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Mason checked his watch. “I’ll give her ten minutes, and if she’s not back by then, she’s on her own.”
Fifteen minutes later, he and A
But the thing that did him in were her eyes. Those solemn, amazing green eyes. When she looked up at him through those lowered dark lashes, when she laughed, when she was surprised, or, later, as she dozed on a lounge chair, he couldn’t quit thinking about those eyes.
He was stretched out on the chaise next to hers, on the dock, his head propped up on one elbow, staring at her when she woke up.
Her sunburned cheeks flushed a deeper pink. “What are you looking at?”
“You,” Mason said. He leaned across and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Where have you been all my life, A
She blushed even deeper. “I’ve been right here. Pokey and I have been best friends since we were five. And I bet I’ve spent more nights at Cherry Hill these past five years than you have. You’re the one who’s never been around.”
“That’s about to change,” Mason vowed. “Starting today.” And for the next six weeks, they’d been inseparable. Knowing her mother’s low opinon of the Baylesses, they deliberately kept their families in the dark about their relationship. Mason could never understand why A
“If your last name wasn’t Bayless, she’d probably love you,” A
“Well hell, she’s right about that,” Mason said with a laugh. “Mama is a big snob. But that doesn’t make me one.”
In the end, though, they both came to enjoy the illicit nature of the romance. Only Pokey was in on the secret. She’d meet Mason at the lake, or stay late after work, and they’d head over to Southern Pines for di
Instead, she and Mason snuck out to the lake house, where she gladly gave up her virginity on a creaky army-surplus cot.
The following Monday, A
Her first few weeks back at school, A
When Christmas morning came and went without so much as an e-mail from him, A
Stung by being so unceremoniously dumped, A
She found herself deliberately staying away from Passcoe, instead spending holidays with classmates, even taking a part-time job as na
The summer before her senior year, she got an internship with a New York advertising agency and shared a roach-infested six-hundred-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn with two other girls from NC State. A
Instead, A
Somehow, she managed to avoid seeing Mason Bayless for nearly two years. Right up until the day Pokey got married. But that was another story.
7
True to his word, Max Kaufman was standing at the emergency room entryway when the ambulance pulled up the ramp at Passcoe Memorial Hospital. In his late fifties, with a close-shaven shock of graying hair and large, soulful brown eyes, Dr. Kaufman was already dressed in rumpled green surgical scrubs.
After Sophie had been moved to a gurney and brought inside, Dr. Kaufman nodded a brisk greeting to Mason and A
Sophie cried feebly at his touch. “It’s okay, sugar,” Mason said, clutching her hand. “Dr. Max is going to make you feel better.” He leaned down, smoothed her hair from her face, and kissed both cheeks.
“We’re going to take this little lady back and get her blood drawn right away, do a CT scan, and make her comfortable, but from what you’ve told me, I suspect it is her appendix, in which case, we’ll just get that bugger out of there,” Dr. Kaufman said. He nodded at the nurse hovering at his elbow, and she began to wheel Sophie away.
“Well, Miss Sophie,” they heard the nurse say. “My name is Molly. And I’ve got a little girl just your age at home, and her name is Sophie, too. What do you think about that? I sure do love that pretty pink dress you’re wearing. Did you have a birthday party today?”
“No,” Sophie said. “We were getting my daddy married, but then I throwed up.”
Dr. Kaufman chuckled, looking from Mason to A
“Is this really necessary?” Mason asked anxiously.
“What, an appendix?” Dr. Kaufman said, irritably. “Mason, nobody really needs an appendix, as far as we know. It’s not terribly common for a five-year-old to have appendicitis, but it’s not a rarity either. That said, if she does have a hot appendix, we need to remove it, or things will get really ugly really fast. So you need to let me go find out, all right?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and disappeared behind the swinging door to the examining rooms.