Beneath the Scars (Masters of the Shadowlands #13)(53)

And it was more than just the…sexy stuff, dammit. She…liked him. A lot. He was amazing with Carson. He paid visits to Oma to check her blood pressure and see how she was doing. The teens in the neighborhood adored him. He’d helped her when Carson ran away—insisted on it, no less—and had been so damned strong and capable.

The three C’s—he had them in abundance: competent, confident, and caring. She’d never been so…attracted…to anyone before.

The trouble was that now, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. When in the office writing, she’d keep glancing out her window, hoping for glimpses of him. Her heart rate would increase at the sound of his motorcycle.

She wanted to feed him, worry about him…care for him.

With the hours he worked, she might not see him until the Shadowlands next weekend. And she had to wonder… Although he’d mentioned talking, maybe the scene was all he’d wanted from her. It wasn’t as if a BDSM session was a…a date or anything.

And really, that one scene should be all she wanted, too. Really. To get involved with a neighbor and one who belonged to the club where she worked was foolish. Add in the BDSM stuff? Purely foolhardy, and she just wasn’t that kind of a person. She was a no complications person.

Dammit, I don’t want to care about him.





Chapter Ten





Carson wiggled his knife in the mashed potatoes. Two eyes. Big nose. Eyebrows pinched together to match the turned-down mouth. Ugly face for the crappiest teacher in the school. Mr. Jorgeson. The big jerk had picked on Juan all during their science class. With his fork, Carson squished the face.

“What school do you go to, Carson? The one down the street with the fires?”

Startled, Carson looked across the table at Holt who’d come to supper. “The dumpster fires? Yeah, that’s my school.” Blazing dumpsters—kinda awesome. No one knew who was doing it, but the teachers were sure all freaked.

“Fires? More than one?” Oma asked.

“Um, yeah.” Carson shrugged. “Two.”

Holt’s mouth went tight. “An equipment shed was also burned.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Mom looked upset. She always got worried if she heard about anything interesting. She sure found a lot of stuff dangerous. Isaac’s mother was the same way. It must be a mom thing.

“No one hurt, and not too much damage, thankfully,” Holt said.

As Mom sat back, Oma started telling about the guy down the street who’d lit his house on fire by falling asleep with a cigarette.

Talk about embarrassing. Chewing on a bite, Carson shook his head.

As the grownups talked, Carson dished himself more mashed potatoes and gravy. No one made better food than his mom did.

Sure looked like Holt liked it, too. Like Carson, he’d taken seconds.

He was pretty cool. Picked great music when he and Carson worked on his backyard. And Wedge and Duke—the fifteen-year-olds—said he had a huge TV, and if there was a game on, he’d let them come over.

Today, Holt’d seen him and Mom putting up Christmas lights around the door and windows, and he’d walked over to help. They’d gotten done really fast that way.

And Mom’d invited him to supper. Mom did friendly stuff like that.

Only not with men. Last week when Holt came to supper, well, that was Mom’s way of saying thanks for saving Carson. Was today just a thank you sort of supper again?

Or…did Mom like Holt, as in like the way a girl would?

Carson eyed the guy. He’d shaved his beard off. Looked good, kinda normal. The girls would say he was hot, Carson figured. Would Mom? Judging grownups ages wasn’t easy. Holt might be around Mom’s age or a few years older. And he’d gone to college, so he was smart.

He kept touching Mom. Not like laying a big, wet one on her, but gripping her shoulder or putting his hand on her back. It was really creepy to think about a guy making moves on his mom.

If she and Holt were just friends, he wouldn’t touch her like that, would he? But they must be. Mom didn’t have boyfriends or anything.

Thinking of friends… “Hey, Mom, Brandon asked me to go over to his place on Saturday. Yukio and Juan are going. Can I?”

“Who is Brandon?” Oma asked.

“He’s in a couple of my classes,” Carson said.

Mom added, “I met his mother at the fundraiser book sale. She seemed nice, although unhappy.”

“Why would that be?” Oma asked.

“She got divorced this year, and it sounds like she and Brandon are taking it hard.”

Yeah, Brandon was messed up about the divorce. And even more pissed off his father was so into the new baby and didn’t want Brandon any more. Kind of like ol’ Everett, the douche. “You’re not my kid. Get away from here, you little bastard.”

Carson frowned. “I don’t know why people get married anyway. They just end up hating each other and getting those divorces and stuff.”

His mother straightened. “Not everyone gets a divorce,” she said, mildly.

Yeah, because some—like Mom—don’t even get married. He bit back the words. It wasn’t her fault Everett was an asshole. Carson’d told Juan about his father last week; Juan’s mother hadn’t married either. Juan had made him see what kind of jerk Everett was. And, although Mom was smart about people now, she might not have been back when he was born.