring Melody’s insistence that this game isn’t funny.

  “Life with chronic body odor and an oozing sore and a shriveled arm stump that smells like beef jerky,” Aria says, making Melody moan.

  I’m still laughing when the doorbell rings and smothers my happiness like a blanket over a fire.

  It’s six o’clock.

  Mason is here.

  Chapter 5

  Lark

  “I’ll be back later!” I grab my purse and bolt, knowing better than to let Mason get sucked into sister drama.

  I wrench open the door, ignoring the way my stomach flips at the sight of him looking as gorgeous as ever—there really should be a law against ex-boyfriends being this cute—and jab a finger toward the street. “Let’s go.”

  “Have fun, you two!” Melody calls out sweetly. “So good to see you, Mason! Well, sort of see you, anyway.”

  “Have her home by ten and don’t be a jerk,” Aria shouts as I hop out onto the stoop and shut the door behind me.

  “Ready?” I breathe.

  “So ready,” he says in that husky voice that makes me think about kissing again.

  Already. Argh! I’ve got to get a grip or I’m doomed.

  “Good, then let’s go.” I circle around him, giving every delicious inch of his yummy self a wide berth as I head down the walk to the shiny new car parked at the curb.

  It’s a fancy sedan with leather seats so different from the old pickup Mason used to drive that when I first slide inside, it’s almost possible to imagine I’m going out with a different person. But then I catch a whiff of his familiar Mason scent—that mixture of clean laundry, man, and freshly toasted bread that always made me feel warm all over—lurking beneath the new car smell and memories come flooding back.

  Sniffing the place where Mason’s shoulder meets his neck used to be enough to make me dizzy, to make my entire body ache with wanting him. And when he left, I slept with the tee shirt he’d left in my car after a trip to the lake for weeks, pathetically clinging to the smell of the boy who’d broken my heart.

  “So, where are we going?” I ask, clearing my throat as I push the troubling thoughts away.

  I’m not going to think about how much I want—wanted—Mason or how much he hurt me. I’ll make polite conversation, catch up with a man who was once a good friend, and then go straight home—do not stop on the front stoop to say goodnight, do not make end-of-date mouth mistakes.

  That’s what kissing Mason would be—a mouth mistake.

  I decide to start calling it that, even in my own head. Whatever it takes to keep this evolution from bitter exes to casual friends on track.

  “You’ll see,” Mason says, with a glance my way. “You look beautiful, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” I smooth the skirt of my wrap-around jean dress down over my thighs, swallowing the “so do you” on the tip of my tongue. I don’t want to encourage Mason, and he hardly needs any assurance that he looks wonderful.

  Even in a simple pair of dark blue jeans and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to show his muscled forearms, he’s stunning.

  It’s disgusting, really. I am repulsed by his flawless man beauty. Flaws are good. Flaws help to reassure the people we love that nobody’s perfect.

  A person really ought to have a few flaws, just to be polite.

  Sadly, however, other women do not share my perspective. When Mason parks the car at the east end of Main Street and walks around to get my door, all female heads in the vicinity turn to take him in. One pretty woman in a tight black sundress and high-heeled sandals actually stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk to give Mason a once over and drool into her basket full of farmer’s market goodies.

  All the attention he attracts would be enough to intimidate me if this were a real date. Or if I hadn’t gotten used to the effect Mason has on the opposite sex years ago.

  Mason has always been gorgeous, magnetic, and way hotter for a man than I am for a woman. I have healthy self-esteem, and I don’t think I’m unattractive by any stretch, but I’m also a realist. When it comes to looks, Mason and I aren’t playing in the same league.

  But that never bothered me back when we were Mason and Lark. It didn’t matter how many prettier, thinner, big-boobier women ogled my boyfriend. Mason only had eyes for me. To him, I was the most beautiful woman in the world. The way he used to look at me left no doubt about that.

  Who am I kidding?

  There’s nothing past tense about that look. Mason still looks at me like I’m something magical, a rare enchanted unicorn princess he’s proud to help from his car.

  The look used to make me feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

  Now, it makes my forehead wrinkle.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I mumble, pulling my hand from his and moving onto the sidewalk as he shuts the door behind me.

  “Like what?” he asks as the gentle May breeze ruffles his hair, making him look even more gorgeous, like a guy who should model really manly sweater-vests on a yacht.

  The woman in the sundress who stopped to gape is still staring, her gaze darting between us. She’s obviously trying to discern if Mason is taken. I barely resist the urge to step around him and insist she run for her life. Men who look at you like an enchanted unicorn one day and bail on your engagement the next can’t be trusted. Black Sundress would be wise to stay the heck away.

  So would I, but I agreed to this week of dates for some stupid reason and I never go back on my word.

  But that doesn’t mean I can’t lay down some ground rules. “You know like what,” I say to Mason, my tone cool. “We’re here to get to know the people we are now, not to go walking down memory lane. And that look is straight out of memory lane.”

  Mason sighs, seeming so deflated that for a moment I feel guilty.

  Then I remember that he’s the one who is a runner and an engagement bailer and a h
eart destroyer and lift my chin higher in the air. Stay strong. I have to stay strong.

  “Got it,” Mason says softly. “No enchanted unicorn look.”

  My chest tightens. “You remember that?”

  “I remember everything,” he says, in a voice that makes my bare arms prickle and my heart ache.

  “Not everything,” I say, trying to lighten the moment. “It was like a unicorn princess. Not just a unicorn because that would be weird. I’m assuming you’re not into unicorns.”

  “No, I’m not,” Mason says, shoving his hands into his pockets and wandering toward the east end of downtown. “At least not in that way.”

  “Oh?” I arch a brow. “In what way are you into unicorns?”

  “In the way most non-perverts are into unicorns,” he says with a straight face. “I respect the gore-potential inherent in their horn and admire their silky manes and propensity for wish granting, but the feelings end there.”

  My lips quirk. “Propensity for wish granting. You and your twelve dollar words.”

  Mason grins. “I hear some girls like big words. Or they used to, anyway.”

  “Nope, now I just like big dong.” I fight a laugh as Mason’s jaw drops, but can’t help myself. “Kidding,” I add with a giggle. “I’m kidding. Sorry. I couldn’t resist the joke. You set me up too perfectly.”

  Mason’s eyes flash with appreciation. “Don’t apologize. I like raunchy-joke-making Lark.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m older and slightly raunchier than I used to be,” I say, before adding quickly, “But don’t get any ideas. It was just a joke.”

  “Obviously,” he says mildly. “And I’ve never had an idea in my life.”

  “Right.” I try to stop smiling, but fail. I’ve always loved bantering with Mason, and that he gets my sense of humor so completely.