Getting Over It: Sapphire Falls Book Six (23 page)

He was the first to see Hailey. He was sitting facing the crowd and she came up behind them and started weaving between the bales of people, smiling and greeting them as she went.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Or rather, her outfit. And how she looked in it.

He hadn’t seen Hailey Conner in cut-off jeans since high school, and the sight back then had almost stopped his heart. Now, a woman not a girl, who had grown into her long legs and had curves everywhere she was supposed to, approached him. And his heart did stop for a moment. He was sure of it.

He knew this woman intimately. He knew what that denim and that fitted sleeveless shirt covered. He knew how it all looked, felt and tasted. And he knew the sounds she made when he looked, felt and tasted it.

Ty shifted on the hay bale, itching with the desire to surge out of his seat, sweep her up into his arms and head right back out of there.

But he wouldn’t. Because whatever she was doing was important. Hailey wouldn’t show up at a town meeting, something TJ claimed she hated, in cut-off jeans unless there was a good reason.

Finally, she made it to the front and her eyes met his. She faltered in her sure steps for a split second—her sure steps in cowboy boots no less, which also made him hard—then she gave him a smile and took her seat.

TJ thought Ty was trying to make Hailey into something she wasn’t, pushing her to be what
he
wanted instead of seeing who she was. His mother thought there was more to Hailey too, deeper, softer stuff that she didn’t want anyone to see.

He’d started all of this to show Hailey that she could be number one, then he’d kept with it so she could see the woman he saw. But right now, right here, with everyone in the damned town watching,
he
wanted to know her. Not to prove that he already did. But because he realized that he didn’t.

Lauren took the mic from the stand in front of the coffee table and greeted the crowd.

“Good evening, everyone, thanks for coming. As you know, we have two very interesting candidates who are vying for the position of mayor. We, Mayor Conner’s team, invited Ty and his team here tonight so that you could all get to know them both better. Tonight isn’t about what they will do about the highway expansion or what they think about the gas tax. Tonight is about them, as people and citizens of Sapphire Falls. Ask them anything—within reason, of course.” She paused for the expected laughter to fade. “And let’s make it fun.”

“I have a question.” Phoebe Sherwood bounced out of her seat and took the mic from Lauren. “Hailey, since you’ve been mayor you’ve organized a number of festivals, fundraisers and charity events and, of course, headed the efforts to build Sapphire Hills. What are you most proud of?”

Ty rolled his eyes. He was certain Lauren had come up with a number of questions ahead of time and had planted them with various people. And it was probably a great idea. One that his team hadn’t thought of. But the question annoyed him. Everyone knew Hailey was amazing at her job. While pointing that out over and over again was absolutely her campaign manager’s first priority, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He wanted to get to know
her.

He waited politely for Hailey to explain why it was hard to choose what she was most proud of when Sapphire Hills helped the local economy so much but the pet adoption and spay-and-neuter program was important in its own right.

No, this was not how the evening was going to go.

“I have a question,” he said, pushing off the hay-bale couch and reaching for the microphone when Phoebe tried to hand it off to Delaney.

Phoebe brought it to him, eyes wide. She glanced at Lauren, who was frowning at Ty.

Ty didn’t care.

“I have a question for Hailey,” he said, turning to face her. “What is your best childhood memory of Sapphire Falls?”

She was clearly stunned. She glanced at the crowd, all of whom were watching her intently. Then she looked at Lauren, who shrugged. Finally, she focused back on Ty.

He gave her an encouraging smile. He wanted her to trust him here. To go with the questions and be honest and be herself.

“Summertime,” she finally said. “Everything about it. Spending the days at the pool and then riding my bike around town with my friends. Buying popsicles at the Stop. Catching lightning bugs after dark. The movies they’d show on the side of city hall. The annual festival and going on the rides and watching the fireworks.” She was quiet for a moment and then added, “I think it’s those memories that make me want to work to keep this town as wonderful for everyone as it always has been for me.”

Someone in the audience coughed, and Hailey shook her head, almost as if she’d gotten caught up and forgotten the nearly hundred people listening in.

She smiled, clearly a little embarrassed. “Everything about summertime.”

Ty had to clear his throat before he said, “I have another question.”

Lauren had been on her way over to him, but she stopped after only a few steps. She looked at Hailey.

But Hailey was looking at Ty. “Okay,” she said.

“Everyone knows you love your job. But what do you like
best
about being mayor? And you can only pick one thing,” he added.

She smiled. “That’s easy. Seeing people move back after leaving home for a while, or when new people come to visit and end up staying. I love knowing that people want to be
here
over everywhere else they could be.”

Ty felt like her answer was just for him. It wasn’t, of course. There were a number of people who had left and come home, like Mason, and there were even more who had come to town for some other reason but ended up staying—Lauren, Adrianne, Joe, Levi, Kate, Hope and Delaney were only a few.

But the way Hailey was looking right at him as she answered made him think that maybe she was especially happy he was in that group after all.

“So you plan to spend your life here?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“And you hope to have a family? Get married? Raise your kids here?” With each question, Ty felt his chest getting tighter and tighter.

He wanted those things. He wanted to get married and have kids right here in Sapphire Falls. He wanted his kids to have what he’d had growing up—the sense of community, the safety of the small town, the joy of having family all around. He’d love to see his kids playing in the park where he’d played and running through the fields with his brothers’ kids. He’d love to gather at his mom’s place for birthdays and holiday celebrations. He felt it to his bones.

She swallowed hard before answering. But she gave a nod. “I think about that all the time,” she finally said. “A part of me would love that. Sapphire Falls is made for families. But…”

She trailed off and Ty took a step toward her without meaning to. “But?”

“I’m hard to live with,” she said with a light laugh.

But he could see there was some true regret in her eyes.

“I don’t know if I’d be a good mom or wife,” she said truthfully. “So I’ve focused on making this town good for all of the other families.”

She glanced away from him, her gaze landing on the crowd gathered—the very quiet and attentive crowd—and blushed a deep red.

“My favorite childhood memory is summer too,” Ty said, pulling the audience’s attention back to himself and off her sudden discomfort. “Summer at the pool meant girls in swimming suits.”

Everyone laughed, and Ty felt a wave of relief that he’d been able to divert the attention and lighten the tone. He hadn’t meant to make Hailey uncomfortable. He supposed he hadn’t expected her to be so honest about not believing she’d be good at being married or parenting.

“Oh, Ty,” Hailey said. “You shouldn’t joke about that. You were at the pool to train. I remember you being ticked off when the kids would get into the lap lane and mess up your stroke. And you were out biking and running all the time. When did you start that? You were young.”

He blinked at her. Turning the questioning back on him? Positively?

Okay
.

“I’ve loved to run, bike and swim as long as I can remember. My brothers were responsible for my competitive streak.” He glanced at the three men who had pushed him since he was born. “Since I was the youngest, it was about keeping up with them. And they didn’t make it easy.” Travis, Tucker and TJ all grinned at that and Ty affectionately rolled his eyes. None of
them
had an Olympic medal.

“And how did that all turn into triathlons?” Hailey asked.

She knew this story. She’d asked him before.

“When I was fourteen, triathlon was a part of the Olympics for the first time and I remember watching it with my dad.”

Thomas Bennett was in the front row next to Kathy and he smiled and nodded at the memory.

“You have a wonderful family,” she said.

No one else probably heard anything but a sincere compliment, but Ty saw the wistfulness in her eyes and heard the longing. He’d thought he knew about her family and how she’d grown up, but his mother had turned that all around the other morning.

“Tell me about your family,” he said before he could think better of it.

He didn’t want to make this embarrassing or painful, but there were things about Hailey that people needed to understand. Family made a person who they were in so many ways. And he would suspect that if Kathy Bennett knew some of the truth, others did too.

Hailey looked at him for a long moment and Ty held his breath. He gave her a single nod.

Then her chin lifted, and he breathed.

“My dad has always been very caught up in his work. Being a politician means a lot to him,” she said. Her eyes stayed on Ty, as if they were having a conversation just between the two of them.

And Ty wished they were. Or that they had. They’d talked, of course, but thinking back on their time together over the past few years, it seemed their conversations had stayed in the present tense. They hadn’t talked about the past much and rarely mentioned the future beyond the few weeks directly in front of them. He wished he’d asked her these questions, and many more, before this.

“He’s a workaholic, but not in the negative way a lot of people say that,” Hailey went on. “He truly loves being a public servant, and there isn’t anything more important to him.” She took a deep breath. “I had a wonderful role model for true dedication to an elected office and public service. He said that it’s the epitome of trust for people to put you in charge of things.”

It seemed that the audience agreed with her assessment of her father. Ty didn’t know Stan well at all, but his impression was that he was an honest, hardworking man, and Ty knew his own father had voted for Stan for state Senate. That was all the stamp of approval Ty really needed.

“What about your mom?” Ty pressed.

Hailey took a deep breath. “My mother was a waitress at my dad’s favorite café before he moved back to Sapphire Falls. They had a brief affair, she got pregnant and then was killed in a car accident when I was two months old.”

There was a collective gasp. So Ty wasn’t the only one who hadn’t known all of that.

“Angela was my stepmother. She doesn’t like me very much,” Hailey said with a wobbly smile. “And she loved to point out the things I did wrong. My flaws.”

“You don’t have any flaws, Madam Mayor,” Ty said, his voice gruffer. She was opening up and he knew what that took from her. God, he was proud of her.

She laughed and the strain in her eyes eased a little. “Of course, I do. We all do.”

She took another deep breath and lifted her chin in that way that never failed to make Ty confident that she was determined about something.

“I was easily distracted. I was always losing things, forgetting things, running late. And Angela loved to point my mistakes out to my dad. She told me I was an airhead, ditzy, a dreamer, unorganized, impossible—lots of different variations of that. She would say things like I was a true blond. Just like my mom. And what did he expect from the daughter of a waitress? A rocket scientist?”

Hailey stopped and looked around the crowd. “And she wasn’t wrong about me,” she said. “I
was
unorganized. I
did
have a hard time focusing and keeping track of things. I still do. And it causes a lot of anxiety in my life. I’m obsessive about things now—I triple-check things and write things down in three places and I sometimes redo things two or three times until they’re perfect. I sometimes have to get up and go to the office in the middle of the night because something will occur to me and I can’t sleep until I take care of it. I’m completely addicted to sticky notes, I have three different planners, and I have to read very slowly and methodically to absorb and understand what I’m reading.”

Ty frowned. He hadn’t meant for her to spill her guts entirely. He didn’t consider her an airhead or unorganized at all. What was she doing?

“And,” Hailey went on, “it wasn’t until I was in college and really struggling to keep up that I learned that I
wasn’t
dumb or slow or ditzy, and it had nothing to do with my blond hair. They diagnosed me with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactive disorder.”

She paused to let the murmur go through the crowd and Ty crossed to his hay bale to sit. He hadn’t known
any
of this. She’d hid it well. Which made sense, he supposed. She hid a lot of things well.