Straight shooter. She liked that. More than that, her instincts told her Leo would be a good fit. She was tired of second-guessing herself. She’d gotten here without any savings and would get over the next hurdle the same way. “Can you start tomorrow?”
She’d deal with the rent increase. Everything would be okay. She kept wondering if others believed in her but if she didn’t hire Leo, when she knew she needed someone, it would be like she didn’t even believe in herself.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She shook his hand. “Hailey. Would you like a salad?”
He laughed. “Sure.”
“Good. You can make your own. It’ll be good practice.”
She watched him walk behind the counter, wash up. Her gaze met Wes’s and she saw a myriad of emotions. They mirrored what she felt. Most of which was happiness.
17
“I would have helped you make salads. This is a ridiculous trade,” Wes said. They’d decided to shop right after she closed her store that Saturday because the speed dating started at eight.
“You don’t have any food prep training. Plus, it’s not really a trade. She asked me to go so she didn’t have to go alone. I would have done it even if she didn’t make salads.” Hailey put two boxes of the same cereal into the cart. Wes pulled one out, set it back on the shelf.
The store was fairly quiet even at this time. Most people probably didn’t spice up their Saturdays with a supermarket visit but Hailey had come to love this part of her week.
“I thought you didn’t want to date.” His voice was clipped.
Hailey stopped, a hand on the cart. “I don’t. I’m going for a friend. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to test the waters, you know?”
“You could try an app,” he said, lips twitching.
“Would you invent one just for me the way you did for Everly?”
He laughed, pushed the cart forward. “No. Chris was so mad about that app. It was his idea but he kept complaining about the guys on it. They were all screened but he didn’t like the fact that she was dating. I’m not getting involved in anyone’s dating life again.”
“Come with us tonight.”
“What?” Now he stopped the cart.
“It would be good for both of us. Come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll go, see what the Love Gods have in store for us, and then go to dinner after. You like Fiona. It’s for her.”
Wes frowned. “For her article. I don’t want to be part of an article. It’s one of the reasons I was happy to leave New York.”
Hmm. So he hadn’t seen it. “Speaking of,” Hailey said, grabbing her phone from her basket inside the cart. She pulled up the web page she’d pinned. The business section of The L.A. Times had released a statement from Ana and Aidan’s company. Turning the phone, she showed Wes. “You might have wanted to mention your desire to stay out of the news to your new business partner.”
Wes took the phone from her, looked closer. She’d committed it to memory. New York’s finest brothers join forces with former sibling models making this the sexiest collaboration since Beyoncé and Jay-Z teamed up with Tiffany’s. To be fair, it was the newspaper’s headline, not Ana’s. The article was her commentary on a very lucrative and hopefully successful merger.
A growly sigh left his lips as he passed the phone back to her. “She mentioned she was going to announce it. No reason for the headline though. It diminishes the whole thing. It’s a great merger. An excellent acquisition on our part and instead of saying that, they talked about Ana and Aidan’s red-carpet days. Just what my father needs to stick his pins in a little further.” The red-carpet stuff had only been mentioned in the end, yet Wes’s whole body seemed to vibrate with tension.
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “My father has lawyers all over everything we do, trying to find some sort of basis for suing us. It’s his way of continuing to assert power.”
“I don’t understand how your father can be so toxic and you and your brothers are so great.”
Wes gave her a weak attempt at a smile. “I think when you grow up like that, you either shut your eyes and follow suit or you open them wide and head in the other direction.” They started walking, turning down the next aisle. “What about your parents? With the holidays coming up, will you see them?”
She avoided his gaze because he had enough parent issues of his own. “They booked a two-week vacation to Mexico over Christmas. They’re flying out of LAX and offered to meet me there for a drink before they leave.”
“How nice of them to set aside a little time. How do you seem so okay with it?”
The indignation on her behalf was oddly sweet.
She put her hand on his arm. “What choice do I have? I could keep trying to get them to include me like I did while I was growing up or I can move on and make my own life. My own family. They did their job. They raised me, supported me. They’ve never denied me anything. Some people only know how to love one way. I just remind myself that I don’t want to be that way. It took me a bit to realize I also don’t want to be loved that way by anyone else.” Dorian had taught her many things.
The look he gave her sent an unpleasant shiver up her spine. “Some people don’t know how to love at all.”
Taking a new approach, Hailey looped her arm through his. “That’s it. Enough of this. You’re coming to speed dating tonight.”
“Nope.”
“Yes.”
“Or no.” He pulled two cans of tomatoes off the shelf, making her smile.
“Please?”
Looking up from where he was rearranging the items in his share of the cart, he groaned. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Pretty please?” She clasped her hands together.
“Science fiction movies for the next three Saturdays in a row.”
Laughing, she nodded. “Done. Let’s grab this stuff and just order the rest online.”
He sighed like she was hopeless. “We’re right here. Let’s finish the job. Tell me about Leo’s first couple of days.”
They fell back into the routine but Hailey was distracted by the idea that even though it wasn’t their intention, they could both have dates before the end of the evening.
* * *
“I cannot see Wes doing this,” Fiona said for the third time as they waited by the bar. They’d put on their adhesive name tags. Hailey had been tempted to put a fake name for fun but it seemed to negate the purpose. She wasn’t sure anymore of her real reason for being here. To help Fiona? Wes? Herself? To see if anyone found her remotely attractive or intriguing? God. What if no one did? That’d be a kick to the head.
It’s just for fun. Just for fun. It didn’t feel like fun. Men and women were separated like they were at an eighth-grade formal. The guys clustered in a group but didn’t really talk to each other. The women told each other how good they looked and checked each other’s lipstick. Hailey felt like she was back in high school on the wrong side of the cafeteria. Fiona started chatting with a woman she knew to the right of her while Hailey’s insides turned into a spin cycle.
Heat pooled at the base of her neck, making her rethink the whole leave-it-down idea. Up. I should have put my hair up. Down looks like I didn’t try. Up is sexy. She mumbled something—at least she thought she did out loud—to Fiona and pushed through the crowd of women. She needed some air. Head down, the murmur of voices a nauseating buzz, she hurried for the front door. She saw black dress shoes before it registered she was on the straight path to a—
“Oof.” Collision.
Hands gripped her shoulders, gentle but firm. Inhaling sharply, the apology ready to tumble out, her senses immediately calmed. Wes.
Hailey tilted her head back, willing her lungs to resume function. She’d know his scent anywhere. It was like her favorite sweater. Nothing else felt quite the same.
“Hey. That’s one way to make an impression, but I think you’re going the wrong way.”
She shook her head, mini hammers pounding in her temples. “I can’t. This was stupid. I thought I could do it but I can’t.”
“Okay.”
Her breath whooshed out of her lungs. No judgment or censure. Just, okay. She didn’t know what to do with that. So, of course, she babbled.
“I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ready to date again, to put myself out there in a way that tells someone, here’s my heart, it’s available for you to stomp, mess with, and screw up.”
Wes wrapped an arm around her shoulder, led her to the front door. She loved that the air was warm, with just a hint of November chill. Moving them to the side of the art deco building, he braced her against the wall and stepped back, meeting her gaze. His was patient, steady, and caring.
“I wouldn’t make that your opening line,” he said.
Hailey laughed, smacked his chest, then noticed he was dressed very nicely in a crisp blue-and-white-striped polo, a pair of dark gray dress pants, and those shiny black shoes. “You look good.”