Page 37 of I Need You Tonight
His last words didn’t surprise me. I guess being a celebrity came at a cost.
The small smile I gave him held more meaning and emotion than any of the words I’d hastily spoken.
“Does that mean it’s okay with you if I hang around a few more days to help out?” he asked. “As your friend?”
I nodded. “I would like that.”
Mason and I returned to the main part of the store, where Heidi was standing at the front counter sorting through the contents of a cardboard box. She looked up.
“One of the fridges is still working, but the other one is dead. Luckily, most of my tools are still okay,” she said, doing her best to sound strong, but the slight wavering of her voice betrayed how she was really feeling. “I just have to clean them so they don’t rust. And I found enough supplies for next weekend’s wedding, so I won’t have to place an emergency order.”
“Will there be enough room in the working fridge to store the flowers?” The shipment was due a few days before the wedding, and there was no way the flowers would stay fresh if left in my house. Not unless I cranked up the air-conditioning—and even if I did, I didn’t think it would get cold enough. Like everything else in the house, it was an old model. I was surprised it still worked.
“There should be,” Heidi said.
We spent another two hours sorting through the debris. Mason found a broom and swept the shattered glass and destroyed flowers into a pile in the corner.
By the time we were finished, our feet were wet, we were filthy and reeked of smoke, and our bodies were ready to call it a day. A few hours of sleep wasn’t enough. And I’d had more sleep than Mason, who had dealt with Bernie first.
I glanced over at him and my heart did a flutter kick at the sight of him, dirty and carrying a box. He could have bailed this morning while I was sleeping and headed back to L.A. He didn’t have to be here in the store with me. He didn’t have to help me with assessing the damage. And he certainly didn’t have to walk Bernie…but he had.
“You ready to go?” I asked him. We said our goodbyes to Heidi and Chris and drove back to my house. “I’m going to have a shower and then walk Bernie.”
Carrying the paperwork I’d brought home with me, I climbed the stairs, each step feeling as though I were wading through a vat of drying glue. In my room I dumped the paperwork on my desk, grabbed clean clothes from the closet, and went into the bathroom.
After turning the shower on full blast, I stripped out of my clothes and stepped under the spray. I closed my eyes, but the memory of the destruction in the store was too much, and a sob broke free.
Unable to hold it back any longer, I let the tears fall. With the water raining hard against the tub, I could cry without Mason hearing me.
Suddenly the shower curtain moved to the side, freaking the hell out of me, and I shrieked. Before I could say anything coherent, Mason stepped into the shower—fully dressed.
His T-shirt was instantly wet from the water pelting him. The soaked fabric clung to his body, showcasing his perfect muscles. Normally I would’ve been turned on. This time an unexpected laugh bubbled free. “You were that eager for a shower, you couldn’t wait long enough to take your clothes off first?”
“I heard you crying.”
“So you figured you would climb in with all your clothes on, to make me laugh?” If that had been his plan, it had worked. I giggled uncontrollably, so overwhelmed by everything that had happened that I was unable to stop laughing.
“I was thinking that you should join me on tour.” He said it with such a straight face, I couldn’t help but laugh some more. He was obviously kidding.
“I don’t think that will solve any of my problems,” I said after I’d calmed down and taken a breath. “Besides, I need to stay here to help with the store renovations.”
“Actually, it’s a perfect solution. The band needs a social media person to travel with us and post regularly on our social media sites. With your background, you’d be perfect for it. And just so you know, I’m asking you as a friend, not because we’ve slept together.”
“But I have a job.”
“You can do this one while you wait for the store to reopen. Tour with us for a few months. Once it’s ready to reopen, you can come back here and the band will find someone new to take over the social media job.”
“I can’t be gone that long. Heidi will need my help.”
“For what? I thought she was the one who does the floral arrangements, and you stick to the business and marketing side of things. You can always do that on the road with the band. We have computers and Wi-Fi on the bus.”
Was he for real? Or just plain crazy? I had a life here. And by life, I meant I had a job that took most of my time. A job that was for the most part on hold for now, thanks to the fire.
But what he was suggesting did sound tempting. I had always done the sensible thing. The boring thing. And look where that had gotten me—nowhere but a string of boring dates that Heidi and Cindy kept setting me up on. Before that, I’d been busy with college and working part-time. I’d never done anything adventurous. What would it hurt to do something different for once? It wasn’t like I was running off to marry Mason. And it would be great job experience.
Plus I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Mason yet. In the few days he’d been here, I’d had more fun with him than I’d had in the past year. We’d taken Bernie on walks several times a day, cooked together, watched movies, and worked on projects around the house. And unlike with my recent boring dates, none of it had felt awkward.
The object of my thoughts pushed a wet strand of hair from my face, reminding me I was naked in the shower and he wasn’t.
