Armed And Dangerous (The McKinnon Legends - The McKinnon American Men Book 2) (29 page)

"I’m a piece of shit, that's who I am, Robert. And she deserves better. She deserves a man who will give her a comfortable, quiet life and kids. That is just not me.”

“Do you love her?” If Mason said he didn’t, Robert would be surprised. If he admitted it, he would be even more shocked. “Let her decide if you are right for her or not.”

Mason began to walk away, headed for his motorcycle, and pulled on his helmet.

"Mason, come back with me. She is asking for you.” Robert called after him and Mason just kept walking.

“Can you see your life without her now? Can you see her being the replacement for the things you are using to desperately try to fill the void in your soul? The racing bikes, the endless parade of women, the parties, they’re just fillers, Mason,” Robert called after him.

“I know what you’re doing, Robert, and it won’t work.” Mason yelled back as he snapped the straps of his helmet.

Robert did not stop. He would not get another opportunity, and the fact Mason was still there and not already three blocks away told him he was still listening and open.

“Do those things leave you warm and fulfilled or hungry for that elusive feeling you cannot quite describe or touch because it is out of your reach except when she is near?” Robert understood that feeling. It was that way with him and his wife, Kate. Life would be meaningless now without her by his side. Mason could well be in the same place and not fully understanding that walking away would accomplish nothing; not in the short run and never in the long run.

Still sitting on his bike and ready to leave, Mason did not answer.

“Can you see your life without her?” Robert quietly asked the one question which should have been the deciding factor.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I can,” he said, kick-starting the bike. “Actually, I can see a life without any of you.”

“And I bet it’s ugly,” Robert tossed out again angry at Mason’s lack of maturity.

“Don’t ever presume to tell me what my life is or is not.” Mason purposefully revved the engine when he saw Robert was about to speak.

“She is asking for you, Mason. Come back.”

“What? I cannot hear you.” Holding his hand to the side of his helmet in exaggerated sarcasm, he continued to gun the bike's motor.

Robert tried to speak again and Mason gunned the engine even louder.

“You can all just go to hell.” Mason pulled out leaving Robert behind wondering what the hell was wrong with the man.

Barbara was thinking that it had been five months since Mason disappeared. However, today was special. It was his birthday. She closed the file cabinets and locked them for the weekend before she poked her head into Robert’s office holding her coat and purse over her arm.

“Robert, I’m leaving for the weekend. Is there anything else you need before I close it down?”

“No, go on. I can lock up,” he answered half listening.

“Have a good weekend then,” she waived before closing his office door. As she walked past her desk, she picked up the birthday card and gift which had laid on the corner for almost a month in hopes Mason would come back. She tossed them into the trash on her way out the door.

Robert turned his attention back his phone.

He was reading an e-mail from Mason who was asking for a ride home from the airport. It was the first contact with him in over five months.

After Robert managed to track Mason’s motorcycle to Seattle, he had hit a dead end. Mason had just simply dropped off the face of the earth, going to ground, and regardless of the fact that Robert had spent a small fortune trying to find him, there had simply not been a single trace.

Now, Robert understood why.

It was Friday and Barbara had a very lively evening planned ahead. She had already taken a long bath and painted her nails.

Phase two was curling up with Lula and Brian to watch a movie. She had met Brian while recovering from her gunshot wounds, and they had been dating for a while. She expected him home at any minute from his rounds at the hospital.

Looking through her mail, she shredded most all the junk and filed the bills needing to be paid. The tattered envelope addressed to her caught her eye. It was postmarked Kodiak, Alaska, and dated over a month ago. She saw there was no return address as she flipped it over front and back. Shrugging, she opened it.

Immediately, she had to sit down.

Baby Doll,

I hope this finds you well. I’ve thought a lot about you over these last few months when I could afford to let my mind wander.

I’ve missed you.

I never got the opportunity to say thank you for the unselfish gesture. I would like to think you took that bullet just because it was me, but deep down I know it would be a lie. You would have taken that bullet for a total stranger, and I know this because I was not worthy and yet you did it anyway. I owe you my life, such as it is these days.

You are an amazing woman and my only regret is that I had years to get to know you and didn’t. I failed to see what might have been between us. That is my shortcoming.

You said once that in another world and another life that we could have been something special. I believe that now. Yet, like a coward, I took what I thought was the easy way out. The way I thought was best for both of us. I did not deserve you.

After I left Dallas, I took a job as a greenhorn on an Alaskan fishing boat and have been at sea for the last four months. I’m coming home and back to Texas soon after we finish this last run.

I would like to see you to offer my thanks and apologies in person.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed at the man three thousand miles away. “You no good sack of horse shit!” she yelled. She was hurt, furious, and heartbroken all over again as she began to cry in frustration.

She railed at the letter shaking it in her fist. “You bastard!”

She cried in frustration, tearing the letter into tiny shreds and watched it fall on the floor of her dining room like the shattered pieces of her heart.

“You make me fall in love with you and then leave me without so much as hi, bye, or kiss my ass and then expect to waltz in here having me welcome you with open arms and blindly accept your apology?” She kicked at the confetti on her floor.

“Naive, but yeah something like that.”

The soft voice behind her startled her. She swung around only to see Mason standing in her living room just inside the door she had obviously forgotten to lock. It had been five months since she had seen him, and the changes were startling.

His full beard was scruffy, and he was badly in need of a shave and haircut. His face was thinner, his body tighter, more cut. He looked as if he came straight from the boat dock, to the airport, then to her.

That was exactly what happened.

He had not even slowed down enough to clean up or shower, almost missing his flight as it was.

He dropped his duffel and opened his arms.

“Please.” It was all he could say.

She did not move, and even in her sweats, bunny slippers, and ponytail she looked beautiful to him.

He took a step forward. She still did not move.

Mason knew this was going to be hard; he just did not have a clue how hard. He took on the most hazardous job in the world, spending five months trying to exorcise her from his heart. The Bering Sea is a ruthless mistress, demanding full and total devotion. He could not give it to her. His heart totally and irrevocably belonged to another.

The Sea understood this fact and jealously tried to take him at every opportunity, very nearly did so. He had cheated death several times over the last five months. The last time she nearly succeeded just three days ago. It was then he realized he wanted to live too much to give up his soul to the cold gray depths of Davy Jones’ Locker.

He survived the thirty four degree water while waiting on the Coastguard chopper to fish him out after a rogue wave took him and three others over the side. He had lived, the others had not. He simply wanted it more. He wanted to live with the one woman who could make him feel truly alive simply by being near him.

He closed the gap, and just as he did the very first day in Robert’s office, he gently took her face into his hands.

“I’ve missed you.” He kissed her forehead letting his lips linger savoring her nearness.

“Go to hell,” she whispered closing her eyes against the feeling.

“I’ve already been there.” He kissed her temple after he encircled her into his iron grip.

He was always in good shape. Now, she could feel rock hard muscle beneath his sweater. Five months of slinging crab pots and fishing nets dissolved any softness he might had ever actually had on him. His body might be harder, but she felt tenderness in him that was not there before. He had changed. But so had she.

“And you dragged me through that same hell and along for the ride.” She did not return the affection.

“I know, baby. You were with me every league and every fathom.” He kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry that I ever left you.”

He kissed her lips gently, fighting the urge to crush her to him. He so desperately needed to feel her close. “I owe you my life.”

“You owe me more than that.”

“Yes, I do owe you more than that, Barbara. I owe you an explanation.”

She pulled away and placed some distance between them, just as the lock in the door turned and without much further hesitation the door opened.

Brian stepped in. “Hey, babe, I’m home! I brought beer and the movie... you... wanted…” He slowly finished the sentence as he saw who was standing in her living room.

Brian could not believe what he was walking in on. “You son-of-a-bitch. Get the hell out before I kill you with my bare hands.”

It was Brian's worst fear come to life, and he could see from Barbara’s face she was totally distraught emotionally. The lines of strain were clear on her face.

“Brian, no, it’s all right.” She stopped him by placing her hand on his chest. “Really, it’s ok. Mason was just leaving.”

“No, I was not just leaving,” Mason protested, balking at seeing this other man in her life.

It never occurred to him that she could have moved on while he was away. He was so absorbed in his own internal battle that it never sank in that he could be waging a war with himself, only to find that he was losing the battle for her.

Talk about naïve, he thought.

“Yes, you were leaving. I’ve moved on, Mason. You never gave me any reason not to.”

Barbara wondered if that was actually the truth. She had practiced this speech to herself in the mirror. She had repeated it over and over for the last five months in order to convince her own heart that Mason’s leaving was for the best. They were just so wrong for each other. It had taken her four months of daily internal and external battles to come to the conclusion. And right or not, it didn’t matter. Mason was gone, either direction. “We’re no good for each other, Mase. We never were.”

“And he is?” Mason pointed at the man who was taking his place in her life and in her bed.

“He is my… doctor,” she offered up lamely. To say Brian was her fianceé just might be enough to set Mason off.

“Oh, I’m way more than that to her, buddy.” Brian’s angry words left Mason in no doubt that he was encroaching on another man’s territory. Maybe this was why Robert advised him to wait until Monday to see her and to do it at the office. Again, he had charged headlong into the fray.

“Give me a chance here. I screwed up, yes. I know I did, but I also know that people can change. I have had five months to assess what is really important and why I lived life on the edge.”

He needed to tell her that he felt she was the only thing which mattered to him. The racing bikes, the crazy BASE jumps, or mountain climbing meant nothing at the end of the day. She mattered. They mattered. He loved her, and even if she thought they were wrong for each other, after five months of soul searching, he knew that assumption on her part was no longer true.

Mason would agree at first they were wrong for each other. More the truth was he was wrong for her. She had always been right for him. Now, they were very right for each other, and he just had to make her see that for the truth. “I’ve had five months to realize what we are to each other.”

“And, damn you, I’ve had those same five months to wonder where the hell you were! I had no way of knowing if you were dead or alive. For all I knew, you were just off screwing around surfing in the Philippines.”

“She doesn’t what to hear this, McKinnon.” Brian pushed Barbara behind him.

“Yes, she does.” Mason insisted, trying to side-step Brian, to look at Barbara.

“No, she doesn’t. You left her broken and bleeding. I was her surgeon, and I picked up those pieces of her body after she took that bullet for you. I was there to find and help piece the shattered parts of her heart back together, which you so callously left scattered. I have been here for her while you, on the other hand, have been noticeably absent. You have no right to come in here and tear her up again!” Brian raised his voice, angry with the one who was responsible for all her pain and suffering.

Barbara was pushing between them, separating the two men who were almost nose to nose.

Mason was nearly coming to blows with this man. Brian had no rights to Barbara. Barbara was his woman.

“I have every right!” Mason shouted. Then he calmed because he knew this was unsettling her. “I have not right to hurt her, no one has that right, but I do have a right to be here. More right than you ever will.” Mason could have already lost her. He was seeing that very clearly. “You are her doctor. I am her husband.” He looked down at Barbara’s shocked face. “The marriage was legal, Barbara. I just found out earlier tonight, and my intentions never were to hurt you. Not then, and certainly not now.”

“Just stop! Leave.” She really did not need to hear this putting her hands over her ears. She hated being a coward, but still could not take it.