Page 54 of Housekeeping

29

Mason

I frowned at my phone as the line rang once again, and she refused to fucking answer it. I’d been trying to reach Laura for days and I still wasn’t getting an answer. There were times when her phone would be off and the call would go straight to voicemail. Then there were times when my call got cut off or was just left to ring out.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked aloud, feeling irritation creep up on me.

I didn’t want to be irritated with Laura. She might have a good reason for ignoring me. She had promised me she wouldn’t run, and I’d told her I trusted her. The problem was, now I felt as if the words had fallen on deaf ears because she’d done a disappearing act.

Fuck!

I couldn’t deal with this. I’d had enough drama with my family, I didn’t need it with my love life too.

A light ding made me look up, and I remembered I was in the elevator. The doors had just opened to the office floor, and I stepped out, headed for the office. I gave the secretary a distracted nod of acknowledgment and let myself in. Trent looked up from his desk.

“You could knock, you know,” he said, though he didn’t look angry.

It wasn’t like I’d ever knocked, and even if he told me to start doing it, I wouldn’t get used to it. I was used to walking into this office, no matter who sat behind the desk.

“Sorry,” I said distractedly, putting my phone and both my hands in my pants pockets. I shook my head at the idea of apologizing, I never did that.

Trent’s eyebrows jumped up. “Wow, did you apologize to me? Mason, that’s not like you.”

He wasn’t playing, and I wasn’t in the fucking mood. A genuine note of worry entered his tone, and I was surprised to hear it. Trent and I weren’t exactly close after all, no matter how friendly we acted with each other.

“Just…” I hesitated before deciding it would be better not to tell him just yet. Fuck, I hated the way I was talking like some kinda wimp or something as if I wasn’t sure of myself and I didn’t know if there was a problem. I still hadn't decided how I was going to break the news to my family. I was still planning the proposal, and I was thinking of telling them after that.

Of course, I needed to speak to Laura before any of that could happen.

“Just… what?”

I sighed. “Nothing important. I just don’t feel like work today.”

“Is it woman trouble?” he asked, and I stopped in my tracks wondering whether to tell him the truth, but I felt the need to talk to someone and that someone just happened to be him.

“Yeah, how did you guess?”

He shrugged, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. “You could say I’m in a similar predicament, though I don’t know what exactly your problem is.”

He was being smug about it, which put me off telling him the whole story. I’m dating one of the maids from the hotel. We’ve been dating for weeks already, and I think I’m in love with her. But right now, she’s avoiding me, and I haven’t got a clue why. Shit, back in the day it would have been the other way around. I would have given out my number after being too drunk and tried to let the girl down gently, but there was never a gentle way to break someone’s heart, was there?

Maybe this was fucking karma?

All the times that I’d treated women badly and now there was this one woman. Someone who had plucked at my heart and now I was so fucking lost, and I felt the need to talk to someone about it. But I wasn’t about to pour my heart out to Trent. I wasn’t that fucking desperate.

“What’s your problem? You’re never interested in anything that’s bothering me and now you want to act as if you’re my best friend,” I blurted, wanting to make sure that before I told him anything else, I was doing it with a clear conscious.

He sighed, and before I could say stop words were pouring out of his mouth. “Well, I wanted to ask her to move in with me, but she’s still pretty reluctant. But then she asked for my help for a place to stay; only she wants to stay there with a friend of hers who’s ill. I’m helping them out with the rent for a month, it might be longer than that but we’ll see later. I don’t mind any of that, but my problem is she doesn’t have time to even pick up my calls, and I don’t want to bother either of them by calling…”

A frown grew on his face as he stared off into space.

“Anyway, that’s how it is. I can only be patient and wait for her to reach out to me because she’s busy with her friend right now.”

I hummed, wondering if this could be the reason Laura wasn’t responding to me. Maybe she had something else keeping her distracted?

“I’m not sure if that could be it, but she’s not picking up my calls…” I said with a hint of a whine that I didn’t like at all.

“It could be anything. Just don’t jump to any conclusions before you talk to her, or you might be wrong and end up regretting it.” He sounded like he was talking from experience.