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“I have his address, but not which apartment is his.”
“Cawthorne?”
“John Cawthorne’s my father,” Bliss answered automatically, and wondered at the tension tightening the corners of the woman’s mouth.
“He rents a unit in the back,” the woman said, still eyeing Bliss with a sense of horror—or was it just curiosity?—for she managed a thin, though certainly not warm, smile again. “Upper level of the carriage house.”
“Dee Dee’s daddy?” the cherub with the dark curls asked.
“Mmm.”
Dee Dee’s daddy. The thought of Mason fathering a child did strange things to her. “Thanks,” she managed to say, though she barely noticed what happened to mother and daughter as she walked around the corner of the house and along a tree-lined drive.
Would she ever have a child of her own? A baby? “Stop it,” she muttered, ignoring that empty barb that pricked her soul as she thought about her childless state. She wasn’t a hundred years old, for crying out loud. There was still time—plenty of it. She just had to find the right man. Oh, right. Like that’s going to happen anytime soon.
Rounding the corner of the main house, she spied a second tall building with paned windows, black shutters and the same gray siding as the main house. A private staircase led to the second story, and despite the perspiration on her palms, she marched up each step. She rapped on the door and was rewarded with Mason, all six feet of him looming directly in front of her.
“Well, Ms. Cawthorne,” he drawled, his gold eyes silently appraising. “What brings you here?”
“We need to talk.”
“Do we?” His smile slid from one side of his square jaw to the other.
“About Dad.”
He leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb. “Come on, Bliss. I bet if you think real hard, you ca
n come up with a better topic than that.”
“Do you?”
With that same amused, cocky smile, he stepped out of the doorway. “Come on in.” As she passed, he added, “How about something to drink? Soda? Coffee? Something stronger?”
“I don’t think a drink is the answer,” she said as she tossed her purse into one of the few chairs in a room with glossy wood floors, windows opened slightly to let in the hot summer breeze and walls paneled in yellowed knotty pine.
He left the door ajar, allowing a bit of cross ventilation as Bliss realized they were alone for the first time in a decade. Goose bumps rose on the back of her neck and the fragrances of honeysuckle and rose swept through the narrow room.
“Let me guess. You’re here because I bought part of the ranch from Brynnie,” he said, as if he’d been expecting her.
“Right out from under Dad’s nose.”
“She approached me.”
“And you just couldn’t say no, could you?” Bliss said, folding her arms over her chest.
“I didn’t want to.” The smile fell from his face and she noticed the fans of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. “I’ve always liked the place. Dreamed of owning it years ago.”
“And now there’s a chance to get back at Dad.”
“That wasn’t the intention.”
“Sure.”
He crossed the room and stood directly in front of her. She’d forgotten how intimidating he was, hadn’t remembered that the scent of him sent unwanted tingles through her blood. The temperature in the carriage house seemed to shoot upward ten degrees, and she found drawing a breath much harder than it had been. “Why, exactly, did you come over here?” he asked.
No reason to avoid the truth. “I think you manipulated this—this ridiculous situation. Somehow you convinced Brynnie that she needed to sell.”
“I said, she came to me.”
