Stealing Her Heart
A Billionaire, Small Town Romance
Kaylee Spring
Copyright © 2020 by Kaylee Spring
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
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About the Author
Chapter 1
Hailey
The worst and best day of my life starts off just like any other.
After sleeping through my first three alarms, I leap out of bed and go through my morning routine in half the time I really need. This means putting off applying any make-up until I park outside the bank and watch the seconds tick down until my shift is supposed to start. It also means no time for anything resembling a well-balanced breakfast. Instead, I only manage to get a granola bar down before checking my teeth one last time in the mirror and promising myself that I’ll brush them again after lunch.
Ten minutes later, I’m standing behind the counter of the bank, prepping my drawer for the day and already glancing up at the massive clock on the opposite wall, wondering how I’m going to make it to 5:00.
“Another day, another dollar. Isn't that right, Hailey?” my manager says like he does every morning. He’s not a bad guy. He’s got at least twenty years on me, with a dad bod and a moustache that I would make him shave off if I were his wife. He may be annoying with the way he always tries to work my name into conversations because he thinks it makes him more personable, but he’s never been creepy or micro-managing, so as far as bosses go, I can hardly complain.
“Thank god it’s Friday,” I repeat back another one of his favorite quotes.
“Got any plans for the weekend?”
He asks me this every week, and my answer is sadly always the same. “Drink a little too much boxed wine, binge something on Netflix, and count down the hours until Monday, I guess.”
“I’d say you need a man in your life, but that life sounds perfect to me. Oh, to be single again. Not that I would ever give up my wife. She’s the love of my life!” He finishes this up with a light laugh at himself. Then he raps his knuckles on the marble counter between us and takes off to unlock the doors.
He’s always complaining about his marriage, but following it up with how much he loves his wife. It’s like a way to cope with a life he’s only settled for. Honestly, it’s as depressing as it is annoying.
But it’s not like I have a lot of room to talk. Ever since I graduated university three years ago, I’ve fallen into this rut. The way I cope with the crippling reality of life is to tell myself every paycheck that I’m only going to work at the bank long enough to put money away so I can eventually travel around the world. But by the time I pay all the bills, even after drinking only the cheapest of wine and stopping myself from drowning my sorrows in too much take-out, I’m still left with a pittance to transfer to my savings account. At this rate, I’ll never have enough for a road trip to the Florida Keyes, much less for a ticket to Europe.
Two hours roll by and the morning rush slows the closer we get to lunchtime. A few of my regulars stop in. Miss Forster, the elderly woman who owns about a dozen properties around town that she rents out for well below market value. She could definitely stand to increase her tenants’ rents by two or three times, but she refuses. Saying that’s how much they agreed to pay in the beginning. Besides, she’s comfortable enough in her routine, which includes dropping by to make a deposit twice a week.
Then there’s Jack. That’s what he insists we call him even though I know his real name is George. He’s the only homeless person I know of in town. Not that he couldn’t afford to live somewhere with a roof. I’ve seen his savings balance. He wouldn’t be living like a king, but he could certainly afford a studio apartment and a new wardrobe. But he’s happy to stop by every morning and deposit the meager few dollars he was able to scrounge up begging the previous day. Everyone in town knows him by name, including Miss Forster, who always includes him in her rounds of Christmas cookies when the season rolls around.
It’s rare for a customer I don’t at least recognize to step in the bank. This is a small town with small-town people. It’s cliché, but true: everyone knows each other. Which makes it all the more strange when a new face appears just before my lunch break.
I definitely would have remembered seeing him before.
As he walks into our air-conditioned lobby, there’s immediately this aura of something different. I wouldn’t be losing any money if I bet he was from a big city. It’s not just the clothes he wears (navy slacks, a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, brown loafers, and those sunglasses with the perfectly reflective lens like a mirror); it’s the way he wears them. The countryside life hasn’t beaten him down. He walks proudly, his wide shoulders making my breath hitch as I follow the curve of his body down to his thin waist and imagine what hangs just below.
He goes to stand in another line, but then he sees me. At least, I think he does. It’s hard to tell what he’s looking at with those sunglasses on. He switches lines, and while I tend to other customers, each time I look up, I can feel his gaze on me. He swipes a deposit slip from the table in the middle of the lobby and quickly jots something down.
“Are you feeling alright, Hailey?” asks Courtney. She’s another regular. A manager at the local bar who’s usually here first thing every morning to deposit the bar’s earnings from the night before. Her face is ragged, but when she follows my eyes back to the guy three people behind her in line, a smile cracks through her exhausted mask. “Oh, I see. Looks like you’re coming down with a case of hot-guy fever.”
As I complete her deposit, I ask her in a conspiratorial whisper, “Have you seen him around?”
She shakes her head. “A new face. Fresh meat.” She leans forward and in her usual teasing manner that earns her more tips than any other bartender or server in town, she says, “I’ll give you first dibs, but if you crash and burn, he’s all mine.”
“Crashing and burning insinuates I’ll ever get off the ground in the first place.” I hand her a receipt and the cash bag back, its thick zipper clinking on the marble counter.
I get through the next three customers on autopilot until the man in the suit and sunglasses is next in line. My heart speeds up and I open my mouth to greet him, hoping I can work in a little joke or maybe invite him out tonight. But then he slides the folded deposit slip over the counter and everything changes.
The reason my breath is stuck inside me is no longer because our fingers grazed when he passed the note over. No, it's because I can just make out the first two words through the thin paper: Hand over….
It’s not even a conscious thought that pulls my hand under the counter where my finger presses the silent alarm. It’s training that tells me to prepare for the worst. Because when you work in a bank, it’s only a matter of time before someone slides a note to you that says, ‘Hand over all your money’.
So it turns out that my kn
ight in shining armor is anything but.
Just my luck.
Chapter 2
Robert
The small town vibes come at me from every direction. It’s like I’ve been dropped into a Norman Rockwell painting, but instead of being cute and picturesque, it’s slow, quiet, and boring. If not for the solar array I’m looking to set up here, you couldn’t pay me to stay here longer than I absolutely have to.
Not that I need anyone else’s money. I’ve got plenty of my own.
Or at least I should, if any business here accepted credit cards. I didn’t know that places like this even existed anymore. Just last week I passed through a village in Thailand that’s not on any maps. There was a single store along a dirt road, and even they accepted MasterCard. But not Branchville, Missouri.
Without an ATM in sight, I gravitate towards the bank, which is set up just at the end of the Main Street in a brick building that is both majestic compared to the buildings around it, while still managing to look like cookie-cutter architecture from any small town in America.
My luck turns around when I spot the teller working the desk.
Now, I’ve been in the company of plenty of women. Parties on yachts, dinners on Spanish beaches, and enough Michelin restaurants that I’ve become one of those wine snobs that can tell—at a single sniff of a glass—whether the grapes came from Spain or California. And with a bit of luck, I can even name their variety.
So when I say that a woman is drop-dead gorgeous, it’s not an exaggeration for dramatic effect. It’s simply an objective observation. It doesn’t make any sense why we should meet here and not on a private jet or a black-tie party in Manhattan, but the simple fact is that the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on happens to work at a backwoods bank in the middle of nowhere.
I switch lines when I realize the one I’m in leads to an ancient man who bears the stereotypical Midwest pudge at his waist.
Next to me, in the middle of the lobby, is an octagonal table stocked with slips of paper and pens attached with little chains. I’ve heard of deposit slips, but I’ve never actually filled one out. This is something my assistants do, not me. But when I see the paper and the pens, I get another idea. If I’m going to be spending another night in this Podunk town, I’m not going to pass up the chance of doing so with the lovely creature behind the counter.
So after scrawling down a cheesy picky-up line, I fold the paper over and wait my turn, which takes far longer than it should. Everyone here is chatty, so transactions that could be completed in two minutes stretch into five and six minutes. By the time I’m the next in line, I’ve been fiddling with the note so that it’s crinkled in the middle. A minute later and I’m finally face-to-face with the lovely creature whose nametag declares her to be Hailey.
“Welcome to Central First Bank. How can I help you today?” she asks, to which I simply slide the note over.
As she’s reading it, I say, “That’s only my first request, of course. I’ve got a number of others in mind if you’re up to the task.”
Now, when I turn on the charm, I’m used to one of three things happening: the girl reciprocates in a big way, usually because she realizes I’ve got money to burn; the girl lets out a tired sigh that tells me I’m at the end of a long list of guys who’ve recently hit on her; or, lastly, she pretends not to notice my obvious interest, choosing to rely on professionalism to get her through an exchange that she has no interest in.
Hailey is different.
Her movements are rigid, like she’s never had a guy ask her out before. My note was quite clear: Hand over your phone number and no one gets hurt. In the moment I came up with it, I thought it was pretty clever, but now I’m imagining how my dad’s marketing team back in the city would rip this ad copy to shreds. They’d probably pull an all-nighter and come up with something so brilliantly simple, yet so elegant, that it would make my original idea look like something drawn in crayon. Despite its corny qualities, I still can’t believe this teller is taking my note with such stoicism.
“So what will it be?” I ask as I lean over the counter a bit, catching a whiff of her perfume. I want to say it’s Chanel, but it smells sweeter. Cheaper. Even so, she’s wearing just enough to be classy but not too much to be off-putting. “Are you going to make me leave here empty-handed?”
She never looks me in the eyes, instead glancing over her shoulder at some commotion going on outside the frosted glass windows. It sounds like someone is being pulled over. As a second set of sirens adds onto the first, the sound becomes impossible to ignore. When the cops breach the front door, weapons drawn, the aim of their focus pulls in all other eyes like a black hole.
Me.
They’re looking at me.
Aiming their pistols at me. Motioning for me to lift my hands in the air. Which is exactly what I do, but not without letting out a nervous laugh and asking, “What seems to be the problem, officers?”
But these small-town cops are no more bubbling with humor than their big city counterparts. Instead of answering me, they surround me, and a large one who smells of bacon grease, pins me to the tile floor while wrestling my wrists into cuffs.
“You have the right to remain silent,” he recites my Miranda Rights in a drawled-out accent that adds another layer of ridiculousness to this whole situation. But not even I’m laughing when I’m dragged out the front door and placed in the back of a police cruiser.
Chapter 3
Hailey
His badge might label him as Officer Smithy, but he’s always been Shane to me. It’s hard not to look at him and remember the asshole he was in high school. Some things never change, including the way he slides up to me once the danger has been dealt with. He slips his hand over mine, sweat transferring from his palm, and rubs his thumb over my knuckles. When I pull away, it seems to annoy him, but it certainly doesn't slow him down.
“How are you holding up, honey?”
A shiver literally runs down my spine. Truth be told, I feel more at danger with him standing across from me than I did when the cutie who turned out to be a bank robber was standing in the same place. Shane may have added an extra fifty pounds to his midriff, giving him a soft dad look, but I still remember what he did back in junior year, even if I’ve been gas-lighted into believing it was nothing but a drunken nightmare.
“Just a little shaky,” I finally manage to get out. When I open my hand to flex my fingers and check how much I really am shaking, I notice the paper there. The note that started this whole mess. I don’t want to unfold it in front of Shane. He’d manage to take all the glory for himself. Probably even frame the note and hang it in his office back at the police station, rewriting the story he tells people until it concludes with him singlehandedly taking the bank robber down.
So, keeping my fist clenched around the note, I say, “I think I just need a trip to the ladies room.”
Shane nods at this and then slaps the counter. The sudden sound sends a shockwave up my spine. “I’m just going to start reviewing the security tapes. Join me after you finish. Maybe I can get your statement over lunch.”
I don’t answer, instead scurrying off to the bathroom where I seclude myself in a stall. Then I finally allow my fingers to relax so that I can protrude the note that started this whole mess. But as I unfold the deposit slip now damp from my sweaty palm, an absolutely horrid realization stops my heart for a whole second.
Below the first line I saw before, the one that says ‘Hand over’ is not the rest of the sentence my mind filled in earlier when I pressed the emergency button under the counter. Instead of demanding all of the money from my drawer, the man who is at this exact moment locked away in the back of Shane’s police cruiser was asking for something altogether different:
‘’Hand over your phone number’?
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I leap off the toilet seat and into action. I seem to see—if not my life—my very near future flash before my eyes as I dart
back into the lobby. Not only am I going to lose my job over this, but also the guy I falsely accused will press charges. Could he sue me? I don’t know, but if I were him, I wouldn’t let any of this slide. Whether he can do anything legally or not, I’m certainly never going to live this day down. In a small town like Branchville, rumors spread faster than news.
I wrap my hand around the arm of the very first police officer available. It’s a skinnier guy I’ve only seen in passing at the Goodwill, where he was always flipping through their collection of LP records, looking for a diamond in the rough. He looks over at me with urgency at first, but then lets out a breath when he sees I’m just holding up a note.
“You have to let him out,” I practically scream.
“Let who out, ma’am?”
Ma’am? Ouch. He certainly looks like a rookie on the force, but I can’t have more than five or six years on him. Certainly not enough to warrant such a title as Ma’am.
“The guy you arrested. I was wrong. I didn’t read the rest of the note.” I hand it over to the officer. He holds it up and reads it out loud: “Hand over your phone number and nobody gets hurt?”
“I only read the first line when I pressed the emergency button. I thought he was demanding all my money, but he was just trying to pick me up. God, I’m so stupid.”
But if I’m expecting the officer to agree with me, to escort me outside where we can release the innocent man, and I can fall at his feet, begging forgiveness, I’m terribly mistaken for the second time today.
“We can talk about this at the station,” he says, handing the note back to me.
Stealing Her Heart: A Billionaire, Small Town Romance (Sweet, Sexy Shorts Book 11) Page 1
