"Allow, schmow, babe. Feelings are what feelings are. Tell mama what the story is with yours."
Hayley skinned her hair off her forehead with both hands and held it there while she stared at her best friend. "Your brother slapped the moves on me last night."
Kurstin's eyebrow elevated. "Yeah? Well, golly gee whiz. Shocker." She gave Hayley a poke. "The million-dollar question is: how did you respond?"
"Uh, you are not going to like this, Kurst. I hit him on the head with an oar handle."
She could still see him falling back, clutching his temple. "Jesus, Hayley," he had growled. "A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed."
"I said no!"
"One you meant, I mean."
Angry and rattled, she had been tempted to give him another rap. But Bluey had emerged from his office, demanding to know what the hell was going on, and she had taken a large step back instead.
"Don’t think this is the end of the discussion," Jon-Michael had warned in a low voice that licked its way down her nerve endings. Then he’d picked up his instrument case and strolled away, leaving her to make a lame excuse to Bluey while Jon disappeared through the darkened lounge.
The coward.
Kurstin regarded her now with obvious relish. "He really got to you, huh?"
"Please. I succumbed to a moment of panic, is all." She tried to disguise her knee-jerk defensiveness with an indifference she was far from feeling. "I haven't attracted male attention in a long time, and it spooked me. I overreacted."
"Yeah, it probably spooked the hell out of you to discover you liked it."
"Who said anything about liking it!"
"Oh, come on, Hayles, this is me you are talking to. Why else would you strike out at him?”
She bristled and Kurstin hastened to add, “Now, I’m not saying you wouldn’t have smacked the man silly if he were harassing you. But I have known you forever and if that were the case, you would have screamed bloody murder while you were beating him black and blue, and I’d be bailing him out of jail today." Kurstin gave her a stern look. "So, please back atcha. He kissed you or felt you up, or something, and you liked it. But—and this is the real issue—he has already messed up your life once so you didn’t want to like it and you cracked him upside the head to make him stop. How am I doing so far?"
"Shit."
Kurstin grinned. "That's what I thought. So when is the wedding? I'm warning you, put me in pink flounces and I will make your life a living hell."
"Good God, you’re a smartass. We have got to get you out more often."
"Well, lighten up. You aren’t seventeen any more. What could Jon possibly do to you now that is worse than what you have gone through the past few years?"
Hayley dropped her hands to her sides and blew out a breath. "Not a damn thing. Okay, you're right," she admitted and flashed Kurstin a crooked smile. "Crap, I spend nine months out of the year counseling teenagers to get in touch with their own truths, to learn not to lie to themselves, no matter how many lies they feel compelled to tell others to get through their days. Pretty good advice, don't you think?"
"Yes, you should take it."
"I really should." She scooped her hair behind her ears. "Here is the thing though, Kurst: dealing with Jon-Michael sometimes? It makes me regress right back to seventeen. I forget I’m an adult now with much bigger problems to handle. Instead I feel like those PTSD vets you hear about who flashback. I get hit by all the old feelings of impotence and rage I had to deal with every time some thick-necked jock invited me out and I knew he thought he was gonna get a red-hot roll in the hay at the end of the evening for the small cash outlay of a burger and a shake. So, no. You are absolutely right." She expelled a harsh breath through her nose. "I do not want to like it when Jon-Michael kisses me."
Kurstin glanced over at her friend as they started walking again. Hayley's head was down, her hands stuffed in her pockets. "I’m not denying you have cause not to believe a word he says to you," she said. "But he truly has changed, you know. He is not the same self-absorbed eighteen-year-old anymore."
Hayley glanced up at Kurstin. She hesitated but asked, "When did he quit drinking?"
Her patent reluctance to even ask tempted Kurstin to jump right in and answer her. Except…
"I think you really should discuss that with Jon-Michael," she said with reluctance. Ooh, God, that hurt. She yearned to tidy up everyone's problems; it was her nature to do so. But in this instance it really was not her place.
"Fine." The flatness of Hayley’s voice made Kurstin wince, for she was familiar with both the tone and her friend's innate stubbornness. Hayley would choke before she’d ask Jon-Michael. Hell, Kurstin could practically see her nailing the lid on a curiosity she probably already regretted voicing.
"You know," she said slowly, thinking aloud. "You and Jon-Michael used to talk."
Hayley made a rude noise. "We used to spar."
She smiled. "Well, yeah, that too. Intellectual foreplay, I always thought. But if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit there was a lot more to it. You two really talked to each other. Except for me, you were probably the only person in the world for whom he didn’t constantly put on a front." Watching her friend start to poker up, Kurstin acknowledged, "I know he broke faith with you in a big way. Sometimes, though, I think you tend to forget everything except that."
"So, what you’re basically saying is I do not have a right to feel the way I do?" Hayley smiled bitterly. "So much for feelings are what feelings are."
Kurstin stopped dead in the path and glared at her friend. "Oh, quit being so goddamn obtuse!" She took a deep breath, drawing calmness in with the scent of the evergreens, before continuing more quietly, "I would just like it if you would consider the earlier parts of your relationship with Jon…the good ones. Don't let one night poison all your memories.”
Since Hayley had more or less told herself the same thing she kept from snarling a defensive kneejerk reply. “I’ll consider it,” she said instead, and unapologetically changed the subject. “So, you have anything left to eat besides those stupid raisins?”
"Mr. Olivet will see you shortly, Mr. Olivet." The secretary smiled self-consciously at the duplicated name. She was new, and Jon-Michael studied her from where he sprawled in the hard-backed, hard-armed visitor's chair. His father was a difficult employer, demanding and gruff, and his secretaries generally only lasted somewhere between six and ten months.
The telephone rang and he felt no compunction about eavesdropping on the secretary's end of the conversation when she picked it up. "Richard Olivet's office," she said with professional pleasantness. “I’m sorry, sir, he is not available at the moment. May I take a message? Ben Thorton?" She scribbled on the pink phone-message pad. "I'm sorry, Mr. Thorton, would you repeat that? I didn't hear the name of your company." She blinked at the receiver. "Mr. Thorton? Hello, Mr. Thor—darn it." Flustered, she reseated the receiver.