Seduction by Design

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve got to go to Atlanta f

or a few days. I’m on the run now, but I wanted to call you before I left. I have a plane to catch in Knoxville, and if I don’t hurry, I’m not going to make it.”

“I see.” She felt like she had been dashed with cold water and then wrung out. Her spirit was deflating with each passing second. You should have known, Hailey…

“I’m leaving Faith here in the care of a lady the management of the Glenstone found for me. I think they’ll get along fine, but the lady doesn’t drive, and I wondered if you’d mind Faith’s company on any outing you might be taking. I’d consider it a big favor.”

Time seemed to stand still, as did her heart. She stared at the calendar on her desk until the demarcating lines between the days of the week bled together and her vision doubled.

“Hailey? Are you still there?”

“Yes.” She spoke with amazing calm. Cool, dependable, competent Hailey. Nothing shook her. She could be counted on in any situation. “Yes, I’m still here.”

Taking that as compliance with his request, he rushed on. “Thanks, Hailey. I didn’t think you’d mind. The two of you get on so well. You’re good for her.”

Every word struck like a knife stabbing into her soul. She wanted to get on well with Tyler. She wanted to be good for him. He hadn’t asked her how she had slept. He hadn’t told her how difficult it had been for him to leave her last night. He had inquired about Serendipity and now he was asking her to be a glorified baby-sitter for his daughter. Damn the man!

“I might be busy, but I’ll see what I can do. Is there anything else?” she asked with businesslike abruptness. “I’d hate for you to miss your plane, and I’m extremely busy myself.”

“Hailey.” She recognized the drugging quality in his voice now. It had obliterated her good sense on two occasions, but now she saw it for the sham that it was.

“I have another call, Mr. Scott. Good-bye.” She slammed the receiver back onto the phone and then shouted at it, “And I hope you rot in hell.”

The walls began closing in around her. If she didn’t get out of that room, she would smother. She strode through the outer office. “I’m going to check something out, Charlene. Take my calls.”

Then she was weaving her way through the park’s landscaped walkways, not caring where she was going, knowing only that she must keep moving.

How could she have been so stupid not to have seen it? It had been there all the time, but she wasn’t looking in that direction. When he first tried to woo her, she had thought he was availing himself of a willing playmate for the office. She should have known better than that. Someone with Tyler Scott’s sterling reputation in the professional world hadn’t gotten it by dallying with secretaries or associates.

What he had been looking for was a stand-in nanny for a daughter he was too busy and too selfish to care for himself. At her first sign of capitulation to his seduction scheme, he had taken a tentative step toward anchoring her in that position.

“Excuse me,” Hailey mumbled as she swiftly passed a couple who were poring over a map of the park.

“Say, lady, you work here, don’tcha? Can you tell us where the Haunted Plantation House is? It’s not on the map.”

Of course it’s on the map, you idiot! she wanted to scream. Instead, she answered with the patience and kindness of a nun. “Yes, sir. Here it is.” She pointed to the plainly marked attraction on the colorful, easily read map. “Go past the puppet theater and you can’t miss it.”

“Okay,” he said and ambled off with his wife in tow.

“You’re welcome,” Hailey muttered under her breath in exmasperation. The rudeness of some people never ceased to amaze her. Which brought her immediately back to dark thoughts about the character of Tyler Scott.

Had he come to her like a decent human being, told her how much his daughter had taken to her, explained the girl’s difficulties in adjusting emotionally to her mother’s death, she would have sympathized. More than likely she would have offered to see Faith frequently. After all, she had very little that occupied her free time, and she enjoyed Faith.

But he hadn’t made that approach.

He had appealed to her feminine vanity, to the instinctive need in every woman to feel attractive and … loved. He had plied her with compliments she should have seen through immediately. She had never been beautiful. Why had she been so eager to believe him when Tyler had told her she was? If her body was the sort that drove men wild with desire, wouldn’t she have known about it before now? What a fool she had been.

The morning air was still crisp and cool, yet her cheeks burned as she recalled how she had shamelessly responded to his caresses, his honeyed words, his kisses. How he must have secretly gloated over his rapid conquest. He hadn’t left her last night out of respect, as she had wanted to believe. He had left because he already had her malleable—like clay in his hands—ready to do his bidding, grant his favors.

To hell with your favors, Mr. Scott.

Since she had not paid attention to where she was going, her feet came to an abrupt standstill when she looked up and saw the Sidewinder. It was here, almost on this exact spot, that she had first met those gray eyes. They could compel her to behave in so uncharacteristic a way that she didn’t even know herself anymore.

She imagined him the way she had first seen him, and she knew in that instant that the emotion rioting inside her was only half anger. The rest was bitter despair. She had grown to like him. Was dangerously close, she feared, to loving him. Why, Tyler? she asked the vision in her mind’s eye. Why couldn’t you like me for myself? Why is it you only wanted to use me?

Defeat and dejection rode heavily on her shoulders as she turned and walked back to her office. She didn’t see that the trees were becoming tinted with the russets and golds of fall. She didn’t realize how the autumn colors around her emphasized her own coloring.

Women turned envious eyes on her tall slender figure, her burnished hair, her green eyes, made luminous now by unshed tears. But Hailey didn’t see their covert glances. Nor did she see how men turned to appreciate her proud carriage, the natural, unaffected sway of her hips, her well-shaped legs, her high breasts. She was blind to their approving looks and always had been. In her mirror she still saw herself as she had been in her youth—awkward, plain, undesirable.