Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Marcus
H allie Cairns. Hallie Cairns. Hallie Cairns.
Since opening my eyes this morning, my mind had been unable to provide me with anything other than her name and face on repeat. The way her hair brushed against the smooth skin of her back, the dark red of her lips, and the way her blue, almond-shaped eyes narrowed on me before a verbal attack. Just the thought of her makes me hard. The reality of her in person after nearly a decade is more than I can handle.
Eight years.
Eight years since she’d looked at me like I was everything, and the same amount of time since she’d decided she never wanted to see me again.
Seeing Hallie last night had been a surprise, one I’d made the most of. This morning, it was as if she’d stepped directly from my dreams. No matter who we’d been in our past, no matter what we’d been to one another, it was nice to know she still traded in our brand of sarcasm, and she could still take it as well as she dished it out. Julian might’ve disapproved—hell, he’d always disapproved—but sharp words had been our foreplay of choice, even before we’d known what foreplay was.
This time, though, it’s different, our verbal sparring no longer based in flirtation but in her long-standing resentment.
Sadly, my body doesn’t seem to know the difference.
My business is my life. The charity I’d created might be separate from it in some ways, but in my mind, they are inextricably connected. I live and breathe for them, yet today, just a week into my largest contract to date, my brain refused to get with the program. Instead of being anywhere near helpful, the organ was infused with lust, frustration, and just a hint of guilt.
I picked up my laptop, made my excuses, and left my on-site office. My staff had no way of knowing my only plan was to go home and jerk off until my mind was blank and potentially useful again.
Crude but true.
You’d think out of sight, out of mind would’ve been enough to have rid me of any teenage, angst-driven attraction. But no. Hallie’s tongue is still as sharp as ever, and her ass is what my filthiest dreams are made of. While she isn’t a realistic part of my long-term plans, I’ll allow myself this opportunity to let my imagination run away with itself.
I already have the search terms for the porn I would be looking for: “blond” and “no face” being in the top two. I don’t need the sound and don’t want the faces. I want my own particular fantasy, and God, if I happen upon a hate fuck, it could almost be reality.
Turning onto my street, I instantly notice the car parked in my driveway, hoping against hope whoever’s staying in my pool house doesn’t want to talk. Because looking down at my jean-clad thighs, there’s no missing the imprint pressed against the denim.
I park on the street. It might be my driveway, but I’m not interested in being interrupted in order to move my truck. Grabbing my few folders and laptop case from the back seat, I make my way up the driveway and toward my door, holding in a groan as I hear the gate into the backyard open.
I’ve only just decided I won’t be a dick and ignore whomever the hell Julian set up to stay here when Hallie steps out. As if I’ve conjured her from my own filthy imagination, she comes to a halt in front of me, a slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead, her cheeks flushed.
I move my laptop down to cover my erection.
“I’m not here to rob you,” she says, hands raised, palms facing forward.
“Just some general run-of-the-mill stalking, then?” I ask as if my mind hadn’t been obsessing about her for hours now. The thought of her down on her knees, facing me…or facing away from me—I’m not picky.
“Sadly, not that either. Actually, it looks like I’m going to be staying here,” she says benignly. As if only yesterday, this exact situation wouldn’t have been a fate worse than death.
“And why the hell would you think that’s a good idea?”
“I don’t. Your brother just happens to be evil, and whatever the happy couple wants, the happy couple gets, apparently. Remember, he even gave us rules to follow.”
It’s in no way an explanation for what’s happening right now, and I have the feeling I’m not going to get one.
She moves around the trunk of her car as she talks, lifting a perfectly sealed brown storage box and moving back toward the gate. “Not to worry, though. I’m happy to pretend not to know you if you’re happy to do the same.”
Strangers. Yes, I definitely see myself being able to pretend I don’t know the woman I was just about to go jerk myself off to. Great idea.
Hallie staying here is a development I hadn’t planned on, and the urge to walk away to call Julian, demanding an explanation, is strong. However, words of disapproval aren’t the ones that trip off my tongue.
“Can I trust you not to break in and smother me in my sleep?” I ask.
“About as much as I can trust you not to spy on me through the bedroom window as I change.”
I smile as I place my laptop on one of the boxes, pick it up, and carry it into my backyard. A backyard that now holds a host of brown cardboard boxes, some stacked neatly in piles outside of the pool house, a few others open with belongings half pulled out.
“What the hell is all this?”
It looks like someone has unloaded their life onto my property.
Hallie stands after putting down the box she was carrying and moves her hands into her hair, undoing the elastic holding it in place. The long blond strands fall only for a moment before she lifts the weight of it back off her neck and ties it up once more.
The sensual nature of the movement is unintentional and completely hypnotic.
“This happens to be all evidence of my life up until the age of seventeen.”
I’d always known her parents were shit. They hadn’t deserved Hallie as a daughter and had treated her more like a paid staff member, happy to have her around if and when it suited them and their social needs.
A work-family barbecue? They had a darling daughter and couldn’t be more proud, ready to show her off, carting her around like a prized pet.
A cruise around the Caribbean? Or a week skiing in the French Alps? A child-free vacation for the summer and winter breaks it was. For a while, she’d been able to stay with her grandmother, but once she’d died, there’d been no one left to take care of Hallie. Between her parents and the damage I’d done, it’s no wonder she has commitment issues, happy to yo-yo between places and people. Julian hadn’t said much over the years, but I knew enough to know Hallie had kept her distance. A distance she insisted upon, whether inadvertently or not.
No matter how morbid, I’m curious now. The past is a common ground for us, if not a particularly comfortable one. I move closer to the boxes, peering into a few open ones. “Plenty of notebooks with my name scribbled inside them?”
“Hmm, maybe not a notebook, but I’m sure there’s a voodoo doll that looks like you with a pin right through its heart,” she replies without bothering to look at me as she moves around her things.
“Huh. I guess it didn’t work. I haven’t had many struggles with women.” I lift a brow in her direction as my eyes catch on a box with photos in it, another with an assortment of stuffed toys.
“I didn’t put the pin through the penis, genius, just the heart.”
“I’m glad to know that even at our worst, you chose not to harm my dick, Hallie.”
Now she deigns to look up at me. “Well, no, of course not. Not even I’m callous enough to have left you with brain damage.”
She smirks at me before moving over to open another box, and I might’ve thought I was hard earlier, but I was wrong.
Fuck. This woman.
I’m going to need her out of my sight or out of my system as soon as humanly possible. Regardless of the consequences.
I’m inside my house for only minutes before my phone rings, Julian’s name flashing on the screen. Tempted to not answer, but knowing if I don’t, he’s likely to show up in person, I reach for the cell and swipe right.
“Hey, Jules. What can I do for ya?” I go for casual as I pour myself a glass of water from the fridge.
It’s a Friday, so for all I know, he’s been caught up in classes all day and busy with an endless amount of prep to do this afternoon.
“Oh, nothing much. I was just wondering if you were home from work yet?” he asks, pulling the same brand of nonsense.
I walk over to stand at my kitchen window, which looks into the backyard and the entrance to the pool house. Blond hair shines in the afternoon sunlight as Hallie moves around, opening boxes and getting herself settled.
“I sure am, and wasn’t I surprised to find a sarcastic blond causing havoc on my property. Your voicemail earlier said you had a friend who needed a place to crash.”
“Well, I had to make the spare key you gave me work to my advantage sooner or later.”
“I gave it to you in case of an emergency, not in case a woman who loathes me needs a place to stay.”
“My best friend not having a place to stay seemed like an emergency.”
“What about your place? Don’t you have a spare room or two?”
I ask the question, already knowing the answer. I’d helped build the damn house.
“Erica said Hallie needs space to go through family belongings and wants privacy. Look, Marcus, I’m sure you won’t even know she’s there half the time, and it’s not like either one of you is looking to hang out with the other,” he says in the most reasonable way. “You’re forever working, hardly ever home, with little time for relationships and even less time for living in the past. Right? I doubt Hallie being there will be an issue.”
I feel a twinge in my stomach at Julian’s cut-and-dry assessment of my life’s choices, even as he trusts me to have Hallie around.
Yes, I’ve had to choose between romantic relationships and success, and no, I’m not normally one for wasting time looking back. Neither of which I like to think is a massive failure. At first, it’d been a necessity, and more recently, it’d been a personal preference.
“Don’t forget, we have your six little rules to keep us in line. Besides, nothing here has changed,” I reassure him. “You’re right, I probably won’t even notice her being here at all.”
“I’m right? Somehow, I find that the most shocking thing of all,” Julian quips.
“Your opinion of me really is glowing,” I say with a chuckle.
“You’re really all right with her being there?” He sounds genuinely curious now.
I wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to have your brother break the heart of your best friend and somehow manage to salvage both relationships. Because of the role I’d played in that scenario, broken nose aside, I’d been forgiven more easily than I’d probably deserved. It’d taken a year for me to fess up to the way I’d let Hallie’s dad influence me. A year to tell my little brother I’d let the asshole convince me that I was nothing, that I’d nothing to offer. That his daughter could do better. He hadn’t been wrong, but it was still a shitty thing to do. The fact Mr. Cairns had come to make amends a year or two ago and is now one of my charity’s regular funders feels ironic. But not in a funny enough way that I’d told Jules about it.
“No. I figured if she isn’t pushing to leave, it can’t be a big deal. Anyway, we’re going to have to learn to get along on some level. We have your wedding to be a part of.”
Only days ago, I most likely would’ve meant these words.
“Marcus, I know you like to push each other’s buttons, but don’t push too hard…even if she starts it. She’s run from us before.”
I pause, knowing he probably really wanted to say that she had run from me before. We both know I’d made her run, but he’s just too nice to throw it in my face outright.
“I promise to help keep her here until she’s ready to leave and not a moment before.” If the little brat were near me, I’d make the Scout’s honor sign again.
Julian blows out a frustrated breath, the sound both comforting and amusing in the way only your sibling’s annoyance can be. “And you’re completely uninterested in having a relationship with her?”
I scoff. “I’m completely uninterested in having a relationship with anyone,” I reply steadily, well aware that while a relationship might not be in the cards, having my hands on her body probably is.
Since the moment Hallie’s eyes had narrowed in my direction and her sharp tongue had given me a lashing, I’d been caught.
Spellbound.
It hadn’t been an issue thinking our contact would’ve been a few necessary calls, but now she’s here, on my home turf, and while I might not be playing for keeps, I’m more than happy to play for right now.
Hallie is the one I’d pushed away—and who’d gotten away—but that doesn’t mean I still wouldn’t like a taste to get her out of my system once and for all.
And that’s the kicker. Mr. fucking Cairns is offering to double his donation to my charity if I get his daughter to talk to him—a suicide mission if there ever was one. But since he’s threatened to pull his funding altogether if he doesn’t get his conversation, it’s quite literally double or nothing. What’s worse? As a regular funder, it’s money I’d already banked on until he’d added these new terms and conditions to it. Now, each young person who I’ve helped place as an apprentice is at risk, as well as those we’ve accepted as new starts. The education and employment of these young people are up in the air unless I can find a solution.
If I decide to take Johnathan Cairns up on his offer, I’ll have to get close to her.
Luckily, having to be nice won’t have much to do with winning Hallie over. She wouldn’t trust it coming from me, anyway.
“What about the house?” Julian asks, veering us off course and back into the past once more.
“What house?” I move away from my window, well aware of which home he’s referring to.
Two months ago, Hallie had finally eased up and put her grandmother’s house up for sale, a sure sign she had no plans to return in any permanent capacity.
“Are you going to try and tell me you’re not even a little tempted by it?”
He isn’t wrong. I’m tempted. Have been tempted.
Last year, I’d made another offer, a large one. And Hallie had refused. Her property manager had sent me the usual email stating the owner was not considering offers on the property. But apparently, she’d changed her mind.
The place is officially on the market.
It’s beautiful, if in slight disrepair after being used as a rental for a little too long, but the bones are there.
“I’m not going to try and tell you anything, Jules. I’d be a liar if I said the property is anything other than a dream for someone like me; it has endless potential. However, who Hallie sells to is completely up to her.”
“You know she’s just about to buy an apartment in Edinburgh?” he asks, knowing it’ll be news to my ears.
“No. I don’t know, Jules. She isn’t my friend.” My response is nothing other than a bland statement of fact. “But at least the money from the sale of her gran’s place won’t go astray.”
If Hallie doesn’t want to call her gran’s place home, that’s fine, but the least she could do is sell the house to someone who wants it or who’s going to make some money from it. It’s the considerate thing to do. And at least I know she has no plans to return.
Jules lets out a sound of exasperation, and I can picture him rubbing his temples. “She’ll hate it if you buy it.”
He isn’t wrong. “You think she doesn’t hate me already?”
“Well, as unconcerned as you are, you’ve still not said what you’re going to do with it if you do buy it,” he replies, ignoring my question; it was rhetorical, anyway.
“Because it’s none of your business, and also, you didn’t ask.” I keep my tone nonconfrontational.
“Because being in the middle of you two hasn’t always been a part of my business?”
It’s unfortunately a fair assessment.
“Hallie’s always had it in her heart to separate the two of us. I don’t see why it would change now.” My statement’s also true—she’s never held my actions against Jules.
I find my way back to the window. Hallie’s still working, lights now shining from each room in the pool house.
“True, but you’re a different person now.”
“Worse?”
Julian sighs. “No, Marcus. Better.”
If only it were true. The fact that I’m considering any sort of deal with Hallie’s dad, with good intentions or not, proves otherwise.