"Tell you what, ma'am. Help me by staying on your side of the property line, and I'll stay on mine."
She recoiled, tongue making a lump under her upper lip, nodding as if some suspicion of hers had been confirmed.
He'd just made a mess for himself. He could feel it.
She was all business now. "Eleven p.m. on weeknights, one a.m. on the weekends. Anything later than that, I'm going to the homeowners' board."
Mason rolled his eyes. "Fine."
She tapped the roof of his car before she stepped back. "Don't make me pull my bitch routine on you, Mason Worther. I lasted in soaps for thirty years, and the one producer who tried to put his hands on me ended up with broken fingers."
As he watched her walk off, he felt a guilt so powerful it edged on shame.
In the beginning, she’d been nothing but nice to him. On the day he’d moved in, she’d knocked on his back door with a gift basket and an offer of coffee on her patio, and his first thought had been, What’s the catch, lady? Maybe because he’d never really had a mom, and his dad was a cross between John Wayne and a king cobra.
And now, even though it felt childish and stupid and beneath him, he was revving the engine as loud as he could before he backed out of his driveway.
If there was one area of his life where Mason currently excelled, it was hiding hangovers at the office.
He arrived at the Irvine headquarters of Worther Properties with barely five minutes to spare before the design meeting for Vistana’s spec house. The morning staff meeting he’d missed altogether. The firm had two major developments on deck—one a stone’s throw from their office, the other farther south in North San Diego County. Vistana and Escansedo were both McMansion-filled, gated subdivisions-to-be, with Spanglish-sounding names meant to evoke that special magic of people wealthy enough to build a multimillion-dollar house inside a wildfire zone. But Vistana was much closer to building out its first homesites, so their model homes were up for design review first.
By the time he was headed back to his office, there was still no sign of his father.
With a nod, he told his new assistant—the one his father had transferred to Mason’s desk after she’d asked his dad not to curse at her—she was free to grab a long lunch out of the office.
Once his door was shut again, he managed his first deep breath since that morning.
His office had a nice western view over the 405 Freeway to the first scrub-dappled mounds of the coastal hills. There wasn’t room for a sofa or love seat, so he pushed his desk chair against the wall and curled up into the fetal position on the carpet behind his desk, tucking his chair’s lumbar pillow under his head. He’d nodded off a few seconds earlier when he was roused by the sound of his door opening. Figuring it was just a coworker who wouldn’t see him behind his desk, he held his breath and stayed statue still.
A second later, high-heeled footsteps punched the carpet toward him.
“Seriously?”
The only voice he would’ve wanted to hear less was his father’s.
“Why are you here, Fareena?” Mason asked.