Free Hitman's Secret Baby: A Bad Boy Romance by McKenzie Lewis Page B

missed, I suspected that was the case.
    “We could head out,” I offered, grabbing a sweater off the stand. “Go for a walk.”
    “How about a drive?” he suggested.
    I grinned; that sounded perfect. I’d spent too long in my empty house of late anyway.
    We climbed into his car and started along the road. As teenagers, we used to drive for miles sometimes—mostly getting to know each other, often making out in the backseat by the woods. We had sex a couple times, too, but I pushed that out of my head, trying to heed Justin’s words from earlier, if nothing else but to shut him up and tell him I tried.
    “Do you remember when you first came to work at the diner?” I asked Mason, wanting to share my nostalgia with him.
    He chuckled. “Yeah.”
    “In your ripped jeans and baseball cap,” I recalled.
    “God, don’t remind me.” Mason turned the car onto the country back roads, winding slowly up into the hills on the outskirts of town. “I remember the first time I saw you.”
    “Yeah?” I asked eagerly.
    “In your little waitress uniform, coffee all down your apron.”
    I looked at him but his profile gave away nothing but amusement. “You remember that?”
    I certainly didn’t.
    Mason smirked. In the waning evening light, he looked like some bad boy out of a movie—one arm leant out of the rolled-down window, his dark hair caught in the breeze, those full lips pursed in a cocky smile.
    I wondered if he knew what a striking picture he made; everywhere he went, he caught people’s eye. It had always been that way. When he’d asked me out, I’d been both wary and thrilled. I knew his reputation, but after working with him, I’d seen how sweet and kind he really was. And he was the hottest guy in town.
    That certainly hadn’t changed.
    “I remember ’cause I thought to myself: damn, that chick’s got a nice rack ,” Mason told me.
    I choked on my own laughter. “Tell me that’s not the first thing you thought about me.”
    “Sad, but true.”
    I hit him on the arm with the back of my hand. “You little pervert.”
    Mason shrugged. “I was.” And then, more seriously, he told me, “Afterwards, though, I just wanted to take you out and treat you right.”
    I smiled fondly. “I remember you asking me out.”
    “I was shit scared, I tell you.”
    “You? Scared?”
    Mason quickly glanced at me. “Yeah, your dad kept catching me looking at you and he kept giving me the stink-eye and I knew if I screwed up, he’d have my balls.”
    “That sounds like my dad.”
    If Dad only knew…
    “I wonder what he’d think now,” Mason said, self-deprecation creeping into his voice.
    I shuddered a little. How would my parents react to the news of what Mason did? I’d never be able to tell them the whole story, but a man faking his own death and leaving their pregnant daughter to pick up the pieces wouldn’t exactly go down very well, regardless of the other details.
    They’d mourned him, too. He was like a son to them when he and Anna became homeless after the death of their elderly aunt, their only other guardian.
    “Would you even wanna find out?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
    Mason drove on and said nothing. He knew what I was really asking.
    The scenery passed us in waves of shadowy trees and dotted farmhouse silhouettes. The Fosters’ ranch was up here, once upon a time, before it burned down. Mason avoided that area, though, driving us along the winding roads as the moon came all the way up and the stars blinked in full force.
    I turned us away from the subject of parents and back to reminiscing. I was surprised by how much Mason remembered of his old life.
    “I’m still me,” he said simply. “My memories didn’t just disappear when I walked away. Sometimes I think it’d be easier if they had.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He fell silent again, giving the road a renewed focus. Eventually, he shook his head. “I swear there used to be turnoff here somewhere.”
    I wanted to push