Book 22 Rescue After Dark #4
Thirty minutes later, they walk out of the meeting and reward themselves for surviving another budget meeting by having lunch at the Wayfarer.
After ordering, Mac McCarthy, Blaine’s friend and brother-in-law, comes by, and Blaine invites him to join them, but Mac can’t.
Blaine and Mason notice Mac looking overwhelmed.
Blaine texts his wife, Tiffany, about inviting Mac and Maddie over for dinner.
The family is worried about Mac after he recently collapsed at the clinic with a major anxiety attack, and Blaine is hoping to give them a break.
Ned Saunders, Blaine’s father-in-law, congratulates Mason on a job well done, saving Jordan and catching the fire before it got out of hand.
While they’re eating lunch, Mason asks Blaine, “Have you ever, when doing mouth-to-mouth without a shield, has it ever been like, well…”
“Like what?”
“Kissing?”
Blaine stares at him for a long moment before he blinks. “Uh, no. Usually, I’m grossed out by having to put my mouth on someone else’s when I don’t have a mouth shield handy. Why? Did that happen to you?”
“Nah, it was just this weird thing. Forget it.”
“No way. Who were you… Oh! Jordan Stokes?”
“Shut up, will you?” Mason glances around to see who might be hearing that he’d felt like he was kissing Jordan Stokes when he blew air into her lungs.
“You felt like you were kissing her?”
“Not exactly, it was just this strange thing. I don’t know. It’s stupid. I never should’ve said anything.”
“You felt something when you…” Blaine rolls his hand to encourage Mason to continue.
“I don’t know what it was exactly. But it was something.”
“I’ve never had that happen. Usually, I try not to think about anything other than getting air to lungs that need it and then finding the Listerine.”
“Same. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It was so bizarre, but her lips kinda moved, like she was trying to get more.”
“Stop it. No way.”
“Yes! I’m telling you. It was nuts.”
“Wow.” Having apparently lost interest in his fries, Blaine gives Mason’s revelation considerable thought.
That is the last thing Mason wants. “Forget it. It was nothing.”
“What if it wasn’t nothing?”
“I wish I’d never said anything. I already feel stupid enough even thinking it was something, so don’t make it worse.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying that stranger things have happened than connecting to someone during an emergency.”
“That’s not what this was. We didn’t ‘connect.’ I got her breathing normally again.”
“And she tried to kiss you. But other than that, nothing happened.”
Mason signals for the check, eager to get out of there now that he’s made the huge mistake of mentioning it to Blaine.
Blaine cracks up. “I’m not busting your balls. I swear, I’m not. I just think maybe you shouldn’t discount it as nothing.”
Mason tries to retrieve his wallet, but his arm protests the movement. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
“Mr. Saunders picked up your check,” Carly tells them. “He said thanks for your service.”
Jordan sleeps the day away and awakes late in the afternoon, feeling somewhat back to normal.
Only a residual ache in her chest remains to remind her of yet another brush with death.
Her grandmother used to tell her she was like a cat with nine lives.
She used up most of them in the first twenty years of her life and had cashed in another chip last night.
Jordan can’t remember much about what happened, but she distinctly remembers the feel of Mason’s lips on hers and how she’d tried to get closer to him. Totally mortifying! The man had been saving her life, and she reacted that way?
It’s all so confusing.
And in the clinic, he’d been so nice as well as funny, helpful and generous about getting food for both of them, even though he’d been injured, too.
She liked talking to him.
There. She admitted it and is just as quickly back to confused.
A few short months after a disastrous end to a toxic marriage, the last thing she needs to be thinking about is the sexy fireman who rescued her.
At least he’s nothing like Brendan, who’s half Mason’s size and pale as a ghost most of the time.
After being married to Brendan, the only man she’d ever even dated, she’s so starved for kindness that she overreacted to a man who was just doing his job by hanging with her while the clinic staff was busy. It would be just like her to read more into it than it warranted.
She’d had a health crisis.
He’d done his job.
End of story.
Nothing makes sense anymore, except her sister, who’s been by her side always—until she wasn’t and everything fell apart.
When Jordan decided to give her marriage one more chance, Nikki strongly objected.
So much so that Nikki had quit as Jordan’s manager because she’d had enough of the toxic waste dump that Jordan’s marriage had become.
If Jordan had one thing to do over, she would’ve let her sister talk her out of joining Brendan on his tour to try one more time to save something that hadn’t been worth saving.
She knows that now. Hell, she’d known it then and had done it anyway.
She has to own that, not that she blames herself for how it ended.
However, she’d put herself in that hotel room that night with a man she knew was unstable and addicted to Xanax and God only knew what else.
It had been a fool’s errand, like trying to bail the Titanic.
One thing she’s learned is that marriage takes two people to make it work, and if one of those two people is unwilling to do the bare minimum, it’s never going to last.
That’s what she’d said to Brendan that last night in Charlotte.
That she couldn’t keep them going all on her own.
He had to want it, too, and if he didn’t, that was fine.
But she couldn’t go on anymore with the way it had been, competing with his fans, his groupies, his phone, his bros and his drugs for bits and pieces of his attention like a pathetic dog looking for a bone from someone who had no fucks to give.
Apparently, that had been the wrong thing to say, because the fight had turned physical after she’d said that, and the next thing she’d known, his manager, Davy, had been punching Brendan while someone else got Jordan out of there until EMS came.
And thus, her disaster of a marriage had come to a swift and dramatic end that the entire world had seen unfold on social media and the entertainment sites that had gone crazy over Zane’s arrest and subsequent trip to rehab.
His rabid fans had blamed Jordan for all his troubles, claiming he’d never had drug issues until she came along, which was one hundred percent false.
Now, Jordan has the summer to decide what’s next for her. Nikki told her, “You don’t need to decide anything right now. If there’s one benefit to becoming a huge star, it’s that you’ve got plenty of money in the bank. Take the summer to rest, relax and think about what you want to do.”
Mason is nervous about going to dinner at Jordan’s house, and he can’t figure out why he feels that way.
This is why he’s all but given up on women and dating and all the nonsense that goes along with it.
He can’t remember the last time he went out with anyone, because he’s grown tired of the dance and the endless cycle of getting his hopes up about someone only to have them dashed.
He’s been through the full gauntlet—from a wedding called off one month before the big day, to promising first dates that never materialize into second dates, to no-shows, ghosting and everything in between.
Some people aren’t meant for happily ever after.
Maybe he’s one of them. He has an uncle who never married and has led a rich, fulfilling life without having had a family of his own.
Mason is determined to do the same if that’s his fate.
He’ll be thirty-six this year and is more aware of time passing him by than he’s ever been before, especially as many of his friends welcome their second and third children.
Blaine told him last week that Tiffany is expecting their second child together and the third in their family.
Blaine is completely smitten with his stepdaughter, Ashleigh, who has him firmly wrapped around every one of her cute little fingers.
His friend is a lucky man to have a wife, children and an extended family that loves him.
Mason hadn’t been lucky in that regard. So what?
Not everyone gets lucky that way. He has a good life that satisfies him, and he refuses to get maudlin about what hasn’t happened.
He much prefers to focus on the good things.
The incident with Jordan has thrown him off his stride.
That’s all it is. He’d be ludicrous to act on something that had been completely involuntary on her part.
She hadn’t actually kissed him. She’d been having an asthma attack, for crying out loud.
By the time he gets to Eastwood Look, he’s talked himself out of being nervous. Mason reaches for the flowers he bought for Nikki and Jordan and gets out of the SUV. As he heads for the door, Jordan appears, and suddenly, he’s nervous again.
Jordan asks him where the sling is. He threw it out the window and hoped some animal would take it. She nods to the flowers. “Are those for me?”
“And your sister. For having me over.” He hands the two bundles to her. “You can pick which one you like the best.”
Jordan gives the choice some considerable thought before settling on the pink roses over the mixed assortment. “Nikki will like these,” she says of the second bouquet.
He thinks it was sweet that she made her choice based on what her sister prefers.
“Jordan! Let Mason come in, will you?”