by Cora Davies
Eric sat forward in his chair placing the empty water glass back on the small table that barely held her laptop. His eyes were on her hand resting on her lap and he reached out and took it in his own. Hailey seemed surprised and he felt the tug as she jerked her hands away from him-but he did not loosen his grip and she relaxed a second later. He ran his thumb over the back of her knuckles and tickled the palm of her hand with his middle finger. He did not take his eyes off her delicate skin. "It's hard to believe these tiny hands are capable of such big things. All the books you've written; they've touched people in ways I wonder if you even can imagine."
Eric thought he felt a tremble run through her as he placed his other hand on her bare knee showing through the tear in the jeans. There was no shock this time when their skin touched-for the first time he felt an intense pull toward her. He had never felt something like it before. It was like he was magnetized to her. It took all of his will to stay in his seat and not pull her into his arms. What was keeping him rooted? If this were any other woman, he would have had her screaming his name and smoking a cigarette by now.
"I want to be part of this influence you have over people. The way you've touched the world." Eric's hand on her knee moved without his control as it slid from the top of her knee to the inside. This time, he knew he did not imagine the tremble as he stroked her soft skin. Eric's eyes went to Hailey's lips as she bit the bottom one. He felt his own lips part and wanted to feel her mouth against his. But first he had to get what he came here for. "I want to be part of Addy and Thomas."
It was as if lightening hit and not the good kind he wanted. As soon as he said the name Thomas, Eric watched as a darkness slammed down over Hailey's eyes. She yanked her hand free and stood up knocking the empty glass off the table. "If you were serious, you'd be out there working. Not trying to play a fast one on me."
Hailey grabbed her laptop off the table and walked inside, slamming the door behind her.
***
The workday was almost over. At least, that was what Bill kept mumbling. God, he hoped so. Eric needed to get back to the hotel to a hot shower. He wanted to get the grime, dirt and sweat from the day off him. He needed to think about a lot of things too. And there was one thing he'd probably think about while he was in the shower. Hailey.
It had been two days since he had spoken to her on her porch and since she had stormed off. He did not want to chance screwing this up, but Eric could feel a primal need for that woman constantly stirring inside him.
He needed that woman like he needed a hole a hole in the head. But he could not get her off his mind. She had been the someone in his thoughts for a better part of the past six months while he searched for her, but she had been invisible. Now she had a face, a perfect face at that, to go along with these books she wrote. He was not going to be able to get her off his mind for a while.
Making matters worse, for the past half hour, she had been working on flowerpots in the front yard. He felt like every time he looked up she was bending over giving him a great view. Except for the times he looked up and she was glaring at him. He did not know how much more he could stand it. She had dirt streaked across her pants and forehead and he just wanted to pull her down into the flowerbed with him. How did her employees do this day in and out? What a waste she had been on Herb for the past six months.
Eric heard the sound of an engine and looked up as a long white limo pulled up into Hailey's driveway. Who was this now? The other men stopped working, too, leaning on their shovels. The younger one, Bill was the first to whistle. "Damn, look at her."
Eric grimaced as he recognized the woman stepping out of the limo. What was she doing here? Sandy was dressed in stilettos, miniskirt, and a shirt that fluttered around the front and left little to the imagination. Not that she had more than a little to show in the first place. She was walking straight for Hailey who had still not noticed her, due to being arms deep in dirt with headphones in her ears. Sandy held her purse in one hand while the other waved wildly in the air. Eric could hear her across the field. "YooHoo!"
Sandy stopped just a foot in front of Hailey. Hailey rocked back on her ankles and looked up at the woman. Eric willed his feet to move, walk to Sandy and stuff her back in the limo, but he could not budge. He watched as Hailey pulled the ear buds from her ears, and smiled at Sandy. Hailey pointed at Eric and Sandy pivoted and started to clap.
"Oh dude, that's your girl isn't it?" Bill asked. "Bro, I'm sorry, if I had realized..."
"No, it's all good," Eric said, holding a hand up in protest. He guessed it was about time he dealt with Sandy. He just had not expected to do it out here. He actually kind of hoped Hannah was going to take care of this and could distinctly remember asking Hannah to have Sandy moved out by the time he got back. Guess the woman was making him do his own dirty work this time.
"Eric!" Sandy jumped up and down and began to step gingerly through the mud towards him. He saw her arrive at a particularly large muddy patch and stop, waving him over. "Baby! I'm here!"
Eric sighed and put his tools down. He did not want to deal with this right now. He walked over to Sandy, each step feeling like a mile. He could see Hailey smirking behind Sandy, and when he was within two feet of Sandy the petite model launched herself at him. He reached out to grab her.
"Eric!" Sandy screeched as she landed a kiss on his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck. He pulled back from her. She was high, and she smelled like it had been days since her last shower.
"What are you doing here, Sandy?" Eric asked, not bothering to disguise the anger in his voice.
"Luca said I could find you here! I was so bored without you! Hannah was trying to make me clean. Ugh! She is such a bitch!" Sandy was laughing and Eric was grinding his teeth. The guys were pointing at them from the barn and he looked at Hailey. She had a single eyebrow raised but she was not saying anything. Eric heard Jason tell the others to get back to work. "Why are you on a farm?"
Another set of legs emerged from the limo. Eric caught the eye of the limo driver. He had a mixed look of amusement, frustration, and just plain exhausted. "It's a ranch, not a farm. Who else is with you? And where did you fly into?"
"Denver, and I brought some friends!" Sandy jumped again and ran back to the limo to help her friend out. It was a tangle of arms, legs, and hair, as Sandy seemed to pull one model out after another.
"It's like a really sad clown car," Hailey remarked. Eric looked at her and wondered if everything he worked hard to prove the last few days was slowly fading away.
"Hailey, I'm so sorry. I had no idea she was going to come out here," Eric started but was interrupted as a police car pulled into the driveway.
"It's the fuzz!" One of Sandy's friends yelled, and the four models climbed back into the limo as fast as they had emerged. Eric could feel his blood boil. If these girls got him in trouble... Suddenly Jason was at Hailey's side.
"If they're here because of them," Eric pointed to the limo and cringed. "I'll take full responsibility."
"They aren't here because of four drunk models," Hailey said, the irritation full in her voice. "They're here because of my mother."
"The letters started again didn't they?" Jason asked and Hailey ignored him as she headed for the police car. "Hailey, you can't just ignore them."
"I'm not ignoring them. I'm taking care of it," she called back over her shoulder. Eric watched as she shook the hands of the two male police officers that emerged from the vehicle. Then she beckoned for them to follow her inside. He noticed Rebecca standing on the porch. She was the only one who did not seem surprised to see the police in the driveway.
"What letters?" Eric asked Jason. He felt a urge to protect wash over him. Was it the same thing he heard Jason and Rebecca talking about the other day? Was Hailey in some sort of trouble?
"I'm sure she'll let you know if she wants," Jason said as he waved his hand at the limo. "You're done for the day. I'd take care of... whatever this is."
Eric felt dis
missed as Jason walked away. Dismissed, embarrassed, and useless. He gave the limo driver directions to his hotel with instructions to not let the girls out until Eric arrived. Then he hopped into his own rental truck he had traded the Ferrari in for the other day and sped down the dirt road into town. He looked over his shoulder at the cop cars in the driveway. Sandy has the worst timing.
CHAPTER TEN
"Maybe it is time to beef up your security," Jason said leaning against the wall-his arms crossed against his chest. Hailey looked around the room at the two police officers and her mother who seemed to agree with Jason. She drummed her fingers on her knee. The same knee Eric had touched the other day. Snap out of it!
"Funny," one of the police officers laughed. He was an older man with a stomach that hung over the top of his belt.
"Funny..." Jason said looking at him as though he had lost his mind.
"Yeah, a pun. Cuz this is a ranch," the officer said with a goofy grin on his face. "And you got beef."
"Cows, and we don't." Jason turned away from the police officer with obvious irritation on his face.
"Yes, security," Hailey nodded. "I have the security package from one of the biggest companies in America."
"And that's a great start Ms. Rogers," the younger policeman said. He was holding the shoebox of letters she had been receiving over the last few months from the man who was threatening her. She did not want to deal with what was in those letters. "Ms. Rogers?"
If Paul was still alive, would the police officer call him Mr. Rogers? She had never heard him called anything but Paul or Sergeant Rogers. Would the police have come to Mr. Roger's neighborhood this morning to instruct him to beef up security? She snickered.
The four other people in the room looked at her with various expressions on their faces. "Sorry. Yes, I'll beef it up. Whatever you think I should do."
"There is a small in-town security firm-they run stuff for a lot of the local businesses. We can give you their number," the policeman said and handed her a card. "We told them you may be calling, but we didn't fill them in entirely on the um, situation."
"Thank you," Hailey said as he also handed her back the shoebox of death threats. Thank you for giving me back my death threats? She shook their hands and her mother led them to the front door. She tapped the card on the shoebox and waited for her mother to come back in the room.
Jason cleared his throat. "What can I do to help Hailey? I'm here for you, Rebecca and Chrissy. These threats seem to be getting more serious each time and I'm losing sleep over it. I know your mother is too."
Hailey nodded. She had not wanted to admit it. She did not want to admit this person was getting to her. But she was losing sleep, too. It was not her own safety she was worried about, but her family, especially Chrissy's. She had been extra mindful of who her daughter spent time with and where she was in her free time lately. Not that she was doing too spectacular of a job, obviously, if she had missed the fact that her daughter was defacing school property. But she had alerted Chrissy's teachers and the staff at the animal shelter to be extra careful about strangers around lately.
Her mother sat down across from her. "Hailey, what can we do?"
Hailey let out a long sigh and studied a portrait on the back wall taken at her wedding. Paul's smile was so wide, it promised the world. She wished Paul was alive all the time. It had been eight years, but some mornings she still reached across the bed for him. She still called out his name when she had a nightmare.
What can we do?
Everyone asked that question in the year following his death. Could they bring him back? That was all she wanted.
"Can you call this security company for me? Get them to come out and do an estimate. I need to take a drive."
***
Hailey was lying in the bed of her truck out in a field looking at the stars. Not just any field, but her field. Everything she could see belonged to her. That was a strange concept-a really freaking weird idea. For a girl who had grown up living in apartment after apartment, sharing a room with her two sisters all the way through high school, right now she could run as far as the eyes could see and not touch any walls. Not see another human being if she did not want to.
Hailey heard the truck before she saw the headlights. So much for not seeing another human being. There were only her roads out here, whoever was driving out here was looking for her. She remained laying in the bed of the truck.
"Hailey?" It was Eric. How had he found her out here? She had driven around her fields taking it all in for at least an hour before picking a spot to pull over. He did not know the lay of the land, so how did he do that? His head appeared at the end of the truck. "Can I come up?"
She sat up leaning against the back window and shrugged her shoulders, but she scooted over to make room. He laid the tailgate down and climbed up, slamming it shut behind him. She admired his profile in the starlight but diverted her eyes before he looked at her. "Want a blanket?"
She handed him an old wool blanket as he sat next to her. She always had blankets in the back of the truck. One of her favorite things to do was lay out under the stars. It was something she had done with Chrissy a thousand times in the years since Paul had died-even before they bought the ranch. They drove out to fields, counted the stars and talked about the world. Chrissy would not come with Hailey now-she said she was too old.
Eric pulled the blanket across his lap and leaned back against the glass with her. "I just wanted to make sure we were good?"
"Good?" she pretended like she did not know what he was talking about. She wanted to pretend like she did not remember his hand on her knee the other day. Like she did not see his tragic and apparently trashed girlfriend show up this afternoon.
"Sandy and her friends showing up this afternoon. Look, I know what you must think of me now," Eric trailed off.
"Nothing worse than I thought of you before." She tried to smile but she felt a little sad. She had been thinking Eric might be different than she originally pegged him. That he might actually be a decent guy. But what kind of guy dates a woman like that? Sandy looked emaciated on top of drugged out and crazy.
"Sandy is part of that Hollywood lifestyle. I thought Hannah was going to talk to her, but then she showed up here today..."
"Who is Hannah?" Hailey asked. Another girlfriend?
"She is something of a house facilitator. Like a modern butler almost." Eric smiled when he talked about her, and it was another new smile. Hailey felt a twinge of jealousy and it confused her. "Here, I have a picture of her."
Eric pulled out his phone and began to pass through images. She was surprised to see a lot of scenic stuff from around her ranch pass by on the small screen. Then finally, he landed on a picture of him with his arm wrapped around a woman. He placed his phone in Hailey's hand and she was surprised to find the woman in the photograph looked as though she was old enough to be Eric's mother. Older in fact, as Hailey thought about what Eric's mother looked like. Beautiful. But skin blessed by the money gods. "She looks very nice."
Eric laughed and shook his head as he turned his screen off. "She's not-but I love her."
Hailey laughed. She could appreciate that. "You said she was supposed to talk to Sandy?"
Eric put his head in his hands and shook it. "You're going to hate me for this. But she was supposed to kick Sandy out while I was gone."
"Oh," Hailey said, not really sure what else to say. She squinted. "Do you mean, you broke up with her before you left, but she wouldn't move out?"
Eric looked at her with puppy dog eyes. "No. I mean, Hannah was supposed to break up with her for me and move all of her things out."
Hailey stared at him for one beat before punching him in the shoulder. "No! You're kidding me. Eric fucking James."
Hailey laughed so hard, she felt a tear slide out the corner of her eye. Who was this man and where the hell did he come from? Was Hollywood in California or another planet?
"It's not that funny, is it?" He asked
, but she could tell he was holding back a laugh as well. "At least, you don't hate me."
"Why would I hate you? It's not like Hannah is breaking up with me for you." Hailey tried to keep laughing, but the moment went awkward fast. He was quiet-staring at her again.
"Can I do something? Just one thing. Without it having an effect on the book?" Eric asked as he leaned closer to Hailey.
"Why would it affect the book?" Hailey asked feeling breathless. His eyes were on her lips and she was willing herself to not close the small gap between their bodies.
"Everything I do affects something," Eric said. He reached out and touched her cheek. Hailey felt her heart beat slam a little harder against her ribcage. She was dazzled by the stars twinkling in the sky behind him-it was like seeing a real life movie poster. He pulled his hand away and settled back against the window.
"What was that?" she asked.
"I don't think I've ever seen anyone with such smooth skin without it being created by makeup. I wanted to know how it felt." Eric's voice was quiet and his eyes were on the stars. Hailey forced her own eyes back on the stars in the sky and not the one next to her. "Since it was obvious Hannah wasn't going to do it for me, I broke up with Sandy tonight."
"Oh?" Hailey liked the way Eric squirmed when she answered with the word "oh". She felt a little giddy at the thought of Eric being available, but it was no different than if he was in Hollywood and single. Way out of her league. She was a blip on his radar-if that.
"She took it pretty well-she wanted my invitation for a yacht party this weekend. Then she was on her way," Eric said.
"How does that make you feel? With her being cool with it?" Hailey asked. She knew what kind of answer she expected to hear from him. But hoped it would be the one she needed to hear.
"It's been an act for so long... I was relieved she left without a fight." Eric pinched the bridge of his nose. "I think she was just with me for the lifestyle. I was probably with her because it was easy. No work involved."