That seemed to do the trick, proving that Hayes wasn’t the only one who could do some fast-talking. Leyton nodded and motioned for her to go.
Since Shayla seemed to be falling asleep, Cait tiptoed back to her desk to get her purse, and then she stepped outside into the night air. It might be September and officially fall, but it was still hotter than Hades. Even the night breeze felt as if Mother Nature was blowing air out through a raging furnace.
Cait walked down the block, entering the hospital through the ER doors since those were the only ones that would be unlocked at this time of night. As expected, no one was in the waiting area or at the reception desk. Along with not being a hotbed of crime, there weren’t a lot of emergencies in Lone Star Ridge. Having two in one night—Hayes’s and her own—had been a big anomaly that she was betting no one wanted to repeat anytime soon.
Cait snagged another red sucker from the reception desk, backtracked a step and took a second one for Hayes before she headed toward his room, which should be just up the hall. However, she stopped when she heard Mandy talking.
“He could have wrecked the motorcycle himself,” the nurse said. “That’s a hard way to put an end to things, but it could have happened just that way.”
Cait only heard the murmur of a response to Mandy’s comment, but Mandy had to be talking about Hayes. She scowled, wondering why in the name of heaven Mandy would believe something like that.
“It goes back to that woman,” Mandy went on. “The one who killed herself a couple of months ago. It was all over the tabloids. Hayes and she were tight, and I guess it messed him up when she died. One suicide can trigger someone else to do the same, you know.”
Cait’s scowl turned to some serious concern. Maybe Mandy was way off base here, but just to be sure, Cait stepped into the ladies’ room and used her phone to do a quick search for any recent news about Hayes.
Heck. She got thousands of hits.
So she narrowed it down, using the word suicide, and she soon saw the string of articles on the death of a woman named Ivy Malloy. A suicide. She’d been a child actress but had become a makeup artist. There were photos of Hayes and her at various fancy events. Some candid casual ones, too, of them holding hands and gazing at each other—while obviously unaware of the photographer.
Still scanning the articles, Cait saw plenty of speculation about Ivy’s depression. And a possible rift with Hayes. Of course, some of the stories took out the “possible” part and added what were no doubt some embellishments about the woman dying from a broken heart—one that Hayes had given her.
Well, crap. Had Ivy been in love with him? Judging from the pictures, she didn’t appear to be a Shayla-like stalker. Not with the way Hayes was holding her hand and looking at her. But things could have changed. If the relationship had gone south, then maybe Hayes had indeed broken up with her.
And now blamed himself for her death.
Cait still thought the motorcycle accident was just that. An accident. But there were other reports that Hayes had indeed tried to kill himself after he’d been fired from Outlaw Rebels.
It was hard for her to wrap her mind around the possibility of Hayes doing something like that, but it might explain why he had come home. Might explain. And all of the stories could be malarkey, as tabloid accounts so often were.
Cait was ready to put away her phone and ask the source about those stories, but another one caught her eye. Because this one had her name in it.
The title of the story was “Not Lonely for Long in Lone Star Ridge.” It’d been published in one of the tabloids, The Tattler, and was about the Little Cowgirls all marrying brothers from their hometown. The article said the only hookup left was between Hayes and the brothers’ kid sister, Cait, and that rumors claimed the hookup was imminent.
Imminent?
It wasn’t even on the radar.
The anger swarmed through her like really-pissed-off bees, but it didn’t take long for the feeling of violation to set in. Her personal life, even total fibs about it, wasn’t up for speculation.
Both the anger and violation continued when Cait saw that this wasn’t the only article about Hayes and her. Nope. There were three others. In those, Hayes and she were practically footnotes to the meat of the article about the Little Cowgirls finding their “Big Cowboys.”
Cait wanted to gush out some of those bullshit animal sounds like the ones Harvey Crockett had made, but she forced herself to put all of this in perspective. Hayes and the triplets had to deal with this sort of lying publicity stuff all the time, and it wasn’t as if anyone she knew had actually read the stories about Hayes and her. Cait knew this because if someone local had indeed seen it, she would have already heard about it.
She finally tamped down enough of her anger to get moving. The candy sucker helped with that. A slow sugar high from the repeated licks gave her the boost she needed to shove her phone in her pocket and go to Hayes’s room.
“It’s me, Cait,” she said, lightly tapping on the door. If he didn’t answer right away, she would come back tomorrow morning when her mood was better. But he answered before she’d even finished the tap.
“Come in.” His voice had an edge to it. Definitely not his usual smoky drawl. And Cait soon saw the reason for it. Along with the scrapes and bruises, there was something on his face that she recognized.
Pain.
He had a lot more injuries than she did, and he didn’t seem very happy about being in the hospital. It was hard to keep up her snark barrier when he looked as if he’d been ridden hard and put up wet. And not in a good sexual way, either.
“The taste is just one notch above cough syrup,” she said, handing him the second sucker. “But it’s probably better than anything else you’ll get to eat around here. It’s your reward for surviving the ER and bashing your head on the floor when you passed out.”
The corner of his mouth lifted into an almost smile. “And what’s yours a reward for? Before you answer, I should tell you that I saw you get a sucker when you left earlier with Shayla.”
Cait didn’t hesitate. “It’s a second reward for putting up with Shayla. The woman’s batshit.”
“Yeah, she is.” He shook his head, opened the sucker and popped it into his mouth.
It was such a simple gesture. But heck in a handbasket, it gave her the tingles. Maybe because those idiot parts of her tingling wondered if that mouth was made for as much sin as it appeared.
Cait was betting the answer to that was a big-assed yes.
“Speaking of which, how is Shayla?” he asked.
Cait picked through the last two hours and tried to come up with the best memory for him. One that wouldn’t add to the pain and troubles he was no doubt already feeling.
“She was asleep when I left the police station.” And that was as good as it could possibly get when it came to the woman. “Her mother hired a lawyer who’s on his way. We’ll go from there, but I think Leyton’s leaning toward doing whatever it takes to get her out of Texas.”
“A wise decision,” he agreed, moving the sucker around in his mouth. Wincing a little, too.
His wince gave no part of her body a tingle. But it did give her a slathering of sympathy, and it tugged at her. The tugging merged with what she’d just read in those articles, and some genuine worry set in. Worry that she preferred him not to see. When it came to Hayes, it was best for her own self-preservation if she kept up the ploy of the white noise. Thankfully, it was hard to look overly concerned with a sucker poking out of her mouth.
“So, you passed out?” Cait said in the most conversational tone she could manage. “Not very Outlaw Rebels of you.”
“Probably not.” He smiled. Winced. And gave her another tug of worry. “The doc thinks my blood pressure dropped too fast when I stood up.”
Cait considered that a moment. “Does that mean your injuries aren’t
that bad?”
“Only a cracked rib or two,” he said.
Which, of course, didn’t fall into the “aren’t that bad” category. Especially since she was about 100 percent sure that Hayes would downplay any injuries. Cait made a mental note to try to get the truth from one of his sisters. And to keep the worry off her face when she did it. She didn’t want the triplets believing she had a thing for their brother.
Since she didn’t want to sit on the edge of his bed—too intimate and too close to that sinful mouth of his—Cait took the chair. “Will a cracked rib or two affect you filming Outlaw Rebels?” she asked.
He started to speak but shifted the sucker again, and he closed his mouth as if rethinking what he’d been about to say. Then he did something bad. Really, really bad. He looked at her with those bedroom eyes so blue that Cait was certain they alone had seduced too many women to count. Apparently, his sinful mouth had some competition in that area of seduction.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
Well, that was a question that hadn’t been on her question radar, and Cait thought she might not want to hear the rest of what went along with it.
“No,” she said.
“Liar,” he said just as fast. “I told you a secret years ago and you didn’t spill to anyone.”
Cait had to take a trip down memory lane, and after a couple of long moments, it finally occurred to her what he was talking about. When he was twelve and she was nine, Hayes had told her that he had a crush on her then-babysitter, Lizzie Chaplain.
“Because it was a lame secret and not worthy of blabbing,” she explained. “Every boy in town had a crush on Lizzie. In part because of her double Ds and heart-shaped butt.”
“Still, you kept it a secret,” he concluded. Then he paused, made that tingle-inducing eye contact with her again. “The producers of Outlaw Rebels told me to take a break from the show. They’ll excuse my absence by having a rival gang kidnap my character and hold me where no one can find me.”
“Slade,” she quietly supplied and was glad she hadn’t also supplied the entire character name. Slade Axel McClendon. Cait was also glad that she hadn’t blurted out that she knew each scene where he’d bared his butt for a steamy love scene. But there was something else she was going to delve into only so she could be sure that it hadn’t played into the motorcycle accident.
“Does this have something to do with you losing your...friend?” she settled for saying.
Because Cait was looking straight into his eyes, she didn’t see any surprise that she knew about Ivy. But there was sadness and maybe resignation.
“Some,” he admitted, and she thought that was in the same understated, underreported category of a cracked rib or two. “I need a break from the show.”
Now she was the one who opened her mouth, closed it and rethought what she’d been about to say. She wanted to ask if he had actually tried to kill himself. And if that in part was what had happened tonight, but Hayes spoke before she could find her words.
“My sisters are getting married in a month,” he continued a moment later. “I’d like to stay here in Lone Star Ridge until the wedding. I need that time to fix some things in my head.”
So, the articles had been true. Well, true-ish, anyway. There was something that Hayes needed to deal with, and at least some part of it had to do with his friend’s suicide.
“But the fixing won’t be easy if I have the press hounding me about my mental state,” he added.
No way could she argue with that. Cait remembered the way the reporters had hounded and pestered the triplets when Little Cowgirls had been abruptly canceled after Hadley had been arrested for joyriding in a stolen car. Outlaw Rebels was a popular show, so the hounding and pestering might be even worse.
“There are a lot of stories floating around out there about me,” he went on. “Most are bullshit, but there’s bits of truth in them.”
She wondered if one of those bits that was true or even true-ish was about him trying to kill himself.
“How can I help?” she asked because it was obvious he wanted something from her. After all, he’d asked her to come here.
He stayed quiet a few more seconds. “Some of those stories are about you and me. Plenty of tabloid reporters think you and I will get together because our siblings are getting married.”
Cait pooh-poohed that with the wave of her hand and a laughing snort. “As if.”
Hayes leaned closer and made more of that tingling eye contact. “I’d like for you to tell everyone that the stories about us are true.”
CHAPTER FOUR
CLEARLY, HAYES HAD some convincing to do, because Cait looked at him as if he’d just suggested they take a quick trip to Pluto.
“You’d like for me to lie and say the fake stories about us aren’t actual lies?” she asked.
Yep, that was it in a nutshell, but Hayes wasn’t sure if Cait had any such skills to bend the truth. Or in this case, break the truth to bits. That’s why he had to pull out a big gun of persuasion, and this time his trademark looks weren’t going to give him any leverage.
“Sunny,” he said, drawing that big gun. “She was in earlier, and she looked exhausted.”
Cait lifted her shoulder, the one with the stitches, and she winced. “The pregnancy. Shaw said she’s been tired a lot.”
“It’s more than just the fatigue,” Hayes went on. He took a lick of the sucker and learned Cait was wrong. The flavor wasn’t a step above cough syrup. It tasted exactly like the medicine. “It’s the added stress of being worried because I’m hurt and because of all the stories about me in the tabloids.”
He fanned his hand over his bruises and cuts, causing his own wincing. Hayes made a mental note to do less gesturing. Maybe he could cut back on the breathing, too, because his ribs were throbbing.
“You want me to lie so that Sunny won’t be stressed about your injuries and tabloid gossip,” Cait paraphrased, along with giving him a look as flat as a pancake.
“Not just Sunny but Em and my other sisters.” He paused and figured out how to tap-dance around this. “The rumors in the tabloids could give them more reason to worry. Worry that I’d prefer they not have about me. Especially about me,” he emphasized. “I’d rather my family focus on the baby, the weddings and Em’s engagement.”
That last one was something he needed to give a little more focus, too. He had already had a background check run on Tony Corbin, but Hayes wanted to dig a little deeper there. Em was too important to him to get involved with someone who could give her trouble. Over the years, Em had had enough of that, what with her own daughter, Hayes’s mother. Heck, Hayes’s father, too. Em had stepped up to the plate to raise Hayes and his sisters when their parents had basically abandoned their kids.
“I don’t want to have a worry-fest discussion with my family where they grill me about the reasons I’ve come back,” Hayes continued. “I’d rather them believe I’m here because of you.”
Cait kept that flat gaze on him. “What exactly are the reasons you’ve come back?”
Of course, she would ask that, and Hayes went with a variation of what he’d already told her. “I need some time to get my head back on straight and deal with what happened to my friend.”
There was more, but it might not even be a “big gun” to Cait.
Because he was watching her so closely, Hayes thought that maybe he’d put a dent in her resistance, but the dent vanished and the moment was lost when her phone rang.
“Leyton,” she muttered, glancing at the screen. “I need to take this.”
Cait took a couple of steps away from him, but Hayes still managed to hear her brother say Shayla’s name. Hell. He hoped the woman wasn’t giving them any more trouble, but Hayes couldn’t get a lot about the conversation just by listening to Cait. She answered in sounds of approval, one of disapproval and a coupl
e of long pauses.
While she listened to whatever her brother was saying, she paced, though she couldn’t go far in the small room. Still, it was enough space for her to do complete turnarounds and give him a glimpse of her jeans-clad ass. It was a superior ass, and seeing it caused his breathing to kick up a notch. That in turn notched up the pain. Despite that, he still felt the spark of heat in his body.
Hayes looked away from Cait because he figured a hard-on right now would be excruciating, and he didn’t want to disgrace himself by whimpering. That would hardly go with the tough-guy Slade McClendon image that he’d carved out for himself.
“I’ll let Hayes know,” Cait said right before she ended the call. With her back, and therefore her butt, still toward him, she took another moment before she finally turned around to face him.
“Good or bad news?” Hayes asked.
“A little bit of both.” And she launched into an account of what she’d just learned. “Shayla’s lawyer finally showed up. He wants to try to cut her a deal, but Leyton isn’t going to back off on the charges that caused you to wreck. That means he’ll let Shayla go. For now. But she’ll have to come back to appear in front of a judge to answer those charges. Depending on how that goes, she could get some jail time.”
Hayes wasn’t sure if that last part fell into the good or bad category. He didn’t especially want to see Shayla behind bars, but nothing else he’d done had worked to get the woman to back off. Of course, what she really needed was some psychiatric help, and maybe if she got that, then the judge would go easy on her. Even if he didn’t, Hayes couldn’t take this on. He already had way too much guilt on his shoulders.
“There’s more,” Cait went on a moment later. “Some reporter checked into the inn about an hour ago. A guy named Jenner Franklin. Leyton figures he’s here because of you.”
Hayes didn’t have to figure it. He knew Franklin, had had his share of run-ins with the reporter’s “no boundaries” approach to journalism. It sure hadn’t taken him long to sniff out where Hayes had gone. And to follow him. Franklin was indeed in Lone Star Ridge to try to get a story on why Hayes had come home.
Tempting in Texas Page 4
