Standing By: A Knight's Tale #2 (14 page)

“Hay,” she sighs. “I’m not moving to Texas. The job doesn’t pay relocation and at least here I know the babysitters that take care of Iker.”

“Do you need help, Kenz?” She sighs, and I know the answer. She’s too proud to ask for anything. “Kenz?”

“I’m fine, Hay, we made it this far.” She did. A single mom who got through college with the little help she accepted from Dad and me. “Tell you what; if I ever become desperate you’ll be the first person I ask for help. Maybe as a favor, you should stop sending Ike all those clothes and toys, that’ll be helpful. What kind of mother won’t provide the essentials for her child?”

“You always tell me that,” I protest. “You’re a great mother and don’t forget that he’s my godson; I enjoy doing this for him.”

“Hayley,” Mitch calls me. It’s not likely that I can keep hiding in the bathroom. “It’s almost eleven, time for bed.”

“You’re sleeping with the man?” Kendall’s childish tone makes me want to slam the phone against my head until it causes amnesia… if only that was possible. “That’s refreshing. Are you thinking about losing that virginity to a real man or are you still using the sex toys?”

“Shut up,” I say clasping my mouth. “Got to go, after the tedious flight with the thousand questions from Mitch’s brothers, I deserve a twelve hour sleep and instead I’m getting only five if I’m lucky.”

“Call me and let me know how this ends,” she says before I hang up. “Nevertheless, Hay, don’t forget that not all men are assholes, babe. Some might be worth getting to know and love. Just because everyone you know has ended up with one, it doesn’t mean you will too.”

“Ted, Kevin, should I continue?”

“No, because then you’ll mention mine, your mom’s, and end with your father.”

“Love you, Kenz.” I sigh, feeling bad for bringing up some memories she didn’t want to think about. We’re both a depressive mess. “Give a kiss to Ike for me.”

I leave the bathroom after hanging up and brush my teeth. I find Mitch leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed—shirtless. We should add a rule; no one goes shirtless in the house.

“Who is Kenz?”

I tap my phone and show him a picture of her and Iker.

“Her name is Kendall,” I tell him. “She’s Kenz and I’m Hay or Hayl. We went to the same school all the way up until college.”

“The kid?”

“Iker, my godson,” I take the phone back and find a better picture of him. “They live in DC and she works two jobs in order support them while searching for her dream job as a journalist.”

“You worry about them?” He smoothes my wrinkled forehead.

I nod and close my eyes because there’s just so much I can do for them. “Can I help?”

“If she ever asks, I’ll let you help, Mitch.”

I head to the closet for extra blankets and pillows, and put them on the couch for him to use.

“I’m too tall for that,” he complains.

“Goodnight, Mitchel.” I ignore his pout, then head to my bed where I hole up inside the blankets and wish for the images of his naked chest to disappear from my head. There’s no way I’ll reach for my toys to take the edge off.

“Goodnight, Wife.”

Hayley

“I
refuse to
continue doing this—waking up in the middle of the night,” Mitch says as he watches me frost the cake. “We need to hire people to help you. As I explained earlier, I want to sell your muffins and cupcakes in my restaurants.”

“We agreed the expansion would be a slow process.” I place another tulip on the top layer.

“If we hire another baker and another decorator, you can do more of these cakes. At a thousand dollar a pop, you can cover all your operational costs.”

I sigh, trying to fake resignation because I hate that he is making sense. I do want to stop worrying so much about the daily production and progress more into the direction of creating cakes.

“Now about the production of cupcakes for
Knight’s Restaurants
,” he presses the issue but before he continues talking, he throws the piece of fondant he’s been playing with to the ceiling, catching it with his mouth. Man-child. “We must do it. Don’t you think it be strange if I’m not carrying my wife’s cupcakes and muffins?”

“I’m not your w—”

“Are you here, dear?” Mom. I hear her voice through the doors that divide the kitchen from the front of the bakery. “I need to know all about your wedding night. Finally, you’re a woman now.”

I glare at Mitch. After three hours of listening to the chime of my doorbell each time it opened, he wrenched it off. Thus, I didn’t hear Mom arrive.

For the first time my frame glasses, frumpy t-shirt and frayed out jeans won’t bother her. No, she has a new subject to concentrate on. My marriage to hot-rich boy—and apparently my virginity but she’s always been fixated on that one.

“Why is my sexual status so important to everyone?”

“Not to me.” He smirks and kisses my cheek. “I’ll go out there with you. That should stop her from asking more questions than you wish to hear.”

He intertwines our fingers, and we cross the swinging doors to the shop. My mother stands wearing a short dress and her usual high heels. The spicy aroma of her perfume as usual threatens to kill my sense of smell.

“Hayley, dear you’re glowing,” Mom flashes a bright grin. “I’m ecstatic that you’re happy.”

Her tender words remind me of those days when she likes me and I start to feel like this is a step forward to having a decent mother-daughter relationship.

“Son,” she says in a sing-a-song tone. “Welcome to the family. You can call me Mom, or Caro.”

However, before Mitch can respond to her “
Call me Mom
” request, as on cue, my father’s loud, threatening voice makes me jump.

“You.” He slams the door against the wall and points at Mitch, with a red face and wide eyes straining against his sockets. “You don’t go behind my back and marry my daughter. If you’re a real man, then have the balls to ask for her hand. Ask for permission to take her away from me, not just steal her to Vegas and marry her like she is not worth the time for a real ceremony.”

“You sound like an idiot, Augustine,” Mom says, contradicting what she yelled a couple of weeks ago. That I deserved a wedding bigger than the one Kate Middleton had. She turns to Mitch. “I apologize; he’s in his seventies already and too old to have a daughter Hayley’s age. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I… had her. Too young if you ask me.”

“Mom, stop,” I don’t know if she’s flirting or what but this isn’t what I had in mind when I thought about the confrontation with them, actually I lie – I didn’t even give the moment a fleeting consideration.

“Nevertheless, Caroline, Hayley’s not one of those types of women he dates. She’s my child,” Dad says. How does Dad know about Mitch’s type of women? “Tell me young man, did you even take the time to ask what she wanted? I’ll tell you: a beach wedding, in the Caribbean with white sand and the sunset. If you had asked, we would’ve arranged it within days and made her happy. Not Vegas. That’s not her.”

A voice cuts through our family dialogue, “You married?” I look up to see Susan Darling wearing a crisp pantsuit, enter. I need my bell back. “Well, congratulations. I hope the man doesn’t mind your parents’ little outburst. Mr. Welsh. Congratulations.” Then she looks at Mitch. “I remember you from last week, you did great, Hayley. He in turn hit the jackpot. Now, tell me you have time to deliver a cake on Saturday.”

I move my gaze toward the door, a lady wearing a sleeveless white silk blouse, a pair of khaki pants and a long blond bob waves at me. I can’t remember her name, but she’s a customer and blueberry muffins with orange glaze are her favorites.

“Good morning.” She waves and smiles at all of us.

“Hayley, sweetheart, welcome to the family.” She continues her way to where I stand and crosses the green line, ignoring the
Employees Only
sign. Mom and Dad suck in air and watch as the woman pulls me into a hug. My entire body tenses. “What did I do?”

“No, Mom.” Mitch tries to stop her.

“You crossed the green line,” I whisper.

“Mom, behind the counter.” Mitch hugs me. “I told you, later. She’s working and overwhelmed by her family already.” He turns to my father. “Sir, I apologize for not asking permission for your hand, I mean her hand. I should’ve done it, and I shouldn’t have pushed so hard but believe me when I say we took our time making the right decision for both of us and we’re happy about it. Now, unless you’re here for anything that doesn’t involve purchasing products or ordering cakes, I’d advise you to leave.”

“So much for being welcomed to the family.” Mom leaves slamming the door.

Mitch’s Mom orders cupcakes, Dad too and Susan places the cake order. One that Mitch promises he’ll have delivered on Saturday.

“Sorry for bursting into your workplace, Hayley,” Mitch’s Mom says. “Hope you’ll still join us for dinner.”

“I’d love to,” I say without thinking. She apologized, and that makes me feel… respected. “I’ll try to bake something for you.”

“I’ll see you later today. Mr. Welsh, it’ll be lovely if you join us also,” she invites Dad who gives her a fake smile, and he leaves with Rachel Knight after waving at us.

“I don’t like this.” I search for the bell inside the drawer where he threw it earlier.

“Put the bell back and leave, I need alone time—me time.”

My gaze goes back to the door before I speak again.

“Dad – I mean my father is angry and sad, did you notice?” Dad’s slumped shoulders and silent presence gave him away, worse; he didn’t talk to me.

“‘
We took our time making the right decision for both of us and we’re happy about it.’
We were drunk and you misread the chapel information…” the laughter overtakes my anger and Mitch joins in.

Our drunken night cost him about fifty thousand dollars because he asked for
the best package
and now we don’t even remember it.

“I’m ambivalent about this entire ordeal,” I confess, sobering from the laughter we just shared. “I bet someday we’ll look back and laugh about it.”

“We laugh every time we talk about it,” he says as he tries to compose himself, but the smirk remains intact. “I’m an idiot. Hey, for their entertainment, we can repeat the wedding.”

“It wouldn’t be magical,” I head back to my working table and try not to imagine
my magical wedding
. My shoulders droop as I complain about my future. “I’m going to end up alone, loveless and babysitting Paige’s children.”

He nudges me. “Come on, what will make it magical?” He bats his eyes, links his hands together and tries to change his rough voice to a soft feminine one. “Doves being released while you say
I do
? Some pop singer composing the soundtrack of the wedding. No wait, you’d rather have the Smashing Pumpkins doing so.”

Yes?

I push his chest with my hand, obviously failing to move his rock-hard body. No, hard rock; you don’t want to rock hard that body hard, Hayley?

“Being in love, you jerk.”

“Hayley, you don’t want to fall in love.” He takes a sharp breath. “That’ll make you do stupid, irrational things and lose yourself for something that more often than not is self-destructive.”

“That Chloe person did a number on you, didn’t she?” Poor guy, for the first time I feel sorry for him. “Why don’t you look for her, try to fix things and see if the two of you are meant for each other? Or let it go. No wait, it was Jordan… one of them really broke you.”

Mitch

C
hloe Anderson was
the first and only girl I fell in love with and she proved that being in love made you—or at least me—a stupid person. To top it all off, she was a prostitute as in her occupation. How could I have failed to see it when we dated? I was blind; she was the one with the experience, not me. I lost my virginity at sixteen, had sex with another girl after that, and that sums up all my experience up until I met Chloe. The girl provided me with a lot of sex, yes, also tons of dramatic outbursts. “
Nobody loves me, I’m a fucked up mess.
” and… I always tried to convince her that she was worth loving.

Though I considered her my girlfriend, Chloe hated titles and hated me when I called her my girlfriend.

“Don’t objectify me, I’m free.”
Free to fuck whomever and whenever she wanted—at the right price, but I didn’t learn that until after that our so-called relationship ended. Free to forget we were exclusive and free to dump me for a man who’d give her what I didn’t… money.

A couple of years later we crossed paths again. She then lived with her high school sweetheart and coincidentally Liam’s employee—one we deduced had a drug problem. By then my brother, Jake, who recovered from his injuries, saw Liam’s employee as his pet project.

“I followed her today,” Jake arrived at my apartment one night. “All day long, then interviewed the men she spent a few hours with.”

“Who are we talking about?” I asked Jake, wondering if he was starting to lose his sanity. The fucked up accident had an impact on his head too and so far, nothing had changed. Only his dark mood.

“Chloe Anderson, the girl Gavin Clement is dating. Liam likes the guy, but he’s snorting cocaine during business hours.”

“Well, perhaps he’s passing his addiction on to that girl.” I suggested because Chloe wasn’t a drug addict.

“That’s what I thought at first,” Jake explained, leaning his cane on the wall and taking a seat on the couch. “Then as I watched them closely, I realized she’s the one with the contacts.”

“Contacts?” I crossed my arms now worrying about my brother and deciding if I should call Mom.

“Yes, drug dealers.” He pulled some notes and read the names and numbers. “She works for an exclusive escort company. She’s worked there since the age of eighteen, and she’s into some pretty hard core stuff, Mitch.”

“Escort, hard core?” My mouth opened wide. “As in prostitute?”

“She’s a whore and about to get the boot because she’s consuming drugs with her clients. I learned that little tidbit from her employer. But here is the interesting thing.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Some of the dealers have supplied her since she became an escort.”