A difficult Man to Love

by Elizabeth Lennox

  “Hayden!” Natalie cried. “Stop stalling! Tell us what happened!”

  “He proposed,” Hayden blurted, leaning her arms against the countertop and waiting for the explosion. When there was only silence, Hayden peered over her shoulder, trying to determine her friends’ reactions. The stunned expression on both of their lovely features was almost funny. Or it would be if there was anything humorous about this situation.

  “Say something,” she urged, turning around even as her fingers twisted the dishtowel nervously in front of her.

  Natalie continued to stare. Kate opened and closed her mouth, looked at Natalie, then back at Hayden. “Are you kidding?”

  Hayden could only shrug her shoulders slightly, not sure what else to do. But when they both continued to stare at her, she grew impatient, needing their guidance.

  “Guys!” Hayden yelled.

  That jerked both of them out of their stupefied trance. Kate was the first to speak. “Let me get this straight. You took two hours out of your morning to go to his office in the city, told him that you were now willing to sell your land to him and, instead, ended up engaged with a fridge full of food and a…”

  Whatever Kate was about to say was interrupted by the doorbell.

  Hayden lifted a finger, halting her friend’s dissertation on her crazy life for the past thirty six hours and hurried out of the kitchen. When she answered the door this time, there were two men standing on her porch. Burt was still looking around, his pen frantically scratching out something on his clipboard, ignoring the newcomers as he continued his work.

  “Can I help you?” Hayden asked, thinking they were with Burt, but apparently not.

  The first man stepped forward. He was wearing a slate grey shirt with his name on it and matching pants. “I’m here to check out your plumbing.”

  Since that made no sense, she turned her eyes to the second man, silently prompting him to explain his presence. “I’m here to inspect and repair any electrical issues.”

  Hayden stared, her eyes moving back and forth between the two men, to Burt and, when Natalie stepped up next to her, she looked at her friend. “Plumber and electrician,” she said to Natalie.

  Kate was right behind Natalie, and Hayden felt her friend’s reassuring hand on her shoulder. “This is good!”

  “Thank heavens!” Natalie agreed. “The electrical outlets in this house are ancient!” She laughed when Hayden poked her ribs. “And it takes about thirty minutes to get any hot water upstairs.”

  The two men nodded in understanding, but because Hayden was still standing in the way, they didn’t move.

  “You need to let them in,” Kate said in a stage whisper. “And then tell us what else happened.”

  Hayden was even more confused. “I don’t need any electrical or plumbing work done.”

  The plumber looked down at his clipboard…Hayden was starting to really hate clipboards…and said, “I’m supposed to install one of those endless water heaters,” he explained. “And check out the drip in the kitchen sink.”

  Hayden’s mouth fell open in surprise. “How in the world did he know about…?” Hayden stopped talking and looked at Natalie, gritting her teeth at the woman’s curious expression. “I don’t need…”

  Kate interrupted her, pulling Hayden out of the way to open the door wider. “She does. Come on in, guys. Do whatever you need to do. She’ll stay out of your way.”

  Before Hayden could close the door, a delivery driver pulled up to the bottom of the wooden stairs, jumping out of his car with yet another clipboard.

  “Are you Ms. Hayden Ferrant?” he asked, huffing slightly as he came to a skidding halt in front of her.

  “Yes,” she replied warily.

  “I have a certified check here for you. I need you to sign for it.”

  Hayden looked down at the check and noticed that it was from Harry, not Viktor. A sharp burst of happiness hit her, and a matching burst of gratitude towards Viktor. He’d been right! “Wow! He really sent a check?” she gasped.

  The man chuckled. “Certified, even,” he agreed, handing her the clipboard and a pen.

  Hayden gladly accepted this clipboard and signed on the line, handing both board and pen back to him. He hurried off and Hayden tore open the envelope. Sure enough, there was a twenty-four thousand dollar check. And change! The line items showed that the twelve thousand was for the back-logged purchases and the additional money was for the new order. “Wow!” she said again, flabbergasted at the amount.

  “Do you know what this means?” she asked Natalie.

  Kate peered over Hayden’s shoulder, whistling as she looked down at the amount. “That’s a lot of zeroes!”

  “You’re taking Kate, me, and Alejo out to dinner?” she teased.

  Hayden laughed, throwing her arms around both women. “It means I can pay all of the back taxes!”

  “Not before you explain what happened yesterday,” Natalie argued and slammed the front door before dragging Hayden back into the kitchen.

  “Okay, spill it!” Kate and Natalie crossed their arms, waiting not-so-patiently for Hayden to fill in the blanks.

  Hayden was still looking down at the check, relief surging through her with the amount.

  “The man proposed…and?”

  Hayden laughed. “Yes. He proposed, then he drove me back here.”

  Kate nudged Natalie in the ribs with her elbow, both of them grinning. “And you had mad, passionate sex, right?”

  Hayden couldn’t stop the blush that formed on her cheeks with Kate’s assumption and Natalie clapped her hands together. “Wonderful! It’s about time you got laid!”

  “I think he expects me to marry him.”

  Natalie waved that aside. “Of course you’re not going to marry the man!” she scoffed.

  Kate agreed. “He’s drinking the crazy Kool-Aid if he thinks that.”

  Hayden twirled her tea cup around, holding it in her hands, unable to look at her friends. She was excited and confused and overwhelmed and a whole host of other emotions. Harry had paid her…and it was all due to Viktor’s intervention! Oh, the man was extraordinary!

  Natalie made a sound, bringing Hayden’s attention back to her cautious friend. “Hayden, you’re not going to marry the man, right?”

  That brief glimpse of vulnerability came to mind once again. Hayden’s mouth stretched out as she tried to find the answer to that. “He needs me,” she finally said, wondering if her friends understood. Goodness, it felt wonderful to be needed!

  Kate made an inelegant sound. “He’s a billionaire, honey. Trust me, he doesn’t need anyone.” She paused before she whispered, “Just tell me you used protection, right?”

  Natalie and Hayden both looked at Kate. The two of them had discussed Kate’s wary attitude towards wealthy people before. They didn’t know about her background and accepted her without that knowledge, but there was something sad and…almost scared…in their friend’s eyes at that moment. They’d seen that look before and wanted to help her, but as warm and wonderful as Kate was about some things, she was completely closed off when it came to her past.

  Hayden lowered her eyes from Kate’s sadness, then smiled weakly. “Yes. We definitely used protection.”

  Natalie nodded, relief relaxing her lovely features. “Good. Trust me, you don’t want to deal with…” she waved her hands in the air again. “Well, I love Alejo with all my heart, but going through pregnancy without a father is…tough.”

  Hayden covered her friend’s hand. “You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

  Kate leaned over and hugged Natalie. “I’m here for you as well.”

  Natalie sighed. “I know. And thanks.”

  Turning her hand around, Natalie gripped Hayden’s fingers. “So, you had a wonderful experience last night?”

  Hayden thought about the beauty of being in Viktor’s arms and the passionate way he’d made love to her last night. He hadn’t been gentle then, well, until…yeah, he’d been sweet and…no
, not gentle, she thought with a silent laugh. But he hadn’t kissed her goodbye. Unfortunately, that’s the issue that seemed to bother her the most. He hadn’t said goodbye! He’d just left.

  But both women needed something, needed reassurance. So she squeezed her friends’ hands and nodded. “Yes. It was nice.”

  Natalie’s eyes turned angry. “It should be better than nice! It should be…” she looked up at the ceiling and Hayden saw a sad look come into her friend’s beautiful eyes. “It should be life-altering. Mind blowing.”

  Hayden laughed and looked over at Kate, shaking her head. Kate shrugged as if she hadn’t had the experience of “life-altering” or “mind-blowing” sex either. Last night with Viktor had been all of those things. And would have been more…if he’d been there this morning with her.

  The doorbell rang again and Hayden sighed with frustration. “I’ll get rid of whoever is at the door now.”

  Natalie was not amused. “He didn’t satisfy you last night, and now he is invading your privacy. You didn’t like him the last time he came around…”

  Sounds of someone yelling came through the door and all three of them stopped to look out the window.

  Someone in a silver pickup truck and a small, red, sporty roadster were pulling into the parking lot. “What now?” Hayden groaned, rubbing her forehead as she tried to figure out how to deal with this latest intrusion.

  Natalie wrapped her arms around Haden, giving her a gentle hug. “I have to get to work but tell these people to buzz off. We’ll talk about this later, okay?”

  Kate joined in the hug as well, wrapping her arms around both of them. “I have to check in on Toby and make sure he didn’t blow up the coffee shop doing some sort of experiment with caffeine and creamer.”

  The ladies laughed, knowing that Toby was a chef in-training and loved to experiment with different flavors of coffee and syrups. Some of the experiments were a real hit and others…well, some of them the customers didn’t appreciate as much.

  “Why don’t you ladies come by the coffee shop later today and we’ll finish this conversation?”

  “I’ll try,” Hayden agreed, thinking that she wasn’t really in the mood to talk about it at all.

  Natalie agreed as well and grabbed her purse before rushing out the doorway. Hayden watched her friends leave, wishing that she could do something to help both of them. Natalie’s son really was adorable and just thinking about the man who had fathered the beautiful boy made her angry. And Kate…? Yes, there was a mystery in Kate’s past, but she didn’t share. And every once in a while, Hayden stopped by to talk with Kate and caught a flash of terror in her friend’s eyes. It only lasted a moment, and only when Kate was off-guard, but the look still concerned Hayden.

  The doorbell rang again and Hayden sighed as she walked towards the front of the house. Her morning had started out crazy and was getting more insane by the hour, she thought.

  Opening the door, she blinked as she took in the three different people standing there waiting for her.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, but not to anyone in particular.

  The two women both started talking at once. “I’m here to help you select flowers for your wedding. If you want something by next Saturday, we need to move quickly.” And at the same time another woman spoke up. “I have dress samples for you, Ms. Ferrant. I really need to get your dress size so that I can order the dress. Especially if you want something from Paris or Milan. Alterations take time, you know.”

  Hayden lifted her hand in the air, palm out, indicating that both women should stop. They continued on regardless and Hayden rubbed her forehead. “Stop!” she yelled when the two women started bickering with each other.

  Pointing to the guy behind the ladies, she said, “What do you need from me?”

  The man looked to be in his twenties, maybe early thirties, and he just grinned, his freckled face soothing her temper slightly. “I’m just here to drop off your new cars, ma’am.”

  Hayden stared at the Opie-looking guy for a long moment, not sure she fully understood. “Car?”

  The guy’s grin increased. “Well, two of them, actually.” A long finger pointed to the side of the house and Hayden peered around her door. The silver pickup and the sporty, red Miata were sitting there, looking innocuous and beautiful.

  Hayden straightened and looked back at “Opie”. “Those aren’t mine,” she told him. “I didn’t buy a car.”

  The giant Adam’s apple in the poor guy’s throat bobbed as he swallowed nervously. “Um…” he looked down at his clipboard…she was really starting to hate those things now…and read off the information. “Are you Hayden Ferrant?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied warily. Immediately, a tall, dark haired, arrogant, obnoxious, irritating man popped into her mind.

  “Opie” shrugged, not sure what to do. Apparently, no one had ever rejected delivery of a vehicle before. “Mr. Chenko said that you needed cars. He specifically said that you needed them this morning, immediate delivery.”

  More forehead rubbing and Hayden tried to calm herself down. Shaking her head, she wasn’t sure what to do. “I’m not…he shouldn’t have…”

  The guy swallowed again, his happy grin completely gone. “How about if I just drop these keys off with you? If you don’t want the vehicles, then Mr. Chenko will have me come out and get them another time.” With that, he extended his very long arm, depositing both sets of keys into Hayden’s hands before she could think to tell him no. A fraction of a second later, he was literally jumping down the stairs and diving into yet another vehicle. The car drove away with three people inside, “Opie” telling the other two something that was most likely along the lines of “crazy lady”.

  Hayden might have laughed if she didn’t feel as if she might choke from the panic welling up inside of her. The breakfast she’d eaten a scant hour ago was not sitting well in her stomach, threatening to come back up. “This is insane,” she whispered.

  The florist laughed softly. “Marrying a man like Mr. Chenko can be like that,” she observed.

  Hayden lifted blue eyes to glare at the other woman. “I am not marrying that man!” she snapped.

  Two mouths fell open in shock. And horror?

  Feeling horrible for speaking so badly, she lifted her hands once again. “I’m sorry,” she soothed. “I don’t mean to be rude, but…”

  How was she supposed to explain to these women that the man had only proposed to her yesterday? Of course, she’d slept with the man. Well…and a whole lot more!

  But these women couldn’t know that.

  “I really…this will have to wait,” she told both women.

  The electrician came up behind her at that moment. “I’m going to fix a few things today, but from what I understand, the installation of the endless water heater is going to take a special circuit and you have walls coming down. That’s going to need some re-wiring too. So, I’ll just fix the emergency issues today and come back after the other issues are finished.”

  Hayden stared at the man, her mouth hanging open like a gasping fish. “I have electrical issues?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, but when she continued to stare at him, he tapped his clipboard. “Not many. It won’t be bad.” More staring and he tried to soothe her by saying, “Mr. Chenko is paying for all of it.”

  She blinked, not soothed in any way. “But…what walls are coming down? I don’t want walls to come down!”

  The contractor stepped in at that point. “Mr. Chenko suggested that the walls between the kitchen, living room, and dining room come down to open up this area,” he explained.

  Hayden looked at her walls, the cozy spaces where she’d grown up, opened Christmas presents, watched movies curled up between her parents on Friday nights or watched cartoons on Saturday morning.

  “But…I don’t want the walls to come down!” she told him, trying to be firm, but knew she sounded pretty pathetic now.

  Unfortunately, the plumbe
r came up the stairs at that moment, still writing on his damn clipboard as he said, “I’m going to have to take out the basement window to get the old water heater out of that area.”

  When he looked up at the crowd, Hayden’s mouth was no longer gaping. She was furious.

  “Oh my! We have a lot of work to do here, don’t we?” a new man announced as he stepped into the house, almost shoving the florist and dress woman out of the way since they were still standing in the open doorway. Good thing her heater had been repaired yesterday because that baby really needed to crank out the heat today!

  The man stepped into the foyer and looked around, tilting his head left and right to peer into the other rooms before he sighed, shaking his head disdainfully. “I’m here to decorate. And just in the nick of time!” he laughed.

  Oh! That was the last straw, she thought.

  With a growl, she spun around on her heel and grabbed her purse. She normally didn’t carry a purse because…well, she was a gardener. A purse looked pretty silly with grubby jeans and a bulky sweatshirt.

  But she’d used a purse yesterday, trying to look professional. Look what that had gotten her! “No more!” she snapped. Looking down at the keys, she had no idea which one would start either vehicle, but she stormed out the door and started pressing buttons. When the red Miata blinked, she tossed the remaining keys into her purse and yanked open the door. Revving the engine, she practically made the tires squeal as she backed up and drove out of the parking lot.

  She was fired up and even the thirty-five mile drive into the city couldn’t soothe her temper. In fact, because of the heavy traffic at this time of the morning, the normally forty-five minute drive took her two hours. Hayden grumbled the entire way as she inched along with the rest of the Washington, D.C. commuters. What was the point of having a car if public transportation was just as fast?!

  By the time she reached the building that housed Viktor’s offices, she was even angrier!

  “I’d like to see Mr. Chenko, please,” she growled through gritted teeth to the security guard in the lobby.

  The man’s face went from pleasant to blank in a fraction of a second, most likely to hide his wariness at letting her through.