Read Online Spring Fever by Mary Kay Andrews - Free Book Online Page B

Mason had been right about Annajane’s legs. They were spectacular. And the rest of her wasn’t bad either.
    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, Annajane Hudgens?”
    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 Annajane wanted to keep him a secret. “Your mom doesn’t even know me,” he’d protested. “How do you know she wouldn’t like me?”
    “If your last name wasn’t Bayless, she’d probably love you,” Annajane finally admitted. “But Mama’s funny. She’s got some kind of bug up her rear about your family. She never has admitted she likes Pokey, even though we’ve been best friends our whole lives. Mama thinks your mother’s stuck-up, that she looks down on anybody who doesn’t belong to the country club.”
    “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 dinner and a movie. And on the last summer weekend before she had to go back to school at State, she fabricated a story about an all-day shopping trip to Charlotte with Pokey.
    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, Annajane went off to Raleigh for her sophomore year at NC State and Mason went off to grad school. It would be two years before she would see Mason Bayless again.
    Her first few weeks back at school, Annajane told herself Mason hadn’t called or e-mailed because he was busy with classes. Getting a master’s in finance was no joke, she knew. The weeks stretched out, and he still didn’t call or e-mail, and she was too proud to call him. She went home at Thanksgiving, but Mason didn’t. When Christmas rolled around, she was sure she’d see him. The Baylesses made a big deal of Christmas, with a huge open house on Christmas Eve and an elaborate family dinner. But Mason, Pokey told her, had been invited to spend the holiday with a classmate, at his family’s vacation home in Cuernavaca.
    When Christmas morning came and went without so much as an e-mail from him, Annajane tore the card off the antique sterling silver cufflinks she’d bought for Mason and instead gave them to her stepfather, Leonard, who only wore short-sleeved dress shirts.
    Stung by being so unceremoniously dumped, Annajane returned to school and threw herself into classwork and a rigorous social life. She dated with a vengeance, told herself she was in love with a cute but slightly dim-witted guy in her marketing class, slept with him once, and then swore off men who used more hair products than she did.
    She found herself deliberately staying away from Passcoe, instead spending holidays with classmates, even taking a part-time job as nanny for one of her