That Night with You by Alexandrea Weis Page A

from her calf
when Hayden came up to her.
    “ You shouldn’t have taken
off like that,” he chided, seeming a little out of
breath.
    His concern perplexed her. “Why? I’m
fine. The only thing that can hurt me here would be a snake, and
it’s too cool for them to be up.”
    Hayden quickly glanced down at the
ground. “Oh crap, I hate snakes.” He glowered at her. “If I chased
you up here only to step on a snake, I will fire you.”
    Madison had never seen a man afraid of
snakes, and the look on his face when she had mentioned the
possibility of a slithering visitor was absolutely priceless. She
broke out in a fit of laughter.
    “ What’s so
funny?”
    “ You.” She waved her hand
at him. “Afraid of snakes.” She started laughing again. “I thought
you were this famous architect, all sophisticated, and here you are
afraid of a little ole snake.”
    “ Well, no one likes snakes,
Madison.” His anger cooled as he ran his hand through his wavy
brown hair. “I’m not the big, famous architect. That was my
father.”
    Her laughter slowly abated. “No, I’m
pretty sure it’s you. Your designs are the talk of
Dallas.”
    His head cocked to the side, and the
morning light catching in his gray eyes made Madison’s toes curl
into the soft ground. “Is that why you wanted to come and work with
my firm? Because my designs are the talk of Dallas?”
    “ Do you want to know the
truth, Mr. Parr?”
    “ Mr. Parr was my father.
I’d prefer it if you called me Hayden.”
    She stared into his eyes, mesmerized
by the way the sunlight made them look so transparent. “The truth,
Hayden, is I really, really needed a job.”
    Hayden smiled and then chuckled.
“Well, I did ask for the truth, didn’t I?”
    “ Yes, you did.” She angled
her face upward to catch a ray of sunshine.
    “ Why are you so different
out here?”
    She shrugged and looked over at him.
“Maybe because we’re not in your office; out here we’re free of
constraints.”
    He dipped his head closer to her. “But
I like constraints. I like it when people do what is expected of
them.”
    Emboldened by her surroundings, she
flirtatiously smiled at him. “And why is that?”
    “ Because I like control. I
like order. Without it there is simply…chaos.”
    “ I thought that was a good
thing,” she argued. “Chaos reminds us that we’re alive.”
    Hayden peered into her eyes. “I can
think of other ways to feel alive, Madison.”
    “ Hey, where are you guys?”
Adam’s desperate voice cried from a patch of brush behind
them.
    Madison could feel the heaviness of
reality returning to her shoulders. For a few blissful moments,
there had been no office, no boss, and no sense of propriety coming
between them.
    “ Over here, Adam,” Madison
called.
    “ Where?” Adam’s voice was
laden with panic.
    “ Over here,” Hayden
shouted, his eyes never leaving her face. “By the
river.”
    The crash of brush to their right soon
gave way to the figure of Adam. With a leaf or two hanging from his
red hair, the man’s face was bright red and his green eyes wild
with fear.
    “ This was a very bad idea,
Madison,” he complained, coming up to their side. “There isn’t a
thing we’ve accomplished by making our way across this
jungle.”
    “ I don’t know, Adam,”
Madison offered. “I think our little adventure was very
informational.”
    Hayden’s eyes curiously searched her
face. “What did you discover?”
    She motioned to the ridge behind them.
“The drop from the ridge is a lot steeper than I thought and not
visible from the road. The topography is going to be a challenge,
especially if we’re talking about a big house. We’re going to have
to somehow make this home fit into the ridge.”
    “ I don’t see it,” Adam
rebuked. “Why not just clear the ridge? Get a few bulldozers in
here and flatten the land for what we need.”
    “ What about the natural
beauty of the property?” she persisted. “You’ll destroy it