Chapter 12

12

MASON

I wasn’t sure how to feel after kissing her. It was a quick kiss on the lips, sure, but still a kiss. I’d had to fight all my instincts to stop myself from pulling her in and pressing my mouth to hers again like I really wanted to.

Now we were waiting on the sidewalk in a flurry of thick snow. Rex, my driver, was stuck in traffic across town, and there was no telling when he’d be here.

“You know, I live nearby.” Fia shrugged, motioning to the east.

“We could walk through Central Park for a while on the way, if you don’t mind, of course.”

“I’d love to take a walk with you.” She grinned, wrapping her arm around mine. She was wearing a brown, wool-lined coat that hung around her ankles with a red knit hat stuffed over her thick hair. Snow was already getting caught in her eyelashes.

She looked beautiful, and suddenly I was glad Rex was late. I walked her across the street, through the crowd spilling out of the library, and down the block toward the park. I texted Rex and called off the ride, telling him I’d find my own way home tonight.

It was nearly ten and the park was remarkably quiet in the haze of falling snow. We passed a few couples out for a stroll but otherwise found ourselves completely alone, surrounded by a new level of tension.

I’d nearly told her I had feelings for her. It would have been a stupid thing to do, given that I wasn’t entirely sure if my feelings were simply that of a budding friendship or something more intense. All I knew for sure was that she was constantly in my head and I was feeling desperate to do something about it.

She twirled in the snow. “Isn’t it beautiful tonight?”

“Yeah, it is.”

She smiled at me, tucking her chilled hands back in her pockets as we turned to the east, following the well-laid path dotted with snowy footprints.

“So, what’s next? Event-wise, I mean.”

I hummed to myself, digging through my mental calendar. “We have the Decks on Deck next weekend.”

“What is that, exactly? I couldn’t tell based on the description in the calendar.”

“It’s a party on a yacht. We’ll be spending the night aboard after dinner and a tour of the city from the water.”

She frowned. “We’re going on a yacht in December? Isn’t that going to be a little cold?”

“I went last year and it wasn’t that bad. The deck is covered and heated, and there’s plenty of indoor space. The dinner is very formal, however, so you’ll need a gown.”

“Do you have a request for color?” she asked, looking up at me.

I smiled to myself as she skipped ahead, spinning in the snow again. “Blue, definitely.” She looked amazing in blue. I couldn’t stop thinking about our night out at the Blue Winter auction.

“I can wear blue again.” She suddenly grunted in pain, clutching her chest.

“Fia? Fia!” I rushed toward her, but something white whizzed toward me. I ducked, grabbing onto Fia’s jacket and pulling her to the snowy ground as a snowball parted the air just above my head.

More snowballs hurtled toward us, followed by sharp, boyish laughter coming from a nearby hill where a wall made of snow had been erected. I glared at the five heads that popped up, chucking more snowballs.

Fia, who had the absolute wind knocked out of her but was otherwise fine, lay sprawled out on the grass in front of me. She clutched my sweater, gazing up into my eyes. “Save… yourself…”

“Are you actually injured? Fia? Where?—”

She dug in her pocket, stuffing a thin length of paper in my hand and curling my fingers around it, squeezing hard. “Give that to my mother. Tell her I loved her. Avenge me, Mason. The only regret I have in my short life is that you—you and I didn’t have more—more time.” Her eyelashes fluttered in an exceedingly dramatic fashion before she sighed deeply and went limp.

I unfurled my hand. “It’s a CVS receipt.”

A snowball hit me right in the face. I snarled, and Fia dropped out her dramatic reenactment of what had to have been a scene from Band of Brothers to choke out a laugh. I rose to my feet, dumped her in the snow, and gathered a handful, forming it into a tight ball as I stalked toward the pre-teen boys.

They squealed in excitement and started chucking more snowballs. I dodged them, chucking the snowball toward the biggest kid and hitting him square in the chest.

“Nice!” Fia laughed, struggling to her feet. She giggled deliriously as she gathered her own snowballs.

One of the boys made the mistake of hopping over the wall and I caught him with a snowball right in the stomach. He doubled over and rolled down the hill, much to the dismay of his friends, who were panicking to make more snowballs as I gained ground.

One of them chucked a snowball at Fia, which hit her in the shoulder. She yelped in surprise, then threw one of her own right back. I quickly learned Fia was a terrible shot because the snowball hit me instead.

“Whose side are you on?!” I shouted over the laughter of the boys. I lobbed another snowball but missed.

“Is that all you got old man?” one of the boys taunted.

Old man? Old man?

Three headshots later, the boys scurried away licking their wounds, and I was sitting on a bench beside Fia, who had snow all over her. “Did you even get any of them, or just me?”

“I have terrible depth perception,” she shot back, wiping melted snow from her cheeks.

“I can tell.”

She nudged me, leaning into my shoulder as she laughed. “That was fun. You have to admit it.”

“I did have fun but I’m sure my lawyer is going to have afield day if their mothers find out who I am and how deep my pockets are.”

“You did hit several of them in the face.” She nodded. “And they are technically children.”

I dragged my tongue along my lower lip as I stretched my arm along the top of the bench with Fia nestled close. I did have fun. A lot of fun, actually. For a moment all of the stress from work, from the holidays, from the crushing weight of my familial expectations lifted and I was just Mason for a moment. Mason, who was walking his date home through Central Park. Mason, whose date was now leaning her head against his shoulder while she shivered.

I roped my arm around her. “It’s your own fault. You spent more time rolling around in the snow than helping me defeat those youths.”

“ Youths? God, Mason. You’re an eighty-year-old man trapped in the body of a thirty-five-year-old.”

“I’ve been called an old soul .”

“Oh please.” She chuckled. “When people say that they mean you’re boring.”

I smiled down at her, shaking my head. “Do you think I’m boring, Ms. Webster?”

“No, surprisingly, I don’t.”

“Surprisingly?”

She shrugged. “Colin didn’t exactly sell me on this scheme with his description of you.”

My brows rose, and her mouth lifted into a teasing smile.

“You still said yes,” I said.

“I don’t regret it. This has been fun. You’re fun.”

No one had ever said those words to me before. I’d been described as serious, somewhat intimidating. People tended to give me a wide berth. Fia, however? She stayed close. She said whatever she wanted around me, not caring about my status, my power, or my wealth.

The tip of her nose was bright red when I looked down at her again. My hand slid up and down her arm. “Your teeth are chattering.”

“I’m a little cold.”

“We should go. I need to get you home.”

“I don’t really want the night to end yet,” she said.

Her eyes shone a soft amber in the hazy light of a flickering streetlamp. I found myself leaning closer. “Me neither.”

She wrapped her arm around my waist, her fingers curling into my leather jacket. “What would we be doing right now if we were a real couple?”

“I don’t know. You’d probably be curled up on the couch watching a Christmas movie while I paced in our bedroom trying to come up with a good plan for how I was going to propose to you.”

She bit her lip and the action made a warmth spread through my chest, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt.

So, I continued. “I’d come join you, full of nerves, and watch the movie with you in our apartment that you’d just finished decorating for the holidays.”

“I like that.” Her voice cracked a bit.

“Yeah, so do I.” What was happening right now? I had to be imagining that I was leaning in again, my hand resting against the side of her neck as I angled her face just where I needed it to kiss her.

Her lips were warm, full, and soft as they met mine in a gentle kiss. A first kiss. A real one. This wasn’t part of the scheme and the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. I pulled away with an apology on the tip of my tongue, but her eyes opened, heavy and slightly dazed as she looked up at me.

“Mason—”

“Fia, I’m sorry.”

She roughly pulled me in again, clasping my face between her freezing cold hands and kissing me like I’d never been kissed before. I wasn’t sure I believed in sparks flying. I wasn’t sure if I believed in soul mates, or love at first sight, but whatever I felt toward Fia made all of those things seem possible. Whatever this was, it was fireworks. It was hot and all consuming.

I pulled her closer, tilting my head to the side as she let out a breathy sigh around my lips. I slid my tongue along her lower lip and she opened her mouth for me, inviting me in, and I lost myself in her.

I forgot I needed to breathe. I forgot we were in public, in Central Park. I forgot that this was fake, a ruse, a show to get into my family’s good graces again, and that in a matter of weeks this would be over.

All I felt was her.

She broke from the kiss and looked into my eyes, slightly shocked. “Was that real?”

“Yeah.” My voice sounded like someone took a rake over my vocal chords. I caressed her face, my heart hammering in my chest. “I don’t think we should have done that.”

“I know,” she whispered, sliding her hand over mine to keep it there as she leaned into my touch and closed her eyes for a moment.

Reality crashed into me hard enough to take my breath away. Fia wasn’t my long-time girlfriend. We didn’t have an apartment together overlooking Central Park. I wouldn’t be taking her home to the rooms we shared. I shouldn’t be thinking about what it would actually be like getting down on one knee in the snow, watching her face brighten in the glow of Christmas lights as I opened a ring box and asked her to be with me for the rest of our lives, not just until New Year’s Day.

Fia wasn’t mine.

She was Colin’s little sister. This was supposed to be fake, but that kiss sure wasn’t.

“You’re freezing. I need to take you home now,” I bit out, rasping the words as conflicting feelings swirled through my body.

She nodded but her gaze dipped to my lips again. It was almost my undoing. I would have thrown caution to the wind and kissed her again. I would have picked her up and carried her back to her apartment, laying her down on her bed and claiming her as my own had she kissed me a second time.

In the end, I did walk her home. She kept her hand tucked in the crook of my arm as we wove through the icy, brightly lit streets of the Upper East Side until we came to the older building with a bodega beneath it. In the soft flash of the bodega’s open sign, she turned to me, her hand on the door of the building’s residents’ entrance.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?”

It was almost midnight, but who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight anyway. “Yeah, I do.”

She opened the door and motioned for me to follow her inside.