In life he’d assumed the next step would naturally appear above the last. That he’d climb one and then ascend to the next. One step up after the last was how he’d built this community on Spright Island, how he’d handled his business dealings. How he’d acted every day of his life...up until the day he bumped into Reid Singleton at that coffee shop.
Life had no rulebook.
What he’d thought was firm footing leading to the next step up had instead been a chute spiraling him down into the darkness, where he’d felt as lost as if he’d worn a permanent blindfold.
Discovering his twin brother.
Finding out he was kidnapped.
Learning about his biological parents in London.
Realizing that his adoptive parents had been wary of the agency from which he was adopted...
Then there was Hayden.
Beautiful, strong, trusting, giving Hayden.
She’d been his confidante and true friend, the woman of his sexual fantasies come true.
And now she loves me.
In what might be the worst timing in the world, Hayden Green had fallen for him, and he had nothing to offer her except metaphors for what he thought life was...and wasn’t.
Given enough space he could easily fall in love with Hayden. Hell, if he did a deep-dive into his emotions, he might find he already had. But in no way was he ready for a next step—not with anyone. Claire had reminded him of that tonight.
Hayden deserved a man who knew he loved her without pause or breaking into a cold-hot sweat. After meeting the family who’d put her second her entire life, Tate knew Hayden deserved a man who could put her first.
He wasn’t that man.
Not with a hundred other things fighting for first place. His community. Two sets of parents and extended family. His own sense of identity.
Tate had a loose idea about where he was headed and a truckload of physical affection to shower upon her. But an engagement ring and a future?
He swiped the sweat now beading on his brow. He wasn’t ready. Not yet.
At the start of this evening, he’d been sure how tonight would go. He’d planned on kissing Hayden at midnight, drinking champagne as gold and silver confetti fluttered to the floor, and then bringing her back here and having sex in front of the fireplace. But only half that plan had come to fruition. He hadn’t prepared for bumping into Casey or Claire, or learning that the two of them were business partners.
He’d been building a mountain out of surprise molehills lately, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that Hayden had blindsided him with a proclamation of love.
His heart sank.
This was his fault. He’d leaned on her and let her take on his emotional baggage—he’d lavished her with physical love and flew her first-class. Tonight was a Cinderella story right down to the clock striking midnight.
He moved her gently from his chest, ignoring her when she asked where he was going. He reached for his pants and checked his phone. 12:15 a.m. Close enough.
He turned to face Hayden. Beautiful Hayden, with her mussed hair, holding the blanket over her naked body. She was ethereal and perfect and the most sensually attractive woman he’d ever spent time with.
And Tate?
He was the asshole about to break her heart.
Twenty-Three
It didn’t take long for Hayden realize that the “I love you” she’d thrown out after Tate’s innocent “Happy new year” hadn’t gone over well. She didn’t know what she expected, but she knew what she’d hoped for.
She’d hoped for one of his easy smiles. She’d hoped he’d thread his fingers into her hair and look deeply into her eyes. She’d hoped for those coveted words—“I love you, too.”
She wouldn’t have minded if his “I love you” had also included a lengthy explanation of how gobsmacked he was by her announcement.
But this...he looked like he’d witnessed an accident. Panic had surfaced on his features, and he’d become instantly fidgety.
So, yeah, it hadn’t gone over well.
“Oh-kay, so that was awkward,” she said with an uneasy laugh. “What I meant to say was ‘Happy new year to you, too!’”
Her heart beat out a clumsy, erratic rhythm. She hadn’t fallen in love with someone in a really, really freaking long time. And this time felt more real, more grounded. She knew who she was and what she wanted. She knew who she loved.
“Claire was at the party tonight.” He stood and stuffed his legs into his tuxedo pants.
“Pardon?” Surely she hadn’t heard that correctly.
“Claire Waterson. My ex-fiancée.”
“I know who Claire is.” What she hadn’t wrapped her head around yet was that Claire was...at the party?
“She’s engaged. And for some reason in a business partnership with Casey.” Tate’s teeth were all but gnashing.
If Hayden understood what he was saying, his evening had gone south not because of a run-in with Casey, but a visit from Claire...who was engaged.
“You didn’t tell me she was there,” Hayden said.
Hands on his hips, Tate looked down at where she sat on the blanket. “I didn’t want to ruin your evening.”
“But we left,” she reminded him. “She’s why we didn’t stay?”
“It doesn’t matter why we left.”
But oh, it so did. She’d said I love you and instead of “I love you, too,” Tate had told her that his ex-fiancée was engaged to someone else. As if that was the takeaway for the evening. The highlight of tonight!
“We had a special night planned,” he explained. “I knew if you saw her it would derail those plans.”
Wow.
So Claire had been at the party, had walked over to tell him she was engaged and instead of Tate coming to Hayden and telling her his screwy ex-fiancée was in the building and had apparently moved way, way on, he hadn’t told Hayden anything. He let her believe that he’d been rankled by that Casey guy, then Tate had swept her up with his handsome smile and wooed her with promises of champagne and making love...
He’d lied by omission. And Hayden was the most honest she’d ever been.
“Let me get this straight...” Hayden heard the shake in her voice. “You thought if I saw Claire tonight, that your chances of getting laid would go way down.”
“What? No.”
Hayden didn’t wait for another of his explanations. She riffled through her discarded clothes and clumsily pulled on her bra and panties.
“Hayden, wait. Don’t get dressed.”
“I’m not arguing with you naked.” She jerked on her sparkly dress, angry that she had nothing else to wear. This was hardly a time for celebrating.
“We’re not arguing.” When he noticed she was fumbling with her zipper, he offered to help, but she swung away from him.
She raced into the kitchen for her purse, but only when she lifted her coat off the chair did she realize she was stranded. She didn’t drive herself tonight.
“Can we talk about this, please?” He snatched his shirt off the couch and pulled it over his shoulders, leaving it open in the front. She admired him, dammit, even while angry with him. He was handsome with his hair a disaster and his shirt open, revealing flat washboard abs, the legs of his pants falling to bare feet that were as attractive as the rest of him.
“There’s nothing to talk about. You’re still clearly in love with Claire if the news of her engagement hit you so hard you had to leave the party. I’m the moron who thought your heart would be as available as the rest of your body parts!”
“That’s not true!” Tate actually shouted, the sound bouncing off the high ceilings and ringing off the light fixture over the dining room table where they stood on opposite sides in a faceoff. “Can we please talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to say. I shouldn’
t have told you...what I told you.” She couldn’t say those three words to him—even in reference. She should’ve known better. “I’d been planning on telling you this evening and I thought—”
“You’d been planning this?” But he didn’t sound flattered or even appreciative. He sounded distraught. “For how long?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s clear you don’t feel the same way about me.” Try as she might, she wasn’t able to keep her chin from trembling. This was a nightmare. A waking, living, breathing nightmare. She was in love with him, and not only didn’t he know how to tell her he didn’t feel the same way, but he’d sort of lied to her tonight, too.
“It’s not that. I could... Given enough time. I think.” His eyebrows arched sympathetically. Meanwhile, she’d be over here dying of humiliation.
Never had she been this hurt. This disappointed. Not even when her parents had skipped her high school graduation to rescue her grandmother from yet another midday bender.
“The timing is off,” Tate said. “That’s all this is.”
“Oh, is that all?” She bit down hard and willed the tears currently tingling behind her eyes not to come. “Tell me, Tate, when is the perfect time for your girlfriend to tell you she loves you? For that matter, when’s the perfect time for you to find out you have a secret brother? Or an entire family, for that matter!”
Anger brought forth the tears she’d been swallowing down. Angry at herself for so many reasons, she swept them away with her fingers.
“We can still—”
“Sleep together?” she interrupted before letting out a humorless laugh. “I bet you’d love that. Oh, sorry. I bet you’d enjoy that. Let’s not use the L-word.”
He stalked toward her, his face reddening with anger of his own. A muscle in his jaw ticked, and she felt that win all the way down to her toes. She’d rather him be mad at her than frozen with panic like he’d been earlier.
“I’m not saying the timing has to be perfect,” he said. “I just need things to slow down for one goddamn second!”
He pulled his hands over his face like he was startled that he’d yelled, and then calmer, tried again. “I tried to live dangerously. I tried my life being in complete disarray. It didn’t work.”
Disarray? Danger? Was he referring to their relationship, or was he blaming Hayden for bringing disorder to his life? Was he longing for Claire? The perfect Stepford wife?
“I’ve worked hard my entire life to keep things steady,” he said. “To achieve incrementally and move my life toward the finish line. The...situation with my family has made me question everything I thought I knew about myself. Learning that Claire was engaged threw me, but not because I want her for myself. She was another in a line of failures I couldn’t prevent.”
Hayden blinked, finally understanding. “And you don’t want to be responsible for failing where I’m concerned. So you’re not taking the chance? You tried to live dangerously, to give yourself over to the experience that was me, and now I’m not worth the risk.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly. You’re too scared to take the chance to love me. I thought you were lost. I didn’t know you were a coward.”
It was like his blue eyes went up in flames. His complexion darkened, his voice the low warning of a lion.
“I can’t meditate and make my problems go away! I am Spright Wellness Community.” He jabbed his breastbone with one finger. “I’m responsible for an entire community of people. I have to focus. I have to implement actual decisions and strategies that affect others. Even when my life was falling down around me, I kept this place going. Everything I do is in service to the legacy I built. This place will house generations to come. Throughout every bit of adversity I’ve faced, SWC has thrived. Casey Huxley was a warning that my island could be on shaky ground. I have to be responsible, Hayden. I have to live up to the unbelievable pressures of being the perfect environmental oasis for the families who live here. I’m not a coward. I’m a goddamn saint.”
“A saint who is putting work before me!” Hayden shouted, her exposed heart burning with the realization. Another person she loved putting her in second place.
“Yes, exactly!” Tate threw his arms wide before ramming his hands into his hair. “I can’t put you first! You deserve it and I can’t do it.”
“It’s not like you’re housing the homeless, Tate. This is a luxury community. You dwell in a mansion on top of a hill! And who cares what others expect from you? Your ‘community’ doesn’t need you to survive. It can go on without you, you know. You’re the asshole with a god complex.”
His upper lip curled, the silence stretching between them like a band about to snap. Had she pushed him too far?
“Tell me, Hayden, all the ways you’ve sacrificed your own needs to take care of the people who need you.”
Her ears rang like an explosion had gone off next to her. The words were like a sharp, stinging slap to the cheek. More tears fell, but she didn’t feel them. She only knew they were there when they splashed onto her folded arms.
Realization dawned on his face so fast it was dizzying.
“I’m sorry.” He stepped closer, and she skirted him and collected her shoes. “I didn’t mean—”
“Take me home. Now.” She slipped on her shoes and pulled her wrap over her shoulders protectively. If only it were an invisible cape.
“Hayden, give me a chance to...” He followed her to the front door. “That was... I’m angry, okay? I spoke without thinking.”
“Now, please.” She wouldn’t allow Tate to make her feel guilty over a situation he’d never understand. She’d worked hard to untangle herself from her family’s codependent strings.
Besides, she was beginning to believe that she and Tate weren’t good together. This argument had proven that they had a knack for exposing the other’s soft underbelly.
She’d been open and honest with him. Now he was using that honesty against her, which made her feel as if she were slowly suffocating.
“Hayden—”
“I have some meditating to do, and I’d prefer to be at home when I do it.” Their gazes locked, and she tried not to see the human part of him. Tried to hate him for being cruel and elusive. But she couldn’t. She loved him too damn much.
She couldn’t stay and continue loving him, not when he didn’t love her. With sex in the mix, it would border masochism.
And she refused to linger and hope that one day the timing would be right. That he’d return her feelings when life settled down. Life didn’t settle down. Life was change—it was a series of bumps and hills, not flat, even plains.
With a tight nod of acquiescence, Tate finished dressing and put on his coat. He shut off the fireplace and scraped his keys from the kitchen counter, walking past Hayden without a second look.
“I’ll warm up the car. Come out when you’re ready,” he said over his shoulder.
Once the door was shut, she looked out the wide picture window into the dark woods beyond.
Like the cold, still landscape, she was empty and alone. As if she’d traded places with that earlier version of Tate who’d stood outside her studio lost, and soaking in the rain.
Twenty-Four
At her front door, her hand resting on the knob, Hayden read the black-and-silver frosting on the sheet cake. “‘Happy retirement, Roger’?”
“A mistake,” Arlene said, her normally huge blond waves pulled neatly into a ponytail at the back of her head. “Rodger’s name is actually spelled with a D, or so the lady at Blossom Bakery told me. This was the only cake available on such short notice.”
“Why are you bringing me cake?” Hayden stepped aside and Arlene bustled in, a tote and her purse slung over her shoulder.
She’d called Arlene the morning after the New Year’s Eve debacle at Tate’s house, and Arlene h
ad promised to be right over with “reinforcements.”
“I assumed you’d show up with Emily and a few tubs of ice cream.” Hayden shut her front door.
“Emily is with Josh,” Arlene paused for a meaningful eyebrow waggle. “And ice cream is cliché.” She pulled a bottle of sparkling wine out of the tote. “I also have hummus, pretzel chips, brie, salmon and lots of those really fattening buttery crackers we love but know are bad for us.”
Hayden offered a wan, though grateful, smile. “Don’t ruin your resolutions on my account.”
“Pfft. Please. It’s not too early to crack this open, right?” Arlene asked rhetorically as she tore the foil from the neck of the wine.
“Three o’clock is well within the day-drinking window.”
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t closer, or I’d have been here sooner.” Arlene had been in Seattle when Hayden called her and had promised to come ASAP.
“It’s fine. What were you doing, anyway?”
“I was doing a very fine younger bodybuilder type named Mike.”
Hayden’s eyebrows rose.
“I snapped a pic in the shower when he wasn’t looking. Want to see?” But her friend’s smile fell when Hayden’s eyes filled with tears. Arlene quickly put down the bottle and ran to hug her. “I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry,” she soothed as she rubbed Hayden’s back. “It’s too soon for me to be bragging about my hot hookup. And forget about Emily and Josh.”
Hayden let out a watery laugh. “It’s not too soon. I want you both to be happy.”
Arlene leveled her with a look. “I wore my yoga gear so you could torture me in the studio. Whatever makes you feel better.”
That did make Hayden laugh. “Yoga’s about being kind to yourself, not about torture.”
“Whatever you say. Cake first, though. I insist.”
Half a sheet cake later, Hayden and Arlene sagged on the sofa, their champagne glasses in hand.
“After that much sugar, you’d think I’d have more energy.” Hayden stabbed her plastic fork into the remaining cake. They hadn’t bothered with plates. Arlene found two plastic forks left over from takeout and brought them to the couch with the wine and the cake.
Christmas Seduction (The Bachelor Pact Book 4) Page 14
