I lean down and pick my bag up, but again I instinctively use my right hand and groan as I do so, causing him to look down.
“Let me,” he says but brokers no argument as he takes my bag from me and leads us into his office. “Have you had that looked at?” His face creases into a frown, a frown that grows when I shake my head.
He places my bag near his desk then guides me back out of the office with a hand in the small of my back, the same way he moved me on the night we met.
“We’ll be next door, Nicola. Call me when Sean Grainger arrives.”
“Morning, Mase,” calls the lady from the lift.
“Yes, it is, Arianna,” he confirms as he leads me away.
Re-entering his flat makes me light-headed as I recall all of the things he said to me the previous day and the inferences within those comments.
“Whoa,” he says as he steadies me with an arm around my waist.
He sits me down on a stool at the breakfast bar of his kitchen.
“Why didn’t you get this looked at?” He’s wearing a serious expression as he puts a large jug beneath the ice dispenser of his fridge.
I shrug, then attempt an explanation. “It wasn’t so bad until this morning and I had a nine o’clock appointment, prompt, I needed to keep.”
I know I sound as if I am deliberately being arsy and that’s because I am.
He doesn’t rise to it. He just shakes his head before wrapping the ice from the jug in a clean tea towel that he is now placing on my swollen hand.
“Ouch!” I complain, making him smile.
“Well, let this be a lesson to you, don’t go around throwing punches, Olivia.” He uses my first name for the first time, and it shocks me, the sound of it, the way he says it, and just how much I like it. “Although I may have deserved it for some of the things I said,” he admits.
I am disappointed by the fact that he is only acknowledging that some of his comments were out of order, not all of them, but I have no way of knowing which are which.
“Did you take pain relief?”
I reply with another shake of my head.
“Breakfast?” he asks, and I give yet another shake of the head. “Right.” He’s already shrugging out of his jacket that he is placing on the back of the stool next to me. “Let me fix you some breakfast and then you can dose up on pain relief.”
“You really don’t have to do that, Mr Harding,” I tell him and know I’m blushing crimson at being here again, in his home.
“Sweetheart, I think we might be past Mr Harding in private, unless you’d rather I continued to call you Miss Carrington and I probably owe you breakfast.”
I can’t figure him out. He called me a slapper yesterday and I punched him for his trouble and now he is being friendly at the very least if not charming like in the club.
“What should I call you?” I move the ice, but he just replaces it.
“Leave it on,” he replies tersely. “Mason, or Mase. Most people call me Mase. I prefer Mase.”
“Can I try Mason to start with?” I ask, nervously thinking that Mase is too much too soon, all things considered.
“To start with?” He smiles. “Of course. Omelette,” he suggests, rolling his shirt sleeves up turning his back on me to mix three eggs in a bowl.
A matter of minutes later he is turning and presenting me with an omelette. He has another clean tea towel thrown over his shoulder, the opposite side to his tattooed side. I know this because I can see the darkness of the tattoo through his white shirt. I realise I may have been staring so look down at my plate and attempt to eat with one hand, my left hand, which proves to be a struggle. Mason, Mase, sees this and from his position on the opposite side of the bar he takes my fork and breaks my omelette into bite sized pieces and once done he feeds me a piece. I think we should talk about this, the shift of things between us again, but after our last attempt, well my last suggestion at talking I keep quiet, but I do take hold of my own fork and feed myself.
“Thank you,” I say once I have consumed the last mouthful of my breakfast. “It was delicious.”
“Good, and now you need to take two of these. You don’t have allergies, do you?” He places two pills in one hand and a glass of water on the other.
“No, no allergies. What are they?” I ask nervously.
