Page 44 of The Run In

“Can you fall in love with someone you’ve only known for a little over a month?”

She giggled. “Of course you can. I fell in love with your father the moment I first set his apple pie on the table.”

My mother loved telling the story of how she’d been helping out her best friend at the little restaurant where they’d both worked and had taken a pie over to one of her tables. According to her, my father had looked up at her and smiled, and that was all she wrote. My father told it the same way. The second he’d looked into her caramel eyes, he was lost to her. He’d asked for her number, and the rest was history.

“Have you met someone?” Mom asked.

I blew out a breath.

“I’m going to say you have, and things aren’t going as you’d like?”

Laughing, I sat down on the bench outside my office building.

“No. He’s my boss.”

“Oh dear.”

“Yeah. He tried to kiss me once, but I stopped him. He’s a bit of a player. Doesn’t want to settle down or even date, I think.”

“You haven’t been out with him?”

“I have a few times—if you could even call them dates.”

“Tell me why you think you’ve fallen for him, sweetheart.”

That was easy. Sitting back, I took a sip of my tea and started going through my list of things I loved about Mason.

“He’s smart, strong-minded, his business sense is spot on, he’s handsome, he’s kind when he wants to be, and he has a caring heart that he tries to hide, but I’ve seen it.”

“Like how?”

I shrugged. “Well, for instance, his secretary. He tries to intimidate her, but last week she mentioned that her mother’s transmission went out. She was going to have to dip into her savings to help her—she’s trying to buy a house. The next day, she said someone had called the dealership where the car was and had traded her mother’s car in for a brand-new vehicle. Same model but brand freaking new. The poor girl was in tears. Her mother wasn’t going to have to worry about a reliable car and now she was that much closer to buying a house so her mother could come live with her.”

“You know your boss was behind it?”

Closing my eyes, I smiled when I thought back to being on the elevator with Mason last week. I’d been hidden behind a few men, so he hadn’t realized I was in there. “Yes. I overheard him telling them to get the same model, though fully loaded, and to use her old car as a trade-in. He said he wanted it to be anonymous. He got off the elevator a few floors before me, so he never knew I was on there with him.”

My mother gasped. “What an amazing thing to do.”

“I know. And it’s not even that. He has this pull that I can’t ignore. When I’m around him, I either want to kick him in the balls or beg him to kiss me. Most of the time, it’s the latter. It’s confusing as hell, Mom.”

“That’s love,” she said with a chuckle. “Have you talked to him about how you feel?”

“God no!” I answered, standing. “Mom, this guy is beyond gorgeous. He can get any woman he wants simply by walking up and smiling at them. He’s not interested in me like that. I mean, do I think that if I told him I’d sleep with him, he’d go along with it? Yes.”

Pushing the door of the building open, I stopped. “No, I take that back. I don’t think he would. I think he’d want to, but he has more respect for me than that.”

“Saylor Maria Night. Do not ever put yourself down like that, young woman. Any man would call himself lucky to have you.”

I replied, “I’m sorry, Mom. You’re right.”

“I am right. And he sounds like a catch.”

Feeling my chest ache and my heart sink, I nodded and slowly walked to the elevator. “He is. And sometimes his British accent comes out.”

“He’s British too?”

“Born there but moved to America when he was young, so he’s mostly lost it. It comes out when he’s mad. It’s kind of cute, though I’m annoyed with myself for thinking that way.”

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