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“You can’t. I saw you… you can’t resist him even after all these years. Before my mom convinced Caroline that I was innocent, that the rest of Hamlet wouldn’t welcome me back if I just came to stay with her, but she would be doing my mom a big favor if she let me have a room of my own at the Hamlet Inn… Ken found you for me. Dayton, right?” With a scoff, he said, “Big shot doc working at St. Paul’s.”
Tess gasped.
How did he know that?
Mason smirked. “Oh, yes. I know all about St. Paul’s. Stopped by myself once to see if I could get close to Luc without him recognizing me… after he fuckingruinedmy life to get to you, he never even saw me there. Neither did you, Tess. Not in Dayton. And not in Hamlet. All I ever wanted was you… and what did you do?” His smirk disappeared, his expression angry again. “You threw my love in my face, and when the doctormurderedfor you, heblamedme. Is that what you wanted? Someone to kill for you?”
“Luc—”
“Don’t protect him,” Mason bit out, the insane gleam in his eyes damn near sparking beneath the moonlight. “Don’t deny it. Don’t act like he didn’t do it. Iknowhe did. And that’s why I took the business card, leaving it for Sly. I know what kind of monster Lucas De Angelis is. It’s about time the rest of Hamlet did, too.”
Don’t deny it? Okay. “I won’t… but if you’re so sure, how do you know?”
“Three years is a long time to think where things went wrong,” was all he said. “But then I got out. I bartered my soul for you, made a deal with the devil… and what happened next?”
“I… I don’t know, Mason—”
“Mase,” he snarled. “You call me ‘Mase’.”
“Mase,” she repeated.
That seemed to mollify him. “I don’t know why I’m fooling myself because I watched you, too. I thought… if I could save you from the doctor, I could start over.Wecould start over. I could be your knight in shining armor, Tess… but I don’t think you want one. I think you like the bad boy.”
She couldn’t deny that, either.
“You love Lucas.”
If he watched her for even one minute with Lucas, her affection for her husband was obvious. She gulped, and admitted, “I did.”
Ido.
Just like she planned, Mason picked up on that.
“Did? What do you mean ‘did’?”
There was a reason why, when push came to shove, Tessa was a perfect match for Lucas. Not because she was the light to his darkness-which, sometimes, could also be true—but because she could be manipulative in her own right.
She manipulated Jack, getting him to go to Hamlet for a second honeymoon, when in reality she was leading him to his death.
She manipulated Mason, leading him on when she knew that Lucas had him in his sights. He’d wanted to kill the handsy, flirty deputy, and then she manipulated him with her tears, convincing Lucas that a frame job was okay, but she didn’t want to see Mason dead.
And, boy, was she regretting that now…
But she’d manipulated him once. Was it possible to do it again?
Just about to come up with some lie that might save her, maybe telling Mason that she only cared for Lucas because he groomed her, he tricked her… whatever it took to save her life so she could go back to him… she opened her mouth and paused when, in a stray moonbeam, she caught sight of a familiar figure closing in on Mason.
She sucked in a breath instead, stalling.
Hoping like hell that he thought she was still simply frightened, Tess couldn’t let Mason turn around and notice that Lucas was slowly stalking behind him.
Then, telling the biggest lie she’d ever told she murmured ‘I love you’ to Jack Sullivan, she said, “I thought I loved you, too, once, Mase.”
Lucas had to know she was lying. Deep down, Mason had to know that, too. But as Mason lowered the gun to sweep toward her the same time as Lucas broke into a sprint, it became obvious that she’d set off both men.
It all happened at once after that.
Lucas shouted, “Tessa,move.”
