Mason's Marriage (10 page)

She tapped Mason on the shoulder. “Hey.”

He raised his head and grinned at her. “Hey, Noisy.”

“I am not!”

Sitting up, he ran a hand through his dark hair. “Let’s just say I think all the ladies decided to have dinner out to avoid the symphony.”

He was exaggerating, as usual. Mimi sat up, keeping the sheet tucked primly under her armpits. “Do you know that we never use a condom?”

“Why should we?” Mason demanded. “We want more children.”

Putting on his jeans, he stood tall as he zipped them. Mimi admired his bare chest and his strong posture for a moment before he surprised her by saying, “You’re coming back to the ranch with me right now. Being here serves no purpose.” He scratched his head. “Pack your suitcase. Keep the gown. It works for me.” He tossed her small travel bag on the bed and began cleaning out the dresser drawers.

“And then what?” Mimi asked, watching him busily run her life, which was a strange thing considering that all these years, she’d run his.

“Then we get married,” Mason said. “I don’t think you know how to date worth a damn. And in spite of my best intentions, I don’t seem to be able to stay away from you, Mimi Cannady.”

Once Mason said he wasn’t any good at proper courtship, he felt a load lift from his shoulders. Why should he feel bad about it? He and Mimi belonged together. They always had; this component of their relationship was just different.

He watched her with a mixture of lust and powerful attraction as she put on her clothes. Affection. Man, she had him in a stew.

She always had.

“Let’s go get you a ring and do this right,” Mason said.

“All right,” Mimi said, shocking him with her acquiescence.

He gave her a suspicious eyeing. “No argument?”

“No.” She shrugged a bare shoulder, and Mason nearly tossed her back into the bed. But she shook her
head at him. “Uh-uh, you’re getting that look in your eyes again, and I have to wash the sheets before I leave.”

“Let me help you strip the bed,” Mason said. “I taught my brothers how to change beds. I can do this in four minutes flat and you’ll never see a wrinkle.”

“Really?” Mimi folded the blankets while Mason dismantled the pretty bedding. “I always admired the fact that you made the boys keep a clean house. You would have thought a bunch of guys living in a fraternity-like atmosphere would have had cleanliness issues. But you never did.”

“I allowed the occasional boot heel on the coffee table, which Helga does not. But,” he said, remembering the dark days of old times, “I’m sure child protective services would have been breathing down my neck if we hadn’t been clean. And I was determined to keep us all together.” Straightening, he looked at her. “I don’t give up anything that is mine, Mimi Cannady. Think about that before you head down to the jewelers with me.”

She raised her head, giving him the blunt side of a saucy chin and snapping blue eyes, an expression he’d seen many times and which never failed to amuse him. “Is that your declaration of love?”

He took the fresh sheets she handed him. “I made
that already, when I made love to you. You can call my last statement a promise of commitment.”

She laughed and finished dressing. “So what about your father’s journal?” Mimi asked.

The smile slid from his face. “What about it?”

“When are you going to read it?”

“I don’t know.” Frowning, he wondered the same thing. “When we all agree to.”

“Before or after we get engaged?”

“What does the journal have to do with us?”

“Because with my luck, you’ll find something in there that makes you go off in a completely different direction. One time, you disappeared for months, in case you don’t recall,” Mimi said.

His frown deepened. “I would never leave you and Nanette.”

She nodded. “I just wonder if it wouldn’t be best to put the past behind you before you take a big step like marriage.” With one hand, she reached out and touched him, and the real thing he was running from came rushing back to him with a fierce blast. “You’ve spent a lot of years hurting from your father’s abandonment, Mason. That kind of thing isn’t easy for anyone to deal with,” she said softly. “I know. So let’s not rush this…because that’s how it feels. Sort of…rushed.”

He looked at her, realizing that, once again, she
had guessed his fears. She knew him better than anyone on the planet. Compartmentalizing had been his thing for years: keeping order and strict discipline, for himself and his brothers. Having everything his way had been his refuge against pain.

“I can’t promise you when we’ll read it,” he said.

“I know.” Her hand slipped away from his arm, but she smiled. “You’ll feel better once you do. And so will I. Propose to me then.”

It sounded good, but still, he was reluctant. “You and I could get married, then maybe when I face the past, I’ll sit down and have a good cry on your shoulder,” he said.

“I’ll be around for you to cry on.”

“Around?”

“At my dad’s. You’re just going to have to share Nanette without being a horse’s ass.”

“So we’ll really date.”

“Just like we never did,” she said with a soft smile.

“I’m still sleeping with you at night. My family’s not going to be away from me.”

Mimi laughed. “Dad would gladly give you a room in the house. But you have to knock on the front door.”

“I know. He told me,” Mason said. “The badge calls.”

“Right. You signed on for it. Respect is your calling now.”

“Will you put that gown away until we work this out?”

“Yes,” Mimi said. “And I’ll buy you a pair of black silk boxers for the big night.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Black silk boxers? Don’t think I can sit in a saddle in those.”

She smiled and clicked her suitcase closed. “There won’t be a horse in the room, so it won’t matter.”

“Yeah,” Mason said, starting to feel better, “there’ll be a lady. Don’t forget these,” he said, putting the pink feather handcuffs into her suitcase. “Now that I know what you’ve been hiding, I want to make certain I make all your bad-girl fantasies come true one day.”

He couldn’t wait for that day. But Mimi was right. It was time to say goodbye to the past.

A
WEEK LATER
, M
ASON LAID
his father’s journal on the table in the center of the room. He looked around at all his brothers. The wives were in town at the Union Junction Salon, having a tea for Mimi, as they’d decided that Mason and Mimi’s agreement was somewhat less official than an engagement, but more permanent than what it had been before. With all the wives in town, and the children, the ladies had
decided now was as good a time as any to celebrate an engagement, even an unofficial one.

It was time for the annual Fourth of July family gathering, and Mason had decided this was the right time to talk to his brothers. Last had been right; it was better to do this as a family.

“I want to talk to you,” he told his brothers. “Hawk and Jellyfish found a journal of Dad’s.” Just saying that made a circle of dread sink into his stomach. “This is it,” he said, pointing to it, “and it’s up to you what we do with it.”

Silence met that statement. Mason looked around the room, realizing they were looking to him for leadership.

“I have to admit to some ambivalence. I’m glad that he was healthy enough to keep a journal. I’ll also admit to some…anger that he left.” Mason rubbed his chin, trying to keep the dam in place before a wall of emotions burst through. “Maybe the answers we always wanted are in there. And maybe it’ll just give us a lot more questions.” He hesitated before taking a deep breath. “We’ve all been through a lot, and we’re all happy now. We got through the bad years. We didn’t get separated. It made us tougher, stronger, I guess, and it made us compassionate.”

More silence. Mason scratched at his beard, which
he’d been growing for the past week in a moody gesture of defiance. Mimi hadn’t minded the growth, which was a good thing, since he slept with her every night. Oh, he knew he wasn’t supposed to, but he wasn’t about to go without his girl. He’d made a lot of concessions, but that one he wasn’t going to give. Every night, he knocked on the sheriff’s door. The sheriff let him in like a long-lost son, and Mason went up and read his daughter a bedtime story, kissing her good-night as if his life depended upon it, which it did.

Then he slept in the guest room. In the night, as if in a sleepwalker’s trance, he got in bed with Mimi. He never made love to her, but he did snuggle against her back, holding her to him.

Those were the only hours of peace he’d known recently. Nothing was expected of him, and all he did was bask in the gentle oasis that was Mimi. He was out of the house before anyone awakened. His heart, of course, stayed behind.

Fannin raised a palm. “I don’t see the point of opening a can of worms, Mason.”

Bandera nodded. “Maybe the right thing to do is just be glad Dad was in good condition. I don’t see the point in reading words that weren’t meant for us.”

“How do we know they weren’t?” Last asked.

“Because he never even sent us a letter,” Tex said.

“It can’t matter after all these years,” Laredo pointed out. “I’d like to know what he wrote.”

“I’d like to know,” Ranger agreed, “but I’m hesitant, too. What good does it serve? If we hadn’t found the journal, we wouldn’t have read it, so maybe we shouldn’t read it now.”

“You act like there’s something bad in there,” Navarro said. “Dad probably wrote happy things.”

“He was upset enough to leave his family,” Bandera said. “Why in the hell would you think it’s a happy journal? How many men do you know who keep journals when they’re happy?”

“Easy, boys,” Calhoun said. “Let’s keep this cool.”

Frisco Joe stood. “I vote we table it for now. Until Christmas, when we have our next family gathering. That would give us plenty of time to think about it and decide if any or all of us want to know.”

“Good idea,” Crockett said. “What do you think, Mason?”

Mason frowned. He wasn’t certain Mimi would marry him under those terms. Yet the idea made complete sense. Every brother had to decide if he wanted to know what was between those pages, because it would affect each of them in some way or another. No matter what, good or bad, it would
change all of them. “All right,” he said. “Christmas Eve, before mass, we meet back here.”

“No,” Last said, and it was just like old times as everyone leaned forward to hear what the family philosophe had to say. “Not Christmas Eve and not Christmas. We don’t take those times away from our families. The day after Christmas, while the ladies and kids are hitting the day-after sales in the malls.”

That pleased everyone in the room, so they all jumped on the baby brother and pounded him a little for the sake of nostalgia. Mason picked up the journal, slid it into a drawer for safekeeping and quietly left.

He had another family to think about:
his
family.

M
ASON HEADED TOWARD
Mimi’s town house, looking forward to what had become his evening routine. He wanted to tell her that the past had been dealt with, in as satisfactory a manner as he could manage it. A decision had been turned over to his brothers, and as far as he was concerned, he was leaving the past behind.

His mind was celebrating this fact when he saw a strange couple of men walking through the center of town, in front of the salon. Frowning, Mason decided to see what they were up to. It was, after all, his town to protect now.

Parking his truck, he followed on foot. They had disappeared around the back of the salon. Even more concerned, Mason felt for his weapon and his handcuffs. Having both, he confidently headed into the darkened shadows.

When the board hit him across the face, knocking him to his knees, the last thing that came to Mason’s mind as he lay in the gravel outside was that Mimi hadn’t hurt him; it was his own overconfidence that had finally knocked him to his knees.

“Where’s Mason?” Sheriff Cannady asked his daughter when she finished putting Nanette to bed.

Mimi closed the door to Nanette’s room. “I don’t know. Why?”

The sheriff looked at his watch. “He’s usually here by now.”

Mimi laughed. “You do like your schedules set and kept.”

He nodded. “Yes, I do. Consistency is good for a family. Mason gets here. I let him in. I drink my glass of warm milk, and I go to bed. Nanette gets a kiss from her father good-night, and in the morning, when I hear the front door close, I know it’s time to get up and get my newspaper.”

“Dad, I love you,” Mimi said.

He nodded. “I know. Think you should call him.”

“He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. Come into the kitchen and I’ll warm you that milk.” Secretly, she didn’t want to think about the fact that maybe Mason wasn’t coming.

“Wouldn’t be like him not to call,” the sheriff said gruffly.

“He has all his family in town. I’m sure they’re keeping him busy,” Mimi said, remembering the days when she’d desperately wanted to be included as part of the Jefferson family. To a young girl with no siblings, twelve rowdy brothers had made her wistful.

“Call his cell,” her dad said.

“Dad, he’ll get here if he gets here, and if not, there’s a reason.” Mimi didn’t want her father to know that she was beginning to wonder herself. “You’re making me worry.”

“No point in worrying if you call him.”

“All right.” It wasn’t like Mason not to call and let her know exactly what was going on. All their lives, one thing Mason had always been was reliable. She waited impatiently as his cell rang and then kicked over to his recorded message. With a shrug, she hung up the phone. “Guess he’s busy.”

Her father nodded. “Think I’ll take a drive.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. Not without me,” Mimi said,
knowing her father’s old instincts were rousing. “You shouldn’t be out late.”

“You can’t leave your child, Mimi,” her father pointed out reasonably, “and I’ll be fine. It’s just a drive in the nice evening breeze.”

“No, it’s not,” Mimi said, getting her car keys. “I know exactly what you’re doing, and if someone’s going to check on Mason, it needs to be me.”

“Call me if you need me. I can call Barley to come sit with Nanette. Or one of the stylists. Or Crockett and Valentine since they’re so close. Crockett’s probably up painting, anyway.”

“You get your milk and get back on schedule,” Mimi said. “I’ll report in when I return.”

It was past eleven. She didn’t expect to find Mason; she felt certain he’d fallen asleep at his house. With all his family at home, he and his brothers might even be up late talking.

She was very surprised when she turned into the town square and saw Mason’s truck parked outside the salon. Two men stood near his truck, looking very much as though they were talking to Mason.

Only she didn’t see Mason in the truck. Mimi shut off her truck, looped her purse over her shoulder, got out and quietly closed her door. Pulling out a cell
phone, she rang her house and quietly said, “I’m on the square. Send help.”

Then she decided to play dumb. Maybe they weren’t really breaking into Mason’s truck. They could be peering at it because it was a fine example of a rolling steel castle, but the way they kept glancing around made her think they were nervous.

“Excuse me,” she said.

They whirled to look at her. “Well, now,” one of them said.

“The welcome committee,” the other said with a sneer.

That didn’t sound promising. “The man who owns that truck will get real twitchy if there’s even a fingerprint on it. You might want to find something else to look at.”

“Like you?” The shorter of the two walked toward her.

“Did you happen to see him?” Mimi asked. “The man who drives this truck?”

“Think he’s sleeping right now, sugar,” the taller one said, approaching as well.

Not liking how close they were getting, she pulled her hair-spray can from her purse and she gave them both a righteous spraying in their faces, then ran toward the Union Junction Salon.

She didn’t make it to the porch before the ladies came spilling out the door. Lights went on all over the house, and Mimi could see her friends were armed with skillets and pans and a broomstick or two.

Mimi decided to let the girls do their thing alone once she spied a cowboy hat lying in the street to the side of the big house. Running over to the hat, she found Mason trying to get up and not having a lot of success.

“Mason!” She put an arm under him and helped him to his feet. “What happened?”

“Think I took a two-by-four in the face,” Mason said. “Sheriffing’s not going to be pretty for my complexion.”

“This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have talked you into running for the office—” She blinked, and then tugged at him impatiently. “I think you have a concussion.”

“No, I don’t.” He squinted across the street where a policeman was loading up the two thugs the Union Junction ladies had corralled. “What are you doing out here, anyway? You should be at home with Nanette.”

“You should, too,” Mimi said crossly. “My father sent me to look for you.”

He looked down at her. Mimi winced. She was
pretty sure his nose was broken, and there was a gap over his eyebrow that was going to require a stitch or two. “Fortunately for you, Doc Gonzalez doesn’t live too far away.”

A throng of women encircled them, with cries of “Poor Mason,” and “You should have hit them harder with that skillet, Marni!” and Mason lapped it all up like a conquering hero come home from war. They tried to usher him and Mimi into their home, but Mason shook his head.

“Thanks, ladies. And thanks for backing up my girl. Union Junction’s safe with so many hot lady deputies. But my two girls need me at home.”

Mimi was strangely glad to hear such a possessive tone in Mason’s voice.

“You’re going straight to Doc’s,” she said.

“After that, your house?”

“Maybe.” She smiled. “I have something to tell you,” she said, as they walked toward his truck together.

“I have something to tell you, too, but I think I’ll wait for my anesthetic before I have my say. You go ahead.”

Mimi helped him into the seat. “Everything can wait until later.”

“This can’t,” he said. “My brothers voted not to read the journal until the day after Christmas. Gives
us something to do while you ladies are out spending our money.”

“Put a lid on your male chauvinistic side,” Mimi said, secretly relieved that Mason was in good enough shape to be thinking about their relationship. “I don’t need your money, Mason Jefferson.” She went around and got inside the driver’s side. “I do want your keys.”

He sighed. “Be careful with my truck,” he said, handing them to her.

“More careful than you were with your face. Nanette’s going to cry when she sees you.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell her…some good fairy tale. So, does it bother you that we’re tabling all discussion about the journal until December?”

“No,” Mimi said, “what matters is that you acknowledged it, brought it out in the open and gave everyone a choice in the matter, instead of hiding from it.”

“I don’t hide from anything,” Mason said with a growl, but she laughed at him.

“I’m relieved, Mason. I’m glad everyone is satisfied.”

“Tell me what you have to say now.”

It wasn’t the time she would have chosen to tell him, but at least it would keep his mind off any pain he was feeling, and conversation kept her nerves from shredding. “We’re not pregnant.”

He straightened. “Were we trying?”

“We weren’t not trying,” Mimi said, cross again. “We didn’t use precautions.”

“Oh.” Mason smiled at her, a slow, lazy smile in the darkness as they pulled up to Doc’s. “That means we get to practice a lot more.”

Mimi shook her head. “How can you think about sex with your face all banged up?”

He helped himself from the truck. “Because I know that when Doc gets me bandaged up, I’m going to be sleeping at Mimi’s house. And that makes me think about sex.”

Mimi wasn’t thinking about sex. In fact, she was going to put Mason to bed and tell him not to even so much as roll over! He’d frightened her, more than she cared to admit. It had been all she could do to act like a sheriff’s daughter and not scream when she saw him lying on the ground.

Cool, calm, collected.

She was barely holding herself together.

A
S
M
IMI DROVE
, Mason decided his face hurt like hell and his pride was pretty damaged, too. How could he have let those two-bit hoods jump him? He should have learned something in police training, but clearly, he hadn’t been thinking about two-by-fours. Wanting
more experience, he had gone into the city and taken some squad car rides and some courses that were beneficial to being a sheriff. And then got laid low by petty creeps. He was lucky he had all his teeth.

He was also lucky that Mimi wasn’t the squeamish type. His shirt was pretty red with blood, though one of the ladies had handed him a cloth to press against his wound.

She banged on Doc’s door. “Hang on and let’s see what Doc has to say.”

“But then I want to talk seriously to you, Mimi,” Mason said, trying to make his voice stern and failing miserably. Doc let them in, sending Mason right to a couch so he could look at him under the light of his reading lamp.

“You really need to take a run down to the hospital,” Doc said.

“I don’t wanna.” Mason closed his eyes, feeling very tired all of a sudden. “You’ve stitched us Jeffersons under more exciting circumstances.”

Doc sighed. “All right. Thing is, I think you should be scanned for a concussion.”

“What good would it do?” Mason asked, hearing Mimi groan. “I’m not trying to be stubborn. If I have a concussion, it’s not like there’s anything they can do about it. I’ll just rest at home.”

“I know you won’t rest,” Doc said.

“I’ll make him rest,” Mimi said, and Mason perked right up.

“I can stay at your house and let you be my nurse?”

“Hold still,” Doc said. “Unless you’d prefer I sew up your lips instead of this gash.”

Mason sighed. He felt Mimi move restlessly beside him and wondered if she was getting light-headed from seeing blood and stitches. Actually, he was starting to get light-headed himself. “Make me look good for my girls, Doc,” he said.

“Is he all right?” Mimi asked.

“Yeah,” Doc said, snipping a stitch off. “He’s an ornery ol’ rascal, but he’ll be fine. Some love and attention ought to be as good on his soul as a stay in the hospital. And I’m pretty certain he prefers you and Nanette to any nurse they have over there, although they’re all very competent.”

Mimi looked at Mason’s poor bleeding face and swollen mouth. A shiver ran over her. What if her dad hadn’t sent her out? What if those thugs had done worse?

“Mason,” she said, when Doc went to get some antiseptic. “Mason, I’ll marry you now.”

His hand shot out and grabbed hers. “The Curse of the Broken Body Parts strikes again. I’ll hold you
to that promise, after I date you for a suitable amount of time, of course, so you will have something to look back on fondly.”

Mimi jerked her hand back, surprised. “I thought you didn’t believe in the Curse.”

“I didn’t. Now I do.” He gave her a gimlet eye. “Since it’s happened, I’m going with it. When are you marrying me?”

Mimi blinked. “You’ll need some time to recover—”

“No. I won’t. I’m tough. And you’re not getting any younger, so we better start working on that family.”

“Mason!” Mimi glanced at Doc, slightly annoyed by the teasing.

“In that little toy box the Union Junction girls have, can they dig out a nurse’s uniform? I’d really like to see you in one of those. It’s always been a—”

“Mason,” Mimi said, “you may be bordering on delirium. Please go back to sleep.”

“Think I will.”

Doc laughed. “Who would have thought Mason Jefferson had such a wild—oh. Sorry, Mimi,” Doc said, his eyes twinkling. “My patients usually aren’t so loquacious.”

“Mason’s been surprising me these days, too.” Mimi wondered if Mason would remember her offer
to marry him. He was being such a rascal she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to remember!

“You’re just the right medicine for him, Mimi. There, all done.”

He put away his equipment, and Mimi looked at Mason with some puzzlement. “Mason, Doc says you’re fine to go home.”

“Good.” Mason slowly moved his legs over the side of the sofa and stood, letting Mimi support him. “I feel just a wee bit woozy, like I’ve had one too many beers.”

“Do you want me to drive you out to the ranch? Your family is all there, and I know you don’t want to miss seeing them.”

“Nope. I want peace and quiet and I won’t get it there. Your bed is fine.”

Mimi blushed as she saw a tiny smile flit across Doc’s face. “Thank you, Doc, for seeing us at this hour.”

“You just keep that reprobate still, Mimi. It’s going to take your finest nursing skills to keep him in his place.”

“Good night, Doc.” She helped Mason toward his truck, glad when he regained his own firm footing. After they got in, she drove toward her town house. “What are we going to tell Nanette?”

“That things happen for a reason, and Mommy should have married me in the first place.”

Mimi frowned. “That’s not what I meant, nor is it true.”

“But now that you’ve hurt me, I think it’s a sign we should get on with the show.”

“Mason, I did not hurt you,” Mimi said hotly. “You walked into someone’s two-by-four. I wasn’t even around!”

“I’m falling in love with you,” Mason said. “It’s the Curse.”

“Oh, goodness,” Mimi said. “I can’t tell if you’re being weird because you are or because of the shots Doc gave you.”

“Mimi,” Mason said, his voice serious suddenly, “I have a bone to pick with you.”

“You always do. Pick away.”

“What were you thinking going up to those thugs and chatting with them like you were Miss Union Junction?”

“I was looking for you.”

“Don’t do that again,” Mason said. “Only one of us is sheriff, and
I
wear the badge.”