Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (129 page)

Hailey sighed. “She thinks it was someone concerned for her safety.”

“Why didn’t she call the cops?” She usually did. Of course, she also called the mayor’s office to complain the next day as well, but she wasn’t content to wait without doing something.

“This anonymous call didn’t come until a little bit ago.”

That should also seem suspicious. Who called to warn someone about something that had happened almost twelve hours earlier? But it was evidently working. Hailey was calling for backup, so Phoebe and Matt had pulled it off in spite of the holes in the setup.

“What do you need from me?” Adrianne was glad she thought to ask. She wasn’t supposed to know that Hailey was meeting Mason this morning.

“Mason Riley is going to the build site to hear about our plans. I don’t have a cell number for him and he’s already left the bed and breakfast. Can you run out there and meet him?”

Geez, Matt had probably camped out across from the B & B so he’d know the exact moment to call Mrs. Langston so that Mason would have already left. Thank goodness, Mrs. Langston could be counted on to get right on the phone to Hailey. And thank goodness Hailey generally ran ten to fifteen minutes late.

“Um.” She shouldn’t seem eager. But she couldn’t say no. She never said no to Hailey. She was Adrianne’s boss, and truthfully, Adrianne could do everything Hailey did except sign official documents, and that was simply because Hailey was the one who’d been elected and sworn in. “Sure, I guess.”

“I thought he took you home last night.”

Uh, oh. Hailey sounded suspicious. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Your car was gone when I left the Come Again.”

“Oh, yeah, I—” Shit. How was she going to explain that? “We were talking in the parking lot a little and some of the guys came out.” That was all true. They’d been doing a lot more than talking, but they’d talked too. “And we got someone to drive my car home for me.” Not true. But she hadn’t given a name so Hailey couldn’t check it out anyway.

“Oh, okay. I thought that was weird.”

Adrianne breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t going to press for more details. Details were what could kill you in a lie. It was hard to remember things that hadn’t actually happened. Better to be vague.

Or to tell the truth.

Adrianne shook her head. She didn’t like this. Lying wasn’t good. And she wasn’t totally sure why she felt the need to lie. Except that Phoebe and Matt were truly concerned about Mason and Hailey spending time together, and she trusted them.

And she needed her candy shop.

Besides, it was possible Hailey was truly attracted to Mason. He was a great guy. Amazing even. And Hailey had a proven track record of being interested in great guys. There wasn’t a single loser on her list of exes. Hailey’s attention to Mason might not just be about the money. If so, and if she got even an inkling about how Adrianne felt about him, she wouldn’t like Adrianne hanging out with him. Which meant there would be no more kissing. And honestly, Adrianne was hoping for a little more of that before he left town.

So maybe she would have to be a little secretive with Hailey. She could live with that if it was for the good of the project, which meant it was ultimately for Hailey’s own good. But she was going to try to keep from lying or sneaking. Much.

“What time do I need to be there?” she asked.

“Ten. And why don’t you go over some basics? But I need to reschedule a time for him and me to sit down together. Will you see if you can arrange something? Maybe dinner?”

Dinner? Just the two of them?

“Are you going to be meeting with all the investors one on one?” she asked. “Because, you know, I’ll need to make sure we can get it all into your schedule.”

The only true
must do
on Hailey’s schedule were the city council meetings, and those were only once a month, but Adrianne was the one everyone contacted for meetings, lunches and events that involved Hailey.

“Oh, no, I’ll see them all at the investor dinner on Sunday.”

“So Mason’s the only one?” He did have the most money and she’d been serious when she’d told him that he’d give the whole thing a lot of credibility. With him on board, it would be easier to get the others to sign on. Maybe Hailey realized all of that and—

“I told you Mason’s the only one of the bunch I haven’t dated.”

Yep, she sure had.

“So a date then?” Adrianne felt her chest tighten slightly and she rubbed the spot that always felt like someone had kicked her in the chest when she started to get emotional.

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make this project happen.”

Yeah, poor Hailey having to date Mason. Her sacrifices were never ending.

“Do you think it’s necessary to date him to get him to donate? Can’t we show him the plans, impress him with our products, convince him it’s a great idea? Shouldn’t it be about business?”

Hailey laughed. “Of course. We’ll do all of that too. But making sure he has a great time while he’s here won’t hurt, will it?”

Adrianne thought Mason seemed to be having a pretty good time so far. The memory of his hand on her breast shot through her mind and hot lightning seemed to flash through her body. Yeah, there had definitely been two of them there last night. In all her twenty-nine years of life she’d never made herself feel like that.

“Adrianne?”

She pulled herself back to the phone conversation. “Yeah?”

“So you’ll meet him?”

“Sure. No problem.” Because really, what was she going to say?

“And don’t forget to set up a dinner for him and me. Tomorrow night would be good.”

Tomorrow night was Saturday. Saturday was a great date night.

“Great,” Adrianne answered, though she wasn’t sure if she was referring to the pending date or the mess she found herself in the midst of.

MASON HAD BEEN mentally preparing for seeing Hailey all morning. He wasn’t worried exactly. She’d seen him last night and it had been rather obvious she liked what she saw. She’d asked him back to her house to
go over the plans
for the building project. He’d opened his mouth to reply, looked over to where Adrianne Scott was sitting and heard himself say, “I’d like to see the plans and the building site at the same time.” That had led to them setting up this meeting outside at Milton Johnson’s farm.

Technically, of course, it was Mason’s farm. Which seemed strange. It was why he’d shown up a half hour early. He wanted a chance to look at the place for the first time since Milt had passed away and shocked and touched Mason by making him the heir to the property and everything on it.

Mason walked along the fence line at the back of what was officially the house’s yard and where the rest of the land began. He knew every inch of the property from the pond to the pasture to the corn fields to the apple trees. He’d spent some of the happiest days of his life here. Out here, it didn’t matter that he was different. Out here, he could be normal. He had to dig fence-post holes and put up barbed wire and detassel the corn the same way everyone else did. His immense intelligence didn’t change any of that. He couldn’t solve the problem of a loose shingle on the barn any other way than with his hands. Like a normal person.

Mason had known normal people—they’d been all around him playing football, hanging out in the commons at school, going out on Friday nights. He’d also known somehow from an early age, that he wasn’t one of them. Even before he’d tested out of the fifth and sixth grades, he hadn’t been interested in the things the other kids were.

Skipping two grades certainly hadn’t helped. He’d left behind the few friends he did have. But fifth graders didn’t have anything in common with seventh graders no matter their age or weirdness. And being two years behind his classmates in age and hormones hadn’t made him more popular. Dances, girls and sneaking Playboy magazines and cigarettes simply didn’t appeal. Which had made him even weirder.

Rather than sports or girls, he loved watching things grow. He’d watched birds hatch and fly away from nests in their trees. He’d watched corn go from seed to full-grown plant of the most beautiful green he’d ever seen to mature where it browned and dried and was ready for harvest. And then it all started over again.

Strangely, the interests that set him apart from his peers were also what made him feel normal. There was nothing as salt-of-the-earth as being a farmer, genius scientific mind or not.

He watched apples grow, corn grow, cows grow. It was amazing, and even as well as he could understand it, there was little he could do to influence it. Things took time to develop.

Or did they?

Some of the ideas he had gotten rich off of had started on this farm.

What ifs had taken root and grown in his imagination, fueled by his knowledge at first and his experimentation later.

Mason stooped and plucked some grass near a fence post he remembered repairing. He twirled a blade between his thumb and forefinger. As a kid, he’d studied things, as a teen he dived into the whys and hows and then in college it was like everything took on a magical quality. He’d met other people who were as curious and passionate as he was, he’d had labs and books and resources. He’d been able to finally do things. And he’d done it. All of it. Over and over until it was perfect.

He was now twenty-seven and on the verge of making an impact on the world. The growing project in Haiti only needed a couple of meetings and a few signatures and they’d be on their way to bringing more resilient and productive crops to some of the poorest areas on earth.

It was exciting, but the politics were exhausting. He wanted to do it and stop talking about it. Talking wasn’t his forte. He was a thinker and a doer. Talking, explaining, debating, convincing and selling all tried his patience. To say the least. Doing it repeatedly irritated him to the point of alienating people. Like the Vice President of the United States. For instance.

Mason sighed as he turned to look at the farmhouse behind him.

This was technically the back of the house but Milt had built it so that his porch, complete with a swing, faced his west fields. Every night there were crops in his fields the older man sat watching as the sun set over them.

That porch swing had always been the epitome of home to Mason.

He was scheduled to meet with the Vice President of the United States next week.
Newsweek
wanted to do a story about their project. He had an entire team of scientists and students prepared to spend eight to twelve months in Haiti making this work.

And he was here wishing he had a porch swing.

“Good morning!”

Mason turned, knowing instantly that it wasn’t Hailey greeting him. He felt himself smile as he saw Adrianne coming toward him. “Good morning.”

She looked gorgeous. The blue sundress showed off smooth, lightly tanned skin and those perfect, delicious breasts he’d been treated to last night. The bodice of the dress would slide down even easier than the tank top had.

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me this morning,” she said as she came to stand beside him. “Hailey had a last-minute emergency come up. Teenagers smoking in the park.”

“I’m not the least bit disappointed,” he told her honestly. She really was short. She couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three. Her legs and arms were toned, her tummy flat, but she was curvy—she had hips and breasts that he truly loved.

“That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s going to say to me today.” She lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun and smiled at him.

“Just in case, let me also tell you that you look beautiful.”

Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail and she wore no jewelry and very light makeup. She looked like she could do a commercial for facial cleanser or herbal shampoo.

She was so different from the women he was used to spending time with. They were polished and put together—not an eyelash or thread out of place. They were beautiful, but he would have never gotten hot and heavy on the hood of his car with any of them. He wouldn’t have wanted to wrinkle them.

In contrast, Adrianne looked sweet and wholesome and he really wanted to wrinkle her some more.

At his compliment, she grinned. “That’s the nicest thing anyone will say all week.”

“That’s terrible. People should be telling you nice things all the time.”

“Why are you honeying up to me? You’re the one I’m supposed to be wowing with the building plans.”

“Honeying up?” he repeated. “Isn’t the term kissing up?”

She blushed.

All he said was kissing up and she blushed. He liked that. He hadn’t really been worried that she’d forgotten the kiss from the night before, but this made him positive she’d been thinking about it.

“Same thing,” she muttered, her gaze on the fence next to him instead of on him.

He moved closer. “I like anything with kissing in it better.”

“Anyway,” she said. “I’m supposed to be telling you about the building plans.”

“Okay, what part of the property are you thinking about using?”

She laughed. “Right here. And a lot of the yard and extending into the fields.”

Mason looked at her, not sure what the emotion was that he was feeling. The farm held great memories for him. Yes, it was a part of him. But he’d owned it for two years without visiting. He couldn’t possibly be feeling protective of it. He couldn’t really feel possessive. He didn’t care if they knocked the house down and paved the yard.

Except that in that moment he did.

“We’ll need to pave a road and put in parking too,” she said.

Mason looked out from the rise that came up gently from the land around it, where Milt had built his house. It wasn’t truly a hill by any definition. And it was three and a half miles from town. And it wasn’t like they could slap some cement on and call it a road.

“Why right here?”

“Well, it’s a hill…”

“Barely.”

She shrugged. “It’s more of a hill than anywhere else out here.”

That was probably true. “Why does it have to be out here?”

“It’s unused land that’s big enough and not too far from the two major highways.”