Page 5 of Haystacks and Hoaxes

“Hey, Mila.” He stood. “Thank you again for your willingness to come in for an interview on such short notice.”

Her heart gave a silly flip flop over the way his shoulders and arms flexed beneath his white dress shirt. Not that a jobless woman in an interview should be noticing details like that.

Focus, Mila! Focus!

He walked around his desk to meet her in the middle of the room.

She blinked in surprise at the cane he was leaning on and the way he was dragging his left leg.

A wave of lightheadedness shook her as he grasped herhand in his. “I, er…I’m grateful for the opportunity.” She’d always been a sucker for flawed heroes — guys sporting scars and attitudes as troubled as their pasts — which was probably why her life was a big fat zero in the romance department.

As far as she could tell, though, Rock Hefner’s scars were the physical kind. It was new territory for her. Safer territory. He couldn’t be all that bad on the inside. Otherwise, her stepbrother would’ve never hired him. That she was sure of. He might not think much of his stepsister, who’d skidded into his life as a rebellious teenager, but he was otherwise a truly decent person. The way he’d so willingly lent her a vehicle was proof enough of that.

She was dimly aware of her hunky, wounded interviewer ushering her to a small, round conference table on the side of the room. He held out a chair for her. She gingerly took a seat and faced him expectantly.

Though her interview had yet to begin, she already felt heavily invested in it. Her parents might never speak to her again for skipping their holiday cruise, and some joker had nearly run her off the road on her way here. Oh, and one of the company’s owners had made it devastatingly clear that her chances of getting hired were zilch.

Admittedly, the odds were stacked against her.

Story of my life!

This time, though, Mila had every intention of beating the odds.

Chapter 2: The Interview

Mila had never wanted anything as badly as she wanted the man sitting in front of her to say, “You’re hired.”

Yes, she needed the money, but landing her first forensic artist position would be more than a paycheck. It would be her big break, one that would catapult her out of hourly work into the whole new world of salaries and benefits. More importantly, going to work for Lonestar Security would pave a new relationship with her stepbrother — as a professional who was going places like him.

“Relax.” The man who held the power to decide her future leaned conversationally her way, filling her vision with his broad shoulders and earnest brown gaze. “I didn’t lie awake all night coming up with a long list of gotcha questions.”

Good to know.Mila’s breath came out in more of a huff than a chuckle. Since her interviewer seemed to be waiting for a response, she did what she always did when she was nervous. She made a joke. “I take it I’m getting your shorter list of gotcha questions?”

Humor flashed across the hard lines and planes of Rock Hefner’s features. “Much shorter. Only one, actually.” He opened the manila folder in front of him on the conference table and slid a piece of paper her way. It was one of the three sketches she’d attached to her application.

She eyed the haystack with the whimsical, furry tail curled around the base of it. “I sketched this after running across a litter of foxes at Chester Farm. Unfortunately, the mama was overwhelmed by stranger danger and nixed the idea of a family portrait.” The fox had quickly nudged her brood into the empty hut beneath the haystack, just out of sight.Bummer!

“What was going through your mind when you added her tail to the sketch? Without her permission, of course.” Rock looked bemused as he pushed the sketch closer to her. “In case you missed my attempt at subtlety, that’s my way of asking for a peek into your process.”

I’m supposed to have a process?Mila’s confidence wavered, making the haystack go out of focus. It was just her luck that the man would ask something that didn’t appear in the fifty most common interview questions she’d found online —after she’d read every stinking one of them, no less! She hadn’t given a single thought to her so-calledprocess.

“Whew! This is intense.” Feeling two shallow breaths away from hyperventilating, she stalled for time by glancing away from him, not wanting to say or do anything that would ruin her shot at the job. Normally, she was a lot harder to rattle, but discussing her art was different. Her art was her one big gift. It came straight from her soul. Sharing it with someone else never failed to make her feel stripped down and vulnerable.

“I was kidding about the gotcha question.” Rock’s voicewas dry. “Maybe it would be easier if we came at this from a different angle.”

“Okay.” Mila forced her gaze back to his and found it difficult to breathe all over again. There was just something about him that…her mind drew a blank. Though she could have easily sketched it on paper, it was impossible to describe in words how he made her feel, so she gave up trying.

“How long have you been drawing?

That was an easy question. She forced a slow, palate-cleansing intake of air into her lungs. “Ever since I could hold my first crayon.”

Despite the simplicity of her response, he looked fascinated, which nudged her right back into emotionally off-balanced territory. She wasn’t accustomed to people finding her fascinating.

“Did you take art classes in high school?”

“No.” In hindsight, she should have. It would’ve sounded more impressive than the random list she was about to rattle off. Her mother had insisted that her choice of school electives and extracurricular activities underscored her lack of stick-with-it-ness, which wasn’t true. They were mostly due to her insatiable curiosity about the world around her. There might’ve been a teensy bit of rebellion involved, too. She’d been furious with her mother for relocating her on her fifteenth birthday from the glittering skylines of Dallas to a small cattle town. Afterward, she’d taken unholy joy in doing the opposite of everything her mother had recommended, like joining the Heart Lake High choir.

She swallowed a chuckle at the memory. “I took drama for three years.” Though the thought of performing on stage was enough to raise a blister on her brain, she’dquickly found her tribe among their small team of makeup artists — a group of rainbow-haired creatives with a jaw-dropping amount of body piercings. As expected, her mother had pitched a fit and created a new household rule that eliminated so much as the thought of getting a nose ring.

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