Did Mason presume she wouldn’t have a dress worthy of Maize? It was dinner, not the Oscars. She turned the card over to see the amount. Holy shit, she’d barely spent that on her off-the-rack wedding gown.
She’d keep the massage card and donate the rest. She supported a women’s shelter that would hold their holiday auction soon.
Gemma picked up the handwritten note that came with the cards.
Gemma,
Just a little something to help make our night magical.
Mace
Mace? That sounded like the cards came from Mace the hockey star, not Mason the guy she’d known since kindergarten.
She was reading too much into it. People had always called him Mace. Even she used to sometimes. Maybe he preferred Mace these days.
And yet… something about the note was odd. She lifted it for a closer look.
While it was handwritten, only the signature looked like his, and that seemed pixelated.
As if he’d had someone print off a standard note that he sent to all his—
No, now she was getting paranoid. Even Mason wouldn’t do that.
She set the cards aside and went into her bedroom to pick out a dress and make sure she had the proper footwear to wear it in winter.
The rain was holding off. That was all Gemma could think as she left her apartment that Friday evening. With November in Vancouver, rain was pretty much a given, and it wasn’t the sweet springrain that exploded the city into a riot of cherry blossoms. November rain was cold and bitter, in a way that seeped into your bones and didn’t leave until you could soak in a steaming hot bath.
It’d rained earlier in the day, and she just hoped the lingering humidity didn’t turn her curls into a poodle do. Those were her choices this time of year. Poodle or drowned rat.
Mason had been texting to be sure she had everything. Did she need a driver to take her to the spa? He could do that. Lunch delivered to the spa? He could do that, too. It was only after she said no to both that she started to worry he really did expect her to be at the spa and might send over lunch anyway.
She’d explain later. She’d committed to this date, and she didn’t want to risk any temptation to cancel, which might happen if she said she didn’t need the spa visit and he suggested she did.
She looked fine. Her makeup was on point. Her hair was tamed and semi-sophisticated. Her dress was a designer piece she’d bought off the sale rack for a pre-wedding “girls’ night out” with Daphne. Her shoes were a few years out of style, but she didn’t expect the photographers to get full-length shots.
Mason said that his publicist had tipped off the media and confirmed there’d be cameras but only outside the restaurant and the club. No interior shots, meaning she could eat and dance without fear of cameras. Without fear ofprofessionalcameras, that is. He pointed that out, too. Expect some candid shots from other diners and club goers that’d be posted on social media.
She stepped onto her apartment building’s front porch. Mason said he’d pick her up at seven thirty. Her apartment was on the edge of the city, and it’d take about twenty minutes to get to the restaurant.
She should have asked what he drove. Probably not a compact car or a family SUV. A sports car? A luxury pickup? Two words that should never go together: “luxury” and “pickup.” You didn’t actually see a lot of them in Vancouver. The city was too eco-conscious for that. Also space-conscious, the disadvantage to settling a major urban center on a peninsula.
Pickup and sports car were her guesses, so when a luxury sedan pulled to the curb, she almost ignored it. Then the driver’s window rolled down.
“Ms. Stanton?” said a middle-aged guy with a hired driver’s cap.
“Yes…” she said cautiously.
The man leapt from the car and opened the back door. “Mr. Moretti is waiting.”
Ah, Mason had hired a driver for them. Good idea. It solved the parking problem.
She climbed in to find the back seat empty. A moment of panic flared, images of being kidnapped by some obsessed hockey fan who’d tracked her down from the TV interview.
Then she mentally replayed Mason’s text.
Pickup at 7:30. Right outside your building front door.
He didn’t sayhewas picking her up.
