“When you get back, we need to finish that conversation we started before all hell broke loose,” Alex told him, her tone definitive.
Mason felt a scowl darken his features when he stepped into the dinghy. “Told you we were done with that.”
“AndItoldyouyou’re out of your chowder-eating mind if you think that’s true.”
“Not all Bostonians like chowder,” he grumbled, apropos of nothing. It was the best he could come up with since his brain was busy trying to devise a way for him to never, ever,everhave to repeat what he’d told her earlier.
She batted his assertion away. “Lies. The next thing you know, you’ll be telling me not all Bostonians like Dunkin’ Donuts.”
He grabbed his chest as if she’d shot him. “Shut your mouth, woman! Disparaging Dunkies is fighting words.”
She blinked myopically. “Did you just make a joke?”
“It’s the adrenaline,” he deadpanned. “Or maybe wishful thinking on your part.”
Her eyes roamed over his dripping form. It might as well have been her fingers, the way his muscles quivered. When her gaze returned to his face, she gave him an arch look. “I’ll have a towel waiting for you when you get back. Or we could always use friction to get you dry.”
Aaannnddd it happened again. She’d tied his tongue into one hundred knots.
Knowing he didn’t have (a) the wherewithal or the vocabulary to outwit her after something like that, or (b) the time, he simply turned his eyes skyward and prayed for salvation. Then he settled himself into the dinghy without looking back at her.
He and Wolf were headed toward the speedboat’s lone survivor, salt water spraying up behind the outboard engine, when Wolf gave him a considering look. “You okay, man?”
For a moment, Mason thought Wolf was asking if he was okay with what’d happened during the gunfight. Which was weird. In all the battles they’d fought, Wolf had never checked in on Mason’s emotional state. In fact, one of the ways they’d learned to handle their roles as death-dealers was to go on as if nothing had happened.
The human brain has an amazing capacity for compartmentalization.
Then Wolf’s considering look melted into a smirk, and pointing to his own face, he added, “You got a little sweat on your upper lip there.”
Mason pretended he didn’t hear and focused on piloting the dinghy around a larger-than-usual wave.
“Isaid”—Wolf lifted his voice above the sound of the engine and the sea shushing against the rubber hull—“you got a—”
“I’mfine,” Mason muttered. Which wasn’t exactly true, because he was still in the process of cooling the fire in his blood caused by that titillating little exchange with Alex. “It’s hot out here.”
“Right.” Wolf snorted. “It’s the weather that’s got you steaming, not the fact that it’s takin’ everything you have not to haul Alex’s ashes.”
Mason gave Wolf his best scowl. “Haven’t we been through these waters before? Just this morning, in fact? Alex isnotfor me. And her pressing the issue is gonna drive me to drink!”
“Because it’s every man’s worst nightmare to be chased down by a horny virgin hell-bent on his manhood,” Wolf scoffed.
Mason studied Wolf’s face and tried to decide if his fist would look better firmly planted in the man’s left eye socket or his right one. “Every time I reject her, I hurt her,” he insisted, rubbing at the deep ache in his belly. “Ihatehurting her.”
“So stop rejectin’ her,” Wolf said, as if it were that easy. “And before you try to explain again in that emotionally crippled way of yours why—”
“I’m not emotionally crippled!” Now Mason was tempted to plant his fists inbothof Wolf’s eyes.
“Please.” Wolf rolled his eyes. “I’ve never seen anyone more tainted by the dark stain of D-I-V-O-R-C-E than you. You’ve spent the last five years doin’ your best to bury all your emotions in a grave so deep I bet you can’t even see the bottom of it. And if you want my opinion—”
“Idon’t,” Mason assured him.
“I think it’d do you a whole hell of a lot of good”—Wolf pressed on as if Mason hadn’t spoken—“to let Alex have her way. It’d make her happy. It’d makeyouhappy. You deserve a little happiness, man. We all do, and—” Wolf jerked his chin. “Better slow down or you’ll run over our friend there.”
“Fuck!” Mason pulled back on the throttle and yanked the tiller hard right. He narrowly avoided plowing into the human buoy bobbing in the middle of the sea.
“Take over,” he told Wolf. “I wanna be the one to haul his sorry ass out of the drink. And if I happen to accidentally punch him in the face while doing it…” He shrugged. “Oops-a-daisy.”
One corner of Wolf’s mouth twitched. “Did you just say ‘oops-a-daisy’?”
