Sharing Hailey (17 page)

She nodded. “I ran into one of your neighbors in the hall. She recommended it.”

“Which neighbor?”

“Beth. She gave me her card. Wants me to do some grant writing for her.”

“Wow. It’s not even eight, and you’ve already lined up another client.”

“Maybe. I’m meeting with her next week.” She held her breath, wondering if Tony would suggest that he join them.

“Damn, you’ve been busy. Breakfast and business. You’re making me and Mark look like slouches, sunshine.”

They looked pretty damn good to her, but she wasn’t going there or they’d end up back in bed. Too much to do today for that. “So, I’ve been thinking. I want to go by my house and pick up some warm clothes and my laptop. I was also thinking I should get a security system. I’ve toyed with the idea since I bought that house, but I kept putting it off.”

“I think a security system is a good idea. I’ve got a friend who’s in the business. I can give you his number,” Mark offered.

“Great. Thanks.”

“Let’s go by my house first. I want to pick up some things too. Is that okay?”

“Even better,” she said. She’d left her car parked in Mark’s garage. “I can get my car and I’ll be mobile again. Then you won’t have to waste your time driving me all over Albuquerque.”

“Not a waste, babe. I still want to go with you to pick up your stuff.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he raised his hands to stop her. “I just want to make sure it’s safe. In fact, we can call my security friend and see if he can meet us there. Would that work for you?”

She nodded. The sooner she got the security system installed, the sooner she could get home permanently. She was feeling almost normal this morning. Hopeful. She looked forward to getting back to her life—without the
Jerry Springer
theatrics.

Tony drove to Mark’s house in the rural village of Corrales, which butted up against the city of Albuquerque and the Rio Grande. The roads were clear, but piles of dirty gray snow sat in medians. Even larger mounds dominated the parking lots. Unusual for the area. Even when they did get snow, which wasn’t often, it melted in a day or two. Fortunately, the gravel road to Mark’s house was also clear and dry.

Tony parked in front of the house, and they piled out of the SUV. His hand at the small of her back, Mark urged her to the porch, unlocked the door and flipped on the light switches just inside the front door. The interior lights of the great room came on.

“Go turn up the heat,” he said. “I’ll be right in. I want to check my shop.”

Hailey walked across the terra cotta floor through the empty half of the great room and turned the thermostat on the wall from sixty to sixty-eight. She was surprised Tony hadn’t followed her in. What was he doing? She was rubbing her arms and debating whether to turn it up to seventy when Mark and Tony stomped in.

Mark joined her, immediately turning the dial up to seventy-two, the setting she kept hers at during the winter. He grinned at her. “Make yourself at home. I won’t be long.” He disappeared through the door of his bedroom.

Hailey headed to kitchen. “I’m still thirsty from breakfast,” she said to Tony. “You want some water?”

“Sounds good,” he said as he sat on a stool at the plywood bar.

Although the outside of his house was finished, Mark was doing most of the inside finishing work in his spare time. Since he didn’t have much spare time, it was moving slowly. It was a constant joke among his friends. He’d just installed the lower kitchen cabinets before vacation. They didn’t have doors yet, and he hadn’t installed the upper cabinets. The kitchen countertop, including the bar, was next on his long list of projects. Then the upper cabinets and doors.

She loved Mark’s house. The great room ran down the middle of it, like a dog run. Off to the right were two bedrooms. Mark’s was on the southeast corner and had a huge closet and bathroom. A guest room on the southwest corner was still unfinished. On the other side of the great room was the kitchen in the center, a sunroom off the kitchen on the northeast corner and another bedroom, this one finished and furnished, with its own bathroom on the northwest corner. Her favorite parts of the house were the sunroom and the radiant floor heating.

She got two glasses from a base cabinet and filled them with water from the tap. She handed Tony his glass and planted her ice-cold butt on a stool. While they waited on Mark, they talked about returning to work after two weeks off.

When Mark came back out, Hailey asked, “Would you like something to drink before we leave?”

“Yeah, but don’t get up. I’ll get it.”

When he squatted in front of the glasses, Hailey gasped at the sight of a pistol grip sticking out of the back of his waistband in a concealed holster. She knew Mark had guns. He might lean to the left, but he’d been born and raised in Texas, and Texans loved their guns. They might never take them out of the closet, but they had them. Mark was a hunter, so she knew he had rifles and shotguns locked in a gun safe in the master closet. She hadn’t known about the handgun.

She didn’t even wait for him to stand up before confronting him. “When did you get a pistol?”

He shrugged. “I’ve had it for years.”

“Do you have a concealed carry?”

“No, but I won’t be carrying any place other than my pickup and your house.”

She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere with that gun. We’re packing up a few clothes. We’re not packing heat.”

“I told you she wouldn’t like it,” Tony said.

She turned on him. “You knew about this?”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I told him you wouldn’t like it.”

Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly as she faced Mark again. He was still standing in the middle of the kitchen, a forgotten glass in one hand, his expression confused. Although her insides were quivering, her words were calm and deliberate. “The gun isn’t necessary. We’re not going to war. We’re going to get some of my stuff. I love you, but I’m not comfortable with you carrying. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Mark seemed to consider her reasoning. When he spoke, his voice was as calm as hers had been, but his eyes were narrowed, his brow furrowed. “Hailey, Daniel is angry enough to be unpredictable. We don’t know where he is, what he’s doing or what he’s planning. We do know he threatened you after roughing up Nikki so he could get information on you. We know he’s bruised you up pretty good.”

God, she’d been feeling so good this morning. So positive. Why did he have to remind her of how screwed up her life was?

“Tony called him at work this morning. He wasn’t there. He’s taking vacation. That’s
all
we know. He could be in Phoenix waiting for the flight he thinks you’re on. Hell, he could be on that flight. He could be waiting at your house to ambush you. Your safety is our primary concern.”

She turned to Tony. “Are you carrying too?”

“No.”

That was it. Just “no.”

Mark moved until he stood beside her. With his fingers lightly on her chin, he tipped her head up until she was looking into his eyes. “I don’t get it. You grew up around guns. Your dad hunted. Jake hunts.”

“Yeah, but I was young and didn’t pay any attention to them. I only saw them when they took ’em out to go hunting and when they came home. As far as I was concerned, they were just another part of the camping equipment.”

The confusion in his eyes grew. “So why the drama now?”

“Because now I know what they can do. I watch the news. Innocent people are always getting ‘accidently’ shot.”

“A healthy respect for guns is good,” Mark said. “But fear isn’t. How would you feel about taking a firearms safety class?”

“That’s a great idea,” Tony chimed in as he moved to stand next to Mark. “We could take it with you.”

“You say that like it would be fun,” she said, her voice sullen.

“It could be. Who knows?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

Mark shrugged. “That’s better than a no.”

Tony chuckled and draped an arm over her shoulders. “Her lips say ‘I’ll think about it,’ but her eyes say ‘No way in hell.’”

She rolled her eyes again and shrugged out from under Tony’s arm. “Let’s go before I change my mind about loving two rednecks.”

Mark fell back with his hands clutching his chest. “
Ouch
. That hurt.”

Spouting insults at each other like teenaged boys, they bumped and shoved one another as they followed her to the door. What had she gotten herself into? But their roughhousing didn’t last long. The gentlemen returned when Mark stretched around her to open the door.

Chapter Sixteen

They caravanned from Mark’s house to Hailey’s—Tony in the lead in his dark green SUV, Hailey next in her navy Volvo sedan and Mark in the rear in his white pickup. She parked next to Tony in her driveway, and Mark parked out on the street. From what Hailey could see, there was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing out of place. Granted, with the layout of her patio home, she couldn’t see anything but the garage and the fence. Still, she was worried. Was it the reality of returning to her home? If Daniel wanted to get to her, this would be the place he would do it. Or was Mark’s gun making her nervous? Was it the fact that he thought he needed a gun to deal with Daniel?

Mark strode up the driveway. Hailey couldn’t see his eyes because of the dark sunglasses he wore, but his mouth formed a grim line. “Would you stay here with Tony and wait for Will?” he asked.

“Will? Oh, yeah. Your friend. The security guy.”

“He should be here any minute.”

She swallowed, hoping to calm her nerves. “My doorbell works.” No way was she leaving him alone to face…well…whatever it was they would find.

Mark sighed. “Okay, but hang back a few steps.”

Hailey nodded.

Mark took the lead. Tony clamped her hand in his and guided her so she fell in behind the shelter of his body. As Mark led them through the gate in the fence, which extended from the side of the garage, he kept the gun in front of him, arm straight down so the muzzle was pointed at the ground.

The gate opened into the side of her yard. A sidewalk led them from the gate to the front door. As they crept past the dark windows, the pueblo-style patio home seemed lonely, as if it had missed her while she was gone, but other than that, everything seemed normal. With each step she became more optimistic.

Mark stopped a few feet from the entry door alcove. Hailey peered around him, wondering what the holdup was. A bloodred “X” slashed her pristine white door from top to bottom. Two long, narrow windows bracketed the door. Both were broken, large, jagged-edged gouges in each with cracks spreading from them.

“Get her back to the car,” Mark said. “Call the police.”

As Tony herded her back down the sidewalk, she called out to Mark. “You’re coming with us. You’re not going in there.”

“I’m right behind you. No one’s going in until the police get here.”

When they reached her driveway, Tony called the police on his cell phone. While he was talking, Will showed up. Hailey stayed with Tony while Mark met Will at his truck. A few minutes later, Will was gone, Tony was off the phone and the three of them were waiting for the police.

* * *

Two hours later, they were sitting in her car, still waiting. The initial shock had passed, and Hailey just wanted to get her laptop and some clothes and leave, but she was afraid to touch anything before the police arrived. She hoped her laptop hadn’t been stolen. All her work was on it.

Mark’s cell phone rang, and he got out of the car to answer it. Hailey watched him pacing the driveway while he talked. When he returned to the car, he asked, “How do y’all feel about moving to my place until this situation with Daniel resolves?”

Hailey shook her head. After seeing her front door, she was convinced she needed to be someplace secure. “Mark, I love your house, but I feel safer at Tony’s.”

“I know, babe. I don’t blame you. That was Will on the phone. He’s working on a security system at my house. Cameras, lights, alarms. He says he can get it done by tomorrow evening.”

“That’s too much. I appreciate all you’re willing to do for me, but it’s too much.”

“It’s not just for you. Tony and I are targets too. Daniel knows you went to Hawaii with us. We all need to be careful.”

She didn’t like it, but she knew he was right.

“We’d have more room at my house,” Mark said. “Nothing against Tony’s loft, but I think we’ll get on each other’s nerves after a couple of days. But it’s up to you, Hailey.”

She closed her eyes and dropped her head against the seatback. “I am so sorry about this.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tony said. “It’s Daniel.”

“But I was stupid enough to get involved with him.”

“How were you supposed to know?” Tony asked.

Wearily she shook her head. “I don’t know.” She racked her brain for a sign, something that she should have seen before they started dating…or even during those first few months together, when everything had seemed so perfect. “What clues did I miss?”

Mark and Tony exchanged meaningful glances, communicating silently.

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Mark asked.

“No. I really want to know so I never screw up like this again.”

Tony spoke up. “At first we thought we were just jealous. You didn’t have time for us anymore—at least, not the kind of time we were used to spending with you. But then your other friends, even your girl friends, started complaining about the same thing. He was like a surgeon, carefully cutting you off from everyone who loved you and cared about you. He was so good at it that you didn’t seem to realize what was happening. Even when he wasn’t with you, he didn’t want you spending time with friends. He wanted you at home, waiting for him.” His chuckle was dry, forced. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to have you at my beck and call…or maybe not. It sounds good, but it’s not you, so it’s probably one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for things.”

“What makes you think I was sitting at home waiting for him?”

He grimaced. The subject was obviously as distasteful to him as it was to her. “We saw him out a couple of times. We figured it would be a good time to get together with you. But when we’d call, you’d tell us you had plans with Daniel.” He shrugged. “We’d wait around, watch him. He’d leave…too late to go out with you.”

She wanted to crawl under a rock. Too bad there wasn’t room under the front seat. She hadn’t thought anyone knew. “Why didn’t you say something earlier, before I broke up with him?”

“Would you have listened?”

Oddly, she didn’t know the answer to that. “I thought he loved me,” she said faintly. “It was flattering at first—you know, that he wanted to spend so much time with me, that he wanted me so badly he was jealous of other men.”

“And you seemed really happy. You were fucking glowing.”

She raised her eyebrows at his language. It sounded so different, so harsh when he used it outside of the bedroom.

“Yeah, I was jealous, so you couldn’t call me an unbiased observer. But after a while you didn’t look so happy. You seemed tense, as if you were waiting for something bad to happen. Your smile was fake. Your laugh was fake.” His jaw clenched.

Mark finally spoke. “When he started putting you down—” Emotion choked off his voice.

Her chest constricted painfully. Those little putdowns. In private, his criticism had been open and blatant. But in public, she’d thought they’d been subtle enough that no one else would notice.

Her favorite?
I love that you’ve gotten fat because now there’s more of you for me to love.
And she hadn’t been any bigger then than she was now. Still, she’d lost weight in an attempt to please Daniel. Finally she’d realized he was impossible to please.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, sunshine. He was the asshole.”

“Yeah, but I was so stupid. I didn’t realize what was happening.”

“You broke up with him,” Mark pointed out.

She let out a long, deep sigh as she stared blindly out the window. “Yeah, but not soon enough.”

“I finally talked to Beth about what was happening,” Tony said.

Great. Not bad enough that her friends knew she’d been dating a creep. Now a potential client knew too.

“She said Daniel sounded like a classic abusive male. She figured his next step would be to get you to stop working so you’d be totally dependent on him.”

Well, that explained a lot about his behavior with her clients and his insistence that she wasn’t really working since she was home all day.

The police finally showed up, and she answered their questions and walked through the house after they checked it out and dusted for fingerprints. Fortunately, whoever had vandalized her front door hadn’t entered her home. Yeah, it was probably Daniel. But why? Was he trying to scare her? Threaten her?

She packed some clothes, grabbed her computer and helped Mark and Tony board up the broken windows. Even though the vandal hadn’t entered, her sanctuary was violated. It was creepy, and she wondered if she’d ever feel safe here again.

It was midafternoon when her trunk was packed and she was ready to go. They stood in the driveway behind her car.

“I’m gonna stop by the post office and pick up my mail,” she said. “Then I’ll go to the grocery store for some food to get us through the next couple of days.”

“Will you be okay alone?” Tony asked. “I can come with you.”

“I’m fine,” she lied. She was shaking in her clogs. She wanted to return to Tony’s loft, crawl into bed and hide. But if she did, she’d be ceding control of her life to Daniel, and she wasn’t going to do that anymore.

Tony held out the key fob for his loft. “Take this and park in my space in the garage. I’ll use the lot behind it.”

She shook her head. No way was she taking his parking space. “I’d rather leave my car in the lot. You know I hate those massive garages.”

Tony frowned. “Okay, but call me when you leave the grocery store, and I’ll meet you in the lot and help you with the bags. And take the key so you can get in if I get held up.”

“That’s a deal,” she said.

Mark rested his arm across her shoulders. “I’m going to check on Will, see how the security system’s coming along. I’ll catch up with y’all later this evening.”

After she slipped into the driver’s seat, Mark shut her door, and he and Tony walked to their own vehicles. She started her car and backed out of the driveway. Within a couple of blocks they’d all gone different directions, and she realized it was the first time the three of them had been separated in two weeks. She had mixed feelings. On the one hand, she missed them. On the other, it was nice to have some time to herself. Which made her think Mark was right. If they were going to live together for the next few days, they needed more space.

* * *

The next evening, they’d settled into Mark’s house, figured out the security system and stuffed themselves with the pizza Mark had made for dinner. She’d laughed until she cried during some mindless sitcom
and was now propped against oversized pillows on the floor in front of the stone fireplace with a glass of red wine.

Thanks to the wine and Monday night TV, she was feeling pretty good, quite an accomplishment considering the state of her life. As she’d listened to Tony and Mark laughing from the chairs behind her, she’d relaxed. It almost felt like old times. The only difference—and it was a biggie—was that she didn’t have to go to sleep tonight sexually frustrated.

Because as the wine had relaxed her, every inch of her body from her clit to her breasts to her fingertips and toes had begun to tingle in anticipation. It didn’t hurt that she’d finally gotten her test results from the doctor today. She hadn’t told Mark or Tony, yet, but she had anticipated their bare cocks inside of her all day.

She heard one of them moving behind her. A touch on her shoulder, and she glanced up to find Mark bending over her, the ends of his hair still damp from the shower he’d taken after dinner. She sat up from the pile of pillows, and he slipped behind her. When he’d settled her into the V of his legs, she burrowed back against his chest. He rested a hand on her hip and one on her abdomen, just above her mons. His shoulder pillowed her head. As she sipped her wine, Mark occasionally pressed a light kiss to her hair or neck.

Then his hands began to move. As his fingers trailed along her thighs and belly, she mentally tried to direct him to her groin. His palms grazed her arms and hands, causing her to hold her breath, hoping they would brush her nipples. She chuckled when the laughter of the studio audience prodded her but didn’t know what she was laughing at. Her wine glass was empty, and she was dizzy, intoxicated by the alcohol and Mark. He slipped a hand under the hem of her sweatshirt. His fingers heated her skin as they slid up her bare belly to her breasts.

He sucked in his breath, and she could have sworn his heart skipped a beat. “Fuck,” he groaned. “She’s not wearing a bra.” His hoarse voice, though not directed at her, made her arch her back, thrusting her breast into his hand. The movement forced her vulva against the crotch of her jeans, stimulating her clit and sending a fresh rush of hot fluid to her panties. Her fingers loosened on the wine glass, and it thudded on the plush crimson area rug.

She turned her head so she could see Tony. He watched them from a chair next to the bare window overlooking the dark backyard.

“I don’t think he believes me,” Mark said in feigned surprise. “Babe, I think he wants proof.”

She crawled from between Mark’s legs and faced them, sitting back on her heels, knees spread. Grasping the hem of the sweatshirt, she lifted it over her head and tossed it to the side. Her hair fell over her face, shoulders and chest. Lifting both hands, she combed the long strands back from her face. Her nipples budded even tighter when their rapt gazes latched onto them.