"No. Thank you."
"But Hayley..."
Without so much as a by-your-leave, Hayley raises the bow again and takes aim at the target. "No, Patsy," she says with calm finality. "I appreciate your offer, but please, just stay out of it. I have nothing to say to those people."
No, let's hear your ideas, Patsy, no What a good and true friend you are, Patsy. She doesn't even extend me the courtesy of giving the proposal a moment's consideration. Just a curt, No, stay out of it.
My admiration slips silently into something more rancorous.
Okay, that was not a resounding success. Hayley had hoped, when she suggested this outing, that she and Patsy would have a nice low-key hour or two, a chance to really get away and relax.
Well, she had enjoyed rowing the boat. And she had found learning a bit about the compound bow informative and her inept attempts to place arrows in the general vicinity of the target amusing. But Patsy seemed to have lost what little sense of humor she once possessed. There was an intensity about her now that was disturbingly close to repellent.
Pats had always lacked in the humor department. And God knew she had never been particularly spontaneous. But she had been a true friend in their senior year after Jon-Michael trashed her reputation. And once she had been sweet, which had always seemed miraculous all by itself, given the way her mother used to treat her.
Somewhere over the years the sweetness had faded. She had developed a sort of tunnel vision toward pursuing her objectives, and she was clearly oblivious to the fact that her methods trampled over other people’s sensitivities. There were painful subjects Hayley simply did not care to discuss. Why could Patsy not accept the fact and move on to other topics of conversation?
Was that too damn much to ask?
Seventeen
Kurstin walked up behind Ty and rubbed his shoulders. "What's bothering you?” she questioned softly. "You’ve been quiet all evening."
Oh, hey, what could possibly be the matter, he wondered sourly. Aside from the minor matter of the telephone call he’d received this afternoon, telling him to either produce or get his ass back to the newsroom if he wanted to have a job to come back to. He leaned into the hands kneading his neck. "Nothing."
Kurstin sighed. "Secrets," she said wryly. “I’m surrounded by people with secrets."
He tilted his head back to look up at her. "My day just turned out to be kind of frustrating," he said. "My muse deserted me, my characters refuse to speak. What can I say?"
He’d told Kurstin he was on a six-month sabbatical to write a book. "This is not exactly the stuff of earth shattering secrets." He bent his head forward again and growled a little when her fingers resumed their hypnotic massage. "Who do you know who's hoarding real ones?"
"Hayley."
"No fooling?" It took all his concentration not to tense up. "Huh. I would have thought her life was an open book, after all the publicity with her husband, the trials, the upcoming execution and all."
“It’s the execution that has her all tied up in knots. She has such conflicted feelings about capital punishment."
Like a hound on the scent of an escapee, his every journalistic instinct went on point. It was all he could do to say casually, “I would think she’d be for it.”
“I know, right?” But then Kurstin explained Hayley’s long-held stance on the death penalty and why it was tearing her apart her to still have strong leaning in that direction.
Ty stared down at the carpet beneath his feet as he listened. She had just handed him the story he'd come to Gravers Bend for. All tied up in silver ribbons. And…he didn’t have the least desire to sing hosannas.
How dicked up was that?
Hayley followed Jon-Michael up to his bedroom in the early hours after the bar closed down and pulled a handful of scarves from her purse. She pointed to the bed. “Lie down.”
"I'm beginning to think I've created a monster," he said as she straddled his chest to wrap strips of silk around his wrists. He watched as she then tied the bindings to the headboard, unsure if he cared for the look on her face. "Uh, Hayley, honey…about saying you could whip me if you wanted—?"
"No whips," Hayley tersely assured him.
"You have a bad day, sweetpea?"
"I really don’t wanna discuss it right now, Jon-Michael." She gave the scarf a tug to test the strength of her knots.
"Oookay." He sucked in his stomach when she knelt beside him and bent forward, swinging her head from side to side in gentle sweeps that brushed her hair over his chest and down his abdomen. "It's not that I’m complaining about the sex, mind you," he said in a strained voice. "I mean, I hate to speak ill of the dead and all, but if you ask me your late husband had to be the worst kind of fool to try ‘n curb your adventuresome streak. That's like having a concert pianist at your beck and call and only allowing her to play 'Chopsticks' on a Play Skool piano. But, Hayley, is this the only way we can communicate now?"
"Do you really care?" Her breath blew with humid warmth across the head of his cock, and lifting his head to watch it bob stiffly upright in direct response to the stimulation, Jon-Michael felt his lips twist in a wry smile.
"My dick doesn't seem to give a damn. But, yeah, I do care."
"Hmmm," was all she replied and then lowered her head to bestow a delicate lick.
"Wait," he panted. "Wait a sec. Let's talk about this."
"I don't feel like talking." She opened her mouth and sucked him inside.
Jon-Michael's hips came off the bed and his head pressed into the pillows, the need for conversation momentarily supplanted by need of another kind.
She eventually raised her head and knee-walked up the bed to settle herself astride him. Lowering herself until he was deep inside, she began to move. A breathless while later, they were both straining to hold back the inevitable.
"Untie me," he panted. "I want to hold you."
She didn’t appear to hear him. "Saaay it," she moaned.
"Dammit, Hayley, untie me! Now!"
She moved harder on him. "Oh, please, Johnny, please. Say it." She reached for the scarves restraining him and fumbled to untie the knots. They had tightened with their movements. "Say it, say it, say it."
The knots came free.
His arms wrapped around her and he rolled them over. Digging his toes into the mattress, he surged into her. "I love you, Hayley. God! I love you. Come for me, baby. I love you so much."
She screamed his name and climaxed hard, locking her thighs around his waist and digging her nails into his back, triggering his own.
Breathing heavily, they collapsed in a tangle of arms and legs, bonded with sweat where their stomachs pressed and his chest flattened her breasts. Jon-Michael finger-combed her hair off her face and struggled to catch his breath. "You didn't put a condom on me," he panted.
Her breathing halted for a second, then slowly resumed. The infinitesimal shoulder movement she effected an instant later shifted her breasts against his chest. "Oh, well."
"Oh, well? What are the chances you could get pregnant?"