by Avery Flynn
Yeah, a few minutes ago, he’d been a big enough fool to think that she was. What a fucking moron he’d been.
…
Something was very off. Will had been all smiles and soft touches inside the barn, but as soon as they walked out in the hot summer sunshine, his jaw had squared with tension and he’d let go of her hand. They marched in silence down the path to the cabin as the breeze that was always blowing across the prairies and twirling her hair around her face, smacked it against her cheeks and got strands of it stuck in her lip gloss.
“Is everything okay?” she asked as she tugged the strand away and tucked it behind her ear.
He held open the cabin door. “Let’s talk about it inside.”
The bed was still a mess of tangled sheets, and her bra from last night was still on the floor where it had fallen last night. The vibe inside now, though, was completely different. Edgy. Cold. Harsh. Rubbing her palms up and down her arms, she went through every possible scenario for what could have happened. The worst-possible scenario landed like a punch to the gut.
Whirling around to face him, fist pressed to her belly, she asked, “Did something happen with Web?”
Will’s left eye twitched, but that was all the reaction he had. “Web’s fine. When were you going to tell me about your business?”
The words were innocuous, but that didn’t stop the icy dread slithering through her veins. Something was wrong, really wrong. She stood there in the middle of the cabin with the man she’d fallen in love with, and it was all she could do not to cry and she didn’t even know why.
“Come on, Hadley, don’t hold out on me now.” Each word came out hard and cold, completely erasing the Will she thought she knew. “The gig is up—we both know you’ve been working on this little plan of yours for months.”
She had no idea what was going on. How he’d found out about the loan from her parents or why he was so mad about it. “Will—”
“And last night, that was for insurance obviously.” His lips curled upward, but it wasn’t any kind of thing that could be called a smile. “A nice touch. I mean, some people might say it was a step too far, but the Holt fortune is pretty big.”
Getting trampled by the bull in the north pasture couldn’t have hurt more than that accusation thrown out so casually that the cruelty was doubled. It sent her two steps back and reaching out for the wall to keep her balance.
“That is bullshit,” she finally got out, her voice hoarse.
Will let loose with a harsh chuckle. “Come on, you said it yourself: it was time to stop pretending.”
What. A. Bastard. Heat rushed up from somewhere deep inside her, a reservoir of fury she didn’t realize she possessed. “That’s what you think I was talking about? My nonexistent gold-digging scheme that you’re obsessed with?”
“Vigilant, not obsessed,” he snapped back. “Really, I think you should be proud of yourself, of just how you were almost able to pull it off.”
“The level of assholery here is epic.” Not to mention the case of emotional whiplash she had now—it had been what, a few hours since he signed his note with Xs and Os? Wow. He must have really meant everything he said.
“I agree.” He stalked forward, not getting anywhere near her but still moving around the room like a caged animal. “You really should have picked a brother and stuck with it.”
“You need to get your head out of your ass and stop assuming that everyone out there is just waiting to fuck you over. Grow up and learn that not everyone in the world is waiting to fuck you over, but with your shit attitude you sure do make it tempting.”
“I’m sure you’d like me to think that this was just my imagination.”
“Seriously, what is wrong with you?” She clamped her jaw shut so tight, her molars would have winced if they could to keep the angry tears building up from falling down her cheeks. For someone who’d spent most of her life faking that everything was perfect, she sure had been fucked over by someone who put her skills to shame. Fuck her, she’d believed him. She’d believed in them. She was an unrivaled moron. “I thought I’d been wrong about you, that I could just be me, that’s what I meant about not pretending. I thought we had something real.”
He scoffed. “The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves, darling. Then again, I bet that just makes you a more convincing gold digger.”
“Get out.”
“What, you don’t want to try to convince me of your down-home country truthfulness?” he asked, smirking as if this was all just a game.
Each word was salt getting ground into all the jagged wounds in her heart and at some point in time, a woman had to know when she’d reached her limit. Fuck this. She may not be perfect, but she was a better woman than he deserved.
“I’m done wasting my time with you.” She tossed him the keys to the rental. “Just go. Follow the gravel road to the highway and then your phone GPS will start working well enough to get you back to the airport.”
He paused inside the open door, keys in hand and a smug look on his handsome face. “What? No goodbye kiss for the road?”
“You really are the worst, Will Holt,” she said, truly meaning every single word of it for the very first time ever.
The bastard just took off his black cowboy hat and sent it sailing onto the bed. It landed with a soft thump in the middle of all the twisted-up sheets, a final fuck-you to what she’d been foolish enough to think meant something. Then he walked out the door and drove off in the rental.
Hadley kept it together until the dust cloud kicked up by the car’s tires disappeared. Then, with a silent cry, she let the tears flow.
Chapter Nineteen
Still seething and his gut a block of ice, Will boarded the plane back to Harbor City. The entire drive back to the airport, he’d spent mentally reviewing every single second of the trip, looking for what he’d missed, that telltale sign of Hadley’s true plan. Like some kind of masochistic fool, though, instead of finding the answers he wanted, he kept remembering the softness of her hair, the way she smiled when she didn’t think anyone was looking, and her absolutely hilariously awful drawing attempts during Pictionary.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket before sitting down in seat 3A and called the number he’d found a million reasons to avoid until he couldn’t anymore. Web picked up on the second ring, his hello too happy for what was about to come next, but Will didn’t have a choice.
“Cancel the check to Hadley,” he said without returning his brother’s greeting.
“What check?”
Will’s grip on his phone tightened. Sometimes his brother’s literal-mindedness was enough to send him over the edge, and he didn’t need any help today. “Fine, don’t make the money transfer.”
“Did you get kicked in the head by a horse? Because you are not making sense.”
Of course his brother would think that. He was the fun Holt twin, the funny one, the nice one. It had been that way since they were kids. Why? Because Will cleaned up the ugly so Web didn’t have to see it. This time the only way to make that happen was to pull back the curtain.
“Dammit, Web,” Will said, his frustration peaking and making his voice louder than he meant in the plane’s crowded interior, gaining him some curious looks from the other passengers. Letting out a deep breath, Will lowered his volume. “She’s just in it for the money. Whatever she told you about loving you and whatever she promised, it was a lie. She’s a damn gold digger.”
“Hadley Donavan?” his brother said, disbelief and amusement still thick in his tone even if he wasn’t outright laughing. “One of my best friends, Hadley?”
Will gritted his teeth, willing himself not to yell again. “Yes.”
“One, she’s not a gold digger and two, I didn’t give her any money,” Web said.
“Thank God.” The tight pain in his chest remained, but some
of the agony twisting his gut relented a bit. “If it’s just a promise, she doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.”
“You know who you sound like right now?”
“The brother who just saved you from a gold digger?” The words left a foul taste in his mouth.
“Our grandmother.”
Of all the things Web could have said to him, nothing would have hit home as hard as that comparison. “Bullshit.”
Web scoffed. “You’re obsessed with two things right now: our family money and being right. That sure sounds like Grandma to me. Of course, you’re obsessed with Hadley, too.”
“I was watching out for you.” The roiling in his gut rushed back, worse than before, making his palms sweaty and his chest ache. It was as if his body were revolting, calling him out for being so far off the mark—but he wasn’t. “She’s good. She almost fooled me.”
“No, the asshole who fooled you was you,” Web said. “Hadley and I are friends, just friends. I’ve tried loaning Hadley money so she could leave that job where they treated her like shit and finally start her company. She turned me down every time. My guess is that if she has the money now, it’s because it came from her family. Did you even bother to ask her where it came from, or did you just make an assumption?”
The mental image of Hadley in the cabin flashed in his mind. The way her eyes had gone wide as she flinched back as if his words had struck her. He’d taken it as a sign of guilt, the shock of being caught. What if…
Ignoring the doubt creeping in like Lightning through an open window, Will refused to consider any alternative. “She would have told me.”
“Why? Did you give her the chance, or did you walk in assuming you were right?”
Before he could answer, the flight attendant’s voice came over the plane’s speakers. “We have closed the cabin door. All cell phones must be turned off or put in airplane mode.”
“I gotta go,” he said, glad for once to be flying commercial so he couldn’t continue to use his phone.
“We’ll finish this when you land.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. He knew the truth. He’d known it since the first time he’d seen Hadley; he’d just let himself get distracted. Will hung up and watched out the window as the plane taxied away from the gate.
He was right. Hadley was a gold digger—just like Mia. She was just subtler, so much so that if he hadn’t known what signs to watch out for, he would have missed them.
Or maybe you were just looking too hard.
Will shoved the errant thought out of his head. No. He was right. He was always right. Hadley was only after the money, no matter how well she’d hid it with denials and smiles and sweet sighs.
You know what assuming does, Mr. Right? It makes an ass out of you and me.
No. Not in this case. Not with Hadley. He’d— Oh, fuck it.
He dialed her number when the flight attendant stopped by his seat. “Sir, please put your phone away.”
“It’ll be quick.” He just needed to hear her voice one last time to quiet the doubts that were starting to scream in his ear.
The phone didn’t even ring a full time before going straight to voicemail. As Hadley’s voice told him to leave a message, he put the pieces together. She’d blocked him.
“Sir,” the flight attendant glared at him. “Do not make me ask the pilot to turn the plane around so law enforcement can have a chat with you.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled and put away his phone.
Well, that took care of that. He had to be right about Hadley’s motives. If he wasn’t, then he’d just ruined the best thing ever to have happened to him, and he was too smart to have ever done that.
…
Hadley’s first instinct once she’d woken up the next morning was to crawl under the bed and hide until she could come up with a decent cover story about why her eyes were puffy enough from crying to use as a pool float. That wasn’t happening, though, for two reasons. One, she was done lying to her family to keep up her perfect image. Two, and more importantly, it was Adalyn’s wedding day and she was due at the main house now to help her sister with her hair and makeup.
Every part of her ached, right down to the scar in the middle of her foot where she’d gotten six stitches when she was twelve, but still she rolled out of the bed that smelled like broken dreams and Will’s soap. What a total fool she’d been. After living the fake-it-until-she-made-it lifestyle for so long, she’d obviously lost her ability not to lie to herself. She’d wanted to believe Will actually cared, maybe was falling for her the way she’d already fallen for him.
Hads, you are an idiot.
But she didn’t feel like a fool. Everything ached too much for this to be about pride. Blowing her nose, stuffed from hours of teary misery, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and did her best to be bent but not broken. It was her sister’s wedding day. She could pull it together for Adalyn.
After a quick shower, she was back at the main house walking into the bedroom she and Adalyn had shared until Hadley had left for college. Her sister sat on the queen bed that had replaced their two twins on opposite walls. She was still in her PJs, hadn’t showered judging by her wicked bedhead, and was smiling from ear to ear while their mom and Aunt Louise stood there, jaws open and eyes wide with shock.
“What happened?” Hadley asked, hurrying in as all thoughts that didn’t center around Adalyn got shoved into a deep, dark hole. “Is it Derek? Do I need to grab one of Gabe’s shotguns and track his sorry ass down?”
Her sister giggled and shook her head. “Nope, I sent him on his way this morning. I woke up, realized that the life I wanted for me didn’t have him in it.”
Of all the things Hadley had been expecting to come from her sister’s mouth, that was pretty much the last. Looking over at her mom and aunt, she sent out the silent question of what the fuck? Both women just nodded.
Hadley plopped down onto the chair opposite Adalyn’s bed, her brain playing catch-up with what must have been a helluva night. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more positive about anything in my life.” Even though it didn’t seem possible, Adalyn’s smile got even bigger. “I realized somewhere in my second pint of panic ice cream last night that I love the person Derek could be. That’s just not fair to him or to me. Everyone deserves to be loved for who they are, not who they might be in the future.”
And to think she’d been acting as if Adalyn was still the eight-year-old who needed to be protected. “You just might be the smartest person I know.”
“It’s been an enlightening week.” Her sister grabbed a still-steaming mug of coffee. “So the plan is to go ahead with the reception—well, party now—so that the photographers can shoot it for the wedding venue brochure. It seems a real waste to have everyone home and with all our dresses and tuxes available and not turn this into a win for the business Knox and Weston want to launch.”
“What about you?” Aunt Louise asked.
“I’m twenty-six, newly single, and, according to my sister, the smartest person in the world—”
Hadley interrupted with a chuckle. “That wasn’t exactly what I said.”
“Close enough.” Adalyn grinned at her. “So the opportunities are endless. Who knows, maybe I can get a job as the chief financial officer for this up-and-coming charity consulting company I’ve heard about.”
“That would be amazing.” And Hadley meant every single word of it.
Adalyn hopped up from her bed at the same time that Hadley bounded up from the chair, and they met in the middle of the room and hugged in one of those mind-meld events that only sisters could have when you said about a million things without uttering a single word. By the time they broke it up, they were both happy crying and, looking around at their mom and Aunt Louise, they weren’t the only ones.
“The photographer
is going to be here in a couple of hours,” Adalyn said, wiping away a tear. “Go get dolled up in your bridesmaid dress. We have a party to kick off. Be sure to tell Will that we wear cowboy hats with tuxes around here.”
Every single champagne bubble of happiness filling her chest popped at once and Hadley flinched. Looking at the hopeful faces and smiles, she almost gave in to that little voice that told her to make up some excuse as to where Will was, to keep the perfect image intact. However, those days were gone.
Releasing a deep breath, she let the truth out. “Will’s gone.”
“Where did he go?” Aunt Louise asked.
“Back to Harbor City.”
“What happened?” her mom asked.
Bringing her family up to speed wasn’t fun, but it was so much better than feeding them a bunch of excuses. By the time she told them about tossing the rental car keys to Will and telling him to get lost, there was no doubt from the grim expression on the other women’s faces that they were most definitely in agreement that she did the right thing.
Of course, the only problem was that she still hurt as if there was a gaping hole in her chest where Will used to be. For the past year, he’d been a constant—driving her nuts, teasing her, turning her on, making her laugh, surprising her, and yes, showing her the man she’d finally fallen for so hard that she’d never even realized it was happening until it was too late.
“Well, I sure called that one wrong,” her mom said once the true story was all out in the open. Then she pulled Hadley into a hug. “I’m sorry. I thought he really cared about you.”
“Me too. I mean, not at first, but with everything that happened and—” Emotions clogged her throat, making it next to impossible to talk and the tears that in the past she would have held in to keep her family from seeing the real her fell free.
“So it’s an independence party tonight,” Adalyn said, joining in on the group hug.
Aunt Louise wrapped her arms around as much of the trio as possible. “Yee-fucking-haw.”