Getting to Her: A Sapphire Falls BONUS Novella (13 page)

But now, instead of getting away from him as quickly as possible as she usually did, she was settling in as if she had all the time in the world to hang out and relax.

Probably because she thought he was going home to change out of his wet jeans.

“I’m going to go grab some dry clothes,” he said. “See you all later.”

“Come back and dance with me later,” Phoebe said with a smile.

Phoebe was happily married to another newcomer to Sapphire Falls, Joe Spencer, but Joe was a city boy, raised in Las Vegas of all places. He’d learned a lot over the past year of living in Sapphire Falls, but he still didn’t dance like a country boy. And Phoebe loved to dance.

And Ty, immaturely, loved to dance and flirt with women whenever Hailey was around to notice. If she didn’t like it, all she had to do was publicly claim him for herself.

But she never did.

Oh, yeah, he’d be back to dance with Phoebe, and any other pretty girl who wanted a turn. “Count on it,” he told the redhead with a wink.

He headed for the door but just as he pushed it open, he glanced back.

Hailey was watching him.

He gave her a look he knew she understood.

And he knew she’d find a reason to leave and head to her car in a few minutes.

He paced on the other side of his truck, where no one pulling in or out of the parking lot would see him. But several minutes passed with no Hailey.

She was going to let him stew? Oh, no way.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and punched in her number. If her phone was lying where others could see who the incoming call was from, that was her own fault.

She answered after three rings. “Mayor Conner.”

“Get your sweet ass out here or I’m coming back in and carrying you out.” He hung up.

And paced some more.

Four minutes later she was striding toward him, fire in her eyes.

“What the hell, Ty?” she asked, coming around to the more secluded side of the truck.

There was another big truck on one side and the trees that ran the length of the far end of the parking lot on the other. They were fairly sheltered, but not entirely hidden.

“Don’t blow me off,” he said.

“Why? So we can have this conversation
again
? You know that we can’t let on that there’s something going on with us.”

“Something? It’s more than something,” he said.

She sighed, clearly exasperated. “What are you doing here? Again?”

“My brother is going through a broken heart. In case you didn’t notice.”

Hailey snorted. “Your brother is being a typical hard-headed Bennett. And this is Lauren. He won’t be able to stay away from her. It will be okay.”

“I know how he feels.” Ty hadn’t dropped his voice to a husky growl on purpose. But it worked to make Hailey really look at him.

“You were just here for the festival,” she said, but her voice was softer too.

“Nice to know you noticed.”

“That’s what this is? You’re upset because your ego hasn’t been stroked enough?”

“Since we have that in common, how about I’ll stroke yours if you stroke mine?”

“Stop it,” she said sharply. “You always do that. Maybe we could have some normal conversations while you’re in town, but you always turn it into a flirtation. They’re going to catch on.”

“I’ve been flirting with you, sometimes inappropriately, for years, Hailey. They
expect
it.” He moved in closer, watching her eyes. “But it’s
you
you’re worried about, isn’t it? You’re worried that
you’ll
give away how you feel?”

“Yes! Okay? Yes, I have to really fight to keep it under wraps. Is that what you want to hear?”

It absolutely was.

He started to reach for her. But she wasn’t done.

“You’re like a puppy, Ty, I swear. You follow me around, yipping and barking, wanting my constant attention. You always want to play. But I have a
job
here. When I’m in Sapphire Falls, I’m on twenty-four-seven. I can’t take time to play and I can’t be distracted. A weekend four or five times a year, I can deal with. But you can’t keep coming home all the time like this.”

He was like a
puppy
? That was…okay, he could see her point. He did want her attention and he did keep figuratively yipping and jumping up and down to get it.

She was turning him into a pathetic moron.

“Tell me more about how I distract you.” He did like that idea though.

“
Ty
. The distracting thing is the problem. You can’t like it.”

And she knew him well.

He moved closer, boxing her in against the side of the truck. Much less puppy now and more…wolf.

Yeah, he liked that.

“Is it at night? Are you not getting enough sleep because of me?” He put a hand on the truck next to her shoulder. “How many times do you get yourself off each night thinking of me, Hails?”

She hated that nickname…outside of the bedroom anyway.

She pressed her lips together, clearly refusing to respond.

So far.

“Because I had to come twice last night before I could sleep,” he told her, dropping his voice. “The first time was in the shower and I was imagining you—”

“Stop.” She thunked her head back against the truck window, the word more of a plea than a command. “Please stop.”

Ty hesitated. Her eyes were closed, her head back, her hands flat against the truck. The position should have looked seductive and submissive. Instead, it looked as if she was trapped and surrendering. Waiting for him to move in for the kill.

“Hailey, look at me,” he said after a moment.

Fuck.

He didn’t want to upset her for real. He wanted her riled up, maybe rattled. But not…whatever this was.

Hailey heard the concern in Ty’s voice and opened her eyes slowly.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he said. His voice was gentle but firm.

She sighed and lifted her head to look at him fully. “I’ve
been
telling you.”

Well, she hadn’t told him
everything
. She couldn’t. Ty did
not
want to know that even on her best, most focused, most motivated days she struggled to hold it all together.

And when Ty was in town, she was not her most focused or motivated. She didn’t just struggle while he was around…she basically shut down. Oh, she wasn’t in a fetal position in the corner. Not that kind of shut down. Oh, no. All of the responsible, organized, in-charge parts of her brain might shut down, but the fun, giggly, to-hell-with-it-all, in-love parts came fully to life.

Parts that were never active unless she was with Ty.

Which sucked. Not that Ty brought that out in her, but that she couldn’t balance it with everything else she needed to do. Maybe it was because she’d never been in love before. Or maybe it was the weird wiring in her brain. Or maybe it was the fact that she really wasn’t responsible and organized even when he wasn’t there, but her act was so practiced by now that she could turn it on easily—as long as she wasn’t distracted.

And nothing else distracted her like Ty.

She had busy days with a million things going on and those were tough. But she didn’t have family issues—her dad and stepmom were twice-a-year-for-holidays parents now that her dad was a State Senator and living a hundred miles away in the state capitol. She didn’t have kids. She didn’t have dramatic, needy girlfriends. There was very little to distract her from her full-time-all-the-time job as mayor. And that was on purpose.

She knew she couldn’t handle more than the job.

She’d known that going in.

It was why her long-distance relationship with Ty worked.

She couldn’t give him up. She was completely addicted to him.

But Ty was the kind of guy who took over everything. He couldn’t help it.

So, the balance was, in Sapphire Falls she was mayor. And only mayor. In Denver, she was Ty’s.

And it all worked perfectly until Ty came to Sapphire Falls.

Her worlds collided and…her job was the thing to go. Because Ty
wouldn’t
go. He wouldn’t let her put him off and ignore him. So even a conversation with friends over French fries at the Come Again became an effort because all she wanted to do was wrap herself around Ty and absorb him.

It was making her nuts.

She wanted to skinny-dip in the river and stay up all night talking while they looked at the stars and she wanted to hold hands while they shared one of the gigantic banana splits from the Stop.

She wanted to date him.
Date
him in their hometown and float on the cloud of being in love and not worry about anything else.

She focused on Ty’s eyes. He looked annoyed, but he also looked worried, and that was what finally made her say, “Fine.”

Hailey took a deep breath, straightened and said, “Since you’ve been here, I’m behind on the reports I’m supposed to be going over because when I try to read, my mind wanders to what you’re doing and who you’re with.”

Yeah, it was partly because of him. But the truth was her mind often—okay, always—wandered when she was reading reports. It was definitely worse when Ty was around though and he would love thinking that he caused such turmoil. Ty liked to shake things up, especially for her. So she didn’t need to mention that running her train of thought off the rails was as easy as saying “Hey Hailey.”

“I missed a conference call yesterday,” she went on. “Because you were playing sand volleyball.”

Her office took up the entire south end of the third floor in city hall and she had a window that overlooked the town square to the west, a window that overlooked the highway and entrance to town on the south, and a window that overlooked the sand volleyball courts on the side of the Come Again on the east.

Ty gave her a slow grin at that. “Sorry.”

He wasn’t a bit sorry. And that was part of all of this too. He loved that he could distract her way too much. It was a huge ego boost to him to think that the confident, kick-ass, in-charge woman she was in Sapphire Falls was the woman he made needy and submissive in the bedroom. He wouldn’t back off. Unless she truly broke down and told him everything—how much she loved this job but how hard it was for her, how much preparation and energy it all took, how her brain seemed to rebel against the idea of being organized and on-task and brilliant on the fly. She had to work
hard
to pull all of this off.

And that was not the woman Ty had up on the pedestal.

She really liked the view from that pedestal.

She couldn’t confess.

The solution was keeping Ty from showing up in Sapphire Falls all the fucking time.

“I did remember my meeting about the strawberry festival,” she said, but she’d remembered only because of Lauren’s e-mails about the ideas she had. “But I forgot all of the folders.”

Ty lifted a hand and brushed her hair back from her cheek. “Why did your forget them?” he asked.

She met his eyes. “Because I was thinking about the last time you and I had strawberries together.”

They’d gotten strawberry juice and chocolate all over his sheets.

His eyes darkened at the memory and he opened his mouth, but she rushed in, “You have to stay away more, Ty. I can’t have you here this much.” She took a deep breath before delivering the final blow. “If you care about me, you’ll stay in Denver.”

She saw the flicker of dismay and the way his jaw tightened. But she held her ground, her chin up, gaze on his.

She let him see the truth in her eyes. She let the words hang there, soaking in.

And she prepared herself for him to say “fuck it”.

This was his hometown. This was where his family was. She couldn’t make him stay away. But if not, they were going to have to break this off.

Seeing him around town would still be distracting, but it would surely get easier over time. Without memories of him painting chocolate on her with strawberries and how his body felt and smelled and tasted, surely she could go through her normal activities—like looking out of her damned office window—without being overcome by her feelings for him. Eventually.

Maybe.

“Then I want you in Denver
more
often,” he finally said.

Hailey felt her heart thump in spite of really wanting to be
less
affected by him. But the truth was, she’d fallen into him a long time ago and there was no coming up for air.

“I have to be here—” She broke off at the look in his eyes. Tyler Bennett didn’t negotiate. Compromise was a foreign concept to him, really. He took over, dominated and led the way—in his sport, in his endorsement deals, in his relationships.

She suspected that all of that was one of the reasons he’d ended up in Denver. Yes, one of the best coaches was there, but he could have trained in Sapphire Falls. He could have trained anywhere he could run, bike and swim. But in Sapphire Falls there were three other Bennetts who were dominating, take-it-all-over personalities. Ty needed a place where
he
could be the star. That would have been harder at home. Besides being just one-fourth of the Bennett boys here, his older brothers would have kept his ego in check.