Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

CRASH LANDING – Falling for them—literally. Bonus points for landing on top of them, faces millimeters apart.

I t was the tiniest car she could possibly own. It was adorable and suited her perfectly.

“What?” Sawyer said defensively. “It has great tires, and the roads are clear.”

Mason bit down on his lip to keep from grinning. That was not what he was worried about, but if she hadn’t realized the flaw in her master plan, then he wasn’t going to point it out. Not yet. He held up his hands innocently, cutting in front of her to beat her to her door, opening it with a flourish.

She gave him an unbelieving shake of her head as she sank into the driver’s seat. Mason grinned to himself as he crossed around to the passenger side of the old Volkswagen Beetle. Inspiring romance? He was born for this.

The Christmas tree farm was forty-five minutes outside the city, but the drive went by in a blink—partially because Sawyer drove like a madwoman on the highway and partially because Mason may have shut his eyes in preservation instinct more than once. Her car was so old it didn’t have “Oh Shit” handles, otherwise he would have been grabbing them as she slipped between lanes of traffic with barely a glance.

It was best if he didn’t watch the road, so he watched her instead. She talked animatedly as she described all her favorite Christmas traditions, often getting sidetracked mid-story and starting another tale, only to seamlessly slip back into her original point. Her mind was chaotic and fascinating.

“So, besides the tree, what else do you have planned for the holidays?” he asked.

Her face fell, and he swore even her blinker blinked half-heartedly. “We’re here!” Her voice was strained, and he knew her enthusiasm was for show, to avoid answering the question. He couldn’t figure out why. The Queermas traditions she’d spent the past half hour describing sounded better than any holiday party he’d ever attended.

She pulled into the lot, her car comically small next to the SUVs and pickup trucks in the makeshift muddy parking area. He hazarded a glance, waiting for her to realize the flaw in her plan, but the smile on her face that had been taut before was now soft.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“You really like Christmas, don’t you?”

She shrugged. “You don’t?”

Mason frowned. “Not since Santa stopped being real. The only tradition we had was my mom designing the perfect tree for us to pose in front of for her Christmas card with a letter highlighting all the most glamorous things we’d done over the past year—which were all things she’d signed us up for.”

Sawyer made a face that said, Yikes .

He tensed. They’d just agreed to keep things superficial. He hadn’t meant to share so much, never talked openly about his mom with anyone outside of Luis or Alissa. His relationship with his mother was complicated, but he knew the front she put up—while exhausting—had always been to sate the curiosity of the media so she could have as normal a life as possible behind the scenes. He trusted Sawyer wasn’t the type to run off to the tabloids, but his mother’s media training was second nature to him at this point, and he couldn’t resist the urge to smooth it over.

“I love my family. I do. It’s just—sometimes, I can’t tell if I really did luck into having the perfect family or if it’s just a role we were all coached into playing.” So much for smoothing it over. They were well past surface level at this point. It was more honest than he’d ever been, even inside his own head. The night they met, he thought it was just the anonymous one-night-stand effect that had put him so at ease around her, but at Kuma’s and now, his usual filter continued to malfunction. “Anyway…” He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. He really didn’t want to get into his complicated family dynamics and ruin their day.

Thankfully, it seemed Sawyer was also pointedly avoiding… something , and glossed over it without missing a beat.

“That’s showbiz, baby,” Sawyer said in what Mason assumed was her best showman voice.

He fixed her with a look before flinging open the car door and unfolding himself. The crisp air filled his lungs, and he smiled. Half the time, the city made him hate the snow and long for sunny LA winters. But outside the city, where evergreen branches were dusted with fluffy white powder, happy little trees befitting a Bob Ross painting, it wasn’t so bad.

A violent shudder rattled Sawyer’s petite frame as they shuffled forward in the queue to buy their tree. “The thing Hallmark doesn’t prepare you for is freezing your fucking tits off.”

Mason choked on a laugh, shrugging out of his coat and draping it over her shoulders.

She frowned, reluctantly burrowing into its warmth. The way she inhaled his scent from the fabric awoke something in him he was having a hard time stifling.

“For the record, I’m only allowing this cliché gesture because, one: I’m cold,” she said. “And two: you’re an idiot for giving up your coat when wind chill is in the single digits, and I’m hoping this will break you of your romantic tendencies.”

He was about to point out that it wasn’t that cold today, but then a gust of wind stole all his body heat. But fuck if he was going to admit she was right. Gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering, he forced a grin. “Why be pragmatic when you can be romantic?”

She stared up at him like he had three heads.

“C’mon,” he goaded her, nudging her with his elbow. “You added this to the list. Surely you must find something romantic about it?”

Sawyer hummed thoughtfully, but whatever she was about to say, he never found out. As they shuffled forward in line, the pine needles on the ground shifted underfoot to reveal a patch of ice. He careened backward, windmilling his arms in a futile attempt to regain his balance. Gravity won out, and he went down, his ass meeting the ground with a smack .

Sawyer covered her mouth, but it did little to conceal her throaty laugh. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Mason grumbled, embarrassment stinging his cheeks as sharply as his ass cheeks smarted from hitting the semi-frozen ground.

“You know what?” she said around a laugh. “Call me a convert. I’m finding this all to be very romantic. Aren’t you?”

She extended a hand to help him up—the idea that five-foot-nothing Sawyer Greene could pick him up was laughable—but he took it anyway. Everything went sideways from there. As he pushed off the ground, the muddy slush beneath Sawyer’s boots shifted, and she lost her footing. He caught her mid-fall, but he couldn’t stop their foreheads from colliding with a resounding smack. Rearing back, he stared up at the gray sky, laid out on the muddy ground for a second time.

Sawyer collapsed on top of his chest with an oof , their faces a millimeter apart. Her bangs tickled the tops of his cheeks. Her narrowed eyes flicked down to his mouth, a hairbreadth from hers. “You did that on purpose,” she accused with a frown.

“I didn’t,” he laughed. “Romance must be in the air.”

“Gross,” Sawyer grumbled. Disentangling their legs, she pushed off his chest and clumsily got to her feet.

Mason ensured she was steady—and not standing on another ice patch—before picking himself up off the ground with as much dignity as he could muster. Wiping off the seat of his pants, he groaned when his hands came away muddy.

“Don’t worry,” Sawyer reassured him through relentless giggles as she inspected his backside. “It only kinda looks like you shit yourself.”

“Fantastic,” he deadpanned.

Taking pity, she fussed over him, brushing pine needles off his shirt. She pinched a spot below the breast pocket, tugging at it. To his mortification, she pulled a sticker off his newly purchased flannel.

“When I asked you if you had a plaid flannel to wear, and you said yes—?” She let the rest of the question hang in the air.

“I went and bought one,” he confessed.

“Mason, I asked you that this morning . You could’ve said no!”

“I aim to please, and if the lumberjack look does it for you, then…” He flashed his trademark sultry smirk that fans of Diagnostics went wild for.

Sawyer tucked her fingers into his belt loops, tugging him closer. Tilting her head back, she looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “It really, really does,” she purred. His attention drifted over her cheeks, rosy from the cold, down to her red-painted mouth. “But how did you know,” she continued in her low, raspy bedroom voice, “that my real weakness is men who shit themselves?”

Mason’s eyes fluttered shut as the realization washed over him. She was fucking with him. He’d fallen for it without a second thought.

She shoved him away playfully before stepping up to the little red ticket booth to pay for her tree. When he reached for his wallet, she bent over the counter, sticking out her ass to put space between him and the card reader. “Be a dear and grab us a saw, Mr. Lumberjack.”

It was a good thing their mission didn’t require them to keep score, because if it did, well, he’d definitely be losing. If this were a first date, if he really were trying to woo Sawyer, then this was the worst show he’d ever put on.

Hardening his resolve, Mason wandered over to the shelter that housed the handsaws, picking through them. He wasn’t the most handy, something his dad loved to rib him about. His parents were an odd match, yet the perfect cliché. The ex-army stuntman and the leading lady. His dad tinkered with muscle cars and wouldn’t pay for anyone to fix anything around their grand house until his mother insisted—or scheduled it without his knowledge. He’d tried to teach Mason how to do all of that, but Mason never had a knack for it. Margot had gotten the How Things Work gene, but she preferred numbers and dollar signs to carburetors and spark plugs.

Still, Mason didn’t spend as much time as he did with a trainer to not be able to cut down a tree.

In a flannel.

Yeah, he’d lied when Sawyer asked him if he had a red lumberjack flannel. He owned no such thing and had run out to buy one. But the way her eyes had lit up when she spied it under his coat? Worth it.

The same light was currently brightening her green eyes, her irises now the viridescent green of a new leaf. She came to halt in front of him, brandishing her tree receipt like a golden ticket.

“Let’s go, lumberjack,” she said, beaming. Looping her arm through his, she practically dragged him behind her on her quest to find the perfect tree. With Christmas only two weeks away, the pickings were slim.

Sawyer was cooing over a shapely fir when a little girl in a pink reindeer hat ran up to it, hugging it and proclaiming it the best tree ever. Sawyer agreed, and they waited until the girl’s family caught up before beginning their tree hunt anew.

Mason smiled. He was beginning to suspect Sawyer wasn’t as sour as she pretended. Somewhere beneath the jaded layers, there was a cinnamon roll soul. He just needed her to teach him her secret, how he could guard his heart more effectively, stop handing it out so readily.

Sawyer turned right suddenly, letting go of his arm as she circled a tree as tall as her—aka not very tall.

“Alright,” Sawyer proclaimed, hands on her hips. “This is it.”

Mason screwed up his face. “It has a giant hole.”

Sawyer frowned, ruffling the gap in the branches affectionately. “Don’t we all,” she said sagely. “I’ll tuck it away where no one can see it, and cover it in cute ornaments. You’ll never know the difference.”

Somewhere, a therapist shuddered.

Kneeling down, he shoved the bottom branches aside to find a good spot to start cutting. “I guess if you don’t take it home, who will, right?”

Sawyer hummed in agreement. “My good deed for the year.”

Mason glanced up at her through the branches as he made the first cut. “It’s not the New Year yet.”

“I know,” she said brightly. “I meant for this year. Was really worried I wasn’t gonna be able to squeeze it in.”

Mason shook his head, focusing on sawing. “Because you’re such a horrible person.”

“A true Grinch.”

“Except you love Christmas,” he pointed out. He was nearly halfway through the base of the tree now, so he couldn’t see her expression when she took a beat longer than usual to reply.

“It’s everything else that my heart is three sizes too small for.”

She said it so quietly it was a miracle he heard it at all, and he had a hunch she hadn’t meant for him to hear, so he didn’t comment on it. He especially wasn’t going to comment on the fact that her being so against romance and feelings was evidence that her heart was not too small at all, but she, like him, had given it to the wrong person. He was definitely not pointing that out. He wasn’t here to change or “fix” her. He was here to learn from her.

With the rumors that Kara was leaving Diagnostics confirmed, investors had already started blowing up Alissa’s phone, concerned that Mason’s tendency to date coworkers would destabilize production. As if every set wasn’t incestuous. You spent all day, every day with the same crew. Who else were you supposed to date? Nonetheless, he’d already gotten a call from his manager, echoing Alissa’s idea to stay single and let it all blow over.

Mason channeled all his frustration with the tabloids into each stroke of the saw, making quick progress. Each time the saw’s teeth snagged, he pushed harder, the sensation cathartic. Maybe he should work with his hands more often. Once he was over halfway, he paused, sinking back onto his knees.

“Alright.” Grabbing hold of the trunk, he gestured for Sawyer to join him on the ground.

Coming to stand before him, she picked debris out of his hair before smoothing it back, the sensation of her hands in his hair shooting straight to his dick. His gaze flicked unwittingly up to hers, her red mouth smirking. “You look good on your knees.” She punctuated her sentence with a wink.

He ignored her comment—he couldn’t acknowledge it so long as “Rule #2: No sex” was still on the table. “Just get down here,” he growled with a jerk of his head.

She sank to her knees obediently, making a show of wiggling her ass as she situated herself beneath the boughs.

Two could play that game. He draped himself over her, his front pressed to her back as he helped her position the saw, like he was a pool shark teaching his date billiards. “A few more strokes should do it.”

Sawyer laughed throatily at the word strokes , and Mason extricated himself from the tree before she could become aware of what the sound did to him.

As Sawyer went to work on the tree, he watched the kids running around with reckless abandon, so bundled up in coats and scarves that they looked like padded poufs with legs as they wove between trees, laughing gleefully. His nephews had convinced Margot to put up their pre-decorated fake tree the day after Thanksgiving, so it was too late for this year, but he made a mental note to convince Margot to get a real tree next year. He knew she’d gripe about the mess—Margot hated mess—but the boys would love it.

All thoughts of his nephews flew from his mind as Sawyer began sawing, the vibrations of the blade cutting through the trunk shooting up his arm and to his already misbehaving dick. Good God. Was every outing with her going to be like this? He wasn’t going to survive. Gritting his teeth, he attempted to wrangle his hormones under control.

Flirting with Sawyer was effortless. Inspiring romance seemed an easy task when he agreed to it, but just like when he had to act out an emotional scene on set, the real trick was convincing his body that all of the emotions weren’t real. He wasn’t actually an ER doctor saving lives, and Sawyer wasn’t actually his.

This was his problem. Sawyer Greene was the last woman in the world he should be lusting after. She had no interest in dating him and he had no business dating anyone right now. Tabloids notwithstanding, he was moving to LA in a few months. Yet, here he was, mooning over her like she’d been his first one-night stand. She wasn’t. Though, come to think of it, most of his attempts at casual flings had escalated into relationships. Not on purpose—but regardless, he needed to break the cycle. The falling was fun, yes, but the problem with falling was you eventually hit the ground. Mason had yet to stick the landing, and his partners always hit the ground running—running off to the next exciting thing while Mason was left bruised and wondering where the hell he’d gone wrong.

With a shudder, the tree came loose, and Sawyer whooped.

When she reappeared from the boughs of the tree, she was beaming. “I did it!” she exclaimed, flexing her arms and kissing her biceps.

“All by yourself,” Mason drawled. “Very impressive.”

She poked him in the side as she straightened. “With the help of my handsome lumberjack, of course. My Hallmark heart is all aflutter,” she gushed. She wrapped a leg around him, placing a hand on her forehead and swooning like a heroine on the cover of a bodice-ripping romance novel. Did that make him Fabio?

“The flannel’s really doing it for you, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” she said sarcastically. “You’re gonna have to throw me in the back of your pickup truck and yee my haw.”

Mason laughed, shaking his head. Before he could let that visual play out in his mind, he jerked his head toward the tree. “Alright. I got the base. Grab the tip.”

She wasn’t the only one capable of innuendo. See how she liked it.

Sawyer snorted, waggling her eyebrows suggestively before grabbing hold of the top of the tree. Together, they carried it all the way back to her car. As her steps slowed, he wished he was standing in front of her to watch the realization dawn on her.

“Oh dear,” she said fussily, eyeing the massive tree and the tiny car in turn.

Mason grinned, lowering the tree to rest against the side of her car. “I’ll grab some twine.”

“Maybe a lot of twine,” she said around a laugh, falling into step beside him.

As they waited for the family in front of them to finish unspooling twine for themselves, Mason’s attention drifted to the other holiday decorations for sale. Wreaths made from tree scraps, reindeer yard ornaments made from logs, ribbon-wrapped mistletoe. A young couple picked up a piece, nuzzling the tips of their noses together before collapsing in a fit of laughter.

Mason couldn’t help but smile, their love infectious.

Beside him, Sawyer cleared her throat.

“What?” he said defensively. “They’re cute.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re hopeless.”

Mason swiped a bundle of mistletoe off the table, dangling it above them.

Sawyer glared at him. “Against the rules, bud.”

He pressed a finger to her lips. “Close your eyes,” he murmured.

Sawyer shot daggers at him before complying.

“You’re at a party,” he began quietly so no one else could hear. “The person you’ve been secretly into for quite some time is there. They look fucking fantastic. You’ve been making eyes across the room all night. You can feel the way they’d touch you if only one of you would make the first move.” He tucked her bangs behind her ear, and they stubbornly sprang back into place as he trailed his finger along her jaw. A smirk tugged at his lips when her breath hitched, her lashes fluttering with the effort of keeping her eyes closed. “But making the first move is risky, until, you find yourselves under the mistletoe, the perfect icebreaker for the tension between you—”

Mason ran his thumb across her bottom lip, her mouth parting slightly. Her eyes flew open, a series of emotions playing out in rapid succession—lust, confusion, surprise, and then: fear.

Sawyer screamed, spiking the mistletoe out of his hand, the bundle of green and red landing in a patch of snow slush at their feet. Sawyer doubled over, dry heaving.

Mason rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic, Greene. Kissing me isn’t so abhorrent. If I remember correctly, you liked it—”

Still clutching her side, Sawyer grabbed hold of his lapel, pulling him down with her and pointing to the mistletoe.

“What—” The question died on his tongue when he saw the massive brown spider scuttle out of it.

Mason brought his fist to his mouth, swallowing down the rising tide of bile. He shivered like he could feel the spider crawling all over him. “Oh God. Okay, mistletoe kisses are officially ruined for me forever. Thank you. Cross that off the list.”

Sawyer shuddered. Regaining her composure, she mimed keeping score in the air, adding a tally mark for herself.

Mason pursed his lips. “I don’t think you can reasonably take credit for that. I was definitely winning before the spider so rudely interrupted.”

Sawyer grinned smugly up at him as she stepped up to grab their share of twine. “I can, and I will. Besides,” she added with a jerk of her head in the direction of the young couple purchasing a bundle of (hopefully) spider-free mistletoe. “They’re cute, but they won’t survive spending the holidays with each other’s families.”

The corners of Mason’s mouth turned down of their own volition. Even his romanticism didn’t stretch that far. He didn’t bring his partners home to meet his mother for a reason.

When he didn’t object, Sawyer fixed him with a knowing look before drawing another imaginary tally mark in the air.

Looping her arm through his, she guided him back to the car, where they studied the roof and the tree in turn before a fit of giggles overtook them at their quandary.

They managed to tie the tree to the top of her car by looping the twine through the windows and around the bumper, Sawyer laughing as she darted around the car while Mason held the tree steady—a true feat, as Sawyer was determined to spank him with the twine every time she lobbed it from one side of the car to the other. He rested his head against his muddy, sap-covered forearm, unable to stop laughing as Sawyer tied off the tree. He hadn’t laughed this much in a long time.

He hoped she was feeling inspired, because they weren’t ruining this trope for him at all.