View Park, page 8
Next were the repairs, which would cost a couple thousand dollars. Richard had come through again. He worked tirelessly, even though he was pulling heavy hours at the hospital and somehow finding time to raise funds. There was still the furniture and the equipment, which would cost tens of thousands.
Using her mother’s connections, Leigh already had five grand in checks in hand and was promised another fifteen by the end of next week. With at least thirty more people to see, she really believed this was going to happen and that was enough to get her aching body up every day. Still, she hated lying to her parents, her mother especially, and knew it was just a matter of time before they found out what she was doing. She only hoped she would be far enough into this to give her the backbone to stick with it.
“You ready to go?”
Out of her daze, Leigh looked up at Richard unsure of how long he’d been standing there. She shrugged as he sat down on the floor across from her.
“Or do you want to talk?” he asked.
He had compassion in his eyes. They were tender and soft, contrasting with his rugged exterior. Leigh’s heart had been broken too many times by men not living up to the standards she refused to let go of. She didn’t think she had the heart or the time to try again so soon. Her life should be about the clinic, not a man. But those eyes.
“I want to talk,” she answered.
Haley was leaning on Sean as they quietly made their way to her bedroom. He had to hand it to her. She was the best actress he had ever seen and that was saying a lot living in L.A. Even though it was three in the morning when they got home, Steven and Janet were up waiting for them. Haley acted completely sober and so grateful that Steven offered Sean the guest room for the night. Sean was certain he’d said no, but he heard “yes, thank you.”
Everything Sean was made of told him to walk away, but he didn’t. He sat her on the edge of her bed and stood there, wishing she would tell him to get out. When she patted the space next to her without looking up, Sean sat down without even thinking twice.
“It’s dangerous.”
“What?” Haley flipped off her shoes.
“Staying out all night. Having too much to drink.”
“You didn’t drink anything.”
“Then why do I feel like I did?”
“You’re just tired.”
“Just as dangerous to be tired as drunk. Both are bad for the reflexes.”
Haley rolled her head around, giving her neck a good stretch and Sean forced himself to look away. He attempted to stand up, but Haley grabbed him by the arm. She should have been satisfied with her accomplishments tonight, but she wanted more. She always wanted more.
“Why do you hate me so much?” she asked.
He looked at her, wondering if this was another one of her games. “I don’t hate you.”
He was burdened by his attraction to her and Haley felt a hint of pity for him, but it passed quickly. “You certainly don’t like me.”
“Well, you haven’t exactly treated me with respect. I am a man, Haley.”
“Every man has to have his damn respect.”
“See,” he said. “Look at you now. Mocking me. It’s true.”
“So does every woman, but you don’t have any respect for me.”
“That’s not true.” He didn’t think so, at least.
“You think I’m a ho because of Jack.”
It was what he thought when he first met her and hadn’t seen anything to make him think differently now, but he did. “I just…I don’t understand why you’d want to embarrass your family like that.”
Haley laughed bitterly. “My family.”
“Mocking again, but it’s a very serious thing.”
Haley didn’t like the way this conversation was going. “You don’t know my family. My parents are Republicans for God’s sake.” She noticed him swallow and look away and she couldn’t hold back her laugh. “You’re a Republican?”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
“You wouldn’t get it. Your family is probably perfect.”
“My family has problems, too,” Sean said. “Everyone’s family does.”
“Well, then maybe it’s just you,” she teased. “You’re perfect.”
“I’m not perfect,” Sean said. “But I care about the people I love.”
“I care.” Haley hoped she sounded genuine. She didn’t give a damn, but this was working.
The tortured tone of her voice as it caught in her throat made him look at her. Her eyes made him lean toward her. The sound she made as her lips parted made him kiss her.
“So this is your style of protection?”
Sean leaped from the bed in one swoop, facing Janet standing in the bedroom doorway.
“Weren’t you going to sleep?” Haley asked.
“Shut up.” Janet didn’t even look at her daughter.
Sean couldn’t find words for his humiliation. “Mrs. Chase…I…I…”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said.
“It was nothing, Mother,” Haley said. “It was just for fun.”
Sean looked back at Haley, feeling a little stab by her nonchalant tone.
Janet’s small lips curled into a tiny smile as she saw Sean’s reaction. He didn’t know who he was dealing with. Haley probably had him thinking this was his idea.
Sean headed for the door, making sure to keep his distance from Janet who made no attempt to step aside for him. “I should have been…I’m gonna get going.”
“The only good idea I’ve heard you come up with yet,” Janet replied. “I’ve made up your room for you.”
Sean looked at her with wide eyes, wondering if she was serious or sarcastically telling him to get the hell out. The woman hated him and she was daring him.
“Thank you,” was all he answered. Maybe because he was tired or because he liked living dangerously.
Closing the door behind him, Sean leaned against it, trying hard to remember the last time he had been such an idiot.
“No luck, huh?” Jason positioned himself in the chair with a satisfied look on his face.
“Mind your own business.” Sean wondered if the background check he requested on this guy from the department was ready.
“Well, don’t worry. I’ll take it from here.”
Her mother’s insistent staring was about to drive Haley crazy. She was tired and wanted to go to bed, but she knew there was a lecture coming. “Just come out with it, Mom.”
“I’m just making sure you get in bed safely.”
“You’re staring me down.”
“Don’t worry about what I’m doing,” she said.
“Can you get over Jack Flay, please?”
Janet sat on the bed helping her pull her covers up. “No. I look at you loving you more than life and crying myself to sleep because I can’t believe my own daughter has become the type of woman I fear.”
“What?”
“I’m a married woman over forty, Haley. Women like you are all around and would love to drag my husband into their bed and away from me.”
“Mom, I’m not—”
“You’re not what?” she asked. “He was married and he had a family. I know he’s responsible for what he did, but you didn’t think twice before jumping into bed with him.”
“That’s not true.” It was true, but damn this was brutal.
“These are not our values, Haley.”
Haley pulled her sheets tighter. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Janet pulled the sheets back. “I’m not concerned with what you want to talk about.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“I raised you to be a person with dignity and pride.” Janet stood up. “You’re proving yourself to be anything but. You’re going to apologize to this family for what you’ve done.”
“Are you serious?”
Janet didn’t respond. The look on her face said enough.
“I can’t believe this!” Haley screamed. “I feel bad, okay! Isn’t that enough? I didn’t mean to hurt or embarrass anyone.”
“You should have thought of that before you slept with another woman’s husband.”
“Is that it?” Haley asked. “Or would you like me to scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush now?”
Janet made her way to the door. She hated hurting her children, but she loved her daughter too much to toss aside this type of behavior. “There is something else.”
“If it will make you get out, anything.”
“Spend some time with your sister. I want to know what she’s up to.”
“Why are you always trying to get me to spy on her for you?”
“Because she never talks to me.” She ignored Haley rolling her eyes. “And Haley, don’t get any ideas about that detective. I don’t like him.”
“Whatever.”
At first, Sean assumed the tossing and turning he was doing all night was guilt from kissing Haley or getting caught by Janet, but it clearly became something else as the night went on.
Jason.
Sean sat up, looking around the room to let his eyes adjust. Something wasn’t right. It was in his gut and he had to heed it. He flipped the covers off and sat on the edge of the bed. It was five in the morning. Remembering the smug look on Jason’s face as he said I’ll take it from here, Sean grabbed his gun out of the holster hanging on the bedpost.
Jason pulled out his gun with one hand and a silencer with the other. Screwing the silencer in, he hovered over Haley’s sleeping body. Haley didn’t hear his feet on the soft, carpeted floor. She couldn’t see his shadow draped over her. She smelled him. Cheap cologne was like poison because cheap cologne meant a cheap man.
She was disoriented as she opened her eyes. It was dark, but there was something looming over her. The second Haley opened her mouth to scream, Jason covered it with his hand, using the other to put the gun to her head. Haley was still unable to figure out what was going on or if it was really happening at all.
“You should have stayed asleep,” he whispered. “It would have been better for you.”
Just as his finger rounded the click, the bedroom door burst open and Sean rushed in; gun up and rearing to go with the light from the hallway illuminating him.
“Drop it, Jason!”
Haley tried to move away, but an increasingly anxious Jason grabbed her tight.
“Let me go!”
Jason’s voice was more a growl than a tone. “Doesn’t anybody ever sleep in this damn house?”
Sean’s gun was aimed right at Jason’s head. All or nothing. “Put the gun down, now!”
Jason pulled Haley closer to him. “I have a job to do.”
“Who hired you?” Sean asked. “We can help you.”
Voices heard down the hallway were enough of a temporary distraction for Jason to allow Haley to jerk away from him, flinging her body over the other side of her bed just out of Jason’s reach. Sean leaped for him and both men tumbled to the ground. Sean realized he was dealing with a man almost twice his size, but he was trained for this. One blow to the gut, a kick to the groin and another blow to the head and Jason was down.
Haley was peeking over the bed. “Kill him, Sean!”
Sean ignored her as he kicked Jason’s gun away.
Rushing into the room, Steven saw the scene before him and was consumed with a murderous rage. He was only able to get one kick to Jason’s side before Sean grabbed him and pushed him back.
“Just call the police!” Sean yelled.
“Leave me alone with him, Sean.”
“I can’t do that.” Sean stood between Steven and a moaning Jason.
Looking down at the man, Steven contemplated many things. He was a powerful man and this asshole had tried to kill his baby. His demons urged him, but thoughts of his family pulled him back and he reached for the phone.
Sean slammed his foot into Jason’s back as he tried to stand up. Flat on the ground, Jason protested and pleaded but Sean had no mercy.
“Unless you’re telling me who made you do this, shut the fuck up.”
“She’s dead one way or another,” he winced.
Sean looked up at Haley who was standing on the other side of the bed taking it all in. She fell down on her hands and knees and threw up.
CHAPTER 5
Carter’s otherwise calm Saturday morning was shattered by his mother’s phone call about Haley. Here he was, trying to avoid Lisette while obsessing over Avery and how to get back in the game. Avery wasn’t supposed to matter anymore, but another call from Michael just as he was about to leave his condo let Carter know that Haley was just the beginning of a very, very bad day.
“You read the early edition Sunday Times?” Michael asked. “Front cover of the business section.”
“Michael, I don’t think this is the time to…”
“Just read it and get over here. Dad is gonna kill us both.” As usual, Michael hung up without saying good-bye.
Opening his front door, Carter reached down, picked up his copy of the paper and discarded the front section. “Chase Beauty’s Dirty Tactics To Take Over Local Businesses.”
Carter groaned. “Avery!”
As soon as Carter entered his father’s office at the mansion, Steven lit into him and he had no defense. Avery had gathered some of the salon owners and together they laid out a number of complaints regarding the tactics used to get them to sell. Avery had followed through on her threat. Still, Carter was more interested in Haley than getting ripped a new one by his father.
“He’s saying that it was his idea,” Steven said. “That he didn’t like the way Haley treated him and he wanted to kill her.”
“That’s bull,” Michael protested. “We’ll get the truth out of him.”
Steven recognized the look on Michael’s face was the look he had when he saw Jason lying on the floor in Haley’s room. “The last thing we need is for him to get away with this because he’s been mistreated.”
“No one has to know,” Michael said.
“That’s enough,” Steven announced abruptly. “We’re in enough trouble. Carter, how in the hell did you let this happen?”
“Dad, I didn’t let this happen. I had no idea she was…”
“No idea?” Steven couldn’t believe these words were coming out of one of his sons. “Please don’t tell me that, Carter. I refuse to accept that you’re that stupid.”
“She’s making us look like the mob.” Michael understood the irony in his own statements.
Carter could have placed all the blame on Michael. After all, every accusation was probably true and definitely his doing. “I just…I just made a mistake. I underestimated Avery.”
“What about your new angle?” Steven asked.
“She found out,” Carter said.
“Your genius was supposed to keep that from happening,” Steven said. “You know the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.”
“It’s not just her,” Michael jumped in, hoping to avoid the explosion that could come from his father’s insults. “It’s that reporter. He took liberty with her words. We need to sue, Dad.”
“I’ll take care of this,” Carter said.
“Like you have so far?” Steven stood up from his desk and approached Carter. The boy didn’t flinch as he got to within a few inches of him. “I wanted to keep this under the radar. Now, it’s front page and it’s a failure.”
Carter tried to control his temper. “I said I’ll fix it.”
“You’re not going to get the chance,” Steven maintained. “No one touches Avery Jackson or her salons. We have to let it go.”
Carter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We’re not giving up. I can—”
“What you’re going to do,” Steven said sternly, “is deal with the legal fallout from this article. If you think you can handle that without it blowing up in your face.”
Carter eyed his father defiantly and for a second, a short moment, Steven saw himself in his son.
“No.” Carter wasn’t going to let this man hold this over his head forever like he did with everything else. “I’ll get Essentials.”
Steven let a blip of a smile curve his lips for only a second. “Today, we focus on Haley. Everything else…”
He watched as Carter stormed out of the office.
“What about the timeline?” Michael asked.
“I’m not worried,” Steven answered. “Not anymore.”
As she wiped the tears from her eyes, Avery felt her heart beating so hard she thought it might burst from her chest. She didn’t know how long it would take her to recover from the scene she’d just had with Craig. She hadn’t been able to reach him since breaking up his private meeting with Carter, but Saturday was payday and she knew he’d be there and she was ready.
He came with apologies and excuses, but Avery wasn’t having it. There was no room for forgiveness or second chances if she was going to save Essentials. The way the contract was put together, she had the right to terminate the partnership and buy Craig out without notice and without his approval.
Avery kept calm, not letting him get to her. She had been the nice girl for too long. This was business, but Craig quickly made it personal with erratic switches from hurt to anger, then accusations and threats. He objected to everything and Avery was fine with his objections until she told him she was hiring an outside accountant to look at their books and calculate a fair settlement. She thought the impartiality of it would satisfy him, but it made him angry enough to throw a box across the room.
Avery’s entire body was shaking when Craig left, slamming the back door of the office behind him. Everything was made worse when she called Alex for compassion he couldn’t seem to muster for her.
“What do you want me to do, Avery? Call the police?”
“I want you to come over here.”
“I have the guys over,” he said. “It’ll take me forever to get into—”
“Alex, are you hearing me? He threatened me and I’m frightened.”
“We’re talking about Craig, here. He doesn’t have the balls to do anything. You cut his heart out. If you ask me, it’s Carter you should be—”
