Chapter 8
EIGHT
PHOENIX
The door of our room swings open to confirm I might have actually died in a plane crash and been sent to my personal hell.
One bed.
One enormous, brass-framed, doily-covered king bed with approximately seventeen decorative pillows and a quilt that looks hand-stitched by someone’s great-grandmother. The bed dominates the room, taking up at least half of the available floor space.
In the far corner, wedged between a window seat and an armoire that probably contains either mothballs or a family of ghosts, sits a loveseat.
Not even a proper sofa. A loveseat. The kind of furniture that’s designed for two people to sit uncomfortably close while pretending to enjoy afternoon tea, not for a full-grown human to sleep on.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter to the empty room.
Behind me, I hear Mason and Atticus climbing the stairs.
Their footsteps are oddly synchronized, or maybe that’s just my exhausted brain searching for patterns.
I stand frozen in the doorway, staring at the bed like it might somehow split into three reasonable sleeping surfaces if I wish hard enough.
No such luck.
Mason appears at my shoulder first, overnight bag slung across his chest. He takes one look at the room and his jaw tightens.
“I’ll take the couch.”
The words come out clipped, decisive, the same tone he uses when dealing with difficult publicists or restaurant managers who’ve failed to properly label their allergen information.
Before I can respond, he’s already brushing past me into the room, dropping his bag on the loveseat like he’s claiming territory.
“Mason, that thing is practically a child’s chair. You’ll destroy your back.”
“I’ve slept on worse.” He doesn’t look at me, just starts pulling items from his bag with methodical precision. Toiletry kit. Phone charger. The paperback thriller he’s been reading on flights for the past month. “Excuse me.”
He disappears into the bathroom, and the door clicks shut with a finality that feels like a statement.
I stare at the closed door, an uncomfortable knot forming in my stomach.
Something is very wrong with Mason. More wrong than his usual stress responses, more wrong than the controlled irritation he gets when my schedule falls apart.
This is something else entirely—something that started the moment that pilot said the words Harmony Harbor.
I turn to find Atticus standing in the doorway, surveying the room with an expression I’ve learned to distrust. That particular curve of his lips, the way his eyes track from the tiny loveseat to the enormous bed and back again. I know exactly what he’s about to say before he even opens his mouth.
“Don’t even think about it.”
His eyebrows rise in mock innocence. “Think about what?”
“Whatever bullshit is about to come out of your mouth about sharing the bed.”
“Phoenix.” He presses a hand to his chest, sounding disturbingly sincere. “You should really save the tantrum for another time. It’s not going to help.”
I kick off my heels and immediately feel three inches shorter and about a thousand times more vulnerable. “You’re sleeping on the floor.”
“The floor?” He glances down at the worn carpet with theatrical disgust. “That floor? The one that’s probably not been deep-cleaned since the Reagan administration?”
“That’s the one.”
“Interesting.” He steps fully into the room, setting his bag on the bed—on the bed, like he already owns the place—and crossing his arms. “What if I said no?”
“Then I’ll scream.”
He blinks. “You’ll scream?”
“Loudly. Repeatedly. Until someone calls the police.”
His mouth twitches. “That’s your plan? Scream until law enforcement arrives to settle a sleeping arrangement dispute?”
“I’ve worked with less.”
“Phoenix.” He takes a step toward me, and suddenly the room feels much smaller than it did five seconds ago. “This bratty routine might work on Mason, but you’re going to need to try something different with me.”
Heat floods my face. Whether it’s anger or something else, I refuse to examine too closely. “Bratty? Did you just call me bratty?”
“I call them like I see them.”
“You insufferable, arrogant—”
“See, there it is again.” He’s closer now, close enough that I can smell that stupid jasmine-plum cologne, can see the way the lamplight catches the gold flecks in his green eyes. “The defensive deflection. The insults. It’s almost like you’re trying to distract me from something.”
“The only thing I’m trying to do is avoid sharing a bed with you.”
“Why?”
The question catches me off guard. “What do you mean, why? Because I don’t want to. Because it’s inappropriate. Because—“
“Because you don’t trust yourself?”
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
Because you don’t trust yourself.
The words hang between us like a challenge. Like a dare. And the worst part—the absolute worst fucking part—is that he’s not entirely wrong.
I need to get out of here. I need to get away from him before the worst possible thing happens.
The sudden urge to get away from him is overwhelming. Turning on my heel, I rip open the unlocked bathroom door without thinking it through.
And slam directly into a very wet, very naked Mason.
The impact sends the toiletry bag in his hand flying. Bottles scatter across the tile floor—shampoo, conditioner, the obscenely expensive face wash he refuses to travel without. Mason stumbles backward, nearly slipping on the wet floor, and I get an eyeful of…everything.
Literally everything.
Lean muscle. Water droplets tracing paths down his chest. The way his waist tapers into his hips, the faint trail of hair disappearing below—
My brain short-circuits.
“Christ, Phoenix. You scared me.” Mason grabs a towel from the rack, yanking it around his waist with lightning speed, but the damage is done. The image is seared into my retinas like a flash photograph, every detail preserved in high definition.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were—“
“No, it’s fine, I should have locked—“
“The door didn’t have a—“
“It’s an old place, the locks are—“
We’re both talking over each other, voices climbing in pitch and speed, and from the other room I hear Atticus absolutely losing his mind with laughter.
“Stop laughing!” I shriek toward the closed door.
Atticus’s voice is muffled by the closed door, but still clearly audible.”Then stop being so damn funny.”
Mason’s face has gone from pink to red to something approaching purple. The towel is clutched around his waist with white-knuckled hands, and water is still dripping from his hair onto his shoulders, onto the floor, onto my feet.
The bathroom is tiny—barely large enough for a clawfoot tub, a toilet, and a pedestal sink that’s seen better decades. Steam still hangs in the air from Mason’s shower, curling around us.
His scent practically saturates the air, a mix of chamomile and peppercorn that is unlike anything I’ve smelled before. I find myself shifting closer, breathing him in more deeply.
Stop it, girl.
I step backward so fast I nearly trip over my scattered toiletries. My heel lands on the shampoo bottle and I pinwheel, arms flailing, before catching myself on the doorframe.
“Are you okay?” Mason reaches for me instinctively, then remembers he’s holding up a towel with one hand and jerks back.
“Fine! I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’ll just—“ I gesture vaguely toward the main room, toward freedom, toward anywhere that isn’t this tiny bathroom where I can still see the outline of things through that inadequate towel. “I’ll wait. Outside. In the room. Where there are clothes.”
“Okay.”
“Great.”
I stumble backward through the doorway, yanking it shut behind me. My heart is hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to escape, and my face feels hot enough to cook an egg on.
Atticus is sprawled across the bed now, fully dressed but somehow looking more indecent than Mason did naked. He’s grinning like the cat that got the cream, the canary, and the entire dairy farm.
“Don’t,” I warn him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“I’m thinking many things.” He stretches, arms above his head, shirt riding up to reveal a strip of golden-brown skin. “For instance, I’m thinking about how long you stared at Mason’s junk before you remembered how to blink.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m guessing five seconds. Maybe ten if that gasp you made was anything to go by.”
“Enough.”
“Mmmhmm.” He sits up, patting the space beside him on the bed. “Come sit. You look like you’re about to vibrate out of your own skin.”
“I’m not sitting on that bed.”
“It’s a very comfortable bed.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re going to have to sleep somewhere tonight, firebird.”
That damn nickname makes something in my chest flutter, which only makes me angrier. I stomp to the loveseat since it’s only surface not currently occupied by an insufferable alpha and throw myself onto the cushioned surface.
It’s more comfortable than it looks. There’s a view of the harbor, lights twinkling on the water, boats bobbing gently at their moorings. Under different circumstances, it might even be peaceful.
Instead, I’m acutely aware of every sound from the bathroom.
Water running. Mason moving around. The soft swishes of fabric as he gets dressed.
My brain helpfully supplies images to accompany each sound, filling in details I definitely didn’t memorize in those three-point-five seconds I was absolutely not staring.
“So,” Atticus says conversationally. “Mason.”
“Don’t.”
“He’s been holding out on us. I caught a glimpse when you opened the door. Who knew all that competence came with a six-pack?”
“I said don’t.”
“I’m just making an observation—“
“And I’m just telling you to shut the fuck up before I throw you out the window.”
He holds up his hands in surrender, but his eyes are still dancing with amusement. “Touchy.”
“Exhausted.”
“Seems like the two pretty much go hand in hand for you.”
The bathroom door opens, and Mason emerges in gray sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt that clings to his still-damp chest in a way that is absolutely not fair. His glasses are slightly fogged from the steam, and he’s toweling off his hair with one hand while avoiding eye contact with everyone.
“Shower’s free.”
“Thanks.” My voice comes out squeaky. I clear my throat. “Thanks.”
Mason crosses to the loveseat and sits down, immediately pulling out his phone and staring at the screen with intense concentration. His ears are still red.
The bathroom door closes behind me and I slump against it, pressing my cool palms to my burning cheeks.
Get it together, Phoenix.
The bathroom still smells like that indescribable scent, like the freshly ground herbs of an Old World apothecary shop. It might be the most interesting scent I’ve ever experienced. Which makes sense, seeing as Mason is the most interesting person I’ve ever met.
I turn on the water as hot as it will go and strip out of my clothes, letting them fall to the floor in a heap that Mason would probably lecture me about. The tub is ancient but surprisingly comfortable, and I sink into it like I’m trying to drown my own thoughts.
He’s your assistant, I remind myself firmly. Your friend. Your employee. Off limits in every possible way.
But the image of him—water streaming down his chest, surprise widening those gray eyes, the way his hands looked gripping that towel—won’t leave me alone.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, a smaller voice whispers: When did you start thinking of him as off limits?
When did you start thinking of him at all?
I dunk my head under the water and hold my breath until the questions stop.