Meant for Me (A Second Chance standalone) (16 page)

“He sounds like an awesome man,” I murmured, “except this
year you’re breaking tradition because I’m going with you.”

Mason gazed at me in disbelief. “You would actually do that
for me? Have you ever been camping before?”

“Umm … no, but I’ll be with you. You can teach me everything
your father taught you, just like I’ll show you everything you want to know
about my vineyards. We’re in this together, Mason, you and I. You’ve been doing
things alone, not depending on anyone to be there for you, but that’s not how
it works when you want to be with someone. I want to know who you were then so
I can see how you became who you are now.”

Our moment got interrupted when my phone started to vibrate
in my purse. I reached in and pulled it out to see Wade’s name pop up. “Is that
him?” Mason asked with a slight hint of annoyance in his tone.

I nodded and read the text.

Wade:
Are you still coming tonight?

“Yeah, he asked if I’m still coming. I don’t think he knows
you’re going to be with me. I know Erick knows, but I don’t think Wade does,” I
said.

Mason narrowed his eyes. “Is that going to be a problem?”

If Wade behaved it wouldn’t be an issue, but it was a gamble
we had to take. I just hoped Mason could keep his calm around him. “I sure hope
there’s not any trouble,” I replied, “but this whole night is going to be a
dilemma since Erick’s going to be there. I don’t think we can get bigger
problems than that.” I texted Wade back.

Me:
Yes, I’m still coming. I need your address.

He texted me his address and my jaw about hit the floor when
I recognized the name of the neighborhood. It was one of the richest
neighborhoods in Las Vegas. How the hell could he afford that? The waitress
brought us our check, and while Mason looked it over I texted back.

Me:
Moving up in the world, huh?

Wade:
You know it! It’s about time luck was on my
side. Now get your ass here! It’s a housewarming party!

Wade didn’t come from a wealthy family, and before I left
Vegas he lived in an average sized apartment with one of his friends. To live
in the neighborhood he was in it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars
while some houses could be pushing toward the million mark. Surely, he didn’t
make that much money working at the club.

“Why do you have that look on your face?” Mason asked.
“What’s he saying?”

Biting my lip, I glanced at Mason and then back down to my
phone. “Well, he just gave me his address and I’m a little confused. The houses
in that neighborhood are really expensive. I don’t see how he’s affording it. I
know he’s not making it at the club. When you were fighting did you make
hundreds of thousands of dollars?”

“No, not at the beginning, and since I’ve never heard of
your friend, Wade, I’m assuming he’s just getting started. He wouldn’t be
making near that amount until he got a name for himself, and even then it’s not
guaranteed,” he informed me warily.

“That’s what I thought. I don’t think I like the sound of
this, Mason.”

Mason stood from the table and helped me up by taking my
hand. “Neither do I, and that’s why you need to be careful around him. Don’t
put your trust in anyone until I get this handled, okay?”

Sadly, I nodded and said, “Okay.”

The last thing I wanted to believe was that Wade was
fighting for the wrong side. He was a good person, or at least he used to be. I
had to believe he still was. I had a habit of believing in the wrong people
even when deep down I knew there was something dark and tainted inside their
very soul. My brother was proof of that. He let greed and money take over his
life, always wanting more and never being satisfied even though he had plenty
to support him comfortably for the rest of his life.

Once out of the hotel, we got in the truck and Mason placed
a small piece of paper in my hand. “What’s this?” I asked, glancing down at the
phone number scribbled on the paper.

“It’s Ryan’s cell number. I need you to have it in case
something happens to me. If you feel like something’s wrong or if you can’t get
a hold of me all you have to do is call him and he’ll find me. It’s very
important that you know how to get help, so program it in your phone and
memorize it.”

Taking out my phone, I programmed it into my contacts and
hoped that I would never have to use it.

From the hotel, it only took us fifteen minutes to get to
Wade’s luxurious neighborhood. I came from a wealthy family, but even I
couldn’t afford a house in that area. A GPS didn’t come in the rental truck, so
we drove around the neighborhood streets until we spotted the house with a
bunch of cars parked along the road. Saying it was a huge house didn’t do it
justice … it was a damn mansion.

“Wow,” I breathed in awe. The whole house looked like it was
made of stone, very modern with its blocked style architecture. The massive
water fountain in front with a long, circular driveway just added to the
opulence.

“I’m assuming this is it,” Mason guessed.

“It appears so,” I breathed in awe.

He parked us as close to the house as possible and we walked
the quarter of a mile it took to get to the front door. There were people
everywhere, and I recognized a couple of them from the club, but other than
that I had no idea who the rest were. When we got inside the house, the floor
and the imperial staircase was all Saharan gold marble while the railings added
to the shimmering decadence with its airbrushed golden finish. He had paintings
lining the walls in the foyer, and if there was one thing I loved almost as
much as dancing it would be art. It was magnificent.

However, I was brought back to reality when a drunken idiot
bumped into me and almost spilled his beer down the front of my dress.
“Sor-rrry about that,” he slurred, staggering toward the front door.

Mason put his arm around my waist and held me close to him
as several of the other occupants stumbled their way in and out of the house.

“Do you know any of these people?” Mason asked, whispering
in my ear.

I shook my head. “No, not really … do you?”

Peering around the room, I watched as Mason’s gaze hardened
as soon as he locked eyes on someone. “Hey,” I muttered, squeezing the hand he
had on my waist, “who do you see?”

“It’s Chase Benfield,” he growled.

“You mean the same Chase you just beat in the fight the
other night?”

“Yep, that’s him. This isn’t going to be good,” he warned.
“Do you see Erick anywhere?”

I didn’t see him or Wade for that matter. Given the size of
the house there was a good chance we wouldn’t see either one of them. “Well,
since we’re here we might as well walk around and see if we find him,” I
suggested.

I also wanted to get him as far away from Chase as I could.
Chase seemed like a cocky bastard, and if alcohol was anywhere in his system I
was sure it would magnify that cockiness even more. There were a lot of people
going in and out of the kitchen so Mason and I headed in that direction. There
were bottles of liquor and beers everywhere, not to mention Wade had actual
bartenders tending to the guests and mixing their drinks.

I glanced up at Mason who had his ever watchful eyes
circulating the room. “Do you want to get a drink?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea for me, but have at it,
baby. I need to be coherent right now,” he uttered in all seriousness.

He hung back, leaning against the counters while I strolled
up to the bartender’s station. “What’ll it be, sweetheart?” the bartender asked.
She was a petite, red-headed female who appeared to be in her mid-twenties with
a strong southern belle accent. It kind of reminded me of how Mason’s southern
accent sounded, but his was only slight. I could definitely tell he was from
the south, though.

I looked at the selections, narrowing my eyes wondering what
I would want. “Do you have any wine?” I asked her.

She smiled and pulled out a bottle from underneath the
counter. “Will this do?”

Immediately, my eyes went wide at the sight of my family
crest on the label. “Oh, my God,” I exclaimed, reaching for the bottle. She
looked at me like I was crazy, but she let go of the bottle so I could hold it.
It was then that Wade came around the corner, his gaze instantly locking onto
mine. He grinned mischievously when he noticed I had the bottle of wine in my
hands … my wine.

“What’s wrong, kitten, trying to steal the bottle of wine?”
Wade chuckled and bent down to wrap his arms around my waist. When he let me
go, I rolled my eyes at him and handed the bottle back to the bartender.

“Trust me, I have plenty of it at home. I don’t think I need
to steal any away from you.” Laughing, I turned to acknowledge the girl behind
the bar and said, “I’d like a glass of the wine, please.” She nodded and went
to work on pulling out the cork.

Wade moved closer and leaned against the bar, keeping his
gaze on mine. “Thank you for coming tonight. I was hoping we’d get a chance to
catch up.”

“Yeah, we need to,” I remarked incredulously, “like take for
instance this house. How in the world did you get the money for it? Please tell
me you’re not doing anything illegal. You’re not selling drugs, are you?”

I said it jokingly, but I wanted to gauge his reaction.
Laughing, he rolled his eyes and put his arm around my shoulders. “Now why would
I have to do something illegal to get a house like this? Is it hard to believe
that I actually earned it? You should be happy for me considering what my life
was like before you left.”

I wanted to be happy for him, but only if he was doing
things right. He never had much, only living paycheck to paycheck, but I knew
all too well what happened to people when they grew desperate to be something
more. I wanted to ask him
how
he earned it, but I didn’t want to pry
just yet. Maybe I was in denial thinking he was still the same guy I knew even
though I could see it in his eyes that things had changed.

“Of course I’m happy for you, Wade, and I’m glad you’re
getting the things you’ve always wanted.”

At that moment, the bartender set my glass of wine on the
counter. Wade picked it up, but before handing it to me he bent down low and
whispered softly in my ear, “I haven’t gotten everything I’ve wanted. There’s
still one thing I want, but she left me and never looked back.”

No, not this again,
I screamed in my mind.

I didn’t even want to imagine what Mason was thinking right
now with Wade whispering in my ear. When I first met Wade I thought he was the
most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen, other than Cooper. He liked to joke a lot,
kind of like Tyler, but the one thing he wasn’t very good at was being
responsible. Wade liked to do his own thing on his own time; basically, he was
a little self-centered. He wouldn’t be someone you could have a long, lasting
relationship with. That was why when we had our trysts every now and again I
didn’t let it get too serious as far as the emotional side of things.

“Please,” I scolded incredulously, wriggling out from under
his arm. “That was a long time ago, Wade. I was twenty-one years old and you
knew I had to leave at some point. You know very well you couldn’t have handled
a long distance relationship and remained faithful. You had plenty of women
falling all over you back in the day. I’m sure nothing’s changed since then.”

He shrugged, tilting his lips up in a playful leer. “Yeah,
well, we always want the ones we can’t have, don’t we?”

“True, but those ones end up being the people you weren’t
meant to be with anyway,” I uttered wholeheartedly. “You just have to find the
right one.”

The last thing I wanted was to hurt his feelings. I seemed
to have a habit of hurting the men in my life over the past week. Tilting up my
glass, I drank the rest of my wine in one huge gulp and set it down on the bar.
“Can I have another glass please?”

Or maybe thirty of them …

I think Wade was slowly getting the hint of my disinterest
because he put some distance between us and pointed down to my now filled
glass. “I think I made a good choice on the wine selection tonight, don’t you?”

Breathing a sigh of relief, and thankful that he changed the
subject, I took a sip and smiled. “Well, of course. Nothing beats the taste of
my family’s grapes. When did you have it brought in?”

“I had it rush ordered,” he explained. “I talked to a woman
named Melissa, I think, and she handled everything. How is business going at
the winery?”

“It’s going good, but my brother tried to take it all away
from me. It was a huge clusterfuck.” Not only did my brother go mentally crazy
when he got in trouble for stealing his client’s money and kidnapping Melissa,
he also tried to steal our family’s land out from under me. After our mother
died, he sent me on a trip to England, saying he wanted me to relax while he
handled all of the things at home. What I didn’t know was that he took a copy
of our mother’s will and destroyed it just to forge another one stating that
she left the land to him instead of me. He failed to realize that I had several
copies of the will that were hidden
.

Wade’s eyes went wide. “Wait … what? What happened with your
brother?” He seemed really interested at first, keeping his attention on me
when I started to explain, but then something caught his eye over my shoulder
and I completely lost him after that.

“Um … It’s a really long story, I guess since you’re not
even listening,” I began slowly, trying to get his attention. I waved my hand
in front of his face before turning around to see what he was looking at. He
was staring at Mason, except that wasn’t the only thing; Erick was with him as
well.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Wade growled.

Quickly, I glanced from him to Mason and back, trying to
play it coolly. “Who are you talking about? Your agent? I thought you would
want him here,” I questioned curiously.

His whole demeanor swiftly changed from playful to downright
angry in a single second. “No,” he snapped. “I’m talking about Mason Bradley. I
saw him at the club and now he’s here. I know I didn’t invite him.”

“How do you know him anyway?”

He scoffed. “I don’t
know
him, but I heard a lot
about him through some friends. Erick told me he used to be one of the best
fighters a few years ago, and now that he’s back everybody’s been talking about
the big fight next Friday night between him and Matt Reynolds.”

If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was jealous, but
there was something more to it. “So … what are you so pissed about? He’s
fighting Matt Reynolds, big deal. Can’t your agent talk to him? It’s not like
Erick’s going to replace you, right?”

Fuming, Wade hissed under his breath as Mason and Erick
started to walk off toward another room.
Where were they going?
I wondered.

“Fuck, this isn’t good,” Wade growled, running his hands
nervously through his dark, mussed hair. “Claire, I have to go. I’ll be back.”

He stalked off through the room and out the back door, but
not before Mason had a chance to see our interaction with a concerned look on
his face. Erick had just disappeared through the doorway so Mason took a quick
second to glance at me to make sure I was all right. I nodded and gave him a
small smile before he, too, disappeared through the door.

What the hell was going on?

I didn’t know where Mason or Wade went, so I settled on
sitting at the kitchen table. The room was filled with people, but I appeared
to be the only one not having a good time. I knew better than to go traipsing
off by myself with a bunch of drunken people I didn’t know. Especially, in a
house the size of Wade’s with a gazillion rooms to get lost in. I had a friend
in high school who had been raped at a party by a guy at our school and no one
heard her screams because the music was up too damn loud. It was then that I
vowed I would never be a victim. I wasn’t the type of female to cry over every
sad thing in movies or to beg a guy to take her back. I also wasn’t the type to
be afraid.

I wasn’t afraid to jump out of an airplane because I’d
already done it … twice. I’m not afraid to try new things and be adventurous. I
tried to impress Mason and all of his police buddies by jumping off of my
brother’s roof into the pool one year when I first met him. I liked feeling
fearless, but there was one thing that had me terrified. Mason was my weakness
and with him off with Erick somewhere I had that unsettling and panicky feeling
eating away at my gut.