Admit One (5 page)

She made one final attempt at sanity. “Mason. I don’t think –”

“No.”
He lifted one of her legs around his hips. And his hand sliding up her bare thigh, all the way up under her skirt, made him
shiver when she gasped. “Don’t run away from me again.”

He sounded desperate – probably because he was hard as a railroad spike.

But then he kissed her again, almost tenderly this time.
“Allison.”
It was barely a whisper, more a breath of air into her mouth. But Allie didn’t want his false tenderness. She didn’t want the illusion that he cared – she’d already had a bellyful of men with hidden agendas. The lust was at least honest, even if she couldn’t quite understand it on his part. So she concentrated on the feel of his hand on her thigh.  Her lips felt bruised and despite the night air, perspiration began to collect at the small of Mason’s back where she gripped him.

“God.
God.”
He pulled back, looking as mind-whacked as she felt, and Allie experienced a brief spurt of surprise.

Unless, of course, he was acting.

“
Stop it.”

“What?” she said when he frowned at her, a pretty intense expression from three inches away. Those intoxicating eyes narrowed, the left lid twitching again, as his kiss-swollen lips thinned into a line. When he hiked her up, she had no choice but to encircle his hips and hang on. Satisfied that she was clinging like a barnacle, he started walking down the path through the dappled moonlight. 

“What are you doing?”

“You seem to have a talent for overlooking the obvious. I’m carrying you.”

“You don’t need to –”

“I’m afraid that I do. For one, you’ve lost your shoes.”

“I can still walk.” Although now that he mentioned it, the bottoms of her feet stung from numerous scratches and minor lacerations. But she wasn’t about to admit that fact.

“No.”

Okay. The mood had definitely shifted. His grip on her butt seemed less lover-like than it did annoyed.

“Look, I don’t know if maybe you sniffed glue or something when I wasn’t looking, but –”

“If I let you down, you’ll likely run, and I don’t feel like blundering about in the dark, chasing after you again.”

It was kind of difficult trying to decipher his thought processes while they bounced along in the loamy soil, her panties rubbing against his… well. The mood might have shifted, but it was apparent that certain parts of his anatomy had yet to catch up. 

“Look, put me down. I don’t like this
.”
 

He stopped walking, his clipped tone belligerent. “Is that so? You certainly seemed to like it a few moments ago.”

Her hackles went straight up, but she was too honest to deny it. “Yeah well, you caught me off guard.”

“Then we’re even.”

“What?”

Mason blew out a frustrated breath. “Last year? I
did
set out to seduce you. I admit it. I orchestrated the whole thing, and I used your misapprehension to my advantage. But when I kissed you…” He sighed and shook his head. “This is foolish. I’m taking you someplace civilized so we can talk.”

Allie waited a beat. “Where?”

“How the bloody hell should I know? Someplace without alligators.” He squinted, peering around. “Where are we, anyway?”

Allie glanced over his shoulder. There was only the occasional wink of light through the trees, but she could just make out the silent, blackened shell of a building, its crumbling spire stretching toward the sky.

“I know where we are. Put me down.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?” Allie squirmed, trying to slither out of his arms, but he only locked them tighter.

“A little to the left, darling.” 

Inflamed, she contemplated biting him in some vulnerable spot, but a lifetime of decorum won out. “You know, there’s this little document called The Declaration of Independence that says my kind doesn’t take orders from your kind anymore.”

“You’re actually using a two hundred year-old political rift to state your position?”

“No, I’m using a two-hundred year-old political rift to
change
my position. Let go.”

It irritated her to no end that he grinned. “You do realize that you’re adorable.”

“You do realize that you’re about to get your butt whooped if you don’t put me down.”

“Speaking of butts…” his hands tightened. “I, well
bugger me!”

Allie suddenly found herself on the ground, though not quite in the way she’d intended. She wasn’t exactly pinned beneath Mason – because he’d twisted as they went down – but wasn’t exactly not. She was sort of wedged between his legs, his arm at an awkward angle beneath her head, like he’d flung it out at the last moment.

“Cripes. Are you all right, darling?”

She ignored that “darling” bit. Her skirt was up around her hips and something sharp dug into her thigh. “I’m fine.”

Mason lifted his torso, but their legs were still tangled together. “I guess we’re even again. What did I trip over?”

“I don’t know.” But Allie lifted her head, and realized they must be in the cemetery behind the church. “If I had to guess, I’d say a grave marker.” 

Mason was suddenly scrambling around, trying to get them untangled from one another.  She bumped him in the chin when she tried to sit up.

“Ouch. Just let me… the soil seems to be a bit churned up here and…
sorry
,” he said when she cried out, because he’d lost his traction and somehow slipped on top of her again. 

Allie turned her head and spotted a light, bobbing up and down, growing closer by the moment. “Mason.” She tapped him on the shoulder.

“I know. Forgive me, I’m just…” he managed to get to his knees, and offered her a hand.  Just as the light grew bright enough to blind them. “What the…?”

And too late, Allie realized what was happening.

Because Will punched Mason in the face.

WILL
watched several outraged citizens – most of them named Hawbaker – flutter around the bloodied actor in the backstage dressing room.

“Did you have to hit him in the
face?”
his little brother complained loudly, moving aside the cold compress to check what was turning into one hell of a shiner. What Allison had started the night before, Will had finished this evening. He tried to make himself feel bad about that, but then he remembered the scene illuminated by his flashlight.

“He had our sister pinned to the ground with her skirt pushed up over her head.” That Allie favored skimpy lace panties in a glaring shade of blue was more than he’d ever wanted to know.  “And she was yelling.”

“I was not
yelling
,” Allie said. “And where my skirt was is none of your business.”

“It is if you’re being attacked!”

She crossed her arms and glared at Will. “I was not being attacked. Which you might have deduced for yourself if you’d taken the time to look before overreacting.”

Figured. One woman’s heroic authority figure was another woman’s annoying older brother.

“You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t sue you for police brutality,” she told him.

“No, that’s what would have happened if I’d popped the
last
moron you dated.”

“I have no intention of suing anyone,” Mason said from beneath the ice pack just as Allie said “We’re not dating.”

Magnanimously overlooking the fact that Will had just implied he was a moron, the actor muttered “July fourth, seventeen-seventy-six, was a dark, dark day in history.”

Allie scowled at him, but since she’d also jumped to Mason’s defense, Will figured she could handle whatever that was all about without him punching the man again.   

“I suppose I would have hit me, too,” Mason said. “Though probably not with such unerring aim. And why is this compress green?” He pulled back a little to peer at the pack through his swollen lid.

“Parsley,” Branson told him. “It’s an anti-inflammatory and an anesthetic. Josie mixed up a batch of it for me to use on Tommy.”

“It works,” Tommy interjected from his position in the doorway, indicating his own eyes. And indeed the kid’s face did look better than when he’d seen him in the store that afternoon.

But thinking about how he’d come by those injuries made Will’s blood pressure spike. He’d done everything by the book, lined up all his evidentiary ducks in a row, to get charges of aggravated assault and battery brought against the thug who’d jumped Tommy. But the Assistant Solicitor assigned to the case had been hesitant about pushing for the aggravated charge, because Tommy said Jimmy and his pal hadn’t made any slurs about his perceived sexual orientation either before or during the attack.

So Jimmy had been arraigned on a lesser charge. Which was bad enough, but then the little punk had posted bail immediately. In cash. Given the fact that he couldn’t claim any steady employment that Will was aware of, all the Benjamins he’d been flashing around had Will’s
somethin’ ain’t right
meter pinned. He was going to have to start paying real close attention to that guy.

“Do you think it’s too late to write a black eye into the script?” Bran drew Will’s attention back to the current situation. “Maybe something about luggage falling from an overhead compartment…”

“How mercenary of you,” Allie said.

“Hey, I’ve already got one actor on the injured list.” He nodded toward Tommy. “I’m running out of options, here.”

“No, he’s right,” Mason said. “The show must go on.” He replaced the compress with just the right amount of stiff upper lip to have Will giving him the fish eye again. He still wasn’t sure he trusted this guy.

Rainey – her hair sprayed gray and pulled back into a bun – hurried in, carefully holding a carryout cup from The Dust Jacket. “Sorry that took so long,” she said. “It took me an age to find the right tin. Oh, and here are your keys back.”

“Thanks, Rainey.” Allie took the keys and the cup, the latter of which she thrust unceremoniously toward Mason. “Drink that.”

He peered at it, suspicious. “What is it?”

“It’s tea. It should help with the pain.”

“Not that I don’t believe tea is the cure for most of life’s ills,” the Brit told her, “but why does this smell like piss?”

“It’s one of Josie’s old herbal remedies,” Bran told Mason.  “I’m not sure exactly what’s in it, but it really does help take the pain away.”

Mason sipped it, and winced. “Likely because one’s slipped into some kind of toxic coma.”

“Branson?” Will waited until his brother’s blue eyes met his, then tilted his head toward the door.

Bran sighed, then nodded. “Hey Tommy, Rainey? How about we go out and finish running through that last scene in Act One.”

No dummies, the two of them looked at each other, knowing that they’d been dismissed. They were also clearly trying to figure out an excuse to linger so that they didn’t miss anything.

But when Will cleared his throat, Tommy shrugged and grabbed Rainey’s hand. “Let’s go.”

Rainey looked back over her shoulder with a little finger wave for Mason. Tommy rolled his eyes and tugged her from the room.

Bran snapped off a salute before shutting the door behind him.

Hands stuffed in his pockets, Will turned to frown at the two numbnuts that were left. “I need to ask what you saw at the cemetery.”

“Before or after you blackened my eye?” Mason said and Allie said “Mostly, I saw my skirt, being as it was over my head.”

“Don’t be cute.” Will pointed an admonitory finger at her. “We got a nine-one-one call about a possible disturbance behind First Baptist. I happened to be close by so I went over to check it out. Imagine my surprise and horror at finding my sister struggling with some guy on the ground.”

“Oh.” Allie bit her lip.

“Yes,
oh.”

“But,” Mason squinted at Will with his good eye. “How could someone have noticed our presence, placed the call and summoned you within such a short time frame? We couldn’t have been on the ground more than thirty seconds after I tripped. And prior to that…”  He glanced at Allie and cleared his throat.

“Prior to that we were… kissing,” Allie admitted glumly. “And there might have been a few cross words mixed in.  But I hardly think it qualifies as a
disturbance
.”

Will pushed the image that had just flashed like a tawdry neon sign right back out of his head. “Did either of you see anyone else at any time?  Maybe pass someone along the path?”

“I don’t think so.” Allie glanced at Mason, who shook his head. “What’s this about?”

“I’ll get to that. Allie, did you by chance lose any personal items tonight?”

“Personal items?” She looked puzzled. “Like… Oh! My shoes. I totally forgot. Did you find them?”

He had. “I’ll return them to you later. How about your hair? It’s a little,” he gestured around his head to indicate that hers was mussed. “Did you maybe have it tied back or something before…” he glared at Mason “you rolled around in the dirt?”