Page 96 of Home Grown Talent

No truer than the rest of it, those words. The next chapter in the story Mason was spinning, a desperate attempt to keep Owen on board with his latest social media campaign.

We’re telling stories, Owen... It only has to be an approximation of the truth.

Well, screw that. He refused to be the supporting cast in Mason’s story anymore—the current love interest. Stupid to have believed he’d ever been anything more than that. From the start, Mason had been clear about the career-boosting benefits of their ‘relationship’, and Owen had known how much Mason’s career meant to him. Known it, but let himself be sucked in anyway, by the romance and the drama Mason had spun around them. By the story.

What a bloody fool he’d been.

He found himself remembering that fan of Mason’s, the one who’d come into the garden he’d been working in to ask for a selfie. He thought of the way she’d looked at him, all starry-eyed and pleading. “Is it real? Please tell me it’s real.”

Turned out he was just as deluded as she was.

The only difference was he had no excuse. Lewis and Aaron had tried to caution him about Mason, but Owen had been blind. Wilfully blind. It was sobering to discover that he was no more immune to the allure of a beautiful face than any other lonely soul looking for love. So much for his pride in seeing beyond Mason’s looks.

“Wotcher,” Mac said, stopping in the doorway to his office. “Blimey, I thought I was in early, but you look like you’ve been here a while?”

Owen blinked up at her from behind his desk, glancing at the clock on the wall over the door. It was six-thirty on Monday morning. He’d been in since five. And all of Sunday too, not that he was about to confess that to her.

“Thought I’d get on top of the paperwork,” he said, gesturing at his unusually tidy desk.

Mac nodded, looking unconvinced. After a pause, she came more fully into the office, shrugging off her jacket and hanging it on the coat stand. “Saw you on the telly on Saturday,” she said, her tone deceptively mild.

Trying not to react, Owen made a noncommittal sound. More like a grunt, really.

Mac turned around. “Your face when they brought that bloody pineapple out,” she said, smiling. “I thought you were going to murder someone.”

He grimaced, shaking his head. “It was fucking ridiculous.”

“Yeah, it was.” Her smile faded. “Everything okay?”

The last thing he needed was a heart-to-heart with Mac. Or anyone, come to that. He preferred to nurse his misery in private. And okay, maybe that was more of the Stoic Owen routine, but he wasn’t sure how else to act when he felt like this.

It was embarrassing enough that his infatuation with Mason had been broadcast on TV for all to see. He’d at least keep their break-up and his fucking feelings about it to himself.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, getting up from behind the desk. He was looking forward to doing some real work today, getting his fingers in the soil and his boots in the mud. Reconnecting with his actual job and escaping all the fakery of Weekend Wellness.

“I’m going to join Kyle and Dave on the Langley Road job today. They need an extra pair of hands on that driveway. I was going to send Tommy, but—”

On his desk, his phone buzzed, and he glanced down automatically. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, he couldn’t help himself, and sure enough, it was another message from Mason.

Please call me.

They’d been coming in since yesterday afternoon, all saying the same thing.

Please call.

I need to talk to you.

Owen had ignored them all. It was probably juvenile, but he just couldn’t face talking to Mason. He knew he’d have to at some point—they were grown-ups after all, and he was still contractually obliged to do another round of Weekend Wellness filming—but not yet. Not when he felt so raw and so… used.

A sharp stab of pain made him grunt out loud. It took him like that, sometimes, the shock of losing what he’d had with Mason. What he’d thought he had.

Christ, he was pathetic.

Shoving the phone into his pocket, he turned to head into the main part of the unit, ready to start loading up the van for today’s jobs, but Mac stepped in front of him, forcing him to stop.

He glared at her. “What?”

“You don’t look fine.”