Page 57 of Fallen Hearts

As in, he could be leaving. “I get it,” I said, heading to the door and opening it.

“Pia.” He stopped me. How could he have had me pinned against the door five minutes ago, kissing me like I’d never been kissed, but was now rejecting me so easily? Like it was nothing. Mason’s expression was a mask of indifference, so different than it had been just a few moments before.

Rangers are as tenacious as they are disciplined.

The more I read about them, the more I began to understand Mason. The man who watched me walk out his bedroom door was all Ranger. I should have listened to him when he told me he was nothing like his father. “Less nice” was putting it mildly.

“It’s fine,” I said, knowing it was anything but. “This was a mistake.” I repeated his words. “I’m sorry I texted you.”

As I was about to close the door, Mason stopped me.

“Pia.”

I looked up into the eyes of the man I’d been kissing so passionately just a few minutes earlier. “Remember, never apologize to me. Especially when you haven’t done anything wrong. I pulled you into my room. I kissed you. You understand?”

I nodded, just wanting to leave. “Goodnight, Mason.”

“Goodnight, Pia.”

It took everything I had not to run down the hall to my bedroom and slam the door. I wasn’t a child, and maybe I also wasn’t as disciplined as Mason, but I could control my emotions too. Or at least I thought I could, since the second I opened and closed the door, tears began to well in my stupid eyes.

I wanted him. And he wanted me, too.

And that was precisely the problem.

20

MASON

“You look like shit.”

Pia and her family had left earlier, along with our last weekend guest. And though I tried to tell Parker I could paint without him, that he should take the day off, he stubbornly refused to listen. Consequently, the two of us used the empty inn time to knock down the wall between the reception area and main dining room to make a bigger space for potential parties. Though I still wasn’t sure about weddings, Pia’s ideas on potential special events had a lot of merit.

“Thanks,” I said as we cleaned, the wall now completely demolished.

“You didn’t sleep?” Parker correctly guessed.

“Not well,” I admitted, grabbing two waters from the cooler and tossing one to Parker. Sitting on one of the covered chairs in the corner, I took a long swig.

“Talk to me.”

Of all the guys, Parker was the one I’d always opened up to most. Unlike Cole and Beck, he usually went easy on the advice unless I asked for it.

“I kissed Pia last night.”

“Whoa.” Parker sat down on the cooler. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting that. “When?”

“When you guys came back. It’s been pretty obvious there’s something between us?—”

He laughed. “No shit. Really?”

I ignored that.

“I may have said something to her at the bar that precipitated her texting me when she got back, wanting to talk.”

“What’d ya say?”

“Something about me wanting to toss her onto my bed earlier in the day when we accidentally found ourselves in my bedroom.”

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