“Tell her the truth!”
“Hailey, I… You wouldn’t mind … You’d know I was only teasing …”
“When her tearful pleas didn’t work, she tried another tack. She flung her arms around my neck and started kissing me. That’s when you walked in.” Tyler’s eyes had been riveted on Hailey’s as he told her what had happened. Now he swung his head to Ellen and released her arm so quickly he could have been shaking her off like some hideous insect. “Get out.” The words fell into the room like stones.
“Get out?” Ellen asked, aghast. “You can’t—”
“I damn well can. Get out.”
“Hailey,” Ellen said, ignoring him. “You’ve got to help me.” Her voice was a wheedling whine.
“Why should she?” Tyler asked. “Because she always has before? Those days are over, Ellen. Get back to Nashville and wait to hear from me. I think you’d fit in very nicely in a small company I have in Baltimore.”
“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
Hailey’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.”