Getting Over It: Sapphire Falls Book Six (5 page)

It was a mess. A huge mess that most of the people in town didn’t even know about yet. Hailey didn’t think she could solve all the town’s problems completely by herself, but she did try to take care of the things she could without getting everyone all worked up.

Her job wasn’t as demanding as many mayoral positions, of course. For instance, she didn’t have to worry about traffic patterns. There wasn’t anything anyone would call
traffic
in Sapphire Falls. She didn’t have to worry about city workers’ pension plans. They had less than a dozen city workers who all also farmed part-time. The pension plan was healthy and the demands were few.

Besides, a lot of the general cleanup and maintenance was done by the people. The flowerbeds around the gazebo were replanted every spring and maintained by a citizen group. Everyone loved to help with festival decorating activities. And last winter, after nine inches of snow were dumped on the town overnight, everyone had showed up downtown with their shovels and snowblowers and the snow removal had turned into a big party with a snowball fight and hot chocolate for everyone afterward.

Hailey smiled at the memory. It was one example of many.

She loved her hometown.

So did Ty. She shouldn’t be surprised that he wanted to move back. His entire family was here and most of his friends. And her.

She knew his crush was serious, and that sleeping with him three and a half years ago had been a sign to him that she was willing to be more than a crush. And she was. Kind of. From a distance.

No one made her feel like Ty did. Ty thought she walked on water. In spite of her leading him on for two years in high school, in spite of her leaving him without a word the morning after they’d first slept together, in spite of her being a snotty bitch to him over the years, Ty Bennett thought she was amazing.

No one had ever thought she was amazing like he did. That was pretty hard to
not
be addicted to.

And then they’d started an actual relationship. Long distance, yes, but they’d still spent a lot of time together over the past three plus years. She’d been vulnerable with him. She let him dominate her in the bedroom—and even out of the bedroom to some extent. She’d let him do things to her she couldn’t imagine trusting anyone else to do. She’d said things to him, expressed needs and fantasies that
no one
else would ever hear.

So the distance was truly a necessity for her.

He took over everything when they were together, and it was a needed break, a wonderful mini-vacation for her every time. But in Sapphire Falls, she had to be on. She had to be in charge. She had to be confident and bossy and thoroughly engaged.

She already had trouble managing her life
with
a plethora of sticky notes, digital reminders, three planners and a great assistant covering her ass. One more daily distraction would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Her house of cards would come tumbling down.

And Ty was so much more than a distraction. He not only took over her body and thoughts and emotions—he made her
want
him to. She didn’t care about anything else when she was with him. And he loved that. She knew conquering her, convincing her to have a relationship with him, had pumped his ego up to mammoth proportions. She also knew that every single time he made her want him and beg him and then surrender to him physically, it met a need in
him
as well.

It was a win-win situation—he needed her to give in to him and she needed him to want her that much.

In
Denver
.

But in her own backyard—almost literally? No. She could not be completely wrapped up in Ty every day for the rest of her life. She’d never get anything else done.

She realized she had her chin propped on her hand and was staring into space. She shook her head, sat up straight and frowned.

Dammit.

She was tingly and distracted and dreamy and she’d known he was back for three hours.

She might love her hometown, but to be a leader, even in a place full of honest, kind people, you had to be tough. She had to make hard decisions. She had to tell people when they’d screwed up.

She couldn’t be sitting around in her office writing
Hailey + Ty
on her notebooks and drawing big hearts around their initials.

“
Ty
bought the house next door to you?”

Hailey looked up to find Adrianne Riley standing in her office doorway. Hailey smiled at her friend. Then frowned when she processed the question. “Yes.”

“Wow, are you okay?” Adrianne came into the office, set a lavender bakery bag in front of Hailey and took a chair in front of Hailey’s desk without invitation.

She didn’t need an invitation. Adrianne was someone special to Hailey. Because Hailey hadn’t been able to scare Adrianne off. Adrianne listened to Hailey’s wild ideas and tolerated her moodiness. Those were cherished traits in Hailey’s world.

Besides, at one time, she and Adrianne had run their sorority with a firm but glamorous hand, and Adrianne had been Hailey’s first assistant when she’d become mayor. Adrianne understood her. They’d both grown up, of course. Adrianne had mellowed. She was laid-back and accepting and didn’t mind being behind the scenes. Hailey was…none of those things. She’d matured, but she still liked to be in charge.

Regardless of their differences, Hailey sincerely liked Adrianne. And that was saying something. She hadn’t sincerely liked a lot of women in her life. She typically saw them as competition. She knew she could thank Angela, her stepmother, for that. But Hailey knew that many of the women she interacted with were more than beautiful and bossy—which were the two things Hailey brought to the table. So she worked to be
more
of both of those things than any of the other women.

“I’m ticked off no one told me,” Hailey said. “But I’m mostly pissed that he thinks he can do whatever he wants.”

Adrianne crossed her legs and gave Hailey a smile. “Well, I guess he
can
buy a house if he wants to.”

“But he’s—”

Crap. She couldn’t tell Adrianne that he’d bought the house because of
her
. How would she explain that? She couldn’t admit that they’d had a three-and-a-half-year-long affair going. That was the longest—by about three years—Hailey had ever dated anyone. Adrianne would know that meant something.

Like that she was in love with Ty.

But she was in love with Denver Ty. Not the in-her-business, take-over-everything, mess-up-her-job Ty.

“He’s doing it to drive me nuts.”

If she didn’t drive him nuts first. Ty didn’t know about her quirks. He believed she was perfect, and when she was with him, she could forget she was an eccentric, scattered mess for a while.

But now, Ty had decided to insert himself into her life, and he was doing it in his big, showy, take-no-prisoners way. Like he did everything.

It amazed her sometimes how similar they really were. Yet opposite at the same time.

Hailey’s public persona was the bossy I’m-always-right, do-what-I-say person. Ty’s was the as-long-as-I’m-having-a-good-time-I-don’t-care-about-anything-else guy. But behind the scenes, they reversed roles.

After Ty had lost the gold medal in the Olympics, his agent had spun the whole thing in Ty’s favor. He’d convinced Ty that at silver, he could pretend to take the whole thing less seriously. Instead of news stories about his training regimen, they could do stories about him living it up. Instead of him becoming a spokesperson for bikes and helmets and swimwear, he could endorse beer and fast cars. Instead of his day-in-the-life feature on ESPN being about training and inspirational speeches to elementary schools, his could include gorgeous brunettes, crazy clubs and an entourage of adrenaline junkies.

His agent had painted Ty as a world-class triathlete because he lived and played hard and did it for the rush rather than the serious, disciplined, highly trained competitor that he was. And sure enough—he’d missed the top of the podium, but no one remembered the gold medalist’s name, while Ty had become the cocky, charming playboy darling to the media.

But behind closed doors—he was in-charge, dominant, determined to be number one.

That realization niggled in the back of Hailey’s mind. Ty was a competitor through and through. She knew that arguing with her turned him on, and he loved informing other men in bars and clubs that she was with him when they tried to talk to her or get her number.

He wasn’t jealous. It was more than that. He liked having something other people wanted.

But before she could mull that over further, Adrianne laughed.

“Well, he definitely knows how to push your buttons.”

Sexually and otherwise
, Hailey thought. He not only knew how, but he delighted in it.

“I’ll have to figure out ways to avoid him or ignore him,” Hailey said. Which was never going to happen. “Hey, how did you hear about it?” she asked, realizing that the news hadn’t been public knowledge as of a few hours ago.

“Ty told everyone himself this morning at the bakery,” Adrianne said.

Saturday morning at Adrianne’s bakery. Hailey looked at the clock on the wall over her bookcase. It was eleven thirty. By now, everyone in town would know.

“And of course, everyone fussed over him and welcomed him back and told him how thrilled they are that he’s come home,” Hailey said.

She knew Ty. He’d made it a mystery on purpose partly so that the big reveal would be even bigger. She sighed.

Adrianne grinned. “Pretty much. I think he ate almost a dozen muffins and had about a gallon of coffee on other people’s tabs.”

“Was Kathy there?” Hailey asked of Ty’s mother.

“She was,” Adrianne said. “She came in with Hope.”

Hope, another new addition to the town, was Ty’s oldest brother’s girlfriend.

“I’ll bet she was happy,” Hailey said softly. She could imagine Kathy’s face when she found out her baby boy was coming home. Ty was the only one of the Bennett boys to ever leave Sapphire Falls for an extended period. Eleven years was definitely an extended period.

“She really was,” Adrianne agreed with an affectionate smile.

Kathy Bennett had a way of inspiring affection in everyone who knew her.

Hailey’s heart twinged thinking about Kathy hugging Ty, likely with tears in her eyes. She loved Ty’s mom. From afar.

For a girl who had grown up with an evil stepmother, Kathy Bennett was the quintessential mother figure in Hailey’s opinion. She cooked huge dinners from scratch, relished big family gatherings, was outwardly, lovingly demonstrative toward her family, and was so clearly accepting and proud of all of them it made Hailey ache sometimes.

Hailey was plain jealous of Lauren, Delaney and Hope—the three women who had fallen in love with Kathy’s other sons and were now a part of the Bennett family. They had been welcomed into a family that was known for love and laughter and a warmth that touched everyone around them.

Hailey had never had a chance to get close to Kathy. Why would she? No one knew that she and Ty had any kind of relationship. Kathy knew Hailey as everyone else in town knew her—the bossy, spoiled little girl who had grown into a bossy, spoiled woman who, somehow, made a pretty good mayor. Mostly because she
was
bossy, and being spoiled meant she was used to the best of everything, and that carried over to her wanting the best of everything for her town.

She did park cleanups and participated in the festivals and served hot chocolate in the square at Christmastime, but she knew everyone assumed she had to as mayor. Truth was, she was happy doing those things, and if her position gave her more reason to take two shifts or attend
every
single event during the festivals, things got done and she got to be in a little bit of her heaven.

People didn’t know that about her though, and people like Kathy Bennett made Hailey wish she could show that side. Kathy would like that about her. She would maybe even be proud of Hailey.

Hailey wondered how that would feel. To have a woman you looked up to and admired, admire you back.

“
No one
else is upset that he kept it a secret?” Hailey asked. She already knew the answer. Of course not. This was Ty. Everyone loved Ty and expected crazy stuff from him.

Kathy wasn’t thrilled with his public persona, but Hailey knew Ty had clued his mom in that it was an act. At least mostly. He
did
hang out in clubs with beautiful women. He had had a short-term affair with a fellow Olympian. He did stay out late and did have a posse of hell-raisers he hung out with on a regular basis. But most of it was for show.

“No,” Adrianne confirmed. “Everyone is really happy to have him home. I take it you’ve talked to him?”

Hailey was pulled from her thoughts by Adrianne’s question. She nodded. “This morning, when he was mowing the yard at six a.m.”

Adrianne grimaced. She knew Hailey wasn’t an early bird. “What did you say to him?”

That she was going to miss the enchiladas.

But she couldn’t be honest with him and tell him that she was going to miss being the woman she was in Denver. Because then she’d have to explain how that woman—the one who could turn over all decisions and schedules and worries to him—was different from the woman she had to be in Sapphire Falls.