Stealing Her Heart
Chapter 1
Hailey
The worst and best day of my life starts off just like any other.
After sleeping through my first three alarms, I leap out of bed and go through my morning routine in half the time I really need. This means putting off applying any make-up until I park outside the bank and watch the seconds tick down until my shift is supposed to start. It also means no time for anything resembling a well-balanced breakfast. Instead, I only manage to get a granola bar down before checking my teeth one last time in the mirror and promising myself that I’ll brush them again after lunch.
Ten minutes later, I’m standing behind the counter of the bank, prepping my drawer for the day and already glancing up at the massive clock on the opposite wall, wondering how I’m going to make it to 5:00.
“Another day, another dollar. Isn't that right, Hailey?” my manager says like he does every morning. He’s not a bad guy. He’s got at least twenty years on me, with a dad bod and a moustache that I would make him shave off if I were his wife. He may be annoying with the way he always tries to work my name into conversations because he thinks it makes him more personable, but he’s never been creepy or micro-managing, so as far as bosses go, I can hardly complain.
“Thank god it’s Friday,” I repeat back another one of his favorite quotes.
“Got any plans for the weekend?”
He asks me this every week, and my answer is sadly always the same. “Drink a little too much boxed wine, binge something on Netflix, and count down the hours until Monday, I guess.”
“I’d say you need a man in your life, but that life sounds perfect to me. Oh, to be single again. Not that I would ever give up my wife. She’s the love of my life!” He finishes this up with a light laugh at himself. Then he raps his knuckles on the marble counter between us and takes off to unlock the doors.
He’s always complaining about his marriage, but following it up with how much he loves his wife. It’s like a way to cope with a life he’s only settled for. Honestly, it’s as depressing as it is annoying.
But it’s not like I have a lot of room to talk. Ever since I graduated university three years ago, I’ve fallen into this rut. The way I cope with the crippling reality of life is to tell myself every paycheck that I’m only going to work at the bank long enough to put money away so I can eventually travel around the world. But by the time I pay all the bills, even after drinking only the cheapest of wine and stopping myself from drowning my sorrows in too much take-out, I’m still left with a pittance to transfer to my savings account. At this rate, I’ll never have enough for a road trip to the Florida Keyes, much less for a ticket to Europe.
Two hours roll by and the morning rush slows the closer we get to lunchtime. A few of my regulars stop in. Miss Forster, the elderly woman who owns about a dozen properties around town that she rents out for well below market value. She could definitely stand to increase her tenants’ rents by two or three times, but she refuses. Saying that’s how much they agreed to pay in the beginning. Besides, she’s comfortable enough in her routine, which includes dropping by to make a deposit twice a week.
Then there’s Jack. That’s what he insists we call him even though I know his real name is George. He’s the only homeless person I know of in town. Not that he couldn’t afford to live somewhere with a roof. I’ve seen his savings balance. He wouldn’t be living like a king, but he could certainly afford a studio apartment and a new wardrobe. But he’s happy to stop by every morning and deposit the meager few dollars he was able to scrounge up begging the previous day. Everyone in town knows him by name, including Miss Forster, who always includes him in her rounds of Christmas cookies when the season rolls around.
It’s rare for a customer I don’t at least recognize to step in the bank. This is a small town with small-town people. It’s cliché, but true: everyone knows each other. Which makes it all the more strange when a new face appears just before my lunch break.
I definitely would have remembered seeing him before.
As he walks into our air-conditioned lobby, there’s immediately this aura of something different. I wouldn’t be losing any money if I bet he was from a big city. It’s not just the clothes he wears (navy slacks, a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, brown loafers, and those sunglasses with the perfectly reflective lens like a mirror); it’s the way he wears them. The countryside life hasn’t beaten him down. He walks proudly, his wide shoulders making my breath hitch as I follow the curve of his body down to his thin waist and imagine what hangs just below.
He goes to stand in another line, but then he sees me. At least, I think he does. It’s hard to tell what he’s looking at with those sunglasses on. He switches lines, and while I tend to other customers, each time I look up, I can feel his gaze on me. He swipes a deposit slip from the table in the middle of the lobby and quickly jots something down.
“Are you feeling alright, Hailey?” asks Courtney. She’s another regular. A manager at the local bar who’s usually here first thing every morning to deposit the bar’s earnings from the night before. Her face is ragged, but when she follows my eyes back to the guy three people behind her in line, a smile cracks through her exhausted mask. “Oh, I see. Looks like you’re coming down with a case of hot-guy fever.”
As I complete her deposit, I ask her in a conspiratorial whisper, “Have you seen him around?”
She shakes her head. “A new face. Fresh meat.” She leans forward and in her usual teasing manner that earns her more tips than any other bartender or server in town, she says, “I’ll give you first dibs, but if you crash and burn, he’s all mine.”
“Crashing and burning insinuates I’ll ever get off the ground in the first place.” I hand her a receipt and the cash bag back, its thick zipper clinking on the marble counter.
I get through the next three customers on autopilot until the man in the suit and sunglasses is next in line. My heart speeds up and I open my mouth to greet him, hoping I can work in a little joke or maybe invite him out tonight. But then he slides the folded deposit slip over the counter and everything changes.
The reason my breath is stuck inside me is no longer because our fingers grazed when he passed the note over. No, it's because I can just make out the first two words through the thin paper: Hand over….
It’s not even a conscious thought that pulls my hand under the counter where my finger presses the silent alarm. It’s training that tells me to prepare for the worst. Because when you work in a bank, it’s only a matter of time before someone slides a note to you that says, ‘Hand over all your money’.
So it turns out that my kn
ight in shining armor is anything but.
Just my luck.
Chapter 2
Robert
The small town vibes come at me from every direction. It’s like I’ve been dropped into a Norman Rockwell painting, but instead of being cute and picturesque, it’s slow, quiet, and boring. If not for the solar array I’m looking to set up here, you couldn’t pay me to stay here longer than I absolutely have to.
Not that I need anyone else’s money. I’ve got plenty of my own.
Or at least I should, if any business here accepted credit cards. I didn’t know that places like this even existed anymore. Just last week I passed through a village in Thailand that’s not on any maps. There was a single store along a dirt road, and even they accepted MasterCard. But not Branchville, Missouri.
Without an ATM in sight, I gravitate towards the bank, which is set up just at the end of the Main Street in a brick building that is both majestic compared to the buildings around it, while still managing to look like cookie-cutter architecture from any small town in America.
My luck turns around when I spot the teller working the desk.
Now, I’ve been in the company of plenty of women. Parties on yachts, dinners on Spanish beaches, and enough Michelin restaurants that I’ve become one of those wine snobs that can tell—at a single sniff of a glass—whether the grapes came from Spain or California. And with a bit of luck, I can even name their variety.
So when I say that a woman is drop-dead gorgeous, it’s not an exaggeration for dramatic effect. It’s simply an objective observation. It doesn’t make any sense why we should meet here and not on a private jet or a black-tie party in Manhattan, but the simple fact is that the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on happens to work at a backwoods bank in the middle of nowhere.
I switch lines when I realize the one I’m in leads to an ancient man who bears the stereotypical Midwest pudge at his waist.