Jude smiled against Mason’s lips. “Have you ever known me to be uncertain?”
For a second Mason’s eyes dimmed, and he grew more serious than Jude had ever seen him. “Work isn’t life. Or love. You can’t equate the two.”
“I just don’t want you to think that I’m going to change into someone I’m not.”
Mason’s laughter rang out. “You mean, Mr. Uptight isn’t going to become Mr. Party Animal? Yeah, no worries. I didn’t think so.” A line bisected his forehead as he pursed his lips in thought. “But let me say something, and I can’t be near you because you’re too goddamn distracting, so go sit over there.” He pointed to the couch.
Amused, Jude took a seat, wondering why Mason looked so damn nervous when Jude was the one who had no idea what the hell he was doing.
Chapter Eighteen
Jude might have surprised him with his unbridled passion in bed, but Mason wasn’t fooled. No way would Jude be so forgiving to discover he’d been Warren Colchester’s lover. He might believe fucking the boss was a habit of Mason’s.
Mason pinched the bridge of his nose as if it would keep the painful memories from bursting free. One of Warren’s acquaintances had joined them on the yacht for three days, for business and pleasure. The man’s PA, a Harvard graduate who came to breakfast wearing a tie, for fuck’s sake, had sneered at Mason after seeing him exiting Warren’s cabin early one morning, clad only in his boxers.
“How does it feel to be a whore?”
Cruel as those words had been, they’d triggered a reassessment of his life. He supposed he owed the man a thank-you for opening his eyes, because it had led him here—to the brink of something life-changing. A path he couldn’t have predicted in his wildest dreams, but one he needed to keep following to discover where it led.
And right now, all roads led to Jude.
“This is strange for both of us, but for me?” He raked his hand through his hair. “In the back of my mind, I’m still the kid-brother fuckup. The one you were always watching, waiting for me to mess up.”
“Which you often did,” Jude said, tempering his words with a smile.
“Yeah, but you seemed to enjoy watching me flounder. And it pissed me off. So instead of learning from my mistakes, I kept making more until I was spinning out of control.”
“Is that what you think? That watching you make a mess of yourself made me happy?” Frustration poured from Jude. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I didn’t know anything about you. How could I? You never talked to me except to put me down.”
Reticent often to the point of being inhibited, Jude had seemed to prefer to remain in the background, allowing a gregarious Doug to take the lead. That inability to open up, combined with his overprotective-big-brother nature, made it now a no-brainer for Mason to make a conscious decision to deep-six that part of his life he’d left behind.
Jude need never know.
“You didn’t listen to your own brother; why would you listen to me?”
This was getting him nowhere. He sat on the opposite end of the couch, capturing Jude’s wary gaze, and waved his hand between them. “Look, I want this. Whatever ‘this’ is that’s growing between us, which is what I want us to figure out. Together. I spent all those years away working on myself so that when I came back, I could prove not only to Doug and my parents, but to you as well, that I’ve changed.”
Jude’s eyes widened. “Me? You really thought of me?”
His complete cluelessness of his effect on people was part of what made him so damn sexy.
“Ialwaysthought of you. You were as much a part of my life as Doug.” Face hot, he cast his gaze away from Jude. “You still are. And when we reconnected at the wedding, I hoped we could start fresh. Then you got drunk…and you were so angry after we hooked up.”
“Angry with myself,” Jude mumbled. “It was stupid.”
Insecurity still gnawed at Mason’s gut, so he asked, “Stupid to get drunk or to be with me?”
“You know the answer to that.” At the impatience in Jude’s tone, Mason grew annoyed. If he could bare his soul, so could Jude.
“If I did, I wouldn’t ask.”
“People told me that Ilana marrying Doug meant I was free. Free to do what? I had nothing else. Then you blew into my life like a fucking hurricane and confused the hell out of me. I didn’t know how to handle it. Or you.”
“You’ve handled me just fine. Have you heard me complaining?” Mason scooted over to his side. “You’re an amazing lover.”
Jude’s cheeks reddened. “You don’t have to say that to make me feel better.”
