What the Heart Needs (25 page)

“You could transfer me,” Hannah suggested, her tone unhappy at the prospect. No matter what her issues with him might be, she liked her job. And she was good at her job. He honestly didn’t want to lose her as an employee either. She was the most competent, dedicated assistant. Her pride wouldn’t allow her to do anything less than impeccable work.

“No,” he said, a clipped, final word on the subject. “There’s no reason we cant be coworkers at work and then something else outside of work.” A blush rushed into her cheeks and he almost laughed, knowing that she was probably thinking what he was- that they had already screwed around at work. “Look I get the feeling this is all new to you- the whole casual affair thing. But it doesn’t have to effect work.”

“Sex changes,” she mumbled almost to herself.

“It doesn’t have to change anything. We are both professional. We can keep it separate if we want. And I want to.”

He watched her for a few seconds, expecting, hoping for some kind of response from her. His suit was starting to feel itchy, uncomfortable. This was still so strange for him. Realizing she wasn’t about to say anything, he scooched his chair closer to her’s- his knees pressing into the sides of her thighs.

Her whole body tensed. A long moment passed before he brushed her soft hair away from her face, putting his hand under her chin and waiting for her to raise her eyes to his. When she did, he saw the wavering; her desire battling with her innate prudence. “Say yes,” he said, his voice more pleading than he had ever heard it.

“Yes,” she said a second later.

Thirteen

Yes? Yes? What the hell was she thinking? Agreeing to an affair was certainly not going to help the situation. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to figure out what she was going to do about the whole situation for goodness sakes.

And then there he was.

Hannah had snapped at Sam when he called her, informing him she wasn’t a dog he could summon. But she went down anyway, stubbing her toe against a dresser and knocking a book to the floor on her way out of her room.

And then there he was.

For a split second she honestly didn’t even register what she was seeing. But the satisfied, jocular smile spread across Sam’s face snapped her into the moment. Elliott Michaels was in Sam’s kitchen. It wasn’t a thought she could have ever imagined thinking. And yet… there he was. In a three-piece suit, looking tired and relieved.

Had he worried about her? It seemed unlikely. Then her name had drawled off his lips- too familiar, speaking of intimacy, reminding her (and informing Sam) that he was quite well acquainted with her.

Once Sam excused herself, she could feel her stomach all odd and jittery match the irratic pounding of her pulse in her ears. The absolute last thing she needed was to be left alone with him. But there wasn’t a choice. She felt her walls snapping into place: pride and coldness wrapping around her like an old familiar prison- keeping everyone out and keeping herself and her true feelings locked safely away.

She hadn’t expected this side from Elliott. She hadn’t even been aware he had a side that wasn’t aloof and arrogant and rude.

But he
had
worried about her. He jumped through hoops to try to find out what was going on. He talked to her parents, her friends. He chased her to her ex-boyfriends house. For what? To make sure she was alright? To pull her back to work? What?

To be his mistress, she realized, the idea sharp an metallic. He wanted to bring her back so he could keep screwing her. Use her because she was close and easy. Cheat on his wife with her.

Though when he told her to admit she wanted him, when he asked her to agree to an affair with him- there had been a pleading vulnerability that she felt herself pulled to. She had already known that she wanted him. She knew herself well enough to know she was always one smoldering look away from practically jumping his bones. But she had figured it was a purely hormonal thing. Her body was attracted to his body. Pheremones. Pure animal attraction.

She never paused to think that maybe her subconscious recognized something in him. The person underneath the cool, efficient buisnessman.

That maybe there was a part of him that saw her as something more than soft lips and spread thighs.

She had agreed before she had a chance to think it through. And then she had agreed to go back to the inn with him. She wasn’t even fully aware of that until he told her to go grab her bags.

As she climbed the stairs, worridly clenching her left hand over and over- an old tick she always fell back on when she was overwhelmed. When she rounded the corner to her room, she found Sam sitting on the edge of her bed, his arms spread wide across the disheveled comforter.

“Well well well,” he said, grinning.

“Why would you even let him in?” she exploded, grabbing a pair of stray socks off the floor and stuffing them into her bag.

“Because you needed to face him, Han,” Sam said, smile gone, a look of sincere kindness in his eyes. “The second I opened that door, I could guess what was going on.”

“And what was going on, Mr. All Knowing And Powerful?” she mocked, looking for one of her missing shoes.

“Han,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I loved you since we were still kids, okay? I get you. It doesn’t matter that all this time has passed. You’re that same girl I grew up with. You’re still that girl with the attentive parents who needed to know everything when all you wanted was some privacy. You’ve always had those defenses, the coolness and that smartass “I got this” attitude,” he kicked the shoe out from underneath the bed toward her. “When I saw that guy on the step… don’t think I didn’t notice that he was like your absolute ideal either…”

“What… no wa…”

“Oh stop. Tall dark and handsome was always your thing. Maybe that’s what happened with us,” he joked, pointing at his much lighter hair. “Anyway. You feel yourself getting close to someone, or heaven forbid, them getting close to you and you shut them down.”

“Oh for god’s sake. Not everything is about sex,” she said, defensive. While he had been understanding after they had fumbled at each other’s bodies that one time and she told him she didn’t want to have sex again, she had always created this idea that he had been harboring a resentment about it, despite all evidence otherwise.

“I wasn’t talking about sex,” he said, his brows pulling together. “Han…” he said, his voice lower. “was there no one else after me?”

A deep red flooded into Hannah’s face. “Not until…”

A look of genuine surpise crossed Sam’s face for a second. “Ah. Okay. Well look. I get it. It’s a bad situation. He’s your boss and all. But the man obviously cares about you if he traveled all the way here to see you.”

“Elliott Michaels does not care about me,” she enunciated carefully.

“Keep telling yourself that. Look,” he said, grabbing her hand to stop her frantic packing. “get out of your head a little bit, okay? Just enjoy it. So what if it turns out to be a bad idea. Bad ideas make great stories one day. And you owe it to yourself to let loose a little bit.”

“Sam I just agreed to be the mistress to a married man who also happens to be my boss. Things are about as loose as they can get.”

He laughed, letting her go and helping her bring her bags down the stairs. She thanked him, really, genuinely thanked him. He was one of the best men she had ever met. Far too good for her, certainly. She wondered as she said goodbye if the pretty pixie Annabelle was deserving of his attentions. She hoped she was. For Sam who deserved only the best.

She drove her car silently to her parents house, approaching the door and having it swing open before she could even knock.

Her mother stood there, paint all over her overalls. Her mother the talented hippie painter who refused to sell her work. She smiled a strange little smile, tapping a wet paintbrush against her palm. “So your boyfriend was here earlier…”

“He’s not by boyfriend, Mom,” she objected, her voice taking on the teenaged whine she remembered from years ago, the kind of voice that begged a parent to leave you alone.

“Sure, sure,” Moira said, nodding, a wicked glint in her eyes. “Come in for some lemonade. Just a few minutes,” she said as they walked through the cluttered living room- her father’s books strewn over every surface, her mother’s canvases stacked three deep against the walls. “I know you have… places to be. People to do.”

“Mom,” Hannah choked, her eyes widening comically.

“Oh please,” Moira waved her paintbrush in the air, walking in front of her toward the bright yellow kitchen. “we’re both adults now, honey. We can talk about sex.” At her daughter’s dumbstruck face, Moira smiled. Was there anything more amusing than still being able to make an adult child uncomfortable when you crossed over the parent boundary? “He’s one good looking man, Hannah. I wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks.”

“Oh my god. Stop,” Hannah said, grimacing at the lemonade. Her mother squeezed it fresh and didn’t much believe in sugar.

“Seriously. The week you were conceived… I couldn’t even walk.”

Hannah covered her ears, her face a compete mortified mess. “No no no no. I don’t want to hear this.”

Moira laughed, reaching across the kitchen counter, covering her daughter’s hand with hers, paint dried under her fingernails. “Sex is a great part about life. Don’t stress so much about it. I know after Sam…”

“Mom…”

“I know you just shut it off from even being an option. It really says something that this man was able to get you to let down your barriers you know. Just sleep on that. You are so good at finding the flaws in a situation. Find the good, Hannah.”

Find the good, Hannah.
It was something she heard at least a million times growing up. Moira, and people like Moira- more naturally inclined by nature to be more easy, to be comfortable in life’s ebbs and flows, people who leaned enviably toward happiness were an enigma to Hannah. She had inherited her father’s mind, critical and never resting, rather severe in character in general. John Clary and Moira Callihan were the ridiculous, cliché perfect example of opposites attracting.

Hannah often wondered how she managed to grow up and never adopt any of her mother’s natural ease. Why she had leaned toward anxiousness and insecurity when her mother was perpetually worry-free, the kind of woman so solidly settled in her own body that it wouldn’t even occur to her to be self-conscious?

--

She drove back to the inn two hours later, having been unable to resist the chance to spend time with her mother and, after prying him out of his stuffy, cramped library, her father.

Her body felt like lead, all heaviness and worry. Her heart was in her throat, constricting it and making her feel like she could draw a proper breath. What had she gotten herself into? Why the heck was she just blindly following him to the inn?

But before she could debate the issue any further, the inn loomed in the distance. A home to so many late night conversations. Emily had worked there since forever, doing every job from stable mucker, errand runner, general floating lackey, to eventual manager. A child of an unstable and unhappy home, Emily had walked out one night and found herself at the inn, begging for a job and, in turn, a place to stay. She had been a full time maid by the time she was sixteen.

Hannah would sit in the doorways to the rooms as Emily stretched her althletic, lithe body pulling heavy comforters and sheets off the bed, vacuuming, desting, scrubbing the bathrooms and redressing the beds. It was a rule that she wasn’t allowed in the rooms, so the two had decided that it would be totally fine for her to hang out in the halls and chat. Young, girlish things. Boys. Music. Clothes. As they got older, more serious things: Emily’s sad family life, Hannah’s budding relationship with Sam.

Emily had always been ten steps ahead of Hannah, despite being about the same age. Emily had fallen into bed with one of her casual boyfriends at fourteen. “Get it over with, you know,” Emily had said after, eating ice cream and laughing about the faces he had made. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” she shrugged.

Emily, like Moira, was unnaturally at ease in her own skin. She knew she wasn’t soft and feminine, but she moved with the gate of a sexually confident woman. Men liked her. She liked men. It was all so easy for her.

Hannah had barely gotten fully in the doorway to the inn when Emily came sauntering down the hallway, holding coffee for them both, a perfect auburn brow raised. “You have been keeping secrets,” she said as a greeting, walking toward the abandoned seating room, leaving Hannah to follow behind.

Emily curled up on a sette, her legs bent at ninety-degrees on the seat as she faced Hannah.

“I missed you, Em,” Hannah said, a genuine sisterly affection filling her.

“Yeah yeah yeah. I missed you too,” Emily rolled her eyes as if that didn’t need to be said. “So spill on that man upstairs.”

“There’s not that much to tell…” Hannah mumbled.

“Have you two been engaging in the beast with two backs?” she said, grinning as Hannah choked on her coffee. “Exactly,” Emily said, satisfied. “so there is more than enough to tell. You alright?” she asked, concern on her face. She knew Hannah almost as well as Sam. “He wasn’t a tool to you, right? I’ll go up there and throw him out the window.”

“No he was good. Great, actually.”

“Great,” Emily repeated, leaning closer. “Sounds hot. Don’t leave anything out…” she said, winking and putting Hannah more at ease.

It helped to talk about it. She was someone whose default was to clam up and keep everything bottled up inside, though she had known from past experiences that she always felt better when she had someone to use as a sounding board. Sex became less of a sordid mystery when discussed with a girlfriend. It felt more… normal.

Hannah cringed. Sex was normal. She was just taking a longer time to figure that out than most.

It was almost an hour later that Emily unfolded her legs from the couch and stood up. “Okay. Go on, go up there. Go get some,” she winked.