Burned(15)

“Oh sweet hell.” Her vision blurred, temporarily blinding her. Tension and relief, coiled into tight bands of emotion and intense awareness, swept through her like a wave battering the shore.

Her inner muscles convulsed, gripping and milking Hauk. He followed her a second later with his own orgasm.

Unable to support them a moment longer, Vic allowed her arms to flop. She and Hauk crashed to the bed, laughing.

It was only a short matter of time before reality invaded.

Hauk would go home to Sophie. She would go to her salon. They wouldn’t speak of these moments outside the bedroom unless they could be entirely sure no one would hear. Hauk had spent too much time in the middle of Whispering Cove gossip to allow himself to end up there again.





With the salon empty for the first time since she’d opened that morning, Vic could hear the country tunes crooning through the speakers. She had an eclectic blend of music on her iPod that she docked in the back office, but the customers seemed to prefer country. Young or old, people enjoyed the blends of ballads and dance tunes the genre had to offer.

As a popular dance beat began, Vic made mental notes on possible singers for the festival and eased slowly into the chair at the makeup stand to study her face in the mirror. Smudges that were primarily an effect of running makeup darkened her eyes. She couldn’t blame makeup for her heavy lids, though. That was entirely an effect of another sleepless night.

Grabbing a tube of concealer, she worked on touching up her makeup before the next round of customers came in. It had been two days since she’d gotten Hauk to her apartment. Two days since she’d slept more than a few hours. Two days that had passed in an odd silence between them.

Sophie had come to see her when she was feeling better, but there’d been no contact from Hauk. No phone calls or texts or passing hellos on the street. Nothing.

She was beginning to get itchy, as much for her friend as for her newly discovered lover. The same feminine pride that had her wanting to look good kept her from being the one to make the next move. It was probably futile because Hauk wasn’t likely to make a move.

The man had developed a powerful determination in high school that drove him daily to be faithful to his decisions.

He had made some tough ones when he found out his girlfriend Krista, who at one time had been one of Vic’s close friends, was pregnant. They’d all been burned by her before the end, but no one had suffered as much as Hauk. He used to say he wanted to be an attorney specializing in family law, but he had put his dreams aside and married Krista, who later abandoned him and their daughter. She had been picking fights in town, spiraling deeper into the unfolding ugliness of her soul. When Vic had refused to believe a claim that Hauk was abusive, Krista had vowed everyone would see the truth soon. Three days later she’d been found dead with bruises on her face, an open wound across her forehead and a broken arm.

Because of the mysterious circumstances, and in the absence of a goodbye note of any kind, Hauk had been investigated as a suspect. The town had gathered behind him, though, and it hadn’t taken long to recover the boat she’d stolen. On it had been a taped sob story no one believed. When her blood had been found on the railing and no other DNA, her death had been ruled an unsolved death. The injuries alone made it too difficult to believe her death had been an accident or even a suicide.

After a grueling investigation that had verified Hauk’s alibi and failed to turn up another suspect, his name had been cleared by the law. His heart was a different story.

Eventually talk had died down, and though they’d never talked about it, Vic knew it was one more reason he’d rejected the full-ride scholarship he had won.

Instead he took over the running of the pub so his father could retire. Now as a single dad fully immersed in the life he built for himself and Sophie, there was no changing things as he saw it. Vic often wondered if he really would have done things differently. He loved his life, and suddenly she wanted to show him how loved he was. She wanted to see things get easier. To see him relax and enjoy himself more. To laugh like he did when they were alone and he stopped thinking about his to-do list and parenting responsibilities.

More than anything, she wanted to be the woman to help him find a new side to life. She wanted to be the one to give him all the things he wanted, instead of him always doing the giving.

“Salon secrets highlighted with fun are the best. Whisper your secrets to me.” Vic smiled at the latest greeting she’d programmed for her door and capped a tube of lip gloss. Carmen, her newest stylist-in-training, and her sister Aimee, Hauk’s waitress, strolled in. Laughter tinted their cheeks a rosy pink and lit their fiercely green eyes with fun.