He couldn't help but wonder, though, how long it would have been before his drinking managed to destroy whatever had begun to grow between them. When he had awakened with a pounding head, a roiling stomach, and an absolute black hole where the previous night's memory should have been, it had changed him irrevocably. Shaken to the core, he had heard his sexual exploits repeated back to him by the friends he had told in unforgivable detail and knew he needed to make a serious change in his life.
He had felt apologetic for years afterwards, but he didn't have a thing to apologize for now. He had been sober for more than a decade. When he told her he loved her last night, she could not have been any more surprised to hear the words than he had been. But he acknowledged the truth of them…and knew it hadn't been Black Velvet talking. Neither had it been his dick.
He had to wonder, though, why she'd surrendered up her virginity to him all those years ago. Because he had told her he loved her? Or had the words been said in the heat of the moment or even later after the orgasmic bliss had faded?
Had she said them back?
Part of him wanted in the worst way to back off, to retreat behind the protection of the social mask he had perfected before he hit puberty. Its practiced charm had shielded him from rejection over the years, and now with only the smallest effort on his part it could continue to do so.
Another part urged him to rear up on his back legs, beat his chest and drag Hayley off by a fistful of her thick hair. That part wanted to hold her prisoner until she understood just who was boss around here. Until he convinced her he had grown up and was no longer the self absorbed ass he had been back when.
An infinitely more mature part of him put on his shoes and socks, collected his wallet and let himself out of the loft.
Son of a bitch! Ty Holloway wanted to put his fist through the nearest wall when Kurstin walked through his doorway and told him the news. He stared at her incredulously. "Are you fucking kidding me?" he said. "How did the media manage to track her down so quickly?"
Kurstin gave him a puzzled look and he scrambled to cover himself. "I mean, you’d think their first inclination would be to search for her in New England, wouldn't you?" Get a grip, man, he cautioned himself. It will be all right. You still have the inside track. It didn’t stop him, however, from muttering, "Fucking vultures."
And saw nothing ironic in the sentiment coming from him.
"You sound like Jon-Michael." Kurstin kicked off her shoes. "And not to sound insensitive or anything because Hayley is my best friend in the world, but I skipped lunch today and it’s catching up with me. You have anything to nibble on?"
"Come on," he invited and led her to a seat at the breakfast bar of the digs Patsy found him. He watched Kurstin kick off her strappy heels before he rounded the counter to see what he had to offer.
She had come straight from work to his townhouse and he eyed her in appreciation as he put together a snack and poured her a glass of wine. She was so elegant with her impeccably groomed blonde hair, tasteful makeup and long demure skirt, underneath which she had crossed her legs in a manner that struck him as anything but demure. At the same time, she was approachable and warm as she sat there with the top two buttons of her silk blouse undone, swinging a bare foot and smiling at him whenever he looked her way.
He slid a plate in front of her and came around to sit with her as she ate. It was time to kick his proposed seduction into high gear.
He told himself it was strictly business when he leaned over to kiss her the instant she swallowed the last bite. He removed her wine glass from her fingers, set it aside, and moved in closer.
For the story, he reminded himself moments later as he dropped the whisper-thin silk onto the bedroom carpet and peeled her bra away.
She was his ticket to moving up the food chain, and he was not about to forget it. But when her head thrashed from side to side on the pillow and he slid deep inside the slippery clasp of her body with a powerful thrust of his hips, potential for a Pulitzer prize-winning story was not the uppermost thought on his mind.
Bluey's was a three ring circus, and Hayley feared she was the dancing bear. She struggled to stay calm while a flood of out-of-town media jockeys jostled for space at the bar, yelling drink orders and attempting, many of them at the top of their lungs, to elicit her life story. They were rude and pushy and showed not the least compunction about elbowing the regular patrons out of their way. Even Marsha and Lucy had a difficult time getting close enough to the bar to place their orders.
"Hey, Hayley!”
She looked up and a strobe went off in her face for the third time in as many minutes. The current contender for her attention called, "Have you talked to Senator Jarvis yet?"
She blinked against the blue spots floating in front of her eyes. But to answer the question, yes. She had taken the senator’s call but told the woman she was not putting herself even more firmly in the paparazzi’s crosshairs to further the senator’s agenda. Jarvis was well known in New Hampshire for trying to get the death penalty back in play.
Not that she was sharing that conversation with the press.
A brief, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't flood of sunlight washed and retreated across the lounge floor, alerting her that the front door had opened to admit someone new. Oh, goody.
She really needed yet another journalist in her face right now. Then Jon-Michael's voice, stringing obscenities together with rare creativity, cut through the din as another flash went off in her eyes.
"Get that the fuck out of her face!" Striding into the throng, he ripped the camera out of the hands of the most recent contender for the Hayley Prescott photo-of-the-night award and turned to look for the nearest bar maid.
"Lucy!" He tossed her his sax case and a small, exquisitely wrapped package. "Get Bluey out here." Twisting to fend off the photographer who jumped at his side making grabs for the camera, Jon-Michael held it aloft and fumbled to pull up the right menu. Then he found it and the photographer howled in outrage when Jon-Michael hit the delete-all button with one satisfying, economical tap of his finger. “Am I sure?” he murmured, clearly responding to the digital security prompt . “Damn straight.” He hit a button and the photographer moaned.
Jon-Michael looked down at him. "Oh, that was small spuds, chief. You wanna see this expensive little camera stay in one piece, I advise you to back off. I am feeling just the tiniest bit clumsy tonight."
The roar of voices rose to deafening proportions. Then the unmistakable sound of a twelve-gauge shotgun being cocked sliced through the high decibel babble like a chainsaw through butter, and the lounge went very still.
"What the hell is going on out here?" Harve 'Bluey' Moser stood outside his office door, a cigarette illegally glued to his lower lip and a shotgun cradled in his arms, the fully primed barrels pointed at the floor. "Hayley," he said into the sudden silence, "you okay?"
She drew a shaky breath and pulled herself together. "Yeah. I'm fine."
"Uh huh." He looked less than convinced. "And I suppose these fine people howling your name are just a bunch of blues lovers, huh?"
"They're media trash," Marsha snapped, elbowing a network reporter out of her way and slapping her tray down on the bar. She straightened the waistband on her polyester slacks, yanked down the points of her vest and reached across the bar to give Hayley's forearm a comforting squeeze. Then she turned to address Bluey. "These lowlifes have been shoving our customers out of their way, yelling questions I would blush to answer to my father confessor, let alone tell the world, and shoving cameras in Hayley's face ever since they barreled through the door."