Betting on You (3 page)

She still wanted him; he could read it in her eyes. It was darker out here than under the lanterns, but the moon was half full. There was more than enough light to see that Lark still felt the electricity that had always flared between them.

She wanted him, and
god
, how he wanted her. He’d never wanted anyone or anything as much as he wanted Lark. He’d fantasized about her so often during his last year in medical school that he’d had trouble sleeping most nights. He couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like when they were finally together, when he could undress the girl he loved piece by piece until she was completely bared to him.

“Get off of me,” Lark whispered, but the heat was gone from her tone.

“Will you let me talk?” Mason asked, not moving a muscle. He didn’t want this to end just yet. He wanted to stay this close to her, close enough for her warmth to penetrate his clothes, for the familiar smell of her to swirl through his head, bringing back so many memories of this girl,
his
girl, the one he never should have left behind.

“I’m not interested in anything you have to say,” Lark said, eyes darting back and forth, refusing to meet his.

“How can you know if you don’t give me a chance?” he asked, gently.

“Just…I…” Her breath rushed out as she brought her hands to his chest and pushed. “Give me some space. Please.”

Mason pulled away, sitting back on his heels in the grass, feeling the loss of her closeness like a punch in the gut. For all he knew that might have been the last time he’d ever touch Lark.

He had been worried about her being with someone else—which might still be the case, though he didn’t see a ring on her finger—not that she would hate him so much she wouldn’t even give him a chance to explain. The Lark he’d known was a forgiving person. She didn’t hold a grudge. She didn’t even get mad that often, and when she did, her anger passed like a summer storm, in and out in an afternoon, leaving the air cleaner and fresher when it was gone.

But this wasn’t the Lark he’d known, he thought, as he watched her sit up and brush the grass off her dress. This was the Lark he’d left behind, and she might be a different woman altogether.

The realization made him sad, sadder than he would have imagined he could be sitting this close to the one person who had always made him smile, even on his worst days.

“Listen, Mason,” Lark said, curling her legs beneath her and smoothing her dress. “I don’t know why you’re here. I know Lisa didn’t invite you. At least she better not have invited you because if she did I swear I—”

“She didn’t. I came as Lana’s plus one,” Mason said.

“Lana Tate?” Lark’s eyebrow arched. Lana had gone to school with Lark and was one of the few people on Lark’s Undesirable list. Mason thought it had something to do with Lark’s younger sister, but wasn’t exactly sure.

“I ran into her at the
Fill Up Stop
this afternoon and she asked what I was doing tonight,” Mason hurried to explain. “Then she mentioned the wedding and I knew I’d see you here and I thought…”

“You thought what?” Lark crossed her arms and scowled, but Mason could see the panic in her eyes. She was so far from happy to see him that it would have been laughable if his heart weren’t being ripped in two.

“I made a mistake. A terrible, stupid mistake,” he said, words rushing out. The sooner he told Lark the truth, the sooner she could at least consider forgiving him. “I never should have left. I mean, I never should have proposed to you in the first place, but I really never should have—”

Lark let out a strangled sound, somewhere between a laugh and cry of pain, and struggled to her feet.

“Wait,” Mason said.

“I don’t want to wait, I want you to go away.”

“Please, that came out wrong.” Mason took her hand and held tight. “I shouldn’t have asked you to marry me because I was too mixed up to promise the rest of my life to another person. After all the stuff with my mom and my uncle…I just… I wouldn’t have been able to make it work in the long run, no matter how hard I would have tried.”

Mason paused, encouraged by the slight softening around Lark’s eyes.

“My baggage weighed more than I did,” he continued. “We didn’t have a chance back then. But…” He took a breath, fighting for the courage to be honest with Lark. “I’ve been working on myself a lot since I left. It was slow going at first but… I’ve tried my best to become a better man, a stronger man, a person worthy of someone like you.”

“You were always worthy,” Lark whispered, tears filling her eyes. “I…I loved you.”

“And I loved you,” Mason said, pulse racing as he took her other hand in his. “I still love you. If you’ll give me another chance, Lark, I swear I’ll prove it to you. I promise I’ll make you happy.”

Lark blinked, sending twin streams of water rolling down her flushed cheeks, but she didn’t say a word. Not a word, for a moment so long and strained Mason’s throat began to ache.

“Please,” he said. “You’re the only reason I came back here, the whole reason I took a job with a practice in Atlanta instead of somewhere else. Just give me a chance, Lark. I swear I won’t let you down this time. I
swear
it.”

Lark shook her head, and gently, but firmly, withdrew her hands from his.

“Is there someone else?” Mason asked after a moment, beginning to feel stupid on his knees. He stood stiffly, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“No.” Lark sniffed and swiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’ve dated a few people, but nothing serious.”

“Then can’t you at least try to forgive me?” Mason asked.

“Forgive you?” Lark laughed beneath her breath. “It’s been four years without a word, Mason! Without a phone call or an email or a letter or anything. For all I knew you were dead.”

“I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry, but—”

“No, I do know.” Lark lifted her chin, staring him straight in the eyes. “If we’d had this conversation a few weeks after you left, or even a few
months
after you left, things might have been different. You don’t know how many times I dreamed of you saying everything you just said to me back then.”

She stopped, licking her lips and pressing them tightly together, obviously fighting for control. “But it’s too late now,” she went on in a softer voice. “Too much time has passed, and I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t believe in happily ever after. At least not for you and me.”

Mason swallowed. Hard. “What about second chances? Do you believe in those?”

Lark lifted on bare shoulder, one bare, beautiful shoulder Mason would never press his lips to again if he couldn’t convince her to change her mind.

“Maybe, in certain situations, but this…” She sighed. “It’s too painful, Mason. I can’t go there with you. I don’t want to, and even if I did, I’m just too busy. I have my family and a new niece and a business to run. This coming week will be the first time I’ve taken a vacation in over a year. I just don’t—”

“You’re leaving town?” Mason asked.

That would be his luck, booking a weeklong stay at a motel in Summerville during the one week Lark wouldn’t be there.

Lark shook her head. “I’m staying here. I’m exhausted, and tonight has only made me more exhausted. I just want to go home and sleep for two or three days and forget this conversation ever happened.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Mason agreed, her words sparking something inside of him. “You should go home and rest, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at six.”

Lark blinked. “What?”

“Let’s forget this conversation ever happened,” Mason said. “Let’s forget everything that’s ever happened between us. Give me one week to remind you why we should be together.”

“Mason, I can’t—”

“One week, seven dates. Seven dates where you really give me—
us
—a chance,” Mason said, thoughts buzzing as he prepared to lay down his bet. “And if by this time next Saturday you still want nothing to do with me, then I swear I’ll leave Summerville and never bother you again.”

“And if I say no?” Lark asked, cocking her head. Her mouth had a hard set to it, but something in her eyes told him she was considering his offer.

“Then I’ll keep begging,” Mason said, stepping closer, until Lark was forced to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. “I’ll send you flowers and follow you around town on my hands and knees like a stray dog. I’ll sleep on the sidewalk outside your house, and wake you up every morning with love songs I wrote for you on my guitar.”

Lark’s lips curved on one side. “Don’t suppose your singing voice has improved in the past four years?”

Mason shook his head. “Nope.”

Lark sighed, looking past him to where the wedding reception was still in full swing, her expression wistful. An upbeat song had just given way to a slow song, an old country ballad about forever love that made him want to pull Lark into his arms to dance. But he couldn’t. Not yet, maybe not ever, unless…

“Do we have a deal?” he asked in a hushed voice.

Lark sighed again before shifting her gaze back to his with a businesslike nod. “Pick me up at my parents’ house. Tomorrow night at six.”

Mason couldn’t stop the smile from breaking out across his face. “Thank you. I promise you won’t be—”

“Seven days,” Lark interrupted. “One week. That’s
it
, and when I tell you to go next Saturday, you go, and you don’t ever come back and do this to me again.”

“Unless you tell me to stay.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lark said. “I told you, Mason, I’m not the same person, and from the sound of it, neither are you.”

And then she turned and walked away, before he could ask what she meant with that parting remark, before he could promise her that he’d always bet on her.

Always.

Chapter Three

Date One

“This is crazy,” Aria said over her shoulder as she wrangled another bite of smashed carrots into her baby’s mouth.

Feeding Felicity was a skill only her mama and grandmamma had mastered. When Lark tried to feed her eight-month-old niece, she inevitably ended up with way more baby food on her shirt than Felicity did in her stomach.

“It’s not crazy, it’s romantic!” Melody swirled through the room, her chiffon dress with the pink flowers flaring around her, making the baby laugh.

Melody’s boyfriend was picking her up at six-thirty. She had asked Brian to swing by her parents’ place, instead of her apartment, so she could provide moral support to Lark while Lark waited patiently for Mason to arrive.

While Lark paced the floor and chewed her nails down to nubs is more like it.

She couldn’t ever remember being this nervous. Never. Not even the first time she’d gone out with Mason, when he was twenty-four and in med school, and she was just a nineteen-year-old community college drop out working at the diner in downtown Summerville.

She had known
of
Mason since she was little—known he had a rough home life, but was smart as anything, played first string on the basketball team, and was going to college in Atlanta—but it wasn’t until he started coming in for breakfast at the diner every Saturday that Lark really got to know him. To know his unique mix of humor and intensity, the way he could make her laugh out loud one minute, then steal her breath away with one of his magnetic stares the next. To know his easy smile and good heart, the one that made him really listen when people told him about their problems.

He was the one who had convinced her to go to culinary school instead of taking her dad up on his offer to manage one of the family BBQ shacks. Mason had been positive she could make her dream of working as a chef at a fancy restaurant a reality.

Her dreams had changed over time, but she might still be working at
Donut Time Diner
if Mason hadn’t come into her life. As much as he’d hurt her, he’d also helped her. She told herself that’s why she had said yes to his bargain, out of respect for the times he’d been there for her.

It had nothing to do with the way her pulse leapt when he touched her, or the way her lips tingled when she said his name. Nothing to do with the way her entire body had felt like it was catching fire when he lay on top of her in the field last night.

She had given up waiting for marriage a few years ago, when she began to suspect marriage wasn’t going to happen for her, at least not anytime soon, but she’d never felt half as turned on by sleeping with another man as she felt lying fully clothed with Mason.

He was…electric. He always had been. Kissing him was like being shot through with lightning and loving every minute of it.

“Well, I think she should have told Mason to go straight to heck and rot there,” Aria said, pulling Lark from her dangerous thoughts. “And if that didn’t work, she should have applied for a restraining order.”

“It’s Mason, Aria. He would never hurt Lark,” Melody said.

“He’s already hurt her,” Aria said, meeting Lark’s eyes across the living room. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she added in a softer voice. “We can call Uncle Jim and have him and the cousins come over and escort Mason back to his hotel, or wherever he’s staying while he’s in town.”