Seduction by Design (19 page)

“Baltimore! But that’s—”

“Too far for you to come running to Hailey for a handout. Now get out of here before I give you the beating you’ve deserved all your life.”

“Are you going to let him do this to me?” Ellen demanded of Hailey.

Hailey raised her head. It had seemed like too much of an effort to hold it erect. Never had she felt so defeated. “I don’t care what you do, Ellen. Just leave me alone.”

Ellen’s face crumpled like that of a child who is about to cry. “Oh, you always were so mean! You never did anything wrong! Perfect, little goody-two-shoes Hailey. Well, nobody liked you and everybody loved me.” She ran to the door and flung it open. “Even he likes me better than he does you. He just doesn’t want to admit it, but he
was
kissing me back!” The door slammed behind her. Seconds later they heard the motor of her car being raced to life. Then silence.

The room was perfectly still. Hailey could hear Tyler’s watch ticking near her ear as he kept her backed to the wall. He could have saved his effort. The fight had long since gone out of her. All that was left of her was an empty shell. Had he not been holding her up, she might well have folded into a heap on the floor. The day that had started in such a haze of happiness had now gone black with despair.

“She’s lying, Hailey.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” he said, shaking her slightly.

She shook her head. “No. This has been wrong from the beginning. I knew what you wanted of me. You got it. The rest was just playacting for all of us. It was wrong for you, for me, for Faith—”

She broke off suddenly, realizing the terrible scene the child had witnessed. Peering around Tyler’s shoulders, her eyes swept the room, looking for the girl. “Faith?” she asked softly. Her eyes rose to Tyler’s.

He let go of her and turned around, making the same cursory inspection of the room she had. Without having to communicate their thoughts, they separated. Hailey checked the kitchen and the back part of the house. Tyler looked in all the bedrooms and ran around the outside perimeter of the house, scanning the lakeshore as he did so.

They met back in the living room, each asking with apprehensive, hopeful eyes, each getting a negative answer from the other.

Tyler seemed truly bewildered and lost when he said, “She’s gone.”

CHAPTER 11

H
ailey’s fingers mashed against her compressed lips. “Oh, Tyler, she must have been terribly distressed by what she heard.”

“Yes, she would have been,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “Monica and I were barely civil whenever we had to meet. Faith was frequently subjected to shouting scenes. I swore to myself that she’d never know that kind of confusion and fear again. Dammit! It’s a good thing that bitch left or I might very well have killed her.”

“It wasn’t entirely Ellen’s fault.”

“Don’t you dare start defending her,” he flared, his eyes flashing menacingly. “We both just did her the biggest favor of her life. She’ll land on her feet. Her type usually does—after having walked all over your type.”

Hailey looked away, knowing he was right. Ellen had reacted like the spoiled child she would always be, but she would come back with professions of love when she needed Hailey again.

Dismissing her sister from her mind, Hailey focused on the more immediate problem of Faith. “Where do you think she would go?”

“I don’t know,” Tyler said in agitation. “I’ve got to find her and talk to her. She’s probably not in a very sound emotional state.”

“She couldn’t have gone far. We’ll find her soon.”

They couldn’t have known how wrong that prediction would prove to be. They agreed that Tyler would search the woods behind the house, while Hailey called the Harpers and then looked along the lakeshore. When those expeditions proved fruitless, they got in the car and searched the backroads and the wooded areas lining them. No one at the lodge had seen Faith that morning and the man managing the electronic games area assured them that he had been there since opening and would have seen her had she come in.

“What does she look like?” he asked them again. “I’ll check around.”

“She’s eleven years old. Has brown pigtails and eyes the color of mine,” Tyler said. “Tall, thin, braces on her teeth.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Hell, man, I don’t—”

“She was wearing jeans and a blue-and-red-striped sweater,” Hailey interceded quickly.

Their search stretched into hours. With each passing minute, Tyler’s composure dwindled. Fighting her own growing panic, Hailey tried to reason with him, but he only grew more impatient with her banal assurances, recognizing them for what they were. He blamed himself for Faith’s disappearance. Hailey’s own feeling of guilt was just as strong. And though neither pointed an accusing finger at the other, they couldn’t quite meet each other’s eyes.

When by mid-afternoon Faith still hadn’t been found, they called in the local police force, which began combing the foothills and lakeshore in a full-fledged search. Hailey heard one patrolman mention something about dragging the lake to another, and her blood ran cold. Luckily, Tyler had been giving a thorough description of Faith to another officer and hadn’t heard that grim possibility.

As the daylight faded, his belligerence increased. The patrolmen ignored his verbal abuse, knowing that it stemmed from the mind of a frantic parent. Hailey wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t. She had no platitudes to offer, for the possibilities of what could have happened to Faith were limitless and terrifying. She was having a hard time keeping herself from giving way to hysteria.

Long after dusk, they were still awaiting word from the many who were out looking for the girl. The chief officer had commissioned Tyler and Hailey to stay in the house, should he need to call, or should Faith show up there.

For the thousandth time, Hailey’s eyes swept over the living room as she nervously dallied with one of her earrings. The silence was almost tangible. The telephone remained mute. The atmosphere was like that of a wake. No, worse, Hailey thought. It was like waiting for a surgeon’s report on a life-or-death operation. Not knowing was the worst part.

Tyler sat on the sofa, staring at the floor between his widespread knees. His head was bowed low. His hair was mussed. The lines around his eyes and mouth were deeply etched with worry. Mud and leaves clung to his casual shoes, reminders of his stubborn trekking through the woods behind the policemen.

It was heartrending to see a man of Tyler’s arrogance reduced to such a level of humility and abject defeat. All day she had resisted going to him, touching him, embracing him. His suffering touched her deeply because she loved him so completely.

When had it happened? Last night when he had claimed her body and she had given it so freely? When she decided to come with him on this mini-vacation? No, long before that. When? Or had it always been there, waiting for her to admit it? She didn’t remember consciously choosing to love him, she only knew that she did and probably always had, right from the moment he’d first spoken to her.

Is this who we’ve been waiting an eternity for?

Had she fallen in love with him even then, when his slate gray eyes had bored into hers with frustration and … what? What had she seen that day in Tyler’s face that had changed her forever?

Whatever had made her love him, whenever it had happened, it was there now, consuming her, filling her with such joy that she wanted to shout about it. Perhaps she did, for at that moment his head snapped up to look at her. She was appalled at the ravaged look on his face. The silent appeal in his red-rimmed eyes pulled at her heartstrings.

“Hailey…?”

The appeal was silent no longer. She heard it. And she knew what it had cost a man of Tyler’s arrogance to make it. By speaking no more than her name, he had uttered a plea for her help.

Without hesitation she rose from her chair and rushed across the space that separated them to fling her arms around him.

“Tyler, Tyler,” she whispered as his head was buried between her breasts. It wasn’t a passionate action, but one of desperation. An infant seeking solace, a human being needing the touch of another. His arms closed around her with unabashed need.

Tightly, she clutched him to her, stroking the tension out of his shoulders with loving hands. She bent her head over his and kissed his temples, his eyebrows, his silver hair. Whatever she had to give belonged to him.

Because she loved him so fiercely, she was giving him license to hurt and misuse her more than anyone else ever had, yet it didn’t matter. He needed her. It was within her power to help him. To deny him herself was unthinkable. Just as she had given him her body last night, she now gave him her soul and spirit without qualification.

“Tyler,” she said, laying her cheek on top of his head. “Tyler, I love you.”

She held her breath. For a long moment neither of them moved. Had he heard her? Was he shocked? Revolted? Thrilled? He raised his head slowly. Then, when she didn’t think she could stand the suspense any longer, she looked into those gray eyes that cut through her like a rapier.

Before either of them could speak, the back door opened quietly. The metal latch clicked shut. Tyler’s head jerked toward the sound as though to confirm he hadn’t been dreaming. Hailey came off the sofa, her hands clenched at her waist as she took two hesitant steps toward the kitchen.

Faith appeared in the doorway that connected the two rooms. She was dirty. Tears had left two muddy tracks down her cheeks. The knees of her jeans were filthy and threadbare. Leaves and twigs littered her hair. It wasn’t her appearance, however, that stunned them. It was the hateful glare in her eyes.

“Faith,” Tyler said. His shoulders slumped in relief. “Where have you been?”

“In the woods.”

“All this time? Didn’t you hear us calling you?”

“Yes. But I didn’t answer. I didn’t want you to find me. I didn’t want to come back here to you. I wanted to die.”

Her words were spoken with such venom that Tyler’s hasty footsteps toward her were checked. He stared at his daughter uncomprehendingly. He seemed at a complete loss. His arms hung loosely at his sides. Wanting to rush to his child and hug her tight to reassure himself that she was really home safe, he was stunned by her antipathy. He turned back toward Hailey for help. She met his baffled eyes with the same sense of puzzlement.

“We’ve been very worried about you, Faith,” she said to the girl. “Your father was sick with worry. We thought something terrible had happened to you.”

“You wouldn’t care!” she shouted. “No one would have cared if I’d died. No one likes me. My mother didn’t. She was always telling me how stupid and ugly I am. She wanted to be with her friends all the time, never with me.”

She rounded on her father. “You didn’t want me to come live with you, either. You hate me, too. All you think about is work and making telephone calls and going off to meetings. You wish you didn’t have me.”

She was sobbing now, her small chest heaving with the emotions that ripped through her. Hailey’s heart went out to her, but she didn’t have a chance to soothe her before Faith turned to Hailey with unleashed wrath.

“You pretended to like me, but you don’t. I was hoping that maybe you could live with us, be my mother, but you don’t treat my daddy nice. If you’d hug and kiss him instead of always being stiff and shaky and mad when he touches you, then maybe he’d ask you to live with us. Last night I pretended with the Harpers that you were my mom. They kept telling me how pretty my mom was. I wanted you to be my mom so bad.”

Convulsive sobs caused her to tremble convulsively. “But now I don’t because you’re
not
beautiful. I think you’re ugly. If you were beautiful and nice to my daddy then he wouldn’t have been kissing that other ol’ girl. I hate you.” She glowered at Tyler. “I hate you, too. I hate everybody.” On that last wail she ran to her room and slammed the door behind her.

Tyler didn’t even wait a full second before he went after her. Hailey ran to him, grabbing his arm. “No, Tyler, let her cry it out for a while.”

“Un-uh. She’s not going to talk to you and me like that and get away with it. Nor is she going to get by with my nearly going insane with worry. It’s time she learned that she has some responsibilities in this world. For running off and hiding all day, she deserves to be punished.”

Hailey’s lips were rubbery, but she forced the words out. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to spank her.”

“No,” she cried insistently, pulling on his arm. “No, Tyler. She’s upset—”

“So am I.”

“But you’re an adult. She’s been put through a traumatic experience. Please. Wait a while. She doesn’t understand—”

“Then it’s time she did.” He shook his arm free.

Hailey waited until she heard the door of Faith’s bedroom close behind him, then she ran out the front door. The night air was cool as she ran down to the lakeshore, but she didn’t notice it. The water was still, but no moon was reflected on its calm surface tonight. Clouds obliterated it. The magic had been for one night only.

How could everything have gone so wrong in such a short span of time? Or had she been deluding herself? Had it always been wrong for her to love Tyler? She had fallen in love with the man and had come to love the daughter. Now these two people whom she loved most in the world were suffering because of her interference in their life.

She had accused Tyler of using Faith to get close to her. But hadn’t she done the same thing? Hadn’t she used Faith to get to her father? She had been so subtle that she hadn’t even realized what she had done until Faith’s tirade against all the injustices in her young life pointed it out.

Realizing the disastrous effect of her presence in their lives, Hailey sank down on the pebbly shore and pressed her forehead against her raised knees. Unwittingly, she had driven a wedge into the tenuous relationship Tyler was carefully constructing with his daughter. Faith blamed her father for not marrying Hailey when the thought had probably never entered his mind. Faith blamed Hailey for not being good enough for him. Everyone lost.