What The Heart Finds (7 page)

A lazy grin played at his
lips for a second before he brought his face to hers, his lips
landing on hers lightly. A promise of more to come. His thumbs pushed
into the flesh under her chin, pushing her face upward as his lips
demanded more. A whimper pushed its way out from the back of her
throat and Eric’s hungry tongue slipped inside her mouth,
toying slow circles with hers.

Her arms went up and
around the back of his neck, pulling him closer. She needed to feel
him. She needed more.

As if sensing her
urgency, Eric’s tongue slipped away. His teeth dug quickly into
the soft, swollen flesh of her lower lip quickly before pulling
completely away.

Lena’s eyes were
closed tight. She leaned forward, seeking stability, and rested her
face against his chest, his heartbeat quick against her ear. His
hands slid from her face, moving down her back and pulling her
tightly against him.

“Lovely, lovely
night for a … walk,” Emily’s voice broke in,
amused. Teasing almost.

Lena’s eyes sprang
open, trying to pull away but finding Eric’s grip too tight.

What the hell was she
doing? Had she really just let him kiss her? As if she needed any
kind of distraction from her already slow moving work assignment. And
as if that wasn’t bad enough, now there was a witness to her
disgrace.

“Awe, Emmy,”
Eric said, his voice light and easy. “I was just…
welcoming Miss. Edwards to town.”

Lena felt her spine
straighten. So that was all it was. She was fresh meat. A new face.
It wasn’t anything more than that. And she was an idiot to
think, for even the barest of seconds, that it was. Because this was
Eric O’reilly. This was the town’s most well known
womanizer.

She was just a pliant
pair of lips. A soft body to rub against.

Lena felt the shame fill
her so full, her eyes filled with tears for an alarmingly long moment
before she was able to blink them away.

She quickly pulled away,
stepping out of his arms and looking between him and Emily. “Yes,
well,” she said, pulling the hem of her shirt down. “you
should probably practice. Your delivery was a bit clumsy,” she
said and quickly walked around the porch and out of sight.

Eric’s slow,
appreciative laugh followed her all the way back into the inn.

She slammed the door to
her room shut with more force than necessary, pacing the floor in the
bedroom anxiously.

How hard would it have
been to roll her eyes at him and just… go back into the in? To
pull her arm out of his grip and keep moving? What had possessed her
to turn around? To go to him? To allow him to kiss her?

Was she just that badly
in need of physical contact? When she thought about it, it had
probably been the better part of a year since she had even been in a
man’s arms. Longer since she was in any man’s bed. Maybe
she was just sexually frustrated. Maybe her defenses were down
because her body wanted something more than her mind wanted her to
deny it.

And if one could name the
absolutely worst man in the world to be around when you are already
dealing with your own lasciviousness, it was Eric O’reilly.

But what was done was
done. And she just had to move on from that. Avoid him whenever
possible. When she did have to face him, she would make sure she kept
a good three feet between them at all times. Or three yards. Or
miles.

With a sigh, she sat down
on the foot of the bed and opened her laptop. At least she had gotten
a small amount of information to send to EM.

From
what I can gather, there are eight inn employees. Emily and Devon
work the front desk. There is one maid, two cooks, two dining
servers, and Alec the horseback riding instructor. I managed to get
into an employee file for Devon. He works a total of thirty hours a
week on average and makes $13/hr. It goes to stand that Emily must
make several more dollars an hour given her level of experience and
her seeming manager status. I would guess at least $18/hr.

It is assumed that the
dining servers make the standard $2.15/hr plus tips. I would put the
salary for the maid at an estimated $8-10/hr. As for the horseback
riding instructor, that is an unknown.

But given this
information: the small number of rooms and the seemingly high
employee salaries, I cant imagine the inn manages to turn much of a
profit. Which might explain the disrepair.

If EM Corp were to
acquire the property, I think the only course of action would be an
addition to make up for the high overhead.

- LE

Lena
got changed and crawled into bed, wondering what kind of sentimental
attachment would be worth several hundred thousand dollars investment
in a business that would likely never pay it back. What deep kind of
feelings did Elliott Michaels have for Hannah Clary that made him
consider such an imprudent business move?

She
remembered them at her initial employee interview: the long
black-haired Hannah with her pretty face and her confident speech and
the angry red scars around her wrists. Elliott couldn’t seem to
keep his eyes off of her, looking over at her any time she spoke with
a sudden softness to his face. Like she was some kind of miracle.
Like she was the only woman in the world.

Everyone at work knew
their story. Hannah who had started there as EM’s personal
assistant. How they fell in love. How their love had caused a crazy
person to kidnap and torture Hannah. How they had been inseparable
since.

The stuff of movies. The
kind of love that seemed impossible to ever find.

What must that be like,
Lena wondered, curling into her pillow. What must it be like to have
someone who treated you like you hung the moon? To have someone to
come home to after a long day. To have someone give a damn if you
were happy.

Lena took a deep breath,
pushing the thoughts away. It wasn’t like her to be
sentimental. To romanticize relationships. Because for every couple
like Elliott and Hannah or Sam and Anna… there were dozens,
hundreds of other people who ended up with someone who wouldn’t
even look up from the television if you stood there naked. She needed
to get her head out of the clouds and back on the ground. Back onto
work. And onto her plans for the future.

And she certainly
wouldn’t think about Eric O’reilly any more.

Seven

Two days later as she was
browsing around the farmer’s market, grabbing countless amounts
of organic tea and beauty products made by Sam’s wife Anna when
she noticed Hank the friendly grocer keep peeking at her out from
behind a corner display.

“What’s up,
Hank?” she asked, smiling as he came into view, looking
sheepish.

“Hey there Miss.
Edwards…”

“Lena,” she
interrupted.

“Lena… well…
I know you must have plans for the rest of your stay. But, see, we
have this event going on tomorrow night…”

Thank god. Lena had been
walking around aimlessly, popping in and out of stores and steadily
trying to stay away from Eric. She was bored out of her mind.

“Actually, my
calendar is pretty free. What event?” she asked, curious as to
why there hadn’t been any fliers in town.

“Well… we
have a lot of charity events in this town and tomorrow night is
another one of them. One of our annual fundraisers…”

Lena smiled. She didn’t
know what he was hedging about, but his face was red and his gaze
couldn’t seem to hold hers. “Spit it out, Hank, I’m
no innocent flower here.”

“Right,” Hank
said, swiping at his forehead with the back of his hand. “well…
the ladies committee in town came up with this idea years ago for,
well, a bachelor auction.”

Lena laughed, her smile
wide enough to hurt her cheeks. “Oh, is that all?” she
asked, realizing how different the mentality must be in small towns
about sexuality. “I would be happy to attend.”

“Oh wonderful,”
Hank said, looking relieved. “Now, you’re not obligated
to place any bids or anything of the like. There is also a silent
auction and games where you can contribute to the cause.”

“Sounds like fun.
Is there a dress code?” she asked, suddenly realizing she
hadn’t packed anything but work attire.

“People around here
like to have an excuse to get dressed up,” he admitted with a
shrug. “So it’s usually dresses for the ladies, dress
shirts and ties for the men.”

“Alright then,”
she said, looking out toward the street. “have any
recommendations for where I can get a dress around here?”

In the end she found that
there were two options for clothing in the town: going to one of the
local women who worked on the side as seamstresses, or go to the
second hand store and hope for the best. Since she didn’t have
a car to leave town, and she didn’t have the time to wait for a
dress to be made, she found herself buried in the endless overfilled
racks at the second hand store. Where apparently every other woman in
town had already sifted out most of the desirable pieces.

“Oh god,”
Lena groaned, holding up a bright orange and pink floral sundress.

“Girl, you just
need some imagination,” Maude’s voice broke in, a pile of
dresses already spilling over her arms.

“I’d need a
sci-fi level of imagination to think I can pull off a pink camouflage
cocktail dress.”

“Well you’re
lucky I just so happened to know you would be needing a dress so I
came in here before the crowd and put aside some options for you.”
Maude watched Lena’s disbelieving eyes and smiled. “I hid
them inside that awful human-sized vase up front. Come on, let’s
get you to the dressing room.”

Maude ushered her inside
a makeshift room consisting of brightly colored tapestries hung into
a square shape around a standing oval mirror.

“Here,” Maude
said, holding up a plain a-line dress in bright red. “this one
first. Men always like a woman in red.”

Lena rolled her eyes as
she slipped out of her clothes. “I’m not looking for a
man,” she said, pulling on the dress and struggling with the
zipper. It was nice. Simple and dressy. Professional almost. “I
like this one.”

Before she had even
finished, Maude pulled one of the tapestries out of the way and
clucked her tongue. “No,” she said, her voice final.
“take that off.”

“What’s wrong
with…”

“It looks like all
those clothes you wear everyday. You need to shake it up a little.
Here. This one,” she said, tossing a dress at her and pulling
the tapestry closed again.

Lena sighed, undressing
and pulling on the new dress. “I don’t think this is
going to work,” Lena said, struggling to pull the clinging
material over her hips. “it’s too tight.”

“No such thing,”
Maude said and Lena could swear she heard a strange sneakiness in her
voice. “not for a bachelor auction anyway. Come on, let me
see.”

Lena looked in the
mirror, shaking her head. It was a strapless cocktail dress in a pale
yellow and clung to everything like a second skin.

“That’s the
one,” Maude said, nodding her head and tossing the rest of the
dresses on the top of a rack where three women were desperately
searching for something to wear.

“No, Maude…
I really think,” Lena said, pointing to the abandoned dresses.

“Nope,” Maude
said, spinning her around to look in the mirror. “look, it’s
perfect on you. Go get your street clothes back on, I’ll go
wait by the register.”

–

Lena stood in front of
the mirror self-consciously as she carefully braided her hair from
one side of her face to the other, wrapping the end up in a elegant
braided bun. She had even taken time to carefully line her eyes and
put on some lipstick. She didn't know why but she was nervous. More
nervous than she usually was for social gatherings and she had been
to more than her fair share in her line of work.

With a sigh, she slipped
into a pair of light nude pumps with a kitten heel, grabbed a small
purse, and left her room. If she didn't just get going already, she
was going to back out.

The sidewalks were
streaming with crowds of men and women in their finest. Lena spotted
a woman in the pink camouflage cocktail dress she had been talking
about the day before. Slim pickings, she mused, in a small town.

The event itself was
being held at the school auditorium. The woman's counsel and the
students had been working long afternoons getting everything
decorated to its fullest potential. The stage curtains had been
changed to black and white, and the stage itself had been elongated
in front by a catwalk. A few rows of chairs had been placed on either
side of the catwalk, draped in black and white covers. Most of them
were already taken over by a large group of middle aged women. The
counsel, she assumed.

To one of the sides,
tables draped in black lined the entire side, various items lined up
carefully with clipboards in front of them. A silent auction.

On the opposite side of
the room, there were white-draped card tables. On top of each was
what appeared to be some standard gambling games along with regular
boredom-busting games. There were small white signs sitting on each
table with elegant, swooping calligraphy announcing the names of the
games: bingo, poker, blackjack, mahjong, chess, Chinese checkers, and
backgammon.