Page 4 of Hayes

“I had no idea you had psychic powers,” he murmured. Turning away, he walked over to the desk to pick up a paperweight he had given her some time ago. “It’s just business,” he added briefly.

“And business has never bothered you this way before.” Simone knew she should drop it and had to acknowledge, if only to herself, that that woman coming back was giving her shivers of fear. Hayes never talked about her, and she had been wise enough not to press, even though she wanted to. “I know she is back–”

“That has nothing to do with me or you.” Turning around to face her, he sent her a look that warned her to drop the topic of discussion.

“Like I said, I was in the neighborhood and decided to drop by.” Shooting back the cuff of his immaculate ash-gray jacket, he looked at the time. “I have another meeting in a few minutes. I take it we are still on for the gallery opening?”

“Would not miss it for the world.” Simone carefully hid the flicker of anger flaring up.

“Seven, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Walking over to her, he pulled her into his arms for a brief kiss before letting go.

“See you then.”

Simone nodded and waited until he had closed the doors, before going around to sit behind the desk. She had known what she was up against when she started going out with Hayes Marsden. The rumors had been difficult to ignore.

Over the years, he had not stayed with a woman for more than two months, and everyone knew why. That awful scandal, the way he had chased after her when she left and what had almost been a nervous breakdown for him—the press had salivated over what happened to both families over twelve years ago.

The stories had fed the public’s appetite for basking in celebrities’ misery for years. A story that had the much-needed elements to keep their interests alive. Sex, murder, a love triangle gone wrong, and a couple who had been living above their means for years.

But Simone had been determined to be different from the women he had been with before, so she had played her cards carefully.

The Marsden were a powerful family who had been in the airline industry for several hundred years. She knew he would not love her the way he loved that woman, and it galled her to realize that she was his second best.

But she was determined to get him to marry her and had been subtly pushing him toward a proposal since last month. But now Camelia DeWinter was back, and the fear was that he would be tempted to be with her again. Simone could not afford any such thing.

*****

“Hon, I wish you would reconsider staying in that dreary little house. I know you love your independence, but still, it is so much nicer here.”

“And several miles away from the magazine,” Camelia reminded her as she bent to kiss her unlined cheek. “I love my space and dreary house or not, it’s mine.”

Angela waited until she took a seat on a chaise across from her before she continued, “I am not so certain we should have come back.”

Camelia poured a glass of lemonade and took a sip before addressing her “You said we had to, and besides, it was time.”

“Yes.” The woman waved a long-fingered hand in dismissal. “But the rumors are already starting up again.”

“There is nothing we can do about it.”

Stubbing out the flavored cigar that was a fondness of hers, Angela felt her heart trembling inside her chest. “Your father, my brother, was a damn fool. He was weak and easily led. Carla led him through the nose. He was obsessed with her—an obsession that was unnatural.”

She glanced at her niece. “One that you no doubt experienced yourself—with that Marsden boy. I begged my brother to intervene when you started seeing him. But he was too wrapped up in your mother to be a parent.”

“I really don’t want to talk about any of that,” Camelia told her firmly. “Auntie, I love you and am grateful for what you did for me, but if you are going to revisit the past, then I am leaving.”

Angela smiled at her whimsically. “You are so beautiful. Carla was lovely, but she lacked your strength of character, your innate ability to stare adversity in the eye and walk all over it.

You deserve some happiness after what you have been through darling, and I had hoped sincerely that you would have found it with one of those eager gentlemen in Europe.”

“I am not interested in romance. At least not now.”

“I saw his mother.”

Camelia went still at that. “I see.”

“Yes. Hillary was quite distant and polite, and she made it plain that she does not want a reenactment of what went on with her son.”

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