“Yes, you do, Daddy. Everybody knows it was all fake. We were pretending to be a couple.”
“You like him, he likes you. No pretense there,” he said with a shrug.
“No, he did what he had to because I forced him.” Her father laughed at that, the sound so genuinely amused that Daisy was a little offended by it.
“Sweetheart, you can be difficult and stubborn and a little crazy at times, but nobody on God’s green earth, especially not a lightweight like you, can force a man like Mason Carlisle to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
“I blackmailed him.”
“He came to that wedding because he wanted to,” her father dismissed.
Daisy didn’t respond to that, but her eyes drifted to the side-view mirror, and she watched the other car for a long moment. Mason had been out of her life for a month; she hadn’t seen him or heard from him at all in that time. And she knew it was her fault; she had leaped at the excuse to drive him away. At times she was sure she’d made the right decision, but then at other times—like right now—doubt crept in and she wondered if perhaps she hadn’t made the biggest mistake of her life. She often wondered who had really told Shar about their scheme. Not that it really mattered anymore; the damage had been done. But she was still curious.
Straight from the horse’s mouth.
How could Shar possibly have found out about their deception unless she had heard it from one of the parties involved? Could it have been Spencer? He was the only other person who knew about it.
“I’ll tell you what I told my brother,” Spencer said, when Daisy went by his house later that evening to pose the question to him. “It wasn’t me.”
“Mason asked you about it?”
“He’s been trying to figure it out too.” He handed her a beer, not offering her a choice, and she took it with a nod. Beer wasn’t her drink at all, but he was trying to be civil.
“Daisy”—Spencer’s grave face mirrored his tone of voice—“I deserve your doubt and your ill will. I haven’t been . . . kind to you, and I’m very sorry for that. I’ve treated you badly in the past, but I want you to know that the night I asked Mason to distract you while I chatted with Daff was only because I wanted a chance to speak to her and she’s always been very protective over you. So I—stupidly—thought if she saw that you were happily preoccupied, she’d be more open to relaxing and talking with me. Mason was reluctant to go through with it, not because he had anything against you but because he’s a good guy and he thought it might hurt you if you found out his interest wasn’t genuine.” He shook his head. “It was a stupid, ill-advised, and flawed plan. And it failed miserably . . . for me. Mason, on the other hand, my brother liked you from the beginning. And this entire fucked-up situation has messed him up more than he’s willing to let on. He’s miserable.”
“He is?” Daisy hated the thought of Mason being miserable. Especially if she was the cause of it.
“Do you know that he punched Edmonton?”
“What?”
“He didn’t tell me about it; I heard it from one of the guy’s groomsmen. Apparently Clayton was spouting off some shit about you, and Mason punched him and warned the groomsmen if they ever mentioned your name again he’d lay a world of pain on them.”
“Oh.” Daisy’s hands went to her mouth, and her eyes flooded with tears. Nobody had ever done anything so sweet and romantic for her before. Mason had always been kind, gentle, and protective of her. And Daisy had simply thrown it all away because of her own stupid insecurities. Mason was right; she was so hung up in the past, in what people used to think of her, that she’d allowed it to color her vision of the world and herself. And then he’d come along and had seen something completely different, and because his image of her didn’t gel with hers, she had dismissed it as fantasy. As part of an elaborate act.
What a fool she was.
The following afternoon Daisy nervously rubbed a damp palm over the denim of her jeans before lifting her hand to ring Mason’s doorbell. There was a faint answering bark inside. The barking grew closer and closer until she could hear Cooper just inside the door. She cast an anxious glance around. Mason’s Jeep was parked outside, but she couldn’t see his bike or BMW and she wondered if he was out. The possibility filled her with both relief and disappointment. She needed to apologize and to know if they could still have something real between them. She hoped so, because she had stupidly—and against every ounce of her better judgment—gone and fallen in love with the man.