Save My Soul (5 page)

Mason was still standing in the hall
as I followed the last person out of the waiting room. I'd sent
everyone on their way, promising I would turn my phone back on by
nine the following morning. Aven was the hardest to get rid of. He
kept insisting to give me a ride home. I knew how that would go. He
would ask ten million questions then try to get in my pants, in my
case, scrubs, as soon as we got to my house. I didn't want that
tonight. I really wanted to be held and that was it, but Aven
wasn't the type. He didn't even like to cuddle after sex. Neither
did I, but that was beside the point. Hercules was a cuddler, and
he was the only male I needed in my bed.

Mason and I were standing alone in the
hall. "So, are you going to call a cab?" he said with a
smirk.

I knew what he was doing. He'd heard
me turn everyone down that had offered me a ride home, and he was
the only one who offered me another option. He wanted to offer to
give me a ride too, but he was going to let me choose, cab or him.
"Yeah, I guess I am."

"I don't care to drop you off on my
way home if you need a ride. I'm leaving now. It'll probably take
the cab twenty-five minutes to get here. By then, you could already
be in bed. Besides, how're you going to pay for cab fare? I doubt
Sherri left any money in those," he nodded to my attire.

Damn, he had me there. I could always
tell the cabbie to wait while I ran into my house to get money, but
Mason was right, the cab could take a while to get here. Damn. I
sighed. "I guess you're right. Are you sure you don't mind? I don't
want to have to explain to anyone else what happened to me
today."

He smiled a smile that made my heart
skip a beat.

I really needed to figure out what I
was going to do about Dr. Chamberlain, but right now all I wanted
was to go home. "C'mon, Kendra, I'll take you home."

I followed him, but he led me past the
front exit doors. He took note of my confusion and smiled. "The
employees have a different parking lot than the
visitors."

"Oh," I said, then he stopped and
scanned his card through a black box on the wall.

"I had to clock out." So, that was the
reason for the little black box. I didn't miss those days of
punching in and out of work.

We got in a service elevator and Mason
hit a button with a "G" on it. I thought we were already on the
ground floor, so I assumed it must have meant garage. All I knew
was that I was finally getting out of there. The door opened to a
big underground garage and Mason led me to his truck. It was a nice
truck, black and shiny and all chromed out. It had four-wheel drive
and a tall lift kit on it. He used the keyless entry to unlock the
doors, then opened up the passenger side for me. I guess he knew
better than to try and help me up, or maybe he just wanted to laugh
to himself as I struggled. To his amazement, I didn't have a bit of
trouble. Evidently, he must have forgotten about my extreme
hobbies, or maybe he just wanted to see me in action. The last
thought made me giggle involuntarily, but Mason only smiled as he
shut my door.

He got in on the driver's side and
buckled his seatbelt. Mine was already fastened. Safety first.
Although I doubted I had to worry about dying...until Friday. I had
two guardian angels watching over me now.

"Where to?" Mason said as he pulled
out of the garage and came to a stop at the stop sign.

"480 Oakwood Rd. It's to the west and
out of town a few miles," he nodded as if going that far out of his
way didn't bother him at all. I was guessing it was out of his way,
he may very well have lived out west also.

We rode for a while. I was daydreaming
and trying to come up with a solution to my problem when I
remembered one of Mason's. "I thought you had a date
tonight."

He smiled so big that I thought it was
going to split his face in two halves.

"What?" I said.

"I never had a date." When I still
looked confused, he continued, "Brittney, the little nurse's aide,
was listening and she has a crush on me." I just looked at him, and
he frowned. "And the feeling isn't mutual, so I was trying to let
her know I am interested in someone else without hurting her
feelings if she ever did get up the courage to ask me
out."

"Oh…so, there is a girlfriend or
someone that you're interested in?"

He looked at me, then back at the
road. He cleared his throat a little as he looked out his driver's
side window. "Maybe," he said and fixed his eyes back to the road
without looking at me again. I stared at him a moment, there was a
hint of a smile on his face. I didn't put too much thought into it.
Evidently he wasn't going to say anything more on the
subject.

I remembered then that Adam wasn't the
only one in the operating room when they stripped me of everything
but my pride. Mason had seen me naked as well. Crap. I closed my
eyes and gritted my teeth. I know, it's a nasty habit that can
crack your teeth, and I'll end up with TMJ syndrome. I've heard it
all, don't waste your breath.

We were getting close to my road and I
asked Mason to slow down. I pointed out where to turn, and he
complied. "It's the third house on the right." He pulled in the
driveway and cut the engine.

"Nice house," he said, and I
smiled.

It was a nice house. Actually, I'd
purchased four acres out in the middle of nowhere and designed my
own twenty-two hundred square foot house, then had it built. There
were only two bedrooms, a guest room and my own, and all of the
rooms were big and spacious.

"Wanna see it? That is, if you're not
in any hurry to be anywhere else."

Mason smiled. "I don't have anywhere
else to be."

"Great." I opened my door and instead
of climbing down, I just hopped out. I'd had my fill of climbing
down things for the day.

I put my hand above my eyes to shield
them from the setting sun. This was my favorite part of the day. It
had the best light for working in my studio. Mason walked up beside
me and I led him to the door. I could hear my baby barking as I
walked in. Hercules was jumping up and down on his little back legs
when I opened the door. He sniffed the air then caught a glimpse of
Mason. He did his usual growling at the male stranger.

"He won't hurt you; he's just
protective and jealous whenever another male is around. The only
man he likes is my dad." I picked Hercules up and he showered me
with kisses, almost as if he wanted to make it perfectly clear to
Mason that I was his.

He laughed a little. "Oh, okay,
because I was just about to be afraid."

I gave him a sour look then smiled.
"His name is Hercules."

His brow shot up and he laughed
involuntarily. "I think he has the personality for the name, but I
believe he's somewhat lacking in the body department."

I set Hercules down and he ran right
for Mason's leg, tugging on the material if his scrubs with his
little teeth. He was really self-conscious about his size.
"Hercules, no!" I shouted, but Mason had already picked my
miniature Chihuahua up in one hand and was eyeing the little
dog.

Hercules growled at first then began
to whine. Mason ran his hand over the little dog's gray fur, and
Hercules licked his lips and quieted down. Mason nuzzled him at his
shoulder and Hercules began giving Mason kisses on his chin and
neck.

"Oh my God! He has never reacted like
that to a man before. How did you do that?" I asked,
bewildered.

Mason smiled and set Hercules gently
down on his paws. The little dog looked up at him and whined, then
sat back on his haunches and stared up at Mason. "I have an
affinity for animals. You only have to prove which of you is the
more dominant. Looks like I won this time, or I would be lying on
the floor licking his face." He smiled and I smiled back. You had
to love a person with a good sense of humor. Like! You had to like
a person with a sense of humor.

I shook my head at the slip of my
inner vocabulary and waved for him to follow me. I showed him every
room except for one.

"You have an amazing home. I'm stuck
in a small apartment; heavy metal music blaring through one wall,
classical through another, and the man below me thinks that I'm the
one making all the noise. This," he looked all around the room and
nodded. "Is perfect."

My face lit up. "Well, thank you. I
designed it. There's one more room I haven't shown you yet. I was
saving it for last."

I walked to a set of French doors,
looking back over my shoulder at his expectant expression, and
opened them to reveal my favorite room. It was also where I made my
living. There was nowhere else in the world I felt more
comfortable.

Mason came up beside me and I watched
him as he took it all in. Props, cameras, backgrounds and closets
filled the 650 square foot room. The windows were all different
shapes and sizes; some of them were extremely unusual. I had this
room built especially for my work needs. This was my photography
studio, and I had been named the best in the city and one of the
best in the state by a few magazines and newspapers. I enjoyed my
work, and truly felt I had a gift for capturing an image at just
the right moment.

I could tell by the look on his face
that he was impressed with the room, and for some reason I was
dying to take shots of him. "Would you mind if I took a few shots
of you? It won't take long. You can see how I do, what I do." He
smiled and I took that as a yes. I took his hand in mine and pulled
him with me to one of my massive wooden armoires. I opened it to
show it was full of adult male clothing. I looked at him a moment
and decided his shirt size would be a large because of the extra
broadness of his shoulders and the bulk of his biceps. I looked
back at the shirts and chose a bright royal blue cashmere sweater;
I wanted to see just how blue I could make those eyes of his. It
was summer, and very hot outside, but in the cozy coolness of my
air-conditioned house, a photo could lie and get away with
it.

"Here, put this on." I pointed to a
large screen that he could change behind, but he either didn't see
me point or he didn't care. He pulled his uniform shirt over his
head and let it fall to the floor. My God, he was perfect. I almost
changed my mind about the sweater to put him in something a little
clingier, but he took the sweater out of my hand and pulled it over
his head. Damn.

"I uh, um…yeah." I didn't have a
single solid sentence in my head, and couldn't remember the last
time a man had affected me this way. I closed my eyes and thought
to myself; work, work, work. I even counted to ten before opening
them again. I was focused now. I looked at that gorgeous smile,
then up to his eyes. I was right; his eyes were almost as blue as
the sky on a cloudless winters' morning.

I walked away from him to one of my
more unique windows. It was large and the wood trim around the
glass was unstained and all natural. "Sit here and I'll be right
back." I glanced through my backdrops and found the one I wanted.
It was mostly gray with a little green at the bottom and a few
black lines in the middle. All together the backdrop looked
distorted, but for what I was going to use it for I wouldn't need
clarity. I went for the door in my studio room that would lead me
outside and found the window I was working with. I had mounted bars
above each window that I used to hang backdrops from. The sun was
still fairly bright and that wasn't what I wanted for his
background. I put the backdrop in place and put my side walls on
each side so the sun wouldn't shine through and ruin the effect.
The daylight coming in from the top and bottom would give just the
right amount of natural light that I needed.

I turned a knob above the window, and
water began to trickle and dance down the glass. If you want a
rainy day on a sunny day, you need to have a little
imagination.

I walked back in and saw that my
subject had an amazed look on his face. "That is awesome, Kendra."
I smiled but continued to set up equipment around him that I would
need for this particular photograph. I lowered all the shades in
the room. It was dark, except for the dim lights that were
spotlighting Mason. There was just enough light to make everything
gray except for that bright royal blue sweater and those blue eyes
of his.

I positioned him so that he was
looking out the window. It looked as though he was looking out on a
dark rainy day. The green portion at the bottom of the backdrop
appeared to be green grass, and the black lines streaked vertically
here and there looked to be trees in the winter, leafless and
dormant. But from my view behind the camera…I saw magic.

I took several shots then told him
that he could change and leave the sweater on the table by the
closet. Instead of going behind the screen, he pulled the cashmere
over his head and took slow special care in folding it perfectly,
then picked his uniform shirt up off of the floor. He paused and
looked at me.

I still had my camera in my hand and I
was ogling at him. He smiled. "You want to take some shots of me
like this?" he asked as he raised an eyebrow.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe.
He had caught me fantasizing about him and I was at a loss for
words. The truth was, I really did want to take a photo of him like
that, but how do you tell someone "yes" to a question like that
without getting embarrassed. My main focus in photography was
landscapes, weddings and taking pictures of school kids. Nudes were
not my forte'. Well, I actually didn't know if they were or not, I
couldn't get past my discomfort to try it. I turned my eyes away
from him and lied, "No…you can get dressed now. I apologize for
staring."