Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Mason
Fuck.
Mason gave himself a shake as he walked through the hall of Black Fox to his office, feeling unsteady on his feet. He had never in his life been hit like a lightning bolt when it came to a woman. Sure, there had been times in high school that he’d experienced an instant reaction to something.
But nothing had prepared him for Audrey Bowers’ effect on him.
Her curves.
The pin-up style that was hotter than it had any right to be.
He hadn’t even known he liked pin-ups.
If someone had asked his type before this moment, he would have told them that he liked elegance. Smoothness. Calm. Serenity. That he preferred brunettes over blondes, though he wasn’t going to reject anyone based on something so superficial.
He would not have pictured bubbly warmth and chirpiness, with miles of curves packed into polka dots. He would not have pictured bright red hair and redder lips that curved into a beaming smile.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, stopping outside his office to press his head against the wall. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. “You are a psychologist. You know your reaction is just a combination of a dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin release. It doesn’t mean anything.”
The only thing it meant was that she was the first person to make him react in such a manner.
He suddenly had a much better understanding of what others had gone through.
Even though he understood the process, there had always been a part of him that felt sure people exaggerated when they described how they felt.
Secretly, he’d worried there was something wrong with him that he’d never felt that way, and it was easier to attribute it to others’ exaggerating rather than him being different.
Well.
Turned out he wasn’t that different.
Why now?
Why not a year ago? A month ago? Hell, why not yesterday, before Yasmine and I agreed to get married?
Before he’d asked his parents to arrange his marriage would have been even better, but definitely before he and Yasmine had agreed to it.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and immediately buzzed again. He pulled it out to see who was calling. His mother. Of course. As always, her timing was impeccable.
It occurred to him that the description he would have given for his ‘type’ when it came to women closely matched the description he would give of his mother. Take a break, Oedipus. We like what we know.
Taking a deep breath, Mason straightened up and answered the phone.
“Hello.”
“Mason, sweetheart! Your dad and I are putting together the list of people to call about your engagement, and we wanted to know if you wanted us to call Asad and Cyrus, have their parents tell them, or if you wanted to speak with them yourselves.” His mother’s smooth, low voice was laced with unusual excitement.
He suddenly wished he hadn’t answered the phone.
This was what he got for letting his parents arrange his marriage. They were far more involved than they would have been otherwise.
If only he’d been a little less impatient to get his life started. A little less impatient to ‘catch up’ to Asad and Cyrus, his cousins, who were more like brothers. Cyrus had gotten married last year, and Asad was planning his proposal to his girlfriend, and Mason…
He’d gotten jealous. He was man enough to admit that.
Jealous and worried he was being left behind. He’d had no girlfriend, no one he was interested in dating, and nothing about his past relationships made him think he was going to suddenly find ‘the one’. Letting his parents arrange his marriage had seemed practical.
Logical.
Easy.
“Mason?”
“Sorry, Mom. Um, I’ll tell them myself.” Otherwise, they’d be calling him as soon as they heard the news, anyway. Plus, he needed to think of the best way to phrase it. To explain.
“Okay. We’re planning to start calling tomorrow. You’re still telling your friends tonight, right?”
“Right.”
Because his parents had done the impossible and managed to find a woman who wanted the same things out of life that he did, was also willing to have her marriage arranged, and she was even his described type.
And kinky. They’d had several long talks about what they wanted from a marriage. She checked all the boxes on paper.
And she was even friends with a lot of his friends.
They’d never tried dating before for a myriad of reasons, but once their parents set them up, well… it just made sense. They were both ready to be married. They got along well. Mason liked her. A lot.
But he’d never felt like he’d been hit with a brick by her.
It was a weird chemical reaction in my brain. Tonight will be different. It’s probably a completely, if unexpected, natural reaction to knowing that I’m announcing my engagement. A lot of people have second thoughts before making a major life change.
I don’t even know Audrey.
My brain is just playing tricks on me because making a lifelong commitment is scary. It should be scary. This just proves that I’m taking it seriously.
That was exactly the advice he would give any client who came to him with this problem.
“We’re telling our friends tonight,” he said firmly. “You can start calling everyone tomorrow.”
“Wonderful, we’re so excited. Yasmine is such a lovely girl.”
“She is.”
She really was. And now that he’d gotten a little space from his sudden, shocking reaction to Audrey, he could see it for what it really was.
An aberration. A natural response to knowing he was taking the first step toward the rest of his life this evening.
Marriage was serious. He took the commitment seriously.
Perhaps he should have expected to be tested.
A lot of people struggled, and that was when they were in love with their intended.
Mason was approaching marriage a little differently, with a well-thought-out, practical plan for his life.
It shouldn’t be surprising that his brain would react with a roadblock that was purely emotional and physical.
Now that he’d gotten past it, everything would be fine.
Audrey
Jensen’s house was everything that had been described and more.
“This is amazing!” She stared in awe at the front. Three stories up. A massive front porch, which was still covered in Halloween decorations. She assumed those would be coming down soon.
“It is, isn’t it?” Cassidy beamed as she stood on the other side of Audrey’s grandmother, letting Grandma lean on her arm as they went up the steps.
The house had double doors. Huge, dark, heavy wood doors that were ornately carved.
The doorknob looked like brass. “Living here felt like being on a movie set.”
“I want to get one of those flowy robes and appear in the windows at random to passersby,” Audrey said enthusiastically.
She could already picture how cool that would look.
This kind of house was made for a dramatic robe.
The kind widows wore in movies when they’d killed their husbands, and the police showed up to question them.
“Do you think they’d let me do that next Halloween? ”
Grandma and Cassidy both laughed.
“Just wait till you see the inside; you’re going to want to just walk up and down the main staircase in that robe. Maybe lounge around the furniture,” Cassidy teased.
“It would make a great movie set.” Grandma looked around. “You could do horror. Or a historical movie. Or maybe a porn.”
“Grandma.” David groaned as he joined them on the porch.
His arms were loaded with boxes of desserts Audrey had made for tonight, including all three kinds of baklava she’d made for Mason to try.
She felt a little guilty looking at her brother’s overloaded arms, but he’d insisted he could carry everything and wouldn’t let her take any.
“I’m just saying.”
“I wish you would stop.”
Audrey giggled as she rang the doorbell. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that Grandma liked to say outrageous things just to make David react. Granted, she also just liked to say outrageous things, but she was a little worse when David was around. It was highly entertaining.
A handsome man with brown hair opened the door. Very handsome, with a boyish face and a beaming smile. Yet she didn’t have the same reaction to him that she’d had to David’s other teammate earlier.
“Hey, hey, everyone. Come on in.”
They all piled inside, David immediately heading deeper into the house with the boxes of food while Audrey stood awestruck in the foyer.
There was an actual chandelier above her head.
A real crystal chandelier. The inside of the house somehow managed to be even more impressive than the outside.
She felt like she’d stepped back in time.
Everything was carved wood, stained glass, marble, and covered in ornate wallpaper.
“Holy crap… this house is amazing.”
“Thanks.” Jensen, who had been introduced before David took off, looked around, shoving his hands in his pockets. “We can’t take credit for it. The guy who owned it before had it restored to what it looked like when it was originally built in the twenties.”
“Don’t ever change it.”
He chuckled.
“We don’t plan to. Come in and meet everyone who’s here already, then I’ll give you the tour.
” He said it in a completely non-smarmy way, so Audrey didn’t have to worry that he meant it the way her parents’ friends’ sons had when they’d offer a ‘tour’ of the premises and really meant a tour of the inside of their pants.
She wouldn’t have expected any of David’s team to be smarmy, anyway.
“Sounds great.”
Inside meant moving to the left, where she did her best not to be distracted by the gorgeous living and dining rooms and focus on the people instead.
Most of whom were standing around the dining room table where food had been laid out.
David rejoined them, sticking close to her side as he introduced her to his boss, Lincoln, and Lincoln’s wife, Ashley.
There was a pretty big age difference between them, but it was clear from the way they looked at each other that the love was real.
Audrey was used to seeing some big age gaps with her parents’ set; what she wasn’t used to was thinking that the couple looked completely in love.
She was used to more transactional relationships.
Which she didn’t judge anyone for, but it wasn’t what she wanted for herself.
It was nice to see that love still existed and not just for David and Cassidy.
Drew, another member of David’s team, and his wife, Naomi, were also clear examples of a couple who were happily married and in love.
The moment after Drew shook Audrey’s hand, his arm went immediately around Naomi’s waist again, tucking her close against him, and she leaned into him.
Good grief. Audrey was surrounded by happy couples.
Thank goodness for Jensen and his brother, who came out of the kitchen with trays bearing the treats Audrey had made for the party, so she didn’t feel so alone in her singledom. She and her grandma.
After being introduced to Mick, Audrey was given the promised tour by Jensen.
The house was truly amazing. The stained glass went through all the upstairs rooms, the bathrooms had clawfoot tubs, and the wallpaper was constantly changing, yet somehow always fitting the space.
Whoever had designed the place had a real talent.
The decor was overwhelming in the best way possible.
“This is amazing, thank you for showing me around,” she said as they made their way back down the main staircase. She absolutely understood what Cassidy meant about sweeping up and down it in a dramatic robe. Heck, she wanted to run around the whole damn house in one.
“Absolutely. I enjoy showing it off, even though I had nothing to do with it, other than having the good sense to buy it.” Jensen grinned at her, his head cocking to the side as the noise from downstairs increased again.
They’d heard several people arriving while he’d been giving the tour.
“Sounds like another one has arrived. I think that must be everyone.”
They turned the corner, heading from the second floor down to the first. There was a landing on the staircase before the final set into the foyer, with a bench seat and a massive stained-glass window. It looked like the perfect place to sit and read, and Audrey was wildly jealous.
Not as jealous as she was a moment later when they turned the corner and started down the stairs, and she saw who had just come in.
Mason.
And his arm was around a beautiful woman.
An incredibly beautiful woman. One who looked like a model.
A woman who was the opposite of Audrey in every way.
Tall. Not quite as tall as Mason, but only an inch or two shorter.
Slim with perky breasts that would probably never sag, even as she aged.
Pointed cheekbones that were definitely not from Maybelline.
Long silky black hair that flowed over her shoulders and down her back and probably never experienced a moment of frizz.
Tanned skin that had probably never turned lobster red under the sun.
Her eyelashes looked too long to be real, yet Audrey was willing to bet good money they weren’t fake.
It's not fair.
Of course, Mason wasn’t single. Of course, his girlfriend was a goddess.
And yet, when his gaze lifted and met hers, her heart still skipped a beat.
“Jensen. Audrey.” He hesitated as the woman next to him smiled, which made her even more beautiful, as impossible as that should be. “Audrey, this is my fiancée, Yasmine. Yasmine, this is David’s sister, Audrey.”
Audrey forced an answering smile onto her face even though the inside of her chest suddenly hurt so much, it felt hard to breathe.
“Hi!” She hurried forward, reaching out with her hand to greet Mason’s fiancée, and managed to trip on something because she wasn’t looking where she was going. Instead of a calm, collected handshake and welcome, she face-planted right at the golden couple’s feet.
I hate my life.