I stared at him with my mouth open while he spoke.

“Hel o Stel a. I’m Preston Mason, Kai’s father.” Oh dear.

Chapter Fifteen

I’m Not Good Enough for Him

Stella

“I’m supposed to be in a meeting,” I told Preston Mason because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

I had, actual y, been half-assedly planning to get out of the meeting with Dixon Jones by feigning a migraine or a heart attack or something but now I kind of wish I’d made the meeting with Jones. I figured he’d be a lot easier to deal with than a surprise kidnapping by Mace’s apparently super wealthy Dad.

“You’l need to reschedule,” he replied.

I decided to push. “It’s kind of important.” He calmly adjusted the cuff of his impeccable light blue shirt under the sleeve of his equal y impeccable dark blue suit jacket.

“I’m afraid you’l have to reschedule.”

I sat back as the limousine took a curve on the mountain road.

The Little Bear was in Evergreen, a mountain town that managed to be hip, cool, exclusive and a Harley boy hangout al at the same time it looked just a smidge shy of being the type of place where gunslingers would stil have showdowns at high noon.

I effing loved Evergreen. It was as rock ‘n’ rol as you could get (according to me).

“Erm,” I ventured careful y. “Did you just kidnap me?” His jade eyes came to me. “Yes.”

Wow.

Wel one thing was certain, even if I didn’t have the eyes as proof, Preston Mason was as straight talking arrogant as his son.

“Why?” I asked.

“We need to talk about Kai.”

“I don’t want to talk about Kai.”

And I didn’t.

Furthermore, I didn’t want to cal him “Kai”. It felt weird. I felt weird enough as it was, I didn’t want to feel weirder. If I felt any more weird, my mind might spin off into an alternate reality and live there the rest of my life, my body stil in real reality, lying in a coma, confounding doctors who would eventual y turn off life support and then where would I be?

“How wel do you know Kai?” Preston Mason took me out of my crazed thoughts and my eyes focused on him again.

“Um…” I hedged because this was a good question.

Biblical y, one could say I was a “Kai Expert”. Al other ways it was up for debate.

“I feel I should warn you, my son is not a good man.” I sat and stared at him in complete and total shock.

Then I said the hated word, “What?”

“He’s responsible for his sister’s murder, amongst other things.”

Gut kick.

So huge and savage my body jerked with it.

Mace’s sister was murdered?

Visions of Mace’s face swam in my head, the demons dancing in his eyes. Mace tel ing me he could understand what I meant about my father.

And meaning it.

Holy effing hel .

Mace’s sister was murdered.

“Mace’s sister, your daughter, was murdered?” I whispered.

He studied me and it made me uncomfortable. The eyes were familiar but they were also completely different. There was nothing behind them, no emotion, even when he was talking about his daughter’s murder.

For your information, this creeped me way the hel out.

“Don’t you read the papers?” he asked me.

“I haven’t had the chance,” I replied.

“It’s al lies,” he said.

“What’s lies?”

“Al of it.”

“What, exactly?”

He changed the subject. “I want you out of his life.” This threw me because I hadn’t come to terms with the last mental blow he’d dealt.

“Out of whose life?” I asked stupidly.

Preston Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Kai’s.”

“Why?”

“Do you know who I am?”

I shook my head but said, “You’re Mace’s father.” I watched his lip curl right before he asked, “How stupid are you?”

Now I was getting angry.

What was with this guy?

He kidnaps me and then he’s mean to me?

What was up with that?

“What’s with you?” I snapped.

“I know how stupid you are, 2.5 grade point average, you skipped just enough school so you could graduate, too much to learn anything. You didn’t go to col ege. Your father’s a welder; your mother’s been a waitress for twenty-five years. Neither of them went to col ege either.”

“So?”

“So, Kai graduated with honors from the University of Hawaii with a bachelor’s in civil engineering.” Yowza.

Civil engineering?

That sounded hard.

I shook off thoughts of Mace beavering away at his studies using a protractor (or whatever they needed for civil engineering), forged ahead and clipped, “So?”

“So, the last girl Kai got serious about was the daughter of a senator.”

Yikes.

Real y?

A senator?

I hid my surprise and repeated, “So?”

“My God,” he muttered. “You real y are stupid.” Now total y pissed off, I leaned forward and hissed,

“Stop saying that.”

“You don’t get it, Stel a. What I’m saying is that you aren’t good enough for my son.”

He was not for real!

I sat back and crossed my arms on my chest and threw one leg over the other, bouncing my brown, dusty cowboy-booted foot.

“Let me get this straight, big man. First you tel me your son is responsible for your daughter’s murder and he’s not a good man. Then you act like a poorly-written character out of a formulaic romantic comedy and tel me I’m not good enough for him. I gotta tel you, it’s not me being stupid. It’s you that’s not making any sense.”

“Maybe I should have had a picture book drawn up so you could fol ow along,” he returned.

“Yeah, too bad you didn’t do that so I could take it away from you and beat you with it, you crazy loon,” I snapped back, leaned forward and pounded on the smoky partition that separated us from the driver. “Take me back to the bar!” I demanded.

“Sit back, Stel a, I’m not done with you yet.” I looked over my shoulder at him. “You might not be done with me but I’m done with you.” Then I turned around, banged on the partition again and shouted, “Take me back to the bar!”

“Sit back!” Preston Mason’s voice had risen and he sounded pissed off.