Twenty-Six
Vegas was exactly what Hayden needed, which was surprising to say the least. Normally she focused on being quiet and listening to her inner voice to clear her mind.
In this case a few days of drinks, gambling and a male strip show had cleared her mind just fine.
Arlene dropped Hayden off at her studio, a large pair of dark sunglasses hiding the evidence of a killer hangover. Hayden, while she’d enjoyed a few cocktails, hadn’t abused her liver while she was in Vegas. Her drug of choice had been the craps table. She left up forty dollars, which she considered a win since she’d been down over two hundred bucks before that. She knew when to cut and run.
Apparently.
“I’m going to go home and die,” Arlene said, droll.
“I have detox tea upstairs if you think it would help.”
“Not sure anything would help except maybe a time machine. Then I could undrink those last four margaritas.”
Hayden had been swamped with regret during the flight home to Washington, which made Arlene’s next question easy to answer.
“Are you seriously moving off Spright Island?” Arlene looked sad to ask it, which warmed Hayden’s heart. She truly loved her friends.
“Of course not.”
“Yes!” Arlene shouted before clutching her head with both hands. “Ow, my skull.”
“Go home. Get some sleep. And thank you for a fantastic trip.”
She stepped out of the car and Arlene drove away. It was cool, but sunny, and Hayden paused to take in the market across the street, waving at Sherry who’d just pulled open the door to walk in.
All around her there were smiling faces, and beautiful trees. Homes and retail establishments that were cared for and well-loved.
Spright Island and the people who lived here were Hayden’s salvation. No matter what happened between her and Tate in the future, she wouldn’t rob herself of the joy of living here. She was a better person here and this community—a place that Tate had envisioned into all its glory—was special. She sucked in a lungful of crisp air and turned, alarmed to see the man of her thoughts standing on the sidewalk outside her studio.
That speech had sounded fine inside her head. Faced with him, however, her instincts told her to protect herself. Build that wall as high and strong as she could.
“Hayden.”
That voice.
Tate had said her name in every way imaginable. During the throes of heated sexual contact, in jest, when he was angry or happy. She heard compassion in his voice now; saw it on his face, too. He regretted their argument, that much was clear. But if he didn’t love her—when she still loved him with everything she was—then nothing had changed except the date.
“Hi.”
“Can I talk to you?” he asked.
She didn’t want to talk to him. Not yet. Not until... Until what? Until she fell out of love with him? Who knew how long that would take.
Willing herself to be brave, she called up the very strength of character that brought her to Spright Wellness Community in the first place. “Sure.”
“May I?” He gestured to her carry-on and she nodded, letting him take the luggage as she unlocked her studio door. She tried to ignore the brush of his hand on hers and the soft scent of leather coming off his coat. She tried, but failed.
Mere days ago she could’ve greeted him with a kiss. A hug. Maybe more. It was hard to believe after all they’d experienced together—with his family and hers—that this was over.
Stepping into her yoga studio, she focused instead on its pale wood floors and salt lamps. The padded blocks and yoga mats and water bottles for sale.
No way would she abandon her dream any more than Tate would abandon his. She hadn’t run away from her family or her responsibility when she left Seattle. She’d run toward a dream—a vision that burned in her heart. There was a difference.
“I heard you were considering leaving,” he said, flipping the lock behind him.
So they were doing this here.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Emily. But don’t be upset with her. She told me that so I’d know where her loyalty lies. With you. She doesn’t want you to leave.” He took a long, slow look around her studio. “No one at Spright Island wants you to leave. I don’t want you to leave.”
It was great to hear that. She wanted to shout with joy! But just because he didn’t want her to leave didn’t mean he was suddenly and madly in love with her, did it?
“I’m not leaving,” she said cautiously.
“Good.” His smile caused an ache in her heart she was sure would drop her to her knees. So she flexed her core to keep her standing and folded her arms to protect herself. It wasn’t a wall, but it was all she had. She wanted to believe that everything had changed. That he’d recalled their fight with the regret she felt whenever she thought about it. That he wished as much as she did that they had stopped and put their egos on hold long enough to have a conversation about what it meant to be together—and just how much they meant to each other.
It might not have salvaged what they had—she wasn’t accepting less than she deserved from anyone—but they could’ve ended things amicably.
He stepped deeper into the room and came as close as he could without touching her. So close she had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
“I love you, Hayden. I fell in love with you probably before you fell for me, but I was too busy compartmentalizing and trying to sort out everything to realize it. I should’ve realized it. Nothing has ever been clearer than the fact that you belong with me and I already belong to you. I handled that night by the fireplace so badly. I messed up.”
She felt her mouth drop open and she stood there in stunned silence combing over everything he’d said. He’d...fallen in love with her?
“I’m sorry,” he continued. “For everything I said that night that was unfair and untrue. For making you think for one second you mattered less to me than anything on this planet.”
She still couldn’t speak so she stood there, mute as a mime as Tate reached into his jacket pocket and came out with his phone.
“You were thinking of leaving so that you didn’t have to run into me, weren’t you? So we could avoid each other at the market. Not cross paths while dining in the same restaurant.” He tilted his head. “Not bump into each other in the park in the spring.”
Yes to all of those things, but that was juvenile, wasn’t it? Trying to avoid him. Tate Duncan was Spright Island.
“We’ll work it out,” she said carefully, still unraveling what he’d said to her. Her heart was grasping to his “I love you,” desperate to be healed, but her mind... Her mind was more skeptical.
“I have a proposition for you. If you still love me, I want to be with you without barriers. Without compartments. Without playing it safe. Safe is for pussies.”
Half her mouth lifted, hope filling her heart against her will.
He swiped the screen of his phone. “But if you’ve stopped loving me, or you can’t trust me to make good on my promise to love you back, well...”
He offered the cell phone and she took it with shaking hands.
“It’s a deed,” he explained. “To my new house in San Francisco.” He tapped the screen of the phone and brought up a text message with a timestamp from yesterday. “Which means I can sell my house here.”
It was from Sherry, the real estate agent. Hayden read it, her eyes heating with tears. I’m sure we can find the perfect buyer for your house, and fast!
“You’re...leaving?” Spright Island without Tate was as wrong as Hayden’s life without Tate. “You love that house.”
“I do,” he admitted.
“You love it here,” she said, emotion tightening her throat.
“I do.” He put a hand on her arm and gave her a gentle
squeeze. “But not more than I love you. I won’t put anything before that.”
He plucked the phone from her trembling fingers and pocketed it. “I know you can’t see it, but I’m falling apart, Hayden. I miss you every moment you’re not here, and hearing that you were considering uprooting what you’ve built because of—because I was too afraid to be honest with you... It’s not right for you to compromise. So I will. For you. You deserve everything you’ve worked so hard to gain.”
He waited while she stared, tears trembling on the edges of her eyelids. His every word had sealed up the crack he’d put in her heart.
He loved her. He loved her.
And he wanted her to stay. He was willing to walk away from his legacy and move back to California. He was giving her the community that needed him as much as he’d originally stated.
Silly billionaire.
“If I could rewind that night, we’d stay at the party, and drink champagne at midnight, and I’d kiss you so that everyone there would know what you meant to me. We’d still make love at my house by the fire—” he blew out a breath “—I don’t see how that could get any better.”
She bit her lip to hide a smile. Neither did she. It’d been everything.
“But you wouldn’t have had the chance to tell me you love me, Hayden. Not before I said I loved you first.” His eyes shimmered, as if the emotions he’d refused to share with her had pushed their way past his defenses.
“I followed rules my entire life. None of them kept me safe from drama or a broken relationship. When I broke those rules with you, though, I was more whole than I’ve ever been. My identity was mixed up in parents I’d never met and a twin brother I was getting to know. What I didn’t know was that with you, I was becoming someone else. Someone better. I hope...the right man for you.” His smile broke through, but nervous like he had no idea how she’d react. She knew, though. She knew. “I love you so much. I don’t know where you went, but I know why, and I deserved it. I deserve whatever it is you say next.”
He swallowed thickly, straightening his shoulders for the blows that would come. Ready to accept whatever she had to say—ready, if she said the word, to walk away from everything he cared about.
But she loved him. She’d never ask him to do that.
“When I left Seattle behind, when I parted ways from my family, it was to become a better version of myself. The reason I’m not leaving Spright Island isn’t because of my yoga studio, or my apartment, or even this amazing community. I’m staying because of who I am when I’m here. I’m better. More caring. More giving. And that has a lot to do with you, Tate Duncan. You’re more than this community. You’re more than a legacy for generations to come. You’re the man I love more than anything.” A tear tumbled from her eye. “I’m better when I’m with you.”
Before she finished speaking, Tate was crushing her against him.
“Thank God,” he said into her hair, before lifting her face and seeking her lips with his. One kiss, perfect and sweet, and then he looked down at her with sheer awe.
“You, Hayden, are my legacy. Not this community. I’ll never let work, or exes, or family come between us again. Whatever comes up we’ll handle it. Together. Forever.”
“I like the sound of forever.” She wrapped her fingers around his and stood on her tiptoes. “But first, you have to make up for the last few days.”
He smiled against her lips. “Name your price.”
“Well, there was this strip show I saw...shirtless guys covered in oil...” She ran her hands over his button-down shirt. “How do you look in a g-string?”
He laughed, but frowned when he saw that she was serious. “Really?”
“Maybe. But I definitely will need you to call Sherry and tell her you’re not selling your house in the woods.”
“Done.”
She brushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead. “I see no harm in keeping the house in San Francisco, though. We have to stay somewhere when we visit your parents in California.”
He scooped her up against him and kissed away her grin, his mouth exploring hers in a movie-worthy, happy-ever-after kiss before setting her on her feet.
“I love you, Hayden Green.”
“I love you, too, Tate Duncan.” She tapped her chin. “Or is it Wesley Singleton?”
“Something else for you to decide.”
“Me? Why me?”
“I’d like to give you one of those last names soon, along with a wedding ring. And a coveted house in the woods on an island.”
Her head spun with possibility, with a future she hadn’t dared imagine before this moment.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think...that fairy tales do come true.”
“Except in this case, you’re the one who saved me.” Tate gestured to the sidewalk outside her studio. “You pulled me out of the rain, and then you kissed me. And I was never the same.”
“Me neither.”
“Well, then maybe we saved each other.”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Maybe we did.”
Epilogue
Three years later
The Duncan-Green wedding had happened last summer. The Commons were transformed for the lavish ceremony, decorated in, lavender and cream.
Hayden’s family—the Greens—had attended, on their best behavior without Grandma Winnie in tow. She’d passed away eight months ago now, her suffering meeting its end. Quite a bit of Hayden’s and her mother’s had died along with Winnie. Both of Tate’s families had shown as well—the Duncans and the Singletons—and as a result the Singletons hadn’t returned to Spright Island that winter for Christmas.
This year, they had. Christmas dinner had been served in their home—Hayden and Tate’s mansion in the woods. They’d proudly stepped Marion and William through the tradition of Christmas crackers, and Jane and George had gotten their first taste of American holiday cuisine.
Reid and Drew had come to celebrate with them as well and were currently sitting on the floor with their two-year-old son, Roland. Drew cooed over her baby boy, who was tearing apart a box—a box that had previously contained an outfit that Roland was ignoring.
Aunt Hayden understood his lack of excitement.
Tate came into the room with a tray of mugs as Jane followed with their family’s specialty: bread pudding. Hayden had thought she was too stuffed for another bite, but now that she saw the rich dessert she knew she wouldn’t be able to deny herself a taste.
“We have one more gift,” Tate said after everyone had settled into the sofas and chairs with their desserts.
“A surprise actually,” Hayden said, pulling one last paper-wrapped Christmas cracker from its hiding place on the tree.
“Another cracker?” Jane asked.
“A very special cracker.” Tate took the wrapped gift from Hayden and handed it to Jane, then gestured to his Marion. “Mom, why don’t you take the other end and give it a tug.”
“Okay, but I’m not reading another silly joke.” Marion warned. Her Christmas cracker contained a dirty joke about Rudolph and his “sleigh balls.” Hayden wasn’t sure how it got there, but she thought Reid might have had something to do with it.
“I promise there is no joke.” Hayden tucked her palms around her protruding belly, excited for the grandparents to learn what she and Tate now knew.
The pair of moms tugged and the cracker popped, spraying out paper confetti and a rolled photo. Jane reached for it first, gasping as she studied the blurry black-and-white ultrasound.
“You know the sex!” Jane exclaimed, squinting at the blurs and bumps on the photo.
“Let me see!” Marion sat close to Jane and leaned in also.
It took only a few seconds for Jane to recognize what had so obviously been there all along.
“Twins!” Jane exclaimed.
William and George shook hands and then claimed it was time for celebrating with cigars. Drew left Roland in Reid’s arms to see the photo for herself.
“Twins?” Reid frowned at his own son and then to Tate. “Show-off.”
Soon after, the bread pudding and coffee were gone. The men went to light cigars in celebration of twin baby boys coming soon to a wellness community near them.
Before Tate went outside with his brother and fathers he made sure to stop and place a kiss on Hayden’s lips.
“Merry Christmas, Tate.”
“Merry Christmas, Hayden.” He bent to press his lips to her tummy then stood and gave her a wink. “And family.”
* * *
If you loved Tate’s story, don’t miss the other men of the Bachelor Pact,
a series from Jessica Lemmon!
Best Friends, Secret Lovers
Temporary to Tempted
One Night, White Lies
Keep reading for an excerpt from Ready for the Rancher by Zuri Day.
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Christmas Seduction Page 16