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Natalie closed the door of the womens’ restroom behind her. She walked the four steps to the counter that held the double sinks, and leaned her hands on the cool stone. The sunflowers she’d placed in an antique canning jar were still jaunty, although one of the accent blue delphiniums was broken off, the wilted spike dangling over a pool of soap puddled below the dispenser.
She reached automatically to break the stem off and drop it through the hole in the counter into the large trash bin underneath. The prosaic action broke the spell of misery and exhaustion that bound her. Her hands clenched into fists. Her head snapped forward, and a low moan of animal suffering worked its way from her throat. Hot tears flooded her eyes.
All her dreams and plans, all her work ... was it all for nothing? Was Rambles destined to be nothing but an empty building moldering on the riverbank, empty of all but broken dreams?
Outside in the bar, Trista and Judd were working, cleaning and straightening, all the chores that needed to be done to put the bar to bed for the night. She’d waved goodbye to the last of her customers, Teri and her friends and Dave, who had stuck gamely til the end, playing pool and talking, doing their best to behave as if everything was fine.
Teri’s friends had told her what a great place Rambles was, and that they would be back. Dave had given her a big hug, and told her he’d work on that knot-head Cassidy. Their eyes had all held sympathy, as if she were the victim of a fire or wreck and they were waiting for her to break.
Teri had simply hugged her and told her it would all work out, because they would darn well see to it.
After they’d gone, Gaye had taken off her apron, and with her plump arms crossed protectively, her gaze fixed somewhere near Nat’s knees, had informed them that she was done, that she needed to work somewhere she’d know she had a job the next week. She waited only for Nat to promise to send her night’s wages and split the tip jar before walking out.
Mase had stayed, working alongside Trista and Judd to clean. He’d taken on the task of upending the chairs on the clean tables so the floor could be mopped. When Nat had protested, he’d simply given her a look that made her close her mouth and go behind the bar to take care of the till.
He’d been the one to escort the others outside and lock the door behind them. And such was the power of Mase that Nat’s employees accepted that Nat and Rambles were in his hands, and they could go home and rest with clear consciences.
Nat felt as if she would never rest again. She was exhausted, but her mind raced in an endless loop, replaying the horrible events of the evening, from Cassidy’s drama-filled rant to Buzz’s faux-sorrowful condemnation, to the exodus of most of the bar’s patrons in their wake.
How was she going to make a success of Rambles without the nearest town behind her? How had she ever thought she could come back here and make this work? She was a dreaming fool. An idiot.
The door opened behind her, and Mase stepped in.
His presence, big and solid, was the last straw. She gazed at him in the mirror through a haze of tears, her mouth trembling.
“I won’t be able to pay my bank loan. I’ll have to sell my bar,” she told him, her voice rising with each word. “And go be a—a bookkeeper and move into a tiny, little apartment ... sell the Highlander and be just another little paper-shuffler for the rest of my life.”
He gave her a look of sympathy tinged with amusement. “I think you might be exaggerating just a little there, baby.” But his voice was tender, and he opened his arms to her.
Bursting into tears, she threw herself into his embrace.
Mase gathered her close and held her, head on his shoulder, his arms around her, rocking her gently from side to side as she cried it all out.
When finally her tears were spent, she leaned on him in the dull calm after the storm. Mase shuffled them to one side far enough to rip a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and hand them to her to mop her face.
“All right,” he said, his voice a comforting rasp in her ear, “here’s what we’re gonna do. Dave took my truck home for me. I’m gonna drive you in your rig to my place. You’re gonna spend the night. We’re gonna get up in the morning, make breakfast and then we’ll talk.”
She couldn’t summon the energy to answer him. Taking her silence for assent, Mase walked her out of the bathroom, through the silent bar in which he had turned off all but the night lights, and out into the quiet summer night. He locked the doors, checked them, and led her to the Highlander.
Natalie lay back in the comfortable passenger seat as they followed the narrow, paved road into the dark of the countryside toward Vancouver. But well short of the city lights, Mase turned onto another lane and then into a graveled drive where he pulled to a stop.
Nat roused enough to peer out at a sturdy two-story house with deep porches, lit up for their arrival. “Where are we?”
“To my house, baby. Told you that.”
“You have a house?”
He opened her truck door, took her hand and tugged her gently toward the broad steps. “Yeah, I have a house. You think I’d live in a trailer?”
“No,” she said, too tired to get his humor. “An apartment, I guess.”
“Not me. I like being out here where it’s open.” His calm words poured over her, soothing in their normalcy. “Almost country, and it’ll stay that way, because we have covenants that keep property from being broken up smaller than an acre. Didn’t wanna wake up some morning and hear them grading land for seventy-five tract homes next door.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed, leaning into him as he slid his arm around her waist.
He waved at the dark field behind the house. “It’s pretty—or at least it will be. I’ll show you in the morning. Got all these big maples, and a nice pasture that my neighbors’ ponies are currently grazing. One of these days I’ll do somethin’ with the yard.”
He led her up the steps, across a porch and into the foyer, snapping lights on and locking the door behind them.
“Sorry,” he said. “Place is musty from bein’ shut up all day. Need to get air installed.”
He steered her toward the stairs leading up to the second floor. “Give you the two-dollar tour in the morning. Right now, I’m gonna to get you to bed.”
Nat trudged up the stairs, Mase’s arm around her for support. They crossed a wide hall to a large, sparsely furnished bedroom with a king sized bed, a dresser and a nightstand.
Mase helped her undress beside the bed and then led her into a bathroom.
“Sorry about the wallpaper. Purple roses aren’t exactly my thing, but I was just gettin’ started on tearing shit apart when I was shot. Think the place was furnished by someone my grandma’s age.”
The old-fashioned wallpaper did indeed hang in long strips in one corner of the room. The unpapered walls were painted a startling lavender that had not faded along with the paper.
“I see you’re struck dumb by my décor,” Mase said, pulling her with him into the shower. Under the hot water, he gently shampooed her hair and soaped her body, helped her rinse off, and then toweled her dry, dropping to his knees before her on the bathmat like a knight errant tending to his lady.
Nat submitted to his care, soaking it in, letting it cushion her in numbness.
By the big bed, he handed her a soft, clean tee-shirt that smelled faintly of laundry detergent. She pulled it over her head, tugged her damp hair out and crawled under the covers he held for her, curling onto her side.
Mase left the room, and she heard him moving around the house, opening windows.
He returned. The bed dipped as he got in behind her. He put a hand on her belly and pulled her gently back into the curve of his warm, strong body, one arm under her cheek, the other over her waist.
“It’ll be okay, baby,” he promised, his voice soft in her ear. “We’ll see to it.”
If only that were true. With the ugly voices echoing in her head, Natalie couldn’t even try to believe him. They lay silently in the darkness.
After a while, he sighed. “You’re not gonna sleep, are you?” Patting her hip, he sat up, switched on a bedside lamp and began to move pillows. “You like baseball or soccer?”
Nat turned onto her back, squinting at him in the light. “What?”
“Your choice—World Cup soccer or the Mariners.”
She pushed herself up and looked to the big screen TV hanging on the wall opposite the bed. “I like baseball.”
“You do? That’s good.” He patted the pillows beside him. “So do I. C’mere. We’ll see if the Ms can pull it out against the Indians.”
“Okay.” Nat scooted up high enough to lie in the strong curve of his arm, watching as the Seattle Mariners’ logo filled the screen.
She did like baseball, and followed the Ms as her local team. And right now, she desperately needed the distraction of watching handsome, fit players dash about a green, manicured field and hit balls far, far up into the spotlighted night air over their stadium as if their lives depended on it.
Lying with her head on Mase’s good shoulder, breathing in his scent, feeling his heart beat under her palm, his strong legs alongside hers—that was pure comfort.
* * *
NAT’S EYES SLIPPED shut soon after the second batter went out, and her breathing went slow and even as the announcers cut to game analysis.
Mase peered down at her, tucked the sheet over her shoulder, muted the TV, then picked up his phone and dialed. He got Dack on the third ring.
“Brother,” Mase said quietly. “Gonna need your help.”
“You got it,” Dack said instantly. “This for Natalie? Xander called, said it was bad.”
“Yeah,” Mase said, his jaw flexing with renewed anger. “It is.”
“Anything I can do,” Dack said. “Daisy too.”
“All right, here’s what I wanna do.”
Mase outlined the plan he had so far, which wasn’t much, but it was a start. He then called Teri, Trace and Jake in turn.
Only when he had all of them and their partners on board did he click his phone shut and settle back to watch the Ms play ball while his lady slept.
He looked down at Nat, and reached to brush an errant curl from her face. Drying, it was springing into the loose waves he liked so much. He shifted a little to a more comfortable position, and she moved with him, snuggling closer.
He liked that. He liked having her here, warm and soft in his bed. Needing his help and support. She was the only woman he’d brought to the place, and she fit here somehow. Maybe he could even ask her advice about décor and paint colors, shit like that. If she liked it, she’d want to spend time here, right?
He’d bought the house cheap when the market was down the winter before, thinking he’d get right to work on it and gradually fix it up, but then he found Club 3 and started spending his spare time there.
And then of course he got shot, which shut down all thoughts of home upkeep and renovation. This showed in the sparse straggle of grass that was his lawn and the weeds in the garden beds around the house and yard. The house was in good shape structurally, but it was a shit ugly color of faded blue outside, and inside, suffice to say his bathroom wasn’t the only room that looked like a flower shop had exploded.
The wallpaper was gonna go, along with the paint colors and the old bathrooms. He was a guy, he liked comfortable rooms painted decent colors like white or beige, with comfortable furniture in good plain colors like blue, green or brown. This so far consisted of a big screen TV, coffee table and sectional sofa of brown leather in the living room, and a king-sized bed and second TV in his bedroom upstairs. When he was home, he ate at the kitchen island or sitting on one of the plastic lawn chairs on the back patio in nice weather.
He wasn’t home much.
His parents gave him a hard time for buying a place in which he never spent time, but he knew that was mostly because they were ready for him to get married and fill the place with grandchildren. Like his older brother wasn’t producing fast enough—married six years and he had three boys already.
Mase supposed he wanted kids someday. It wasn’t something he spent time thinking about. He liked being able to come and go as he pleased, and while he enjoyed his nephews, tossing a ball for them at family barbecues didn’t fill him with a burning desire to go plant own his seed in a woman.
He wondered what Nat thought about kids. She hadn’t produced any with her ex, but was that lack of interest or because they hadn’t had time to get to it? Hard to run a bar as a couple and raise a family.
He yawned, tucked the sheet over her shoulder and turned back to the game.
The Mariners were down two, two runners on base. The new batter tensed, swung and hit the ball with a hollow thwack of his metal bat. Mase watched as the ball sailed high in the air, arcing above the field and then falling to earth just out of reach of the nearest outfielder.
Runners raced for the next base. The outfielder grabbed the ball, sent it toward third but got there too late, the runner already gone. The third baseman scrambled for it, threw to home, too late. Score for the Ms, with two more men on base.
Mase nodded with satisfaction. Coming through in the clinch, that’s what a man had to do. Making that hit when it really mattered.
He peered down at the woman sleeping on his shoulder and wondered if maybe he did have that in him after all.