I cross the driveway to my car, which looks especially rusted out and ready for the junkyard this afternoon. After a day in Hayes’s BMW, it will feel like I’m driving home in a car from The Flintstones.
“Hey, Tali,” he says, as I reach for the door. “Thanks. It was the best day I’ve had in a long time.” He’s being earnest for once, and I can tell it’s difficult for him.
Another baby butterfly takes flight. I smile, stifling the impulse to ruin it with a joke. But I can’t bring myself to tell him the truth…it was the best day I’ve had in a long time too.
At home, before I’ve even kicked off my shoes, I go online to look up Hayes’s dad and wife.
His dad is hot for a guy in his fifties and looks a lot like his son, which really just makes the whole thing creepier.
Ella, his wife, is fine-boned and tremulously beautiful in that way only foreign women are: So fragile you’d think a strong wind might blow her over. The kind of woman other women don’t even try to imitate because you know, looking at her, that imitation is impossible.
It makes my chest ache. It’s not as if I ever thought I would replace her. It just sucks to realize I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.
17
If I thought forcing Hayes to take a day off would teach him the value of leisure, I soon learn I was woefully mistaken. When I suggest he consider a weekend off, he laughs, and when I ask about blocking out another Friday, he only says “maybe”, in a tone that sounds a lot like no.
But he’s coming home nearly every day for lunch, so…baby steps?
On an office day, when he can’t come to me, I go to him instead. I need to go anyway, since I’ve just gotten his oil changed and have to return his keys. The feminist in me winces as I show up at his office, toting a bag from In-N-Out Burger like some 1950s wife bringing her man his midday meal, but…fuck it. He needs to eat.
The receptionist looks at me like I’m taking my life in my hands and suggests I set it outside his door and run. I know he goes out of his way to appear distant and intimidating…I just didn’t realize people actually bought the act.
I wander back through the hallway to his office, walking in after I tap on the door.
“I got you a cheeseburger and fries,” I say, handing him the bag. “The rest is mine.”
He closes a file. I’m clearly interrupting him, but he doesn’t seem annoyed. Not that I’d care if he was. “Trying to ruin my social life by fattening me up?” he asks.
“At one cheeseburger a week, it will take me about two hundred years, but I have faith in our longevity.”
“You have faith in my longevity?”
I smile. “You might have a point.” I nod at the food. “I mean, look how you eat.”
I reach out to take the bag back from him, but he points to the chair beside me. “Stay,” he says. “I have a few minutes before my next patient.”
“I thought you hated people,” I reply, slumping in the chair happily and pulling out my fries. “Your receptionist wanted me to set the stuff outside your door.”
He spreads the paper wrapper out neatly on his desk and places a napkin in his lap, as if this is a proper meal. “I do hate people. I guess your constant nagging sets you apart somehow.”
I laugh despite myself. “Your staff could learn something from me,” I reply, shamelessly licking the grease from my fingers. He watches me, a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Maybe I should offer an in-office training.”
“Your smart little mouth is plenty,” he says. There’s a purr to his voice that makes my core clench tight as a drum, something that seems to be happening more and more. I’ve always had a fair amount of self-control, but one lingering look from him, one low note in his voice, and I feel like I’m another kind of girl entirely.
Remember why it’s a bad idea, Tali.
I know his romantic past is certainly littered with examples of bad behavior, but when I scour my brain for them, I come up empty-handed. Even the few reports I’ve seen about him in the press have been complete bullshit, like the one claiming that girl I saw leaving his house weeks ago is “broken-hearted” over him—though he saw her only once—just because she looked vaguely depressed walking into yoga. Who doesn’t look depressed walking into yoga?
“Tell me about these purported girlfriends of yours,” I demand. There’s bound to be plenty of douchery there. “I’m still having a hard time seeing it. Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning?” He wipes his mouth. “That would be Alice Cook. We were six. I gave her candy hearts for Valentine’s Day, and she told me her mum wouldn’t let her have sugar and threw them away.”
I laugh and ache simultaneously. It’s too easy to picture a tiny, crestfallen version of Hayes having his tender heart broken for the first time.
He takes a sip of water, stalling, and I wave my hand to move him along. So far, he’s only made my issue worse.
“Then there was Caroline Cutherall, my mate’s older sister, who I loved fiercely from ages ten through fourteen,” he says. “She was a decade older. I suppose I might have a shot now.” He shrugs.
I’m sure he would. I don’t know who Hayes was at fourteen, but there’s no way it can match up to Hayes, two decades later.
“After that, there was Annie, the reverend’s daughter. We dated until midway through my first year at university.”
He pops the last of his burger in his mouth. I notice he doesn’t mention the end with Annie, which undoubtedly means he was at fault. Jackpot. “What happened with her?”
He leans back in his seat and holds my gaze. For a moment I’m certain he’s not going to answer.
“I came home from university to discover she’d been filling her time in my absence with a footballer from the local club,” he says.
Oh.
“She was followed by Ella,” he concludes, “who is now, of course, my stepmother.”
He gives me a rueful smile and takes another sip of water, as if this is all vaguely amusing and a little boring. To me, it is neither. I struggle with a sudden lump in my throat. Instead of a healthy reminder of Hayes’s callousness, I’ve just watched him die of a thousand small cuts and a few major ones.
I want to tell him he deserved better. I want to tell him Ella was crazy, that they all were crazy, but the words are lodged in my throat, too earnest and possibly too invested to be said aloud.
The phone rings, announcing the arrival of his next patient. I quickly clear away our trash, still thinking about what he’s said and wishing I could fix it all. He walks me through the waiting room to the elevator, standing with me while I wait for it to arrive. It almost seems as if he wishes I could stay, and…I wouldn’t mind. Increasingly, it’s hard to remember what my days were like before they included Hayes’s smirks and withering commentary about my car and my choices. Without the sweetness in his eyes that assures me he means none of it.
I’ve barely reached the parking garage when he texts, asking me to return. I wish I was annoyed. I wish I didn’t feel this quiet excitement at the prospect of seeing him again, even though I just left his side.
I find him in a room with a patient and stop at the threshold, but he beckons me in.
“Tali, meet Linda. She saw you in the waiting room and is telling me she wants to look like you.”
I slow, and my last few steps to reach them are faltering.
“I want all of it,” Linda says. “The tiny nose and especially the lips. Get mine as close to hers as you can.”
Is this normal? To point to another human being as if she’s an outfit on display and ask to be recreated? Hayes shows no surprise at all, but he swallows as his gloved thumb presses to the center of my lip. I want to suck it further into my mouth, nip it with my teeth.
“Tali has a lot of volume in her lips, the upper lip in particular,” he says. “It would be hard to replicate, but I could use micro doses of filler to turn the border out the way hers does.” His index finger runs along the contour of my upper lip
. I take tiny, insufficient breaths through my nose, my heart beating harder than it should.
“Yes, let’s try that,” Linda says. “You’ve done such amazing work on her.”
His finger stills on the center of my mouth and our gazes lock. Being the center of his attention, in this way, is headier than I ever imagined it could be. It’s the experience of being exposed, laid bare, but also seen. Seen in a way no one ever has before, as if I’m something fragile, something worthy of care. I never want to stop feeling this way.
He drops his hand as if he’s been burned.
“Tali’s beauty is all her own,” he says gruffly, walking away. “I’m going to get the camera.”
I stare at his departing back in shock, wondering what the hell just happened. Was it me? Was it both of us? My memory of it is a little too surreal to be trusted.
“I wish my husband would look at me the way he looks at you,” Linda whispers. “Like he could be completely content if he never had to look at anything else.”
I glance at her—she is lovely in her own right, more than deserving of an appreciative husband—and my heart gives an odd, hard thud at her words. It’s the ache of wanting something to be true and knowing full well it is not. “I’m just his assistant,” I reply. “He looks at me like that because if I wasn’t around, he’d have to get his own coffee and he finds waiting at Starbucks intolerable.”
“I just watched the way he looked at you, honey,” she says with a knowing smile. “And believe me, that look had nothing to do with coffee.”
18
Hayes’s smoothie is waiting when he joins me in the kitchen the next morning. He’s slick and pressed and perfect as ever, but his gaze is just a little more piercing than normal. I wonder if I was weird yesterday. Of course I was weird, and I’m still being weird. I can’t seem to shake the desire for more of his attention, for the feeling of his hands on my skin and his eyes on my face the way they were in his office.
I picture him cornering me in the kitchen, his hard body pressing my back to the cabinet, invading my space. His thumb on my mouth before his lips seek mine, his hands falling low, to slide over my hips, to tug up my skirt.
The mere thought makes me feel winded. I can’t imagine what the reality would do.
“I have a party tonight,” he says, shattering the fantasy. “I may need your help.”
I hope he can’t tell that my head was somewhere else entirely. I close my eyes for a moment and calm my breathing. Get it together. This is what he does: he makes women feel like they’re special and then he moves on.
“As far as I can tell, you don’t need any help at parties.” It comes out sounding more bitter than I’d intended.
“It’s an industry thing,” he says with a glib smile, putting his keys in his pocket and grabbing his coffee. “Every actress or female producer I talk to is going to wind up deciding she wants a little touch of something. Besides, you’re clearly good advertising. Everyone who sees you assumes I did your work and wants the exact same thing.”
I have no desire to stand by his side while he flirts with beautiful women all night. If only I actually had plans so I could refuse. “What should I wear?” I ask, my shoulders sagging.
He glances at me, his eyes falling to my mouth, soft as a snowflake, before they jerk away. “Every eye will be on you,” he says, “no matter what you wear.”
He sounds as if he regrets it.
I choose a dress I bought right after Matt got his first big part—black and silky, draped low in the front, no back whatsoever.
Matt called it my Fuck This Party We’re Staying Home dress. I flinch at the memory as I slide it on. He made me feel so desirable back then, and the thing is, I still believe he meant it. He just didn’t mean it enough, and how do you ever know when someone does?
I pair the dress with sky-high strappy black sandals that will still only bring me to Hayes’s collarbone. My hair is down, curling softly over my shoulders, along with a smoky eye and a hint of nude lipstick to play up the lips he seemed to appreciate yesterday. Some distant part of my brain asks why I’m making the effort and shies away from the answer.
The event is held at Black Swan, a massive new bar in the center of Beverly Hills. By the time I arrive, the place is packed. Everywhere I look, I see beautiful women and vaguely familiar faces. It’s the kind of event Matt would have sold his soul to attend, back when we first got to LA.
I’d forgotten, until now, how much I hated attending these things with him. The way people would treat him as if he was superhuman and would treat me like the lucky but replaceable straggler along for the ride.
And sometimes I got the feeling he agreed with them. That’s what I hated most of all.
I’ve spent so long telling myself Matt and I were perfectly happy, but as I stand here taking in the crowd, it seems I remember more bad memories than good.
I give my name to the doorman inside and text Hayes to say I’m here. Only moments later, I see him moving toward me. He’s in a black shirt, partly unbuttoned, and looking at me in a way I enjoy far too much. Like I’m the only thing in the entire bar, the entire city, he can see.
“Jesus,” he says, blowing out a breath. “Half the men in this room are old, Tali. And now I’m going to have to defibrillate all of them.”
I blush, struggling to remember why I’m here. I’m sure there was something, but all I want is for him to keep saying sweet things and looking at me the way he is.
“So, what is it you need me to do tonight?” I ask, glancing around us.
He hands me a drink. “Relax, first of all. It’s a party. I’m not going to ask you to perform open-heart surgery. Just help me with scheduling and save me if I get trapped by someone.”
I roll my eyes. “How will I know whether you’re trapped or talking her into something she’ll definitely regret?”
His gaze flickers over my dress once more. It feels as if we are the only people in the room. “I assure you, she wouldn’t regret it. But there won’t be any of that tonight.”
In truth, it seems like there hasn’t been any of that for a while. He still occasionally gets texts from women he’s seen in the past, but he ignores them, and there have been no new dates, no naked women in his bed the next day.
As I’m thinking this, though, he turns toward a group of women who immediately start flirting, gripping his biceps, smiling too widely. Maybe he’s just finally learned how to be discreet.
I’m forced to take a step back as the group closes in around him, and those memories of being replaceable seep back in. I lift the glass in my hand and swallow half of it in one go, hoping it will dull my nerves and quiet my thoughts a little.
“You are way too pretty to be standing here alone,” says a voice behind me. I look over my shoulder to find a generically attractive guy not much older than me. His smile is confident, then sheepish in turn. “Sorry, that was cheesy. I was gonna offer to buy you a drink but it’s an open bar.”
“That would weaken the gesture somewhat,” I reply, taking another sip of whatever Hayes got me.
He extends a hand. “I’m Chris.” His handshake is firm—an adult handshake. “And you look so familiar. What have I seen you in?”
I shake my head. “I’m not an actress.”
“Really?” he says, stepping closer. “You just became so much more appealing to me, and you were already appealing.”
Is this how flirting works? I really have no idea, and now it feels like I’m too old to learn. But this is the first attractive, single guy I’ve spoken to in a while. I suppose I should at least try, even if it’s the last thing I feel like doing.
“So you’re an actor?” I ask.
His grin is cocky. “You seriously don’t know who I am?”
I’m about to reply when Hayes suddenly appears at my side with his hand on my elbow, making a polite but clipped excuse to my new friend as he drags me away.
“And here I was worried you wouldn’t have a good time,” he
says.
I’m relieved he’s rescued me, but I’m not about to let him know it. “I’d probably be having a better time if you weren’t dragging me away from the first man I’ve spoken to in months.”
“I brought you here to work,” he replies. His voice is clipped, devoid of its normal mischief. “It’s funny how quickly you forget you’re being paid.”
I hold up my phone. “And I’m ready to do so. Or was I supposed to—”
My words fall away entirely, my eyes frozen on the man being whisked past the doorman. My heart flops like a fish out of water, in serious danger of collapse.
Matt is here.
With a date by his side.
It’s hard to imagine a worse scenario than this one. He’s even wealthier and more successful than he was a year ago, whereas most of his dire predictions for me have come true. I’m alone, I haven’t finished the book, I’ve taken a lame Hollywood job to make ends meet. If I pack up and move home, he’ll be four for four.
I can’t stand it.
Sheer panic takes over. I’m trying to think, but I’m a shaky mess, all fluttering hands and weak, skittish pulse. “Shit.”
Hayes raises a brow, glancing from me to Matt. “What?” he asks. “Oh, God. Don’t tell me you have some deep, undying love for Noah Carpenter? I thought you were more interesting than that.”
“No,” I say, biting my lip. He’s moving through the room. He hasn’t seen me yet, but any minute now he will. “No. Can I just—can you just do something for me? Please?”
“Fine, I’ll have sex with you,” he says with a long sigh, “but only the one time, okay? And from behind, so it’s not awkward in the morning.”
He absolutely doesn’t get it. Matt’s going to spy me in a matter of seconds, and when that happens, it will be the most humiliating moment of a life positively strewn with humiliating moments.
A Deal With The Devil: A Steamy Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 10