Mess with Me by Nicole Helm (2)

Chapter Two

Hayley Winthrop stared at the little chart in the back of her checkbook. It was simple math, she knew, and yet it was so much easier when the computer did everything for her. But she’d had to sell her computer last week. And she was now down to her last fifty bucks. Which meant she wouldn’t be able to pay her rent tomorrow.

Hayley thumped her forehead against the chipped wood of her kitchen table. She knew she was being ridiculous. If she had half a brain she would have moved home the minute she’d lost her job when Gracely Café had closed. A sensible woman would admit defeat.

But it didn’t matter how old she got, Hayley always fell back into her ostrich tendencies. When something troubled her, she put her head as deep into the sand as she could go until it disappeared. For nearly three weeks she’d been digging in the sand, hoping another job would show up, hoping anything would happen that would keep her from having to face the truth.

She had to crap or get off the pot.

Which meant go home or actually face the Evans brothers in a constructive and meaningful way. Not trying to talk to Brandon in the café and failing, not her bitter and skittish confrontation at Mile High Adventures a few weeks ago, where she’d dropped her bomb and run away to make sure they didn’t have a chance to talk to her.

She actually had to talk and listen, and worst of all . . . she had to know what it was she wanted from them.

She didn’t have a clue.

She’d known since she was very young that her father had paid her mother to disappear. And so, for most of her childhood, she had been aware how different she was. Her father hadn’t just not loved her, hadn’t just hurt her, but he’d paid her mother to make sure he had nothing to do with her, paid for her existence to disappear from his life. No one she’d grown up with had that complicated a father issue.

All made worse because her skin and eyes were so much lighter than her mother’s—physical evidence of someone other—made everything about her a sore thumb. No one could ignore that half her genes came from a man completely different from her family, a man her mother had been tormented and devastated by.

Hayley had almost always known she didn’t belong, no matter how much she was loved. Those early years when Mom had loved her and yet kept her a secret, then the years after her mother had married and Hayley had tried to blend into her stepfamily.

All her life Hayley had done everything in her power to blend in. People didn’t look at the ostrich with her head in the sand. They ignored her altogether, and that was how Hayley was comfortable.

But after college she’d decided that she needed to know more, and her mother was never going to give that to her.

Hayley was different, and she couldn’t find a way to fully reconcile herself to that until she understood why.

She’d been ridiculously relieved when she had found out her biological father was dead. It wasn’t right or fair, but she didn’t have to confront him if he was gone. Finding out about his two sons, legitimate sons—that kept her from running back home.

Because technically they were her family too. She couldn’t help but wonder if, with them, she’d finally belong.

Which felt like a betrayal because she loved her mother and the men Mom had brought into their lives. Her stepfather, Mack, and stepbrother, James, had been nothing but kind and generous and loving. But she was still quite clearly the odd man out. They looked at her a little bit curiously, as if they didn’t totally understand where she came from.

She knew she didn’t.

What Hayley really wanted to do was cry, but that was even worse than sticking her head in the sand. A sand that was quickly sinking away from her head, leaving her exposed.

“Or, you know, you could send me some third alternative,” she offered aloud to the universe.

When a knock sounded on her door not three minutes later, she looked at it skeptically. She loved all the stories of Gracely’s legend and lore: Broken hearts were healed in the valley of Gracely; people who had settled here over a century ago had hoped for survival and found salvation instead.

But this was a little too woo-woo to count on.

Hayley briefly considered pretending not to be home. There was some niggling sense of foreboding about that door knock, and she tended to believe in those niggling senses. Mack and James were both police officers, and they had always told her to believe her gut feelings when it came to other people, and she found it easier to blend in and avoid notice when you ignored people.

But something about Gracely’s legend rattling around in her head caused her to go to her front door. With her luck it’d be someone offering dog-walking services or something else she had absolutely no use for.

She pulled open the door and came face-to-face with a flannel-clad chest. As she raised her gaze—higher and higher—the only other thing that came into view was hair.

Full dark beard, messy, wavy, dark hair, all looming above her like some kind of crazed mountain man from the nineteenth century. Maybe she’d been thinking a little too hard about Gracely’s original inhabitants.

She gripped her doorknob a little tighter, ready to slam it in this guy’s face. “Can I help you?”

His dark blue gaze fastened on her and an odd shiver went through her. Not quite fear, but a lot like that foreboding feeling she’d had when the knock had sounded.

“Are you Hayley Winthrop?”

Hayley shrunk back behind the door. “Yes,” she replied hesitantly. Mack had always warned her about opening the door to strangers, and a million terrible scenarios raced through her head as the man held out an envelope.

Her name was scrawled on the front in a hard-to-read chicken scratch, and she blinked at it, unsure if she should take it. She looked back up at the man who stood there oddly statue-like, letter extended, gaze fixed somewhere above her, every inch of his body rigid.

Hayley took a deep breath and took the letter, keeping one hand on the door in case the man tried to muscle his way inside. Of course, now that she held the letter she couldn’t possibly open it and guard the door at the same time.

“Is there something I can help you with?” she asked the man, who still hadn’t made a move to leave.

“The letter explains things better than I can.” Then he just stood there as if this was perfectly normal.

When she didn’t make a move to read the letter, or anything else, the man sighed gustily and shifted on his feet. “My name is Sam Goodall. Brandon and Will Evans are my business partners at Mile High Adventures. Since you’ve been avoiding contact with them, they asked me to deliver this letter and report your answer back to them.”

Hayley still didn’t move. Mostly because his explanation still didn’t make any kind of sense. And she most certainly wasn’t going to stand here with a stranger watching her open and read a letter, which would leave her vulnerable.

“I’m going to close and lock my door,” she said with as much force and authority as she could muster in her off-kilter state.

“I’ll wait here.”

She frowned at him, but he made no move to outmuscle her and push the door open. He made no move to argue with her about closing the door. He just stood there looking like some sort of immovable mountain.

It was the strangest moment of her entire life.

Giving the man one last glance, she closed the door and flicked the dead bolt before tearing into the envelope.

She pulled out a letter, typed on Mile High Adventures stationery that included the business address and a pretty little mountain logo. She pressed her index finger to the logo, to the name, trying to . . . feel something. But there was nothing, so she read.

They’d scrawled their signatures underneath, but Hayley could only stare at the word brothers. They hadn’t added a half in front of it, or a step, like James so often did.

Something in her heart shifted painfully and she tried to ignore it. She had come to Gracely desperate for answers, but she found the closer she got, the more painful it was. Hayley had always shied away from pain.

But offering her a job that allowed her to stay completely separate from them didn’t make any sense. This had to be some sort of joke or plot. But what would their endgame be? They’d sent a middleman, for heaven’s sake. Surely if they were insincere they would have just paid her off like her father had done, or ignored her completely like he’d done thereafter.

Again the sharp pain around her heart, confusing and confronting. Two things she hated. But this job would allow her to work through it. In her own time.

Not that she would consider this offer. It was insane. Irresponsible. Mack would lecture her about the potential dangers until he was blue in the face. Though it technically wasn’t a betrayal of a promise she’d made to Mom long ago, it would be close enough.

She knew it was wrong of her, but that made it all the more enticing. She’d always done everything she thought her family wanted, and it had gotten her nowhere.

She blew out a breath, trying to blow out that traitorous thought with it. She had to focus on the task at hand, because there was a man on the other side of her door, waiting for her answer.

Saying yes seemed too good to be true. Stay in Gracely, make money, all without having to force herself into talking to the Evans brothers before she was ready. If she could work through her conflicting feelings here and in the sphere of their business, if she had the time to decide what she really wanted . . .

She stared at the door, thinking about the large man on the other side of it.

A job. Working for that odd man. Learning how to guide people through the wilderness, something she knew very little about. It didn’t make any sense.

Timidly, she reopened the door to the gruff, hairy man on the other side. He didn’t say anything, he merely looked at her expectantly.

“I . . . I’m sorry. I don’t understand this at all.”

“It’s a job offer.”

“Well, yes, that I understand.”

“So what don’t you understand?”

She couldn’t help but frown at him. He wasn’t very . . . nice. His demeanor was sort of standoffish and sharp, and it ruffled her usually unruffable feathers. “I don’t understand why they’re offering me a job,” she returned, surprised to hear irritation tinging her voice so clearly. Usually she had a better handle on herself than that.

“It’s in the letter.”

“I’m supposed to believe the two men who supposedly just found out I exist want to offer me a job with no strings attached?”

The man—Sam—merely shrugged. “That’s between you and them.”

“So what’s between me and you?”

His jaw tensed and those ice-blue eyes met hers, cold and sharp. Another shiver went through her.

“I would be your trainer and your boss. It would be like any other job you’ve ever had. It’s just at the end of the day, the men who sign your paycheck are your half brothers that you refuse to speak to.”

Those words should have sounded judgmental, something close to a slap in the face. But he said it so matter-of-factly, as if that was just the way things were. She couldn’t even feel rankled by it. It was simply the truth.

She looked down at the letter, one hand still clutching the door in case this man’s intense demeanor turned aggressive.

“I don’t know what to do with this.”

Again the man shrugged. “Do whatever you like.”

She found herself frowning again. Something about him rubbed her completely the wrong way. And yet here was the answer she’d been waiting for. The universe had plopped this into her lap at exactly the right time. She didn’t know if she believed in fate. She didn’t know if she believed in Gracely’s legend. But she had the strangest sensation in her gut that she wanted to follow this and find out.

Sam grunted and then dug a piece of paper out of his back pocket. He thrust this one at her in much the same manner he’d held out the envelope. “If you’re worried about your safety, here’s Patty’s cell phone number. She said she’d be happy to vouch for us.”

Hayley blinked down at the paper. It was torn out of one of the Gracely Café order pads, printed in Patty’s familiar, hurried script. Her boss at the Gracely Café had been nothing but kind to her.

That Patty would be offering any sort of recommendation when Patty had always had harsh words for the Evans brothers was somewhat surprising. But something had changed in the past few weeks after Patty’s decision to close the café. Hayley couldn’t say that she understood it, but she knew that something had softened Patty toward the Evans brothers and their business endeavor.

Hayley pressed her fingers to her forehead, a tension headache starting to pound there. “I feel like I’ve fallen into Alice in Wonderland or something,” she muttered.

“I’m not a rabbit,” Sam said with a completely straight face.

Hayley stared up at him, startled by the little glimpse of humor masked by a grumpy expression and flat voice. She laughed, and the man looked away.

“Do I have to give an answer right now?”

“It would make my life about ten times easier,” he muttered.

She chewed on her lip, struggling with a response. She didn’t think she owed this gruff man easier, but then again she hated to make waves. But isn’t that what she’d done when she’d dropped her bomb on the Evans brothers? Wasn’t that half the point of being here—making a damn wave?

Clearly agitated, Sam huffed out a breath. “How much time do you need?”

She looked at him helplessly. “I don’t know.” How much time did it take to decide to blow up your life or slink back into the safety of a partial life?

The man grunted again. “I’ll give you an hour.”

“An hour?” she repeated incredulously.

“Yes, I’ll stay in town for an hour. You can find me at . . .” He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “I was going to say Gracely Café, but I guess that doesn’t work.”

“There’s a bench outside of Annie’s,” she found herself suggesting, though she didn’t know how an hour would magically allow her to find the best answer.

He gave a nod. “I’ll be there. Find me within the hour.” He turned and left, as if he had every right in the world to give her orders.

Hayley watched after him, confused, alarmed, and far too curious.