Loving Mason (Imperfect Love Book 2) Read online

  Ruby Molloy

  Loving Mason

  About the Book

  Frankie Finnegan has had her fill of second hand. But when second hand means a guy called Mason, a guy with brown eyes, tattoos, and a quiff she’s itching to touch, what’s a girl to do?

  Mason Zannuto has history and he doesn’t want to get involved. But when he meets a girl called Frankie, a girl with grey eyes, blonde curls and a heart the size of Texas, what’s a guy to do?

  Loving Mason is part of the Imperfect Love series but can be read as a stand-alone novel.

  Contents

  Tentative Beginnings

  ♥ ONE ♥ Skint Frankie Finnegan

  ♥ TWO ♥ Three Kisses

  ♥ THREE ♥ Unfamiliar Territory

  ♣ FOUR ♣ Not Getting Involved

  ♥ FIVE ♥ We Don’t Match

  ♥ SIX ♥ Claws

  ♥ SEVEN ♥ Crumbs

  ♥ EIGHT ♥ Harry’s

  ♣ NINE ♣ Nice

  ♥ TEN ♥ Pink Rabbits

  ♥ ELEVEN ♥ Tiger’s & Champagne

  ♥ TWELVE ♥ Coffee

  ♣ THIRTEEN ♣ Sid

  ♥ FOURTEEN ♥ Porn-Star T-shirt

  ♥ FIFTEEN ♥ Cherry Pie

  ♣ SIXTEEN ♣ Eureka

  ♥ SEVENTEEN ♥ The L Word

  ♥ EIGHTEEN ♥ Fifteen

  ♥ NINETEEN ♥ The Gift

  ♥ TWENTY ♥ Life

  ♥ TWENTY-ONE ♥ Skin and Bones

  ♣ TWENTY-TWO ♣ Without

  ♥ TWENTY-THREE ♥ Brand New

  ♥

  Tentative Beginnings

  Frankie

  I saw him first.

  He arrived at approximately 8pm on a blustery Saturday night, his entrance accompanied by a gust of wind that cooled the bar by a good ten degrees. Heads turned instinctively and conversations lulled into silence as he approached the bar, oblivious to the drama of his entrance.

  It took me several weeks to figure out he only ever showed on alternate Saturdays. During this same time I also learned he was a creature of habit; same table, same group of friends. He drank beer straight from the bottle, always the same brand, always just the one.

  A guy like that, with the hair and the tattoos, he could have been a player. He could have had any girl he wanted, but he always left on his own, always well before closing.

  My eyes would follow him with quick, sneaky glances. I wasn’t alone. The bar was full of girls like me, some staring from a distance, hoping to hook his gaze, other braver souls venturing closer to his table. Josephine, the curse of my fellow students at Southern Fall University, chose the latter method. No skirting around for Josephine. She utilised the direct approach by personally delivering a beer to his table. I couldn’t help my fleeting grin when he frowned at the bottle in her outstretched hand as though it were a long deceased rodent. At that point I would have slunk away, but Josephine is an entirely different creature. She stood her ground and gave him the smile and it worked―kind of. He took the drink, said something – possibly a thank you – and passed the beer to a friend.

  It was rude and blunt and I kind of liked him for that.

  The thing is ... what I’m trying to say is ... that guy – the guy I’d seen precisely four times – he meant something to me. It wasn’t real, it was totally one-sided, but I liked him―a lot. I was never going to do anything about it; it’s just that having noticed him ... well, like I said, I couldn’t forget him.

  So it was a kick to the stomach when one Saturday night his gaze fell upon my friend, Nora. I guess hair like hers – a vivid shade of red that sparkles and shines – is kind of difficult to ignore. She’d recently split (as it turned out, temporarily) from her boyfriend, Carred, and she was feeling vulnerable. Therefore, him picking her up was exactly what she needed. At least that’s what she thought.

  He was her rebound, her intended one-night-stand, the guy who would somehow propel her from a state of numb misery to a new, rejuvenated, effervescent Nora. At least that had been her plan.

  When he called at our house – the house I share with Nora and Ella – walking up our path with a swagger that was understated and sexy as hell, I hated him. Crazy insane I know, but it was far easier to contend with my anger than my hidden longing for a stranger. I opened the door and proceeded to act like a bitch by making him wait in the hall and freezing him out with scathing replies to his small talk.

  It transpired that their one night stand was a non-starter. Nora got cold feet and spent the night alone in his bed, while he got to spend the night on his couch. After which, Nora and Carred got back together, as in permanently, but only after Carred traded punches with Mason. That’s his name, by the way. Mason.

  I never told Nora.

  I never told her I saw him first.

  ♥ ONE ♥

  Skint Frankie Finnegan

  Frankie

  The queue for the bar is ... one ... two ... three deep and I’ve chosen the area that’s moving slower than a constipated snake.

  That’s my life all over; slow queues, overdue library books, an alcoholic mother, and hair that curls when everybody knows straight is where it’s at. I wonder if it’s a genetic thing (the alcoholism, not the curls). But then again, Ivy’s sober as a judge and I only ever saw gramps drink in company, so I guess I’m in the clear. Ivy’s my gran. She and gramps took me in when my mother decided her next drink was more important than her daughter’s welfare. My grandparents were several years into a happy retirement when they sacrificed their quiet, lazy days for the frenzied tantrums of a three year old. They had to stretch their meagre income to cover food, clothing and other items needed by a young girl.

  Ivy isn’t a white haired, cardigan-wearing kind of gran. She doesn’t bake cakes, knit, or act like my friends’ grandmothers. Her hair is blonde and when it’s loose it falls to the small of her back. My friends are always a little shocked when they meet Ivy for the first time. I guess it’s unusual to see the criss-crossed skin of a twenty-a-day ex-smoker framed by long, golden-blonde hair. Thankfully, before she leaves the house, Ivy pins her hair on top of her round head.

  I’m not sure of her exact age. She refuses to tell me. I know she was in her late twenties when she had mum, and mum was thirty when she had me. I’m twenty, so doing the maths, Ivy has to be in her late seventies. I guess she looks her age, but she sure doesn’t move like a woman who’s fast approaching her eighties. She’s sprightly and moves faster than a spring-loaded gate. When I accompany her to the shops on her quest for bargains, it’s me who struggles to keep pace.

  Ivy loves to bargain hunt. Since Gramps was a bricklayer his whole life she had to learn to stretch his pay through lean winters, when it was too cold to lay bricks. Their state pension didn’t cover the wants and needs of a teenage girl and once gramps passed away, and it was just me and Ivy, things got worse. That’s when charity shop bargains and hand-me-downs became the norm. Things became a little easier when Elizabeth Mathewson decided I should be her best friend. She lived in a six bedroom house with a humongous garden, a wide drive, and a double-garage that housed both pool and air hockey tables. In other words she was wealthy as I was poor.

  Elizabeth – Ella to her friends – was, and still is, the kind of friend you don’t ever want to lose, and though she’s always been way taller than me, she offered me her hand-me-downs. Actually, it was more a case of take them or else, because Ella doesn’t take no for an answer. She’s beautiful, cocoa-skinned, and elegant in a street kind of way. And like Nora, she has a great head of hair, except Ella’s is short and platinum-blonde and it’s a statement in itself.

  I’m kind of Ella’s opposite in every way – e
xcept for the blonde hair. My skin is pale, the kind that’s a lighter shade of pale in winter, and not much darker come summer. And where Ella is cool and graceful, I tend to be bouncy, high energy, and a little clumsy. If there’s a drink that needs spilling, I’m your girl. Need a wingman to make you look good? Call me.

  Actually, I’m not that bad. Guys seem to like me, and not in a best friend kind of way. I haven’t yet figured out why this is; I know it’s more than my looks, because I may be pretty but I’m not stunning like Nora or a beauty like Ella. Ivy says I’m a happy spirit and maybe it’s as simple as that―I don’t take life too seriously. Apart from right now, of course, because for a fidget like me, being stationary in this never-ending queue is sheer torture. My right foot is tapping up and down and my arms feel twitchy. Leaning to my right, to gauge the size of the queue, disappointment sets in when I realise there are no gaps.

  “The toilets are over there, to the right.”

  The voice is male and it comes from somewhere behind my left shoulder. There’s a vague familiarity to the rich tones, but all of that is overridden by the fact that this guy, whoever he is, thinks my fidgeting is bladder-related. Anger and embarrassment war for supremacy; anger comes out on top.

  “I said there’s a toilet―”

  “I know what you said!” I say, hissing my words like an angry cat. Claws out, ready to inflict verbal damage, I spin round. My teeth are clenched and my eyes are spitting fire, but whatever I was about to say is lost in the moment because the guy standing before me, the guy who thinks I need the toilet, is Mason―the Mason.

  I want to wave a magic wand and erase the last few seconds from his memory. I want to say something sparkly and funny, something that has him throwing back his head with laughter and forgetting the whole wanting to go to the toilet debacle. But being Frankie Finnegan, I stare at him like a gormless child. By the time I say, “I don’t need the toilet,” it sounds ridiculous, like something my three year old self might have said. I turn to face the bar again, feeling the angry-pink darken to a mortified, sunset red.

  “Don’t I know you?”

  It’s him again―Mason.

  “No!” The word is tossed over my shoulder. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking his way.

  “Sure I do. You’re Nora’s friend, the one with the stick up her arse.”

  God! Why does he have to remember? Why can’t he suffer from poor facial recognition or something? I choose to ignore him because what is there to say? It’s not like we met at a party and hit it off or anything. I’m simply the bitch who stood guard while he waited on Nora.

  “Yeah, you’re Charlie or Bobbie―”

  “Frankie!”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I knew it was a boy’s name.”

  “Unisex!”

  “Right.”

  He’s quiet for a while. The queue edges forward and I keep my elbows wide, holding my place. “I owe you a thank you,” he says.

  Stupidly, I can’t resist. Curiosity gets the better of me and I turn to face him, my right eyebrow arched in question.

  “For patching me up,” he clarifies.

  “Oh. Yeah.” I say this flippantly, as if I’ve forgotten how I wiped the blood from his face after his fight with Carred. My glib response is somewhat ruined when my eyes drop to his mouth. I watch it curve into a cocky grin and I’m captivated; so much so that it doesn’t occur to me to check whether the line is moving. Mason takes a step towards me and I take a single, reactive step back, bumping into the guy behind me. Before I can lose my balance Mason’s hand curls around my upper arm.

  “Careful.”

  His softly intonated caution seems vaguely threatening, though it’s difficult to know his intent because his brown eyes give little away. Am I imagining the frisson that passes between us or that he seems a little unsettled. Chastising myself for my far-fetched ideas I turn back to the bar. There’s now only one person in front of me, but it’s still one too many given that Mason is breathing down my neck. My foot begins tapping again. I’m impatient and nervous, and when I finally reach the bar my tension increases as though I can sense danger coming my way. I breathe a sigh of relief when the barman approaches and I order a round of shots for me, Ella and Kayla.

  I’m searching for my wallet, systematically delving through each section of my bag as panic forms and quickly begins to override everything else. I’m pushing my fingers into fabric corners when a vision appears; my pink wallet lying open, me with a credit card in my hand, carefully typing digits into my laptop as I order yet another set of books for uni.

  Bugger!

  I’ve left my wallet at home.

  I’m about to apologise to the bartender when Mason leans in close and says, “You going to fumble around in your bag all night or are you going to pay the barman, coz you’re eating into my sixty minutes.”

  I’m distracted, my bag and wallet forgotten, my eyes and mind now fixed on a pair of lips that aren’t too plump, nor too lean, and I can’t help but think they might be a perfect fit against mine. I’m only vaguely aware of asking, “Sixty minutes?”

  His mouth curves and there’s a hint of mockery in his eyes and though it’s scarcely noticeable it demonstrates that he knows where my mind is at. If my brain was functioning I might be embarrassed by my idiotic behaviour, but right now I don’t have sufficient prowess to string a coherent sentence together.

  “You want to hurry it up a little, Frankie? I need to head back to London in an hour.”

  “I can’t. I mean, I ordered some books online earlier and I, uh, left my wallet at home. On my desk.” My words spill out like a verbal waterfall and I give myself an imaginary mock salute in recognition of my dazzling eloquence.

  His scathing, dark gaze rests on me for several long seconds, as if he’s checking I’m for real, travelling over my curls, face, and mouth before finally settling on my eyes. I’m guessing he’s not thinking good things because his are drilling into mine.

  Ivy likes to play poker and after she’s won – she always wins – she tallies up her chips and smiles at me over the scuffed pine table. “Child,” she says, as if I’m seven, not twenty, “You’ve gotta get a poker face.” I never did attain a poker face and I’m regretting it now because Mason is seeing way too much.

  “I guess that means your drinks are on me,” he says, sounding unimpressed, as if I’m pulling a stunt. I glance from him to the indifferent barman and I can feel the pink returning to my cheeks. I’m conscious of my second hand coat, my canvas shoes and my fake leather bag. I’m Skint Frankie Finnegan again, the victim of schoolyard bullies, the unwanted daughter of an alcoholic mother. I mumble a strained thanks and scoop up the shots, biting my lip, enjoying the pain because it detracts from every other shitty thing I’m feeling.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I say, but he’s already ordering his drinks. I’m forgotten.

  “Thank you,” I say again, and this time he registers my comment. A low, masculine brow arches towards his hairline and it strikes me once again that I’ve never seen a more beautiful guy. He’s wearing a grey cable knit jumper and a tailored, dark grey jacket that hangs open, its shiny black lining on show. On someone else it would look too dressy. On Mason, with his neck tattoos and his lean build, it looks sexy as hell. His tattoos are small and colourful, interspersed with flashes of untouched skin and this, combined with his heavy stubble, makes him seem wild. The kind of guy who doesn’t give a shit what people think.

  I know he sees the lust in my eyes because it’s there in his reaction, the way he soaks it up, as if it’s his due. He leans in towards me, stops just shy of touching me, and says, “You owe me, Frankie.”

  If I was a different kind of girl I might be intimidated, but I know the difference between a thug and a guy like Mason. And I may not have noticed it before, but I see it now; the keen intelligence, the sharp gaze that swiftly assesses and analyses. He stares at me for too long and I think maybe I should be afraid. I think I should look away meekly
and thank him a third time for paying for my drinks. Of course, I don’t do that. I glance at his clothing, casual yet expensive, and I say, “You’ll get your money, Mason. Though you don’t look like you need it.”

  “I’m not talking about money,” he says. His tone is harsh―as if I should know better.

  I’m not sure I understand and my forehead creases. “What then?”

  He pays for the drinks, grabs his beers and as he brushes past he leans down and says, “You’ll find out.”

  I stand there, shots grouped in my hands, feeling as though something momentous just happened yet not fully understanding its magnitude. Blowing out a breath, I make my way back towards Ella and Kayla, meandering through the heaving bar as I mull over my bizarre conversation with Mason.

  “You were talking with Mason Zannuto?”

  That’s Ella. Direct as ever.

  “Yeah,” I admit, handing out the shots.

  “Who’s Mason? And what’s with ‘Zannuto’?” Kayla asks, her big eyes dancing between Ella and me.

  “Just a guy―a part Italian guy,” I say. I’ve learned not to speak about Nora and Carred’s business, even to close friends, so I’m not about to divulge Nora’s history with Mason. Carred gets a stupid amount of press intrusion, with him being the lead singer of DMGD. It’s crazy the amount of stories that have ended up in the press after a casual chat with friends. Ella also knows to be careful. Her boyfriend, Cooper Summers, is DMGD’s drummer.

  “What did he want?” Ella asks casually―too casually.

  I shrug. “Not much. We chatted about ... things. I left my wallet at home and he paid for my drinks.”

  “That’s it?” she asks, her brown eyes way too watchful.

  “That’s it.”

  “Huh! Looked like there was more. Probably for the best though, what with ...” she hesitates, aware that Kayla is here and changes direction. “What with his reputation and all.”

  “He has a reputation?” Kayla asks, relieving me of the need to ask the exact same question.