Page 78 of A Deal with the Devil

“Huh. Not water once in morning, prune weekly like you thought?”

“Ha ha,” he says without humor. “She has a death wish. She can’t go two seconds without pulling a chair on top of herself or trying to scale a bookcase.”

I scoop her up and bounce her on my hip while Jonathan sinks into the couch. “You don’t know how good it is just to sit,” he sighs. He closes his eyes. “I love her to death, but it’s exhausting caring about someone all the time.”

How exhausting is it? I wonder. Is it so exhausting that he wants to return to his job early? This was always his life, not mine, and I was lucky he let me be a part of it, but I really need time to set things right with Hayes.

“If you want to come back early,” I say quietly, unable to meet his eye, “I understand.”

He leans forward, pressing his elbows onto his knees. “It’s kind of the opposite. Now that I’m home with her, I can’t imagine working those hours anymore. In an ideal world, I’d come back part-time. I know you’re going home, but I wondered if you’d want to stay on part-time until you left.”

Would anything change between me and Hayes if I stayed on? Probably not. I’m still leaving at the end of August, and that’s not enough time to build something lasting. But already, I feel myself growing weak, longing for a shot at something I want, no matter how unlikely. My breath releases in a long, resigned sigh as I contemplate it.

“What’s going on, Tali?” he asks.

I meet Jonathan’s eye. He’s known me nearly as long as Matt has, and probably knows me far better. I’ll wind up telling him the truth eventually, if he doesn’t guess it outright. “I like him. I like him in the very way you warned me not to.”

Jonathan’s smile is soft. “I never warned you not to like him. I warned you not to bang him and sneak out like you did to Brad Perez.”

“Why would you care?” I ask. “You couldn’t have been worried that I would hurt Hayes?”

He hesitates. “Because I saw the potential in you both for more. And nothing could ruin that faster than another of your grisly one-night stands, or his. I wanted you to get to know each other first before one of you could hit the self-destruct button.”

“You almost make it sound like you did this intentionally,” I say. “Like that’s why you hired me.”

And in response, he is silent.

My gaze jerks from Gemma, toddling in front of me along the glass coffee table, to her father. “Oh my God,” I whisper, staring at him. I couldn’t understand why Jonathan had been so devious in hiring me, and now, at last, I do. “You hired me on the off chance that we’d fall in love? Did you even adopt Gemma, or is she just a prop baby you’re borrowing for this?”

He laughs. “I didn’t leave the country for two months solely to set you up with my boss. I’m not that much of a romantic. But, yeah, I thought there was a chance.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Why? I was a marginally employed bartender with a bad attitude about men, and Hayes is...well, he’s Hayes. The two of us together make no sense.”

He shrugs. “He was so smitten with you that night in the bar, and when I told him to back off because you’d had a hard year, he did. He actually cared about you, even then, more than he cared about himself.”

“So that really happened.” I whisper the words in disbelief. Sure, I heard Hayes say as much at the party…I suppose I didn’t want to let myself believe it was true. “But he doesn’t want a relationship.”

“From the sound of it, Hayes is already in a relationship.” Jonathan’s mouth tips into a smirk. “Laguna Beach, Tali? And before you claim you were just assisting him on vacation, let me tell you how many vacations I’ve taken with Hayes in the two years I’ve worked for him.”

I want, so badly, to believe him. But it will only lead to me being more crushed when I discover he was wrong. I need to protect myself. I’ve come a long way since Matt broke my heart, but with Hayes it would be so much worse.

“That doesn’t mean he wants a relationship. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t freak out if he thought this was one. And I can’t just wait around for him to be ready, because that might never happen.”

He nods. “So, I should look into hiring someone else?”

I can’t stand that either. I can’t stand to imagine some knock-out who looks like Ella here in my place every day. I bury my face in my hands. “I can stay on part-time until mid-August,” I say. “And after that, can you only interview men?”

“Oh, Tali,” he croons, as if I’m a child who’s skinned her knee. “Maybe by then it’ll all have worked itself out, and it won’t even matter who I hire.”

I allow the tiniest part of me to hope he’s right, to trust in some future point, weeks and weeks away, where Hayes magically fixes everything or I find some way to fix it myself.

And then that hope dies when one of the nurses at Hayes’s office texts me, saying he’s sewing up right now and wants me to meet him in an hour. It’s best to never end things on the property, in case they refuse to leave, he once said.

Apparently, it’s my turn. The only surprise is that I didn’t see it coming sooner.

* * *

He glances up as I walk into his office an hour later. I see fatigue and reluctance in the gesture, which pisses me off. I did everything right. I never asked anything of him, and yet, here I am, being treated like some desperate girl with a crush.