“Oh, Immy! Here. Take this out to Mason.” Grandma shoved a glass of water and a plate with cookies on at me. “Now.”
“I maded dem!” said the tiny human with her arms elbow-deep in cookie dough. “Hiya.”
“Hi. I’m Immy.”
“I Maya. Are you Dadda’s fend?”
“Kind of,” I said. Thank God I could speak little kid thanks to the classes at the store. “Are you having fun?”
She nodded, blue eyes sparkling, and went back to stirring the cookie dough.
I say stirring. She was more… flicking it everywhere.
I eyed Grandma speculatively, but she shrugged a shoulder and with a very calm, “No, dear, like this,” turned her full attention to Maya and her cookie dough missiles.
Like Grandma couldn’t have taken these out herself.
Ugh.
This woman was going to be the death of me.
I stepped out onto the back porch. Mason was at the far end of the backyard, but he looked up the second my feet touched the steps, as if he knew, somehow, that I was here.
It was weird.
I lamely held up the plate and water so he knew it was for him. He gave me a thumb up, and I waited while he mowed the next line back to the porch where I was.
“Thanks. It’s hot out here.” He took the water first and drank half the glass before he took the plate. “Did they bake these?”
“You mean my grandmother and her new minion? I think so.” I sat down on the top step where it was still shaded from the sun. “Do you know what you’re letting yourself in for?”
Mason sat next to me, keeping a comfortable distance. “No, but that probably stands to reason for this afternoon, too.”
“Why? You’re not painting for her, are you?”
He laughed. “No. We’re going back to the shelter for a Shih Tzu puppy.”
“How did you get roped into that?”
“Fran—that’s Maya’s mom—is on vacation, and her mom had promised to take her to the shelter. They do some kid-friendly thing on a Thursday afternoon.” He sighed. “Basically, I’m a sucker, and after insisting I wasn’t getting a dog, I’m now getting a dog.”
“Seems reasonable enough. How did you get roped into this?”
“Your grandmother talked me in circles until Maya came out and heard the words ‘baking’ and ‘cookies’ and that was the end of it all.”
“Wow. You really are a sucker.”
“Thanks for the support.”
“You’re welcome. Sucker.”
He side-eyed me. “Your grandmother is quite the force of nature.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. I have to live with her and host her little pensioner’s book club once a week.” I met his gaze. “You think she’s bad; you should meet Lillian, Kathleen, and Evelyn. They have to meet here, or I’d probably have to bail them out of jail on a weekly basis.”
“They’re that bad?”
“Why don’t you come over tomorrow night and find out for yourself?”
“I can’t. Maya.” He shoved half a cookie in his mouth. “These are good.”
“Still an animal with no manners, I see.”
“Still willing to call me on what you perceive as my faults, I see.”
I pursed my lips and dragged my eyes away from him. “Eating with your mouth full is a universally accepted fault.”
He laughed quietly, and the plate clinked against the porch when he set it down. “You know we’re gonna have to get along.”
“We don’t have to do anything at all. If you want to help Grandma, you can. I’m only here because my cousin needs some extra cash so she opened the store.” I got up and walked down onto the grass, ready to head to the shed to get some secateurs to trim back one of the bushes along the side of the garden. “Don’t think I’m being a bitch, but I’d rather not have any kind of relationship at all.”
“It’s hard not to think that you’re being a bitch when you are, in fact, being a bitch, Imogen.”
I peered back over my shoulder and glared, but there was a small lump stuck in my throat at the sight of him. His dark blue eyes gripped hold of me, but I once again tore my gaze away and went to get what I was looking for.
Except I didn’t.
I was millimeters from opening the door when I turned around, ready to unleash hell on him at the porch, but he was already on my side of the yard.
“Yes?” he drawled, leaning on the lawnmower.
“You can call me a bitch all you like, but here’s what you aren’t considering, Mason.” I turned to face him and folded my arms over my chest like a shield over my heart. “When you graduated and said you were going to call me but didn’t, you really, really hurt me. The thing with hurt is that it doesn’t go away overnight. You either deal with it or you don’t, and it doesn’t matter that it was years ago, because I apparently didn’t. So when I saw you moving in, all that hurt I’d hidden away came back. Now, if you think I’m a bitch for not wanting to be anywhere near you, then fine. Think it. I’m no less of a bitch than you were an asshole six years ago. The only difference now is that you’re able to call me on my shitty attitude. That wasn’t a luxury I was afforded.”