Static electricity bounced around in the room when Annie Rose and Mason locked gazes, but neither one made a move. O’Malley darted across the kitchen floor and meowed at the kitchen door.
“Hey, you want something to eat? How about a bowl of ice cream?” Annie Rose asked.
“You talking to me or that pesky cat that has already lost his high-dollar earring?” Mason asked.
“He’s not getting ice cream if he can’t take care of an earring. And I thought maybe ice cream would cool us both down,” she said.
“I’d rather have a cold beer,” Mason said.
“You’re right. That does sound a hell of a lot better than ice cream,” she said.
He took two from the refrigerator and motioned for her to follow him out to the porch. They both sat down on the swing and Mason used the heel of his boot to kick-start it into motion.
“Nicky hated to kiss me after I drank a beer.”
Mason leaned over and kissed her hard on the lips. “He was a fool. You taste like a bit of heaven.”
“He’s gone. Door closed and I don’t want to think about him anymore, but I do, and when I do, it makes me angry. Does Holly do that to you?”
“Tonight she did. I broke her picture.”
“We’ve both got a lot of baggage, don’t we?”
“You ready to throw yours into the pond?” he answered her question with another one.
“I am, but will that keep the memories from popping up?”
“Probably not, but it will keep us from letting them control either one of us. I’m ready to move forward with my life. I figured it out tonight at the poker game.”
“Reckon the bad memories for me and the good ones for you will get fainter and come around to haunt us less and less?”
“Oh, yeah. And I think that we are helping each other with that issue more than we realize right now. We should go back to bed now,” he said softly.
“I’d like that, but there’s two little girls who aren’t asleep yet, and if we got interrupted again, darlin’, I’m afraid their chore list would last a whole week.” She kissed him on the cheek and started toward the door.
“Annie Rose?” he said.
She turned.
“I wanted to see your face one more time tonight. The moonlight dancing off your hair is beautiful,” he said.
She smiled. “Thank you. I’ll take that and the feel of your hands on my body with me into my dreams.”
“If you can sleep, that’s a hell of a lot more than I’ll be able to do,” he said.
* * *
Mason flipped the light switch on in his bedroom and the lucky shirt went to the laundry basket. His jeans and socks joined it, and he adjusted the water for a quick shower. A towel wrapped around his hips hung like a low-slung loincloth and his hair was still wet when he realized that the picture was back on the chest of drawers and there was no glass on the floor. He peeked inside the jewelry box, and there were the hoops and the diamond stud in their right places.
He dropped the towel, pulled on a pair of lounge pants, and curled up on his big, empty king-sized bed alone. Sleep was a long time coming, and when it did, it brought such vivid dreams of Annie Rose that he awoke the next morning with a painful erection that took fifteen minutes in a cold shower to ease.