AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But you didn't always get what you wanted.
Hayley knew that.
If you did, she would never have been abducted as an infant and kept prisoner for five years. She never would have been abducted as a teenager and had her finger cut off, and someone wouldn’t have tried to kill her tonight.
Hayley didn't want to be here in Brian’s house. She didn't want him to be her bodyguard. She had almost said no when they’d been discussing it back at her mom’s offices. But the only other option would be having someone else as her babysitter until Jay Turner was caught. Which meant having to stay with Sawyer and his wife Ashley—endangering their young children—or stay in one of the safe houses and take Sawyer away from his family at Christmas.
Neither was a viable option as far as she was concerned.
This meant for the foreseeable future, she was stuck here with Brian.
Stuck wasn't quite the right word.
Under other circumstances the two of them spending all this time alone together would have been a dream come true, but at the moment, there seemed to be this tension between them. She didn't know why. As far as she was concerned nothing had changed, but obviously Brian felt differently because he kept giving her the strangest of looks.
“Eve dropped off some clothes for you. Tomorrow your mom is going to go through your house and pack some more things for you, but these should do for tonight. Why don’t you go take a shower, change, choose which bedroom you want, and by then the mac and cheese should be ready.”
“Yeah, okay,” Hayley agreed. It was better than just sitting here wondering why Brian was acting strange and worrying that Jay Turner would track her down. “That was nice of your sister.”
“She was happy to do it. You know she loves a chance to go through your wardrobe even if she can’t fit into any of your clothes at the moment.”
Brian’s younger sister Eve was three years younger than him and three years older than herself, and was currently seven and a half months pregnant with her first child and huge. Eve’s twin sister Elise had recently given birth to her first child, a little girl, and Hayley knew that Eve was hoping to have a girl as well, but so far, the baby had been uncooperative every time she’d had a sonogram, and they hadn't been able to find out the gender.
It must be so exciting to have a new life growing inside you, something that was half of you and half of the person you loved. She wanted to have a big family one day, lots of kids, lots of love, and lots of fun. Hayley knew that a part of her mother still wished she had been able to have a biological child, just like she knew that her mom loved her fully and completely even though they weren't biologically related. In the nearly twenty years she had been Paige and Elias Hood’s daughter, she had never once doubted that she was loved.
Hayley hoped one day she’d turn out to be even half the mother that her mom had been.
But not today.
Right now, she wasn't ready for kids.
“I’ll text her later and tell her thank you,” Hayley said as she stood up and took the bag of clothes Brian held out. “Is there any bedroom you prefer me to take?”
“The one at the end of the hall, furthest away from the stairs, next to mine, that way if Jay Turner does somehow manage to track you down here and comes after you again, if he breaks in, I’ll be between him and you.”
“Okay,” she said. It was odd seeing Brian like this. All bodyguard like. She knew that he was a trained bodyguard and that he worked for her mom at the private security firm, but she’d never seen him in action before. He was so brisk, his face all harsh and stern, his gaze constantly roaming the room even though it was only the two of them here and Jay Turner had no way of knowing this was where she was staying.
Although she didn't turn around, Hayley could feel his eyes tracking her as she walked across the room and up the stairs. She let out a breath of relief when she reached the second floor, being scrutinized so carefully made her feel self-conscious.
Heading for the room that Brian had told her to take, she set the bag of clothes down on the bed and closed the curtains. A hot shower, dinner, and then bed sounded pretty good right about now. Was she allowed to take a shower with the stitches on her hand? Brian had told her to take one but she better check.
“Brian?” she called from the top of the stairs.
“Yeah?”
“Do I have to be careful of the stitches in the shower?”
“No. I put a waterproof bandage over them. I’ll change it before you go to bed and make sure the wounds are dry and clean.”
“Okay.” That was the Brian she was used to, doctor Brian.
Turning the water as hot as it went, once the bathroom was full of steam she stepped under the spray. The water worked wonders on her sore muscles, washing away all the stiffness and soreness from being knocked down and then jumping off the roof.
By the time she stepped out of the shower and wrapped a fluffy white towel around herself, Hayley was feeling a lot better. It shouldn’t take too long for the cops to find Jay Turner and then she could go back to her normal life. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take long to repair the damage to her house, and if she was lucky, she might even be able to be home before Christmas.
“You look better,” Brian said as she came back downstairs.
“I feel better,” she agreed.
