Jason Read online

  “That’s a mackerel sky,” the woman pointed out, apparently sensing Mallory’s skepticism. She leaned down and picked up a bucketful of rhododendrons and peonies. “Go knock on the door. He’ll come if he’s home. I’m Fiona, by the way.”

  “Hi,” Mallory said, and extended her hand. “I’m Mallory.”

  Fiona gripped her hand with surprising strength. “Go on, now.” With her bucket, she went out the gate and up the steps of the cottage, disappearing inside.

  Mallory went back to fetch her suitcase and dragged it over the gravel. But the gravel kept locking the wheels, and the case knocked into her knee. So she hoisted it in her hand and walked out of the garden and to the stairs leading up to the porch.

  If the house had a grand entrance, she wasn’t seeing it. There was a single door behind a screen. Mallory dragged her suitcase up the steps and rolled it in front of her to the door. She dragged her fingers through her hair in an attempt to tame it as she studied the door before her. Frankly, it looked like a servant’s entrance. She was tempted to dig out her phone and text Inez a picture of this house and that door. But Inez was on set today, and Mallory didn’t want to explain that she’d jetted out to Maine on Jason’s demand. She could already hear the I told you sos.

  Mallory looked around for a doorbell, and finding nothing obvious, she knocked.

  She waited.

  She leaned to her right to peer in through a sidelight window, but could see nothing but hardwood floors covered in thick rugs, a console table against one of the hall walls with a vase full of peonies. She knocked again, only louder this time.

  Still, no one came. “Damn it, Jason,” she muttered beneath her breath. “Why is everything about you so hard?” She fully intended to add this trip through the Maine countryside to the long list of things she had to say to Jason about this whole ordeal. Which included, do you know everyone talks about how insane you are? And If you summon me to Maine, could you at least be somewhere IN Maine?

  She turned to go. To where, she had no idea, and she was beyond furious as she pondered how difficult it would be to get a cab here—her guess was very—when the door suddenly swung open and Jason was standing before her in gym shorts.

  And nothing else.

  He was shirtless. He was not wearing a shirt. Whatever Mallory had been thinking was gone from her head and, for the record, Jason Blackthorne without a shirt was…inspiring. She tried to avert her gaze from his impressive form, but she couldn’t seem to make herself do it. It was like she had cartoon googly eyes glued to his chest. Heretofore, Mallory had not seen Jason shirtless. She had guessed at his abs, of course, because he wore his clothes very tight and it was impossible not to notice. She had certainly noticed the night she’d crawled on his lap how firm and broad his chest and shoulders looked in his blue shirt that seemed to lack the capacity to contain his arms. But to see him so blatantly bare, so chiseled and hard and completely within reach was enough to make her take a step back. To see the shadow of hair on his chest, and the other, tantalizing line of furry down that disappeared into the elastic of his shorts, was enough to leave her speechless. Mallory stared at him.

  Jason apparently didn’t see the issue. He scrubbed at the nape of his neck and frowned at her. “Why are you looking at me like you’ve never met me? And why didn’t you call or text? I would have come out and helped you.”

  In a supreme effort to stop ogling her boss’s chest, Mallory made herself look at his eyebrows. “I tried. You said I was breaking up.”

  He swept two fingers across his brow, as if he thought something was there.

  “I thought this was an inn. But the little old lady in the garden—”

  “Nana.”

  “What?”

  “That was my grandmother. Nana. She was picking flowers, right? Didn’t she tell you who she was?”

  “She said her name was Fiona. And something about a mackerel sky? And that you lived in this house, which I thought was an inn.”

  Jason looked past her, dipping a little to see the sky. “Yep. That’s a mackerel sky all right. You thought this was an inn?” He laughed. “This is not an inn. Why are you coming through the garden, anyway? You should have come in the front door. I thought you were calling the limo service.”

  “Right. About that limo—it was a windowless van. Do you have any idea what kind of shenanigans go on in windowless vans? You said limo!”

  “I said limo service,” he corrected her. “Sometimes they have cars and sometimes, Ned drives. But usually, they come to the front of the house,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the opposite direction.

  “Well Ned the van guy let me out at a big gate on top of the hill.”

  “Huh,” Jason said thoughtfully. Then he shrugged. “He must have been in a hurry. That’s the back way in. Why didn’t you call me?”

  Mallory gave him a withering look. “I did,” she said. “Like ten minutes ago. I am so mad at you right now.”

  “You’ll get over it,” he said with cheerful confidence. Because Jason said everything with cheerful confidence. He pushed the screen door to stand open on its own and then arranged himself with one arm braced high against the doorjamb and studied her up and down. “You look tired, Mal.”

  “Ya think? Someone woke me at three thirty and made me get a on a plane.”

  Jason smiled, all dimples and showy white teeth. “It’s a pretty sweet ride, isn’t it?”

  She wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. “So sweet,” she admitted. “Every man, woman and child ought to be able to fly like that.”

  “What about the carbon footprints?”

  “Shut up.” She’d take on responsible stewardship of the environment another day.

  His grin deepened. “So come in. You look like you could use a drink.” He turned away from the door, walking into the house. “I just finished in the gym. Are you hungry? I’m starving. I had Pam order something in for dinner. Should arrive fairly soon.”

  Mallory tried to maneuver her suitcase inside, but the screen door shut in her face.

  “Oh, sorry,” Jason said instantly and dipped back, pushed open the screen, and grabbed her bag.

  “I really think I should check in, don’t you?”

  “Check in? Check in where?”

  “Check in…at a hotel.” Was it possible that Jason had actually thought ahead to that? No. Not possible.

  “What are you talking about? You’ll stay here.” He picked up her suitcase as if it weighed nothing and walked down a wide corridor. “Look at this place. It’s enormous.”

  “I can’t stay with your family,” she said, laughing at the absurdity of it.

  “Family? There’s no one here but me.”

  “Why? Have they gone somewhere?”

  He looked back at her as if she wasn’t speaking English. “It’s a summerhouse. I’m the only one here this week.”

  Well that made no sense to Mallory’s very lower middle-class self. She could not fathom a summerhouse this big and this empty, and she had to pause to look around her to absorb the idea. If she had a summerhouse with large picture windows that framed a view of the ocean from every room that she could see, she’d be right here. She looked at the boxed beam ceilings, and hand-scraped hardwood floors. At the two-sided fireplace made of river rock. The furnishings were just as grand—chairs and sofas made of leather and brocade, and thick wool rugs to cover sections of the floor. And the kitchen! It looked like a set from an old Nora Ephron movie, with high-end appliances and marble countertops. “I can’t stay here, Jason.”

  He seemed confused. “Why not?”

  She didn’t know how to explain that a girl from a very small house and a very big family should not be in a fancy house like this. This was beyond her reach, and she instinctively recoiled from reaching. Maybe because she’d grown up at or near the poverty level.

  But it was more than that, if she was being honest. Jason wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the busy little bees that maintained he
r libido were working overtime and had kicked it up a notch.

  He frowned. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “You know, that look you get.”

  “Are you referring to the look I get that is my face?” she asked irritably as she tried to figure out what look he was talking about.

  “Look, Mallory, is this about…” He hesitated, pressed his lips together a moment, as if he was trying to think of what to say. “You don’t have to…” He hesitated again, and Mallory wondered if he was talking about that night in his office. Oh God. She could feel the color creeping up her neck and into her face. Please don’t say it. “Look, if you want to stay in town, we’ll drive in later and get you a room.”

  Interestingly, uber-confident Jason looked strangely embarrassed, which was a look on him she’d never seen. Oh God—had she embarrassed him that night? That’s what she got for trying to play vixen. She generally tried not to think about that night at all, because she’d been so mortified by it, but it was damn difficult to forget when he was standing here and now without his shirt. “Thanks,” she muttered, and looked at her feet. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate…I mean, I think it’s probably not…” Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up. She was getting weirder and weirder and she didn’t like it. She suddenly looked up. “You know what? I could really use a bathroom. Do you have a bathroom I could use?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, almost as if he was debating something, and she could feel his gaze penetrating hers, could feel it sliding merrily down into her groin. But then he nodded toward a door in the hall. “It’s right in there,” he said. Then he pointed at a door the other way. “I’ll be in there. Kitchen is on the other side of the dining room.” He deposited her suitcase in the hall and disappeared into the dining room.

  Mallory slipped into the powder room, leaned over the sink, and splashed water on her face. When she glanced up, she recoiled. Her short hair was going in all directions. She had dark circles under her eyes from a lack of sleep. And her pulse was pounding in her neck because Inez was right—she was a cake around very handsome, sexy men. “For the love of Pete,” she muttered. She was definitely going to need him to put on a shirt and get a room in town if she was going to survive this unexpected trip to Maine. She was only human.

  And she was still pissed, too, she realized. Maybe as pissed as she was this morning. Was it only this morning? She paused to think about that. It seemed so long ago now. But on top of waking her up, making her fly to Maine, he’d answered the door looking ridiculously and mouthwateringly hot and inviting her to stay in this ridiculously fancy summerhouse.

  Yep. She was mad all over again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HE CLEARLY MADE HER UNCOMFORTABLE. Jason hadn’t realized before today how uncomfortable he made her. In all the weirdness that followed that night in the office, he thought she’d just sort of blithely put it behind her, but obviously, she had not.

  He walked down the hall to the gym and rooted around in a closet until he found a shirt in a basket. He put it to his nose. Not too bad. He slipped it on over his head and looked down. It was an old Harvard T-shirt he figured had belonged to his brother Phillip. In this house, anything left behind was fair game.

  He returned to the kitchen and took down a bottle of whisky, pouring a finger of it for himself. Mallory looked really tired, and he felt pretty guilty about that. His thoughts could be so scattered sometimes, especially when he was busy. After his parents had died, and Jason hadn’t been able to absorb his grief, Aunt Claire had suggested maybe he had ADHD. He didn’t have ADHD—he’d had a full-blown case of missing his parents and a desire to drown his feelings about their sudden loss.

  But he was very disorganized. He’d had girlfriends through the years who, when he forgot to call, would accuse him of being unfeeling and inconsiderate. He forgot to call not because he was intentionally unfeeling, but because he walked around with a jumble of ideas in his head, and the more interesting thoughts crowded out the more mundane. Some people could deal with all those thoughts at once, but he was not one of them.

  Mallory understood that about him. She walked around behind him, picking up the forgotten cell phone, or finding his lost keys. Her super organizational skills were a perfect match for his inability to organize even a sock drawer. And there was that curious mix of prosecutor and sex kitten all wrapped up one. From the moment she’d walked into his office, he had felt a twinge deep and low. He remembered that day. She was wearing a dress, and she looked fantastic, and she had legs that stretched into next week. But she was all prim and proper, holding onto that binder for dear life. She had said all the right things…but she’d said them to his mouth, and he had wondered if she hadn’t felt that twinge, too.

  He knew there were times he took advantage of her efficiency, but he really didn’t mean to. Like today, making her fly out here at the last minute. And she’d arrived bedraggled and miffed, and then she’d been intimidated by the size of this house. If there was one thing he got about Mallory, it was that she liked to know what to expect. And she had not expected this house.

  Jason tended to forget how the Blackthorne life looked to outsiders. This house, in particular, was large, and he could understand why someone might think it was a tony inn in Maine on the waterfront. It reeked of old money and a past grandeur that few experienced.

  But to a Blackthorne, this house was also a family treasure, built to house generations. It was home, it was summer, and in a family that had come to include seven boys, there had been many times it hadn’t seemed quite big enough.

  He looked around the kitchen. Aunt Claire had had the kitchen renovated several years ago, and it looked like something out of Architectural Digest with its marble countertops, white cabinetry, and gleaming stainless appliances. There was an office and even a library in the house, neither of which had a view of the ocean, so Jason had set up a makeshift office at the kitchen table. From there, he had a spectacular view of the Atlantic and the sailboats that bobbed by every day.

  In the mornings, he often worked on the flagstone patio and made his calls as the sun slowly climbed to a noon sky. There was one thing he could say for King Harbor, and that was that it was peaceful here. Quiet. Nothing but the sound of the sea churning into land below the house to distract him. After several years in Los Angeles, it was a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle.

  He’d thoroughly enjoyed his time here until Darien pulled his shit.

  And then he discovered Mallory was apparently afraid to be alone with him. That unsettling comparison to Darien made him nauseous.

  He heard the door of the hall bathroom close. A moment later, Mallory found her way to the kitchen. She’d combed her hair and washed her face. She smiled sheepishly, drew a breath and said, “Starting over. This house is amazing, Jason.”

  “Thanks. We like it.”

  “Did you grow up here?”

  She was trying to diffuse her anxiety and exasperation with small talk. He would play along. “I grew up in Boston, actually, but we spent our summers here. You can put your backpack down, you know.”

  “Huh?” She turned slightly, as if trying to see her back. As if she’d forgotten she was carrying the backpack. She slid it off her shoulder, wincing when she did, then looked around, uncertain where to put it while she tried to massage her own shoulder.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Jason said. He walked around from behind the kitchen bar, took it from her, and plopped it into a chair.

  “Thanks,” Mallory said.

  “I can help with that,” Jason said.

  “With what?

  “Your shoulder. Your muscles are tense from carrying it around all day. I could massage it out for you.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Fine. But it would feel a lot better.”

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s really tight.”

  “I can tell.” Jason made a circle
motion with his finger. “Turn around.”

  She presented her back to him and Jason put his hands on her shoulders and began to knead the tension from her muscles.

  “Oh,” Mallory said. “Oh!” She dropped her head. “Oh my God,” she breathed.

  Jason clenched his teeth. He wished she wouldn’t make moaning sounds quite like that. They sparked through him, making him think of things he did not want to be thinking about with his assistant. Jesus, he’d just fired Darien! He’d just been mentally chastising himself for the night in his office. But her neck, slender and smooth, was exposed to him, and he could not stop looking at it. Could not stop thinking about pressing his lips against it.

  He was such a pig.

  “Wow, Jason,” she said.

  “Why are you so tight?” he asked. He was also tight. Wound to a tight coil imagining his lips lingering at the top of her spine, then moving down that spine, one vertebra at a time.

  Mallory groaned loudly when he dug this thumbs into the spot where her shoulders curved into her neck. She began to whimper—he could feel the tension releasing from her muscle. “You’re surprisingly good at this.”

  “Surprisingly?” He chuckled.

  “I wouldn’t have guessed you as a massage kind of guy. I would have guessed you the kind of guy who is always on the receiving end of a massage.”

  She wasn’t wrong. “Fair,” he said. He wondered if there was anything about him Mallory hadn’t figured out. “But I know how to give a massage—I’m not a heathen.” Except when he was. He sighed. “So listen, I’m really sorry about last night. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Technically, it was this morning, but thank you.” She tilted her head to one side. “In all honesty, I had a speech I was prepared to make, but my shoulders haven’t felt his relaxed in weeks. So you’re off the hook.”

  He smiled at the back of her head. He stopped kneading her muscles and let his hands drop. Mallory didn’t move. She stood in the very same spot with her back to him, swaying a little.