Straight shooter. She liked that. More than that, her instincts told her Leo would be a good fit. She was tired of second-guessing herself. She’d gotten here without any savings and would get over the next hurdle the same way. “Can you start tomorrow?”
She’d deal with the rent increase. Everything would be okay. She kept wondering if others believed in her but if she didn’t hire Leo, when she knew she needed someone, it would be like she didn’t even believe in herself.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She shook his hand. “Hailey. Would you like a salad?”
He laughed. “Sure.”
“Good. You can make your own. It’ll be good practice.”
She watched him walk behind the counter, wash up. Her gaze met Wes’s and she saw a myriad of emotions. They mirrored what she felt. Most of which was happiness.
17
“I would have helped you make salads. This is a ridiculous trade,” Wes said. They’d decided to shop right after she closed her store that Saturday because the speed dating started at eight.
“You don’t have any food prep training. Plus, it’s not really a trade. She asked me to go so she didn’t have to go alone. I would have done it even if she didn’t make salads.” Hailey put two boxes of the same cereal into the cart. Wes pulled one out, set it back on the shelf.
The store was fairly quiet even at this time. Most people probably didn’t spice up their Saturdays with a supermarket visit but Hailey had come to love this part of her week.
“I thought you didn’t want to date.” His voice was clipped.
Hailey stopped, a hand on the cart. “I don’t. I’m going for a friend. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to test the waters, you know?”
“You could try an app,” he said, lips twitching.
“Would you invent one just for me the way you did for Everly?”
He laughed, pushed the cart forward. “No. Chris was so mad about that app. It was his idea but he kept complaining about the guys on it. They were all screened but he didn’t like the fact that she was dating. I’m not getting involved in anyone’s dating life again.”
“Come with us tonight.”
“What?” Now he stopped the cart.
“It would be good for both of us. Come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll go, see what the Love Gods have in store for us, and then go to dinner after. You like Fiona. It’s for her.”
Wes frowned. “For her article. I don’t want to be part of an article. It’s one of the reasons I was happy to leave New York.”
Hmm. So he hadn’t seen it. “Speaking of,” Hailey said, grabbing her phone from her basket inside the cart. She pulled up the web page she’d pinned. The business section of The L.A. Times had released a statement from Ana and Aidan’s company. Turning the phone, she showed Wes. “You might have wanted to mention your desire to stay out of the news to your new business partner.”
Wes took the phone from her, looked closer. She’d committed it to memory. New York’s finest brothers join forces with former sibling models making this the sexiest collaboration since Beyoncé and Jay-Z teamed up with Tiffany’s. To be fair, it was the newspaper’s headline, not Ana’s. The article was her commentary on a very lucrative and hopefully successful merger.
A growly sigh left his lips as he passed the phone back to her. “She mentioned she was going to announce it. No reason for the headline though. It diminishes the whole thing. It’s a great merger. An excellent acquisition on our part and instead of saying that, they talked about Ana and Aidan’s red-carpet days. Just what my father needs to stick his pins in a little further.” The red-carpet stuff had only been mentioned in the end, yet Wes’s whole body seemed to vibrate with tension.
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “My father has lawyers all over everything we do, trying to find some sort of basis for suing us. It’s his way of continuing to assert power.”
“I don’t understand how your father can be so toxic and you and your brothers are so great.”
Wes gave her a weak attempt at a smile. “I think when you grow up like that, you either shut your eyes and follow suit or you open them wide and head in the other direction.” They started walking, turning down the next aisle. “What about your parents? With the holidays coming up, will you see them?”
She avoided his gaze because he had enough parent issues of his own. “They booked a two-week vacation to Mexico over Christmas. They’re flying out of LAX and offered to meet me there for a drink before they leave.”