Betting on You (4 page)

Uncle Jim was their go-to for parental-type intervention at the moment. Mom and Dad March were out of town on a two week cruise, a last minute trip Lark suspected was spurred more by Mom’s need to get away from Aria than her profound longing to see the Alaskan wilderness.

Mom loved all her daughters, but she and Aria had been butting heads since Aria moved back home. Mom loved having Felicity around, but her eldest daughter’s sour attitude rubbed Sue March the wrong way. Mom was like Melody, a romantic who believed life was a beautiful adventure waiting to be twirled through.

Mom was the one who had refused to let Lark wallow in despair when Mason left. She had insisted Lark think of something she was dying to do and then helped her daughter become so immersed in her new project that Lark had no time for moping or sourness.

That project had been
Ever After Catering
.

Only Lark knew the name was completely sarcastic. Or had been at the time. After Mason left she’d had about as much faith in happily ever after as the tooth fairy.

But now…

But now, nothing. You can’t trust him. He proved that. If you fall for him again, you’ll just be giving heartbreak a handwritten, engraved invitation.

“Well?” Aria asked, reaching for her back pocket where her cell phone always lived. “Am I calling Uncle Jim?”

“No.” Lark shook her head. “It’s only seven days. I can put up with anything for seven days, and then he’ll be out of my life for good. No more surprises.”

“A life without surprises…” Melody sighed and sank into Dad’s overstuffed armchair. “That sounds like the worst kind of life there is.”

“There are lots of worse kinds of life,” Aria said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes that made Felicity laugh again. “Like life with cancer. Or war.”

“Life with leprosy,” Lark added.

“Life with chronic body odor,” Aria countered.

“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing sore on your face,” Lark said, ignoring Melody’s insistence that this game wasn’t funny.

“Life with chronic body odor and an oozing face sore and a shriveled arm stump that smells like beef jerky,” Aria said, making Melody moan and Lark laugh until her side hurt.

She was still laughing when the doorbell rang, and smothered her happiness like a blanket over a fire.

It was six o’clock. Mason was here.

***

Fifteen minutes later—after Mason received a warm greeting from Melody, a squeal of approval from Felicity, and a cool “have her back by ten” from Aria—Lark was out the door, tucked into Mason’s shiny new car, and headed toward downtown Summerville on her second, first date with Mason.

It was…surreal.

The car was so new it still smelled like plastic and chemicals and the dashboard gleamed like the cockpit of a freshly detailed racecar. It was so different from the old pickup Mason used to drive that, when Lark first slid inside, it was almost possible to believe she was going out with a different person.

But then she caught a whiff of his Mason smell—that spicy, soapy, pine tree and seashore smell that had always made her feel warm all over—lurking beneath the new car stink and the memories came flooding back. Smelling the place where Mason’s shoulder met his neck used to be enough to make her dizzy, to make her entire body ache with wanting him closer.

“So, where are we going?” Lark asked, clearing her throat.

She wasn’t going to think about Mason’s sexy smell or how nice his arms felt wrapped around her. She was going to make polite conversation, catch up with a man who was once a good friend, and go straight home.

Do not stop on the front stoop to say goodnight, do not collect end-of-date kisses.

“You’ll see,” Mason said, with a glance her way. “You look great, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Lark said, smoothing the skirt of her wrap-around jean dress, swallowing the “so do you” on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t want to encourage Mason, and he hardly needed any assurance that he looked wonderful.

Even in a simple pair of dark blue jeans and a white button-up with the sleeves rolled up to show his muscled forearms, he was stunning. Heads turned when he parked the car at the east end of Main Street and walked around to get Lark’s door. One woman in a tight black sundress even stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk to give Mason a come hither grin.

It would have been enough to intimidate Lark if this were a real date, or if she hadn’t gotten used to the effect Mason had on the opposite sex years ago.

Mason had always been gorgeous, magnetic, and much more attractive for a man than Lark was for a woman. Lark wasn’t
unattractive
by any stretch, but she knew she and Mason weren’t playing in the same league. But that had never bothered her back when she and Mason had been she and Mason. It didn’t matter how many prettier, thinner, blonder, big-boobier women made eyes at her boyfriend. Mason had only had eyes for her. To him, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The way he used to look at her had left no doubt about that.

Who was she kidding? There was nothing past tense about that look. Mason still looked at her like she was something magical, a treasure he was proud to help from his car.

The look used to make her smile. Now, it made her forehead wrinkle with irritation.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she mumbled, pulling her hand from his and moving onto the sidewalk as he shut the door behind her.

“Like what?” he asked, joining her, the gentle May breeze ruffling his hair, making him look even more handsome.

The woman in the sundress who had stopped to gape was still staring, craning her neck, obviously trying to discern if Mason was really taken. Lark barely resisted the urge to stick her tongue out in Black Sundress’s direction.

“You know like what,” she snapped at Mason instead. “This is an arrangement, not a real first date.”

Mason sighed, looking so deflated that for a moment Lark felt guilty. Then she remembered that
he
was the one who was a coward and a runner and a heart destroyer and lifted her chin in defiance.

“You said you’d give this a real chance,” Mason said softly. “It was part of the deal, remember?”

Lark took a breath and held it, swallowing the retort on the tip of her tongue. Mason was right. She had promised to give him a chance, and a March never broke a promise. It was what made her different from people like Mason.

“All right,” Lark said. “I’ll make an effort, but I would appreciate it if you would stop it with the look.”

Mason’s mouth curved. “The unicorn princess look?”

Lark’s lips twitched in spite of herself. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything,” he said, in a voice that made Lark’s bare arms prickle.

“Not everything,” she said, doing her best to keep things light. “It was like a unicorn
and
a princess, spotted together at the same time. Not a unicorn princess. That would be weird.”

“A unicorn in any part of the equation is weird,” Mason said, shoving his hands into his pockets and wandering toward the east end of downtown. “I’m not into unicorns. At least not in
that
way.”

“In what way
are
you into unicorns?” Lark asked, playing up the judgment in her tone.

“In the way most normal Southern men are into unicorns,” he said with an absolutely straight expression. “I respect the gore-potential inherent in their horn and admire their silky manes, but the feelings end there.”

Lark smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. “You’re so weird.”

Mason returned her grin. “And you’re completely normal.”

Lark tried to stop smiling, but failed. She’d always loved that Mason got her offbeat sense of humor. Before she met him, Melody and Aria had been the only people in the world who could make her laugh until she snorted. Finding someone outside her family who could enjoy a part of her even some of her closest friends didn’t quite understand, was…special.

“So how hungry are you?” Mason asked.

Lark shrugged. “Not starving, but I didn’t have dinner.” She paused at the last street corner before the downtown area gave way to strip malls and bodegas, with a few apartment buildings scattered in between. “We should probably turn around. All the restaurants are still on the other side of downtown.”

“I was thinking something a little less formal,” Mason said, taking her hand and pulling her across the street as the crosswalk sign flickered to “walk.”

“Like what?” Lark asked, deftly slipping her hand from Mason’s as she skipped ahead of him and up onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street, determined not to let him weasel his way into getting more than the civility she’d promised.

“Like bowling with a side of corn dogs and French Fries.”

“Bowling,” Lark repeated, wrinkling her nose. “Do you bowl?”

“I do not. I have
never
bowled.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Never? Not even when you were a kid?”

“Not even when I was a kid.”

“Well, then I say yes. Yes to bowling.” Lark was always one to embrace a new experience. Besides, nothing could be more unromantic than bowling and unromantic was exactly what she intended for tonight to remain.

She turned left, headed toward
Summerville Bowl,
a slightly saggy building next to the Feed Store a street over. “I totally forgot the bowling alley was over here,” she said, a spring in her step.

This might actually be fun. Surely it would be easier to keep her mind off the past while doing something she and Mason had never done together.

“I swung by this afternoon to check it out,” Mason said. “It’s got 1960’s charm and only a slight foot odor stench, mostly overpowered by the decades of grease soaked into the walls.”

“Yum.” Lark smiled. “Speaking of foot odor, I’m going to have to buy some socks from the vending machine. If I’d known we were bowling, I wouldn’t have worn sandals.”

“Don’t worry, I brought socks for you,” Mason said.

“You did?”

“I did.” He pulled a pair of white ankle socks from his back pocket. “I stopped by the store on my way to your house.”

“Well…thanks,” Lark said, taking the socks as they reached the door to the bowling alley, feeling vaguely uncomfortable for some reason she couldn’t quite pin down. “That was thoughtful.”

“I’m full of thoughts,” he said, reaching past her to open the door, leaning close enough that his breath stirred her hair. “Lots and lots of thoughts.”

“Yeah?” Lark looked up, her heart beating faster when she realized their lips were only inches apart. His eyes were even more intense this close, so clear and blue and so completely focused on her that she would swear he could see straight through her.

“You can count on it,” he said in a husky voice.

Lark swallowed, willing her breath to come slow and even and her expression not to give any sign of the way he affected her. “The only thing I’m counting on is kicking your butt in bowling,” she said, ducking under his arm and into the decidedly footy-smelling lobby. “I was on a league when I was seven.”

“You’re kidding,” Mason said, joining her at the end of the line for admission and shoe rental. “I didn’t know that about you.”

“It was a daddy daughter league, but I played with Pop-pop. Pop-pop loved to bowl. It was his old man crack.”

Mason paused, and Lark could tell by the quality of his silence that he’d heard the news. “I’m sorry. About Pop-pop.”

“Thanks,” Lark said, swallowing past the tightness in her throat. She missed her granddad so much, but he’d been in a lot of pain at the end, and she was certain he was in a better place now. A place where he could play as many pain-free rounds of bowling as his sweet little old heart desired.

They reached the front of the line and Lark gave the man behind the desk her shoe size and waited while Mason paid before starting toward the lanes. It was quiet for a Sunday night, but there were still a good number of people out for a game.

Lark did a quick scan of the patrons, relieved not to see anyone she knew. She didn’t want to have to explain what she was doing with Mason to any of her friends. She hadn’t told anyone except her sisters about her and Mason’s bargain—not even Lisa. She didn’t want her best friend fretting over Lark while she was supposed to be enjoying her honeymoon, and she didn’t want to deal with the backlash from all of the people who had hated Mason for four years on her behalf.

Better to get this done and over with as quickly and secretly as possible and then go back to her life. Her busy, active, fulfilling life, with not a whiff of romance in it.

Which did not make her sad. At all.

Or at least not much…

She and Mason played ten frames—Mason rallying after a few disastrous rolls, proving he might not be hopeless as a bowler, though Lark did beat him by a good thirty points—and then headed to the snack bar for a grease feast.

It wasn’t gourmet by any stretch, but the food was good for what it was. They chatted over corn dogs, jalapeno poppers, and the bowling alley’s take on a side salad—ice burg lettuce and a few dry shredded carrots topped with Italian dressing—keeping the conversation light. Lark learned that Mason had passed his boards early and Lark told him about the weddings she had coming up in June. Mason talked about the practice he’d be joining in Atlanta, and Lark told him how lucky it was that Aria had moved home just days before Lark’s old pastry chef quit.