“Tyler…Mr. Scott…”
“Tyler.”
“Tyler, please … I don’t want you to do this.”
“Yes you do.”
Yes, she did. His mouth nibbled kisses along her collarbone. She felt her will dissolving as surely as her muscles seemed to be, and she put her arms around his neck for support. She gave in to a whim that had plagued her since she first saw him, and she touched the dark hair that curled against his collar and the wings of silver at his temples.
She never quite remembered when he lowered the thin strap of her dress, but she never forgot the moment his fingers began stroking the fevered skin of her chest. “I knew you’d feel like this. Warm satin. If fantasies were real, I would have already loved you a hundred times, Hailey. Loved you in every way a man can love a woman, and invented new ways.”
The love words he whispered were outrageous when she applied them to herself. Nevertheless, they were transporting. What if they were only what every woman wanted to hear? What if he had learned them from long and frequent use? What if they would be forgotten and meaningless by tomorrow? For now they were a little bit crazy and very, very thrilling to hear. Were these words for her? For Hailey Ashton, known only to men as a pleasant companion, a competent co-worker, but never as a lover?
His lips deserted the hollow of her shoulder to come back to her mouth. Their mouths and noses nuzzled in sweet restraint until simultaneously they ceased to play and kissed each other hungrily.
His hands drew hers from around his neck and lowered them to his waist. Without modesty, she wrapped her arms around him, wanting to feel the muscles she knew now only as rippling curves under his shirt. Her fingers marveled at the hard compactness of his body. The rain that had moistened his face had released the scent of his cologne, and the fragrance, combined with his own essence, intoxicated her.
“Hailey?”
“Hm?”
He lifted one of her hands again. Turning his head, he pressed his lips into her soft palm. “Tyler,” she gasped softly when she felt the wet heat of his tongue against the tender flesh.
“Hailey, let’s touch each other.” She wasn’t thinking quickly enough to grasp his meaning before he slipped her hand between the buttons of his shirt and pressed it against his warm, hair-matted skin. The feel of him against her fingertips momentarily robbed her of consciousness. She didn’t realize he had unbuttoned the first button on her already low bodice, and was skimming his fingers across the fullness of her breasts, until it was too late to resist.
The protest she had formed in her mind changed character before it left her throat and became nothing more than sighing acquiescence by the time it escaped her lips. His hands responded. The straps already lying on her arms were lowered another degree and the fabric so tenuously protecting her fell away under his questing fingers.
She was enclosed in the warm security of his hands. She filled them generously, but not heavily. He appreciated the firm ripeness before allowing his thumbs to test the delicate tips for their response. He wasn’t disappointed. They pouted beneath his inquisitive touch.
“Oh, no.” Hailey, swamped by a mounting desire she had never known could exist outside the world of fantasy, slumped against him and buried her face between his shoulder and chest.
“Hailey, sweet, look at me.”
“No.” She rolled her head against him in denial, because if she looked at him, she’d be lost. And with that one gesture, she knew she was admitting defeat. He
could
—he
had
—seduced her.
“Look at me. Please.”
She raised her eyes, filled with tears of an emotion she couldn’t name, and looked at him.
“Never tell me you aren’t beautiful. Do you hear me?”
She could only nod dumbly, because he was still touching her with more intimacy than any other human being ever had.
“Kiss me,” he said.
With no hesitation, she lifted her mouth to his descending lips. With erotic symbolism, his tongue rubbed against hers as each of his fingers, in turn, touched her nipples.
“Oh, God,” he grated, falling away from her. His breath was harsh and uneven. He stared at the decking beneath his feet for a long time before he looked up at her ruefully. With the gentleness one would use on a child, he raised the straps of her dress and rebuttoned the button he had undone.
“If I don’t leave you now, I won’t be able to keep my promise and go slowly.” His hands came up once more to cup her face. “But God, you’re delicious.”
He kissed her with excruciating tenderness, slipping his tongue into her mouth only far enough to touch the tip of hers. “Good night, my love,” he said. Then he was gone, disappearing into the rain.
Hailey let herself in and prepared for bed in a state of euphoria. He didn’t intend to use her. He liked her for herself, not for what she could do for him, sexually or any other way. Had he only intended to use her, he wouldn’t have left her tonight.
He had promised to seduce her, but it would be a seduction by design, exercising finesse and tenderness, perhaps even … love? Love? She shivered with expectation at the thought. He had called her his love, but had the endearment meant anything? She knew from a lifetime of painful experience that people often paid lip service to love as a means of manipulation.
Tyler, the Tyler who had kissed her with such passionate care, wouldn’t be that cruel.
G
uest Relations. Miss Ashton speaking,” Hailey said into the telephone.
She had been at the park only half an hour, but her desk was already piled with mail and messages. There was a steady stream of guests entering the park turnstiles, though she had noticed earlier that the demographics of the crowd had changed in the past couple of weeks. Since school had started in most communities, the people who were visiting the park these days made an older, more sedate crowd.
“Good morning, Miss Ashton. Guess who this is.”
She didn’t have to guess. That voice had filled her dreams the entire restful night. Had she ever slept so well? She had awakened this morning still rosily aglow with remembrances of the past evening.
“Is this the man on the radio who gives away the prize money?”
“Nope.”
“Darn. I don’t have any luck. Are you the man who is always calling me to ask if he can clean my upholstery, drapes, and carpets for one low price?”
“Wrong again.”
“I know you’re not my breather, he—”
“What breather?” The voice on the other end dropped its humor and became demandingly gruff.
Hailey laughed. “I was only seeing if you were paying attention.”
“Good morning,” he repeated. His tone changed again. This time to a private pitch. He might well have been speaking to her across a pillow.
“Good morning,” she whispered back.
He cleared his throat “Things at the park okay? I talked to Harmon earlier and he seemed to think so.”
“Yes. Or as okay as things can be two weeks before closing. A few guests are complaining that some of the concession stands are closed. I’ve explained that many of our employees are students and that, come September, they go back to school, making it necessary for us to close some of the park’s attractions. They grumble, but they have to have something to complain about.”
“You handle it all with aplomb.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Will you miss me while I’m gone?”
Her heart plummeted and she gripped the receiver with a hand grown suddenly lifeless. “Gone?” she asked thinly.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve got to go to Atlanta for a few days. I’m on the run now, but I wanted to call you before I left. I have a plane to catch in Knoxville, and if I don’t hurry, I’m not going to make it.”
“I see.” She felt like she had been dashed with cold water and then wrung out. Her spirit was deflating with each passing second.
You should have known, Hailey…
“I’m leaving Faith here in the care of a lady the management of the Glenstone found for me. I think they’ll get along fine, but the lady doesn’t drive, and I wondered if you’d mind Faith’s company on any outing you might be taking. I’d consider it a big favor.”
Time seemed to stand still, as did her heart. She stared at the calendar on her desk until the demarcating lines between the days of the week bled together and her vision doubled.
“Hailey? Are you still there?”
“Yes.” She spoke with amazing calm. Cool, dependable, competent Hailey. Nothing shook her. She could be counted on in any situation. “Yes, I’m still here.”
Taking that as compliance with his request, he rushed on. “Thanks, Hailey. I didn’t think you’d mind. The two of you get on so well. You’re good for her.”
Every word struck like a knife stabbing into her soul. She wanted to get on well with
Tyler.
She wanted to be good for
him.
He hadn’t asked her how she had slept. He hadn’t told her how difficult it had been for him to leave her last night. He had inquired about Serendipity and now he was asking her to be a glorified baby-sitter for his daughter. Damn the man!
“I might be busy, but I’ll see what I can do. Is there anything else?” she asked with businesslike abruptness. “I’d hate for you to miss your plane, and I’m extremely busy myself.”
“Hailey.” She recognized the drugging quality in his voice now. It had obliterated her good sense on two occasions, but now she saw it for the sham that it was.
“I have another call, Mr. Scott. Good-bye.” She slammed the receiver back onto the phone and then shouted at it, “And I hope you rot in hell.”
The walls began closing in around her. If she didn’t get out of that room, she would smother. She strode through the outer office. “I’m going to check something out, Charlene. Take my calls.”
Then she was weaving her way through the park’s landscaped walkways, not caring where she was going, knowing only that she must keep moving.
How could she have been so stupid not to have seen it? It had been there all the time, but she wasn’t looking in that direction. When he first tried to woo her, she had thought he was availing himself of a willing playmate for the office. She should have known better than that. Someone with Tyler Scott’s sterling reputation in the professional world hadn’t gotten it by dallying with secretaries or associates.
What he
had
been looking for was a stand-in nanny for a daughter he was too busy and too selfish to care for himself. At her first sign of capitulation to his seduction scheme, he had taken a tentative step toward anchoring her in that position.
“Excuse me,” Hailey mumbled as she swiftly passed a couple who were poring over a map of the park.
“Say, lady, you work here, don’tcha? Can you tell us where the Haunted Plantation House is? It’s not on the map.”
Of course it’s on the map, you idiot!
she wanted to scream. Instead, she answered with the patience and kindness of a nun. “Yes, sir. Here it is.” She pointed to the plainly marked attraction on the colorful, easily read map. “Go past the puppet theater and you can’t miss it.”
“Okay,” he said and ambled off with his wife in tow.
“You’re welcome,” Hailey muttered under her breath in exmasperation. The rudeness of some people never ceased to amaze her. Which brought her immediately back to dark thoughts about the character of Tyler Scott.
Had he come to her like a decent human being, told her how much his daughter had taken to her, explained the girl’s difficulties in adjusting emotionally to her mother’s death, she would have sympathized. More than likely she would have
offered
to see Faith frequently. After all, she had very little that occupied her free time, and she enjoyed Faith.
But he hadn’t made that approach.
He had appealed to her feminine vanity, to the instinctive need in every woman to feel attractive and … loved. He had plied her with compliments she should have seen through immediately. She had never been beautiful. Why had she been so eager to believe him when Tyler had told her she was? If her body was the sort that drove men wild with desire, wouldn’t she have known about it before now? What a fool she had been.
The morning air was still crisp and cool, yet her cheeks burned as she recalled how she had shamelessly responded to his caresses, his honeyed words, his kisses. How he must have secretly gloated over his rapid conquest. He hadn’t left her last night out of respect, as she had wanted to believe. He had left because he already had her malleable—like clay in his hands—ready to do his bidding, grant his favors.
To hell with your favors, Mr. Scott.
Since she had not paid attention to where she was going, her feet came to an abrupt standstill when she looked up and saw the Sidewinder. It was here, almost on this exact spot, that she had first met those gray eyes. They could compel her to behave in so uncharacteristic a way that she didn’t even know herself anymore.
She imagined him the way she had first seen him, and she knew in that instant that the emotion rioting inside her was only half anger. The rest was bitter despair. She had grown to like him. Was dangerously close, she feared, to loving him.
Why, Tyler?
she asked the vision in her mind’s eye.
Why couldn’t you like me for myself? Why is it you only wanted to use me?
Defeat and dejection rode heavily on her shoulders as she turned and walked back to her office. She didn’t see that the trees were becoming tinted with the russets and golds of fall. She didn’t realize how the autumn colors around her emphasized her own coloring.
Women turned envious eyes on her tall slender figure, her burnished hair, her green eyes, made luminous now by unshed tears. But Hailey didn’t see their covert glances. Nor did she see how men turned to appreciate her proud carriage, the natural, unaffected sway of her hips, her well-shaped legs, her high breasts. She was blind to their approving looks and always had been. In her mirror she still saw herself as she had been in her youth—awkward, plain, undesirable.
She wasn’t the only victim of Tyler’s desertion. Faith called her that afternoon. “Daddy said I could call you if I had a problem, but he told me not to bother you too much. Am I bothering you?”