A difficult Man to Love

by Elizabeth Lennox

  Hayden didn’t comment on the meager amount. It wasn’t even a drop in the bucket of what Harry’s company owed her and it irritated her that he kept coming back for more.

  “You owe her twelve thousand, three hundred, ninety-four dollars, Mr. Fisher,” Viktor announced, standing behind Hayden.

  Hayden swung around and stared up at him, her mouth falling open in shock. “Mr. Chenko, this isn’t…”

  “I told you to call me Viktor. Since we are engaged, it doesn’t make sense to call me by my last name.” Then he focused all of his attention on Harry.

  “So, if you want the latest inventory, you will pay the outstanding balance, as well as the full amount for this order.” His eyes hardened as he looked at the other man. “Apparently, your line of credit here is canceled.”

  Hayden was horrified at the hard line that Viktor was taking. She glanced between the two men, trying to figure out how to get rid of Viktor while keeping Harry here. She really didn’t want Harry to go to another plant nursery. He was one of her biggest customers and, once he figured out his cash flow, she’d see a big windfall.

  “I can handle this,” she told Viktor, lifting her hand as if she could ward him off with the gesture.

  Viktor looked down at her. “No, Hayden. This man is taking advantage of your good nature.”

  Harry was puffing up, ready to defend himself. Hayden could see what was happening and held her hands out to both men. “No, Viktor. You don’t understand this business. It’s just difficult to get clients to pay up. It’s simply the nature of the business.” She put a hand on Viktor’s chest, pleading with him to understand and step away. “Harry pays me in increments as soon as his clients pay him.”

  Viktor glared at the other man. “Is this what you told her?” he demanded. He started to take a step closer, but the gentle pressure of Hayden’s hands on his chest stopped him. He was furious with the shorter man for taking advantage of her. “Is that why your company’s bank balance is currently over fifty thousand dollars?”

  Hayden was just about to argue for Harry’s side of things when that number hit her. Turning around, she looked at Harry. “Is that true, Harry?”

  Harry stammered for a long moment. “Of course it isn’t true! I have no idea where he’s getting his information, but my bank balance is as sad as yours is, Hayden! You know this business. Obviously, this stranger thinks he knows how business works, but he’s ignorant.”

  Hayden was so surprised by the strong hand that curved around her waist that she didn’t have the mental capacity to defend Harry.

  “One of my subsidiaries owns the bank where your company accounts are held,” Viktor was saying. “I not only can confirm the exact amount in your accounts, I can also give my fiancée additional information on the collections policies you have in place, which you submitted to one of my bank representatives while applying for a loan three months ago to expand your business.”

  Harry’s mouth opened and closed even as his eyes moved from Viktor to Hayden. Hayden intuitively understood from that look that everything Viktor was saying was true. “Harry? What’s going on? You don’t have that kind of money in your account, do you?” At Harry’s continued silence, she started to step closer, but the strong hand on her waist stopped her from moving away. “And how can you expand your business, if you’re having the same kind of cash flow problems I’m having?”

  Harry sputtered for a long moment, shaking his head.

  Viktor once again spoke up. “Are you telling me that you don’t currently have very efficient collections policies in place? From the history my bank employee explained, your cash flow is extremely normal. You affirmed on your loan application that you require fifty percent of the proposal price up front, another twenty-five percent when the job is seventy-five percent completed, and full payment within fifteen days after completion of the job. Your application demonstrated that you have excellent cash flow and you provided excellent references.” There was a long, painful pause before Viktor went on. “Are you telling me now that you lied on your loan application? Or are you going to admit to one of the suppliers that have made your company such a success that you haven’t been paying her with the same terms that you require of your customers?”

  Hayden’s eyes widened. “Harry? Have you been…” she couldn’t even say the word.

  Viktor once again stepped in. “I expect a cashier’s check to be delivered to my fiancée by no later than close of business today, which will include the full balance that you owe her, as well as payment in full for the plants that you require for this next job.”

  Harry sputtered. “Payment in full?! We’ve never had that kind of a business relationship!”

  Viktor was merciless. “You are free to go to the other nurseries,” he told the shorter man. “But you and I know that the plants supplied by my fiancée are less expensive than the other plant nurseries around the area, which allow you to have such a high profit margin. Also, her plants are of superior quality and are the main reason that your business has spread so rapidly by word of mouth. The results speak for themselves…don’t they?”

  Harry looked from one to the other, obviously not sure what to say. If he continued with his assertion that he didn’t have good cash flow, he was jeopardizing his loan application to expand his business. If he agreed that his business’ cash flow was good, then he would have to repay Hayden.

  In the end, he was more afraid of losing his expansion plans. Pressing his lips together, he gestured to the list of inventory he would need. “I’ll have a check to you by close of business today. My guy will be here promptly at seven o’clock tomorrow morning to pick up these items.”

  “She doesn’t open until nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” Viktor pointed out.

  Harry looked like he wanted to open his mouth to argue, but in the end, he simply nodded. “Nine o’clock then,” and he turned around on his heel to stomp to his truck.

  Hayden stared after the man long after she could no longer see the brake lights on his truck. When she continued to stand there, Viktor became concerned.

  “He was lying to you, Hayden,” he reminded her softly, that deep gravelly voice slicing through her dismay.

  “Yes. I realize that.” She bowed her head. “Now.”

  Viktor was stumped. She looked so lost and he had no idea how to help her. He’d never witnessed a woman looking so vulnerable. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Many women had tried to tug at his emotions but, until this moment, he hadn’t realized he had any. Their efforts had been ignored.

  But when Hayden was upset, something inside of him wasn’t right. It felt as if he was living in a cloud of gloom.

  “Could you give me a tour of your plants?” he suggested, trying to come up with some way in which he could brighten her mood. She looked like she was about to burst into tears, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to handle that. Not from this woman. No. Absolutely no tears from Hayden.

  When those crystal blue eyes looked up at him, he wanted to pull her into his arms. The tears were there, just under the surface.

  No. Absolutely not.

  “My gardener told me that he was going to rip out some green bushes,” he explained, completely lying. He’d never spoken to his gardener, but he needed to distract her from the pain filling her heart. “I want more color and told him so, but the man looked like I’d just suggested that I shoot myself to the moon.”

  Almost immediately, he saw her eyes blink rapidly and the emotions shifted from teary and hurt to shining with intelligence. “Color? What time of the year do you want color?”

  He relaxed now that the threat of tears and hurt were gone. “Time of the year?” he asked as if she’d just asked him something complicated. He shrugged. “All the time.”

  Hayden smiled slightly. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

  He wasn’t, but if it caused her to smile, he didn’t care. “Maybe. Can you recommend something for my gardener?”

  Hayden sighed.
She suspected that this tall, muscular man didn’t even know that he had a gardener and his question was meant only to distract her, but she didn’t care. It was working and would keep her from breaking down. That would have been humiliating, she thought. This tall, intensely attractive man could never see her feeling weak or vulnerable, she told herself firmly. He had far too many advantages as it was.

  “This way,” she directed, folding the piece of paper from Harry in half as she made her way through the plants. “Tell me what you’re looking for.”

  He shrugged. “Color. That’s all I told my gardener. I want color. When I look out my windows, I want to see color.”

  Hayden laughed. “Well, that’s a pretty tall order.” But as she led him through the plants, she described the colors each plant produced during the various seasons, why one would want a specific plant in a pot or in the ground, the various textures of the leaves, and other possibilities. “Most plants are just…green,” she told him, looking up at him, then quickly away when she saw the interest in his eyes.

  Anger was fine. Amusement, yeah, she could take that one. But not interest.

  She was painfully conscious of him walking beside her, her head barely coming up to his shoulder and she wished she was wearing higher heels so that she wasn’t so much smaller than he was.

  When they came to the end of the tour and she had no more plants to describe, she turned to face him awkwardly. Taking a deep breath, she forced her eyes to look up into his. “Thank you for helping me earlier,” she told him, needing to say that to him. Clasping her hands in front of her, she took a deep breath and bowed her head. “I know plants,” she told him. “But when it comes to running a business, I’m….” she looked around, not daring to look up at the man who seemed to thrive on business ventures. “Well, I’m not good at business.”

  “No. You’re not.” Her startled gaze snapped up to his. “Your prices are too low, your inventory is disorganized, your business is right next to your home, which causes customers to psychologically dismiss you as a light weight in the industry. Your collections procedures are bad, your cash flow is pathetic, and you’re too soft on the landscapers, causing you to lose business and capital. They are taking advantage of you.”

  Hayden laughed slightly, more than a little hurt by his laundry list of her deficiencies. “Don’t pull your punches,” she teased, but she bit her lip.

  “I never do. I tell it like it is.” He put a finger under her chin, lifting her eyes back up to his. “On the other hand, you have an excellent knowledge of plants and botany, your inventory is superior to other plant nurseries, and that’s not me saying that because I wouldn’t know the difference between an annual and a perennial. That’s your competition talking about you, by the way. Your advice is spot on and people are demanding that their landscaping companies use only your products because your plants are of higher quality.”

  Hayden was so astounded by his praise, she wasn’t sure what to say. “Um…thank you.”

  “You need a business manager, Hayden.”

  She blinked up at him, not sure where he was going with this. “I thought you were trying to put me out of business.”

  “Not if you marry me.”

  “Which I won’t.”

  “Which you’re going to think about,” he corrected, moving closer. “I think we could have a very strong marriage.”

  She shook her head, trying to step backwards, but he took her hands in his and kept her right where she was.

  “Would you like some tea?” she asked, desperate to put some space between their bodies. This close, all she could do was breathe in the male scent of him. She loved his spicy cologne, as well as the maleness that seemed to burn itself into her nostrils.

  His eyes continued to survey her features for a long moment. But thankfully, he stepped back and nodded. “I would love some tea,” he agreed.

  Hayden made her way from the back of the green house and up through the pebbled pathway to the kitchen door. Inside her house, she cringed, realizing that it was still colder inside than it was outside. She hoped he wouldn’t notice and hurriedly moved to the stove, turning on the heat in an attempt to warm up the kitchen.

  “Did I pull you away from anything important at your office?”

  He looked around and Hayden busied herself by pulling down cups from the cupboard. “Why is it so cold in here?” he demanded.

  Hayden glanced over her shoulder, but her eyes couldn’t meet his. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The next time she looked over her shoulder, he wasn’t there. But she knew exactly where he’d gone and hurried into the living room. Sure enough, he was standing by the thermostat, switching the levers and twisting the temperature gauge. “Your heater is broken, isn’t it?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. I don’t use it this late in the season,” she lied, then held her breath as she prayed he would believe her. She didn’t want anyone to know how desperate her circumstances had become.

  He didn’t say a word, didn’t call out her lie. He simply watched her for a long moment. Hayden waited, her eyes pleading with him to simply accept her lie and move on. The man had just told her she was a horrible businesswoman and, okay, well, yeah, that was true. She was horrible. She was too nice, too trusting, and she had Harry’s performance as evidence of how gullible she really was.

  Beyond all of that, Hayden simply couldn’t allow this man to know that she was too broke to get her heater fixed! That – and her lack of food – would be the ultimate humiliation.

  But he lifted his phone from his pocket and dialed a number. Once again, he had a conversation in Russian and she had no idea what he was saying. She suspected it was about her, but she couldn’t call him out and demand an explanation because she just didn’t have enough information.

  When he slid his phone back into his pocket, she breathed a bit more easily. Thankfully, the tea pot started to whistle at that point as well.

  “I’ll just go fix the tea,” she told him awkwardly and almost tripped on her feet in her attempt to turn around. Grabbing onto the wall, she righted herself, glancing back at him in the hopes that he hadn’t noticed. But of course, he knew exactly what was going on, how she was literally tripping over her own feet. The man didn’t miss a thing.

  “Just…” she pointed behind her, feeling like a clumsy fool. “Water is boiling.”

  With that, she spun around and, thankfully, made it around the door and back into the kitchen. There, she turned off the heat and poured the hot water into the two cups, then stood there for a long moment, bracing her arms out against the countertop. “Pull yourself together!” she admonished herself in a whisper. “He’s just a man! A man like all the others.”

  “But I’m not, am I?” he said gruffly and his voice was too close to her ear. Spinning around, she realized that he was only inches from her back. Now her chest.

  “You’re not…?”

  “I’m not just a man.” His eyes traveled over her features, one by one. “Not to you. And you’re not just a woman to me.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m not?” she whispered, struck by his words and the tone of his voice. Well, and the intensity in his grey eyes.

  “No. I can’t explain it, and I doubt you could put it into words, but neither of us are just a male or female to the other. There’s something there.” His hand lifted to push a lock of hair back behind her ear. “Something intense between us.”

  “There is?” Yes, Hayden was feeling it. There was a throbbing presence, a tension between the two of them that she couldn’t deny. But she was grateful that it wasn’t simply on her side.

  “Why don’t we drink that tea?” he suggested, even though he hated tea. “And you can tell me about your dreams for your business.”

  She nodded her head, not really sure if he was serious. “Tea. That would be nice.”

  “Do you have any other customers coming this afternoon?”

  Hayden sh
ook her head. “No. I’m usually closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.”

  Hayden watched in fascination as his grey eyes darkened, became angry. “So the ass who was trying to steal from you was here on your day off, forcing you to work?”

  Hayden slipped away from him, relieved when she could focus on finding the perfect tea for him. “Is peppermint tea okay?” she offered, lifting the box to show him the candy canes on the outside. When she saw the horrified look on his features, she realized what she was asking and shook her head. “Sorry. No peppermint tea.” She reached up and pulled another box out. Then another. “Not chamomile either.” Another box was covered in blueberries, another with all sorts of berries. “I know I have some regular tea in here somewhere,” she told him, reaching into the back of her cupboard, unaware of his eyes moving over her slender figure in the too-large dress. The way her arms were reaching, they pulled the material more tightly against her butt and he almost groaned with the effort to keep his hands away from that perfect portion of her anatomy.

  When she spun around, he had to quickly avert his gaze and almost laughed out loud at her triumph when she held up the box with the regular tea. “That will be fine,” he responded. Obviously, he didn’t do as good of a job as needed to hide his amusement because she glared up at him despite his efforts.

  “Sugar or lemon?” she asked with a silky smooth tone of voice that didn’t fool him in the least. Flames of anger shot at him from those lovely, blue eyes.

  He shook his head. “Neither. Just straight,” he told her. He actually hated tea, preferring coffee. Tea seemed like a pretentious beverage, but offering him the tea seemed to soothe her somehow. So, he’d drink the tea and get information.

  “Tell me more about what you’d like your business to look like in five years,” he encouraged as he accepted the cup with the tea tag hanging over the side. He noticed that hers smelled like blueberries. Der’mo, he though, realizing that she’d almost offered him the same. He shuddered at the idea, then noticed that she didn’t add any sweetener to hers either. Somehow, the blueberry tea suited her.