CHAPTER FIVE
HE HADN’T EXPECTED her to show up Monday morning. But there she was, in the entryway of the house, hands clasped in front of her, dark hair pulled back in a neat bun. Like she was compensating for what had happened between them Friday night.
“Good morning,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “I half expected you to take the day off.”
“No,” she said, her voice shot through with steel, “I can’t just take days off. My boss is a tyrant. He’ll fire me.”
He laughed, mostly to disguise the physical response those words created in him. There was something about her. About all that softness, that innocence, combined with the determination he hadn’t realized existed inside her until this moment.
She wasn’t just soft, or innocent. She was a force to be reckoned with, and she was bent on showing him that now.
“If he’s so bad why do you want to keep the job?”
“My job history is pathetic,” she said, walking ahead of him to the stairs. “And, as he has pointed out to me many times, he is not my daddy. My previous boss was. I need something a bit more impressive on my résumé.”
“Right. For when you do your traveling.”
“Maybe I’ll get a job in London,” she shot back.
“What’s the biggest city you’ve been to, Hayley?” he asked, following her up the stairs and down the hall toward the office.
“Portland,” she said.
He laughed. “London is a little bit bigger.”
“I don’t care. That’s what I want. I want a city where I can walk down the street and not run into anybody that I’ve ever seen before. All new people. All new faces. I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine living a life where I do what I want and not hear a retelling of the night before coming out of my mother’s mouth at breakfast the next morning.”
“Have you ever done anything worthy of being recounted by your mother?”
Color infused her cheeks. “Okay, specifically, the incident I’m referring to is somebody telling my mother they were proud of me because they saw me giving a homeless woman a dollar.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help himself, and her cheeks turned an even more intense shade of pink that he knew meant she was furious.
She stamped. Honest to God stamped, like an old-time movie heroine. “What’s so funny?”
“Even the gossip about you is good, Hayley Thompson. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why you hate that so much.”
“Because I can’t do anything. Jonathan, if you had kissed me in my brother’s bar... Can you even imagine? My parents’ phone would have been ringing off the hook.”
His body hardened at the mention of the kiss. He had been convinced she would avoid the topic.
But he should’ve known by now that when it came to Hayley he couldn’t anticipate her next move. She was more direct, more up-front than he had thought she might be. Was it because of her innocence that she faced things so squarely? Because she hadn’t experienced a whole range of consequences for much of anything yet?
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said. “Because you’re right. If anybody suspected something unprofessional had happened between us, it would cause trouble for you.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” She looked horrified. “I mean, the way people would react if they thought I was... It has nothing to do with you.”
“It does. More than you realize. You’ve been sheltered. But just because you don’t know my reputation, that doesn’t mean other people in town don’t know it. Most people who know you’re a good girl know I am a bad man, Hayley. And if anyone suspected I had put my hands on you, I’m pretty sure there would be torches and pitchforks at my front door by sunset.”
“Well,” she said, “that isn’t fair. Because I kissed you.”
“I’m going out on a limb here—of the two of us, I have more experience.”
She clasped her hands in front of her and shuffled her feet. “Maybe.”
“Maybe nothing, honey. I’m not the kind of man you need to be seen with. So, you’re right. You do need to get away. Maybe you should go to London. Hell, I don’t know.”
“Now you want to get rid of me?”
“Now you’re just making it so I can’t win.”
“I don’t mean to,” she said, with that trademark sincerity that was no less alarming for being typical of her. “But I don’t know what to do with...with this.”
She bit her lip, and the motion drew his eye to that lush mouth of hers. Forced him back to the memory of kissing it. Of tasting her.
He wanted her. No question about it.
He couldn’t pretend otherwise. But he could at least be honest with himself about why. He wanted her for all the wrong reasons. He wanted her because some sick, caveman part of him wanted to get all that pretty dirty. Part of him wanted to corrupt her. To show her everything she was missing. To make her fall from grace a lasting one.
And that was some fucked up shit.
Didn’t mean he didn’t feel it.
“Well, after I earn enough money, that’s probably what I’ll do,” she said. “And since this isn’t going anywhere... I should probably just get to work. And we shouldn’t talk about it anymore.”
“No,” he said, “we shouldn’t.”
“It was just a kiss.”
His stomach twisted. Not because it disappointed him to hear her say that, but because she had to say it for her own peace of mind. She was innocent enough that a kiss worked her up. It meant something to her. Hell, sex barely meant anything to him. Much less a kiss.
Except for hers. You remember hers far too well.
“Just a kiss,” he confirmed.
“Good. So give me some spreadsheets.”
* * *
THE REST OF the week went well. If well meant dodging moments alone with Jonathan, catching herself staring at him at odd times during the day and having difficulty dreaming of anything except him at night.
“Thank God it’s Friday,” she said into the emptiness of her living room.
She didn’t feel like cooking. She had already made a meal for Jonathan at his house, and then hightailed it out of there as quickly as possible. She knew that if she’d made enough for herself and took food with her he wouldn’t have minded, but she was doing her best to keep the lines between them firm.
She couldn’t have any more blurred lines. They couldn’t have any more...kissing and other weirdness. Just thinking about kissing Jonathan made her feel restless, edgy. She didn’t like it. Or maybe she liked it too much.
She huffed out a growl and wandered into the kitchen, opening the cupboard and pulling out a box of chocolate cereal.
It was the kind of cereal her parents never would have bought. Because it wasn’t good for you, and it was expensive. So she had bought it for herself, because she had her own job, she was an adult and she made her own decisions.
Do you?
She shut out that snotty little voice. Yes, she did make her own decisions. Here she was, living in her own place, working at the job she had chosen. Yes, she very much made her own decisions. She had even kissed Jonathan. Yes, that had been her idea.
Which made the fallout her fault. But she wasn’t going to dwell on that.
“I’m dwelling,” she muttered. “I’m a liar, and I’m dwelling.” She took down a bowl and poured herself a large portion of the chocolaty cereal. Then she stared at it. She didn’t want to eat cereal by herself for dinner.
She was feeling restless, reckless.
She was feeling something a whole lot like desperation.
Because of that kiss.
The kiss she had just proposed she wasn’t going to think about, the kiss she couldn’t let go of. The kiss that made her burn, made her ache and made her wonder about all the mysteries in life she had yet to uncover.
Yeah, that kiss.
She had opened a floodgate. She’d uncovered all this potential for passion inside herself, and then she had to stuff it back down deep.
Jonathan Bear was not the only man in the world. Jonathan Bear wasn’t even the only man in Copper Ridge.
She could find another guy if she wanted to.
Of course, if she went out, there would be all those gossip issues she and Jonathan had discussed earlier in the week.
That was why she had to get out of this town.
It struck her then, like a horse kicking her square in the chest, that she was running away. So she could be who she wanted to be without anybody knowing about it. So she could make mistakes and minimize the consequences.
So she could be brave and a coward all at the same time.
That’s what it was. It was cowardice. And she was not very impressed with herself.
“Look at you,” she scolded, “eating cold cereal on a Friday night by yourself when you would rather be out getting kissed.”
Her heart started to beat faster. Where would she go?
And then it hit her. There was one place she could go on a Friday night where nobody from church would recognize her, and even if they did recognize her, they probably wouldn’t tell on her because by doing so they would be telling on themselves.
Of course, going there would introduce the problem of her older brother. But Ace had struck out on his own when he was only seventeen years old. He was her inspiration in all this. So he should understand Hayley’s need for independence.
And that was when she made her decision. It was Friday night, and she was going out.
She was going to one of the few places in town where she had never set foot before.
Ace’s bar.