Chapter 5

A taxi pulled into the parking lot of SouthPointe Mall at five minutes before noon on Sunday. Hannah Kramer had not returned home until almost nine o’clock in the morning. Rather than bring her daughter to her rendezvous, she had dropped $100 on the table, told Hailey to take a taxi and stumbled off to bed. Her gown was wrinkled and her hose was missing. Hailey didn’t doubt that the thong panties her mother had put on the night before were gone, too.

The last she’d seen of her mother was when she stumbled off to a taxi with a middle-aged man she’d met at one of the hotel bars. At least Hailey had the car keys that she’d stolen from her mother’s purse once the woman was far in her cups. She truly didn’t care how her mother got home – or really if she even did. She had decided she was going to drive her mother’s $60,000 car to SouthPointe and leave it in the parking lot. Her mother would eventually remember that she had a daughter she was supposed to take to meet her ride.

Hailey didn’t bring her gown back to college. She had decided that she was going to turn down all the expected invitations to the fraternity formals. She wasn’t going out to the clubs any more. She was going to buckle down so she didn’t make a fool of herself if she took the internship at Fielding and Sterns. She stood there with two suitcases until Phil’s car pulled in. A glance at her phone showed her it was exactly noon. She smiled to herself. He was right on time.

She was surprised when the trunk popped before Phil got out.

“You’re traveling light,” he said.

“I figured you’d make me put my stuff in the backseat again!” Hailey said, smiling to show she was joking. Phil was looking in the trunk and didn’t see her face.

“My mother insisted my suit needed cleaning,” Phil remarked as he put a suitcase beside his small bag.

“I decided I wasn’t going to need a gown at college,” Hailey remarked, the smile still etched on her face. Phil looked over and realized her initial statement was meant to be humorous.

“I thought you looked really great last night,” Phil said. “I should have told you that. You and your mother both added some class to the joint.”

Hailey snorted.

“My mother spent the night with a 55-year-old married businessman,” Hailey spat. “She needed to get her ego inflated so she found some poor bastard that probably had no intention of cheating on his wife and got him to screw her.”

Phil’s mouth dropped involuntarily but Hailey didn’t notice.

“She flopped her tits on the bar for a free scotch and probably sucked off two or three men in the restroom before landing her target,” she continued. “So you can’t exactly say my mother added class to anything. Jesus Christ, what an embarrassment. I always knew it. I mean that’s where she was on Friday when she couldn’t pick me up. She was fucking some client to bring in more business to Eisler. She thinks that’s how she would get the top job at the company. I can’t count the number of times I’d be eating breakfast and look up to see her coming home in the same clothes she had on the night before. She would run upstairs, change clothes and then hustle out the door without even speaking to me.”

“Jesus,” Phil muttered. By habit, he opened the door for Hailey and helped her into the car. Hailey noted to herself that no one in her entire life had opened a car door for her – not her prom date, not the guy who’d taken her virginity at 14, not the college guys her mother had sent her off on dates with during her prep school days.

Phil couldn’t remember a morning that he hadn’t shared breakfast and dinner with his mother or father – usually both of them. That was an ironclad rule in the household: meals were for sharing details about their day or simply enjoying the company of family.

“The radio’s all yours today,” Phil said as he got into the driver’s seat.

“Can we put in that CD from Friday?” Hailey asked.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Phil said. He handed over a flash drive. “That’s all their CDs. You can put them on your iPod. The lyrics are there, too.”

“Thanks!” Hailey said. “Uh, does that mean you don’t want to talk on the way back?”

“No, we can talk,” Phil said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I’ve been thinking about my summer internship,” Hailey said with a sigh.

“I still think you should take the one at Fielding and Sterns,” Phil cut in.

“I might,” Hailey admitted, “if that is the only one available. What you said about me was absolutely correct. I learned how to manipulate men at my mother’s heel. Do you know she’s been married three times? Well, she has. My father was her second. He lasted the longest – 18 months – before he caught her with her panties around her ankles and some other guy between her thighs. He shouldn’t have been surprised since her first husband caught him doing the same thing. So when I thought I needed the upper hand for the internship I started to give the dean a glimpse up my skirt. I wore low-cut tops and let him ogle my tits. I probably would have been willing to blow him if it came down to it. I’ve done it for less.”

“I was angry when I said that,” Phil said. “Even if it’s true we’re the only ones who know it. The other members of the committee would never mention that the dean was a freakin’ pervert. That would cast the university in a bad light and we can’t have that.”

“I would prefer to accept a different internship,” Hailey said. “Does Barton Holdings have internships?”

“I think almost every division has an intern program,” Phil said.

“No, no,” Hailey said, “that’s not what I mean. I mean does the divisional headquarters hire interns? It doesn’t have to be paid. I’d like to learn how to treat people like your mother does.”

“No, you don’t!” Phil said. “I cannot have someone at school who knows the power of a raised eyebrow!”

“You only say that because she’s your mother,” Hailey said with a laugh. “I watched her most of the night. People like her and they respect her. My mother gets her way with raised voices and raised hemlines. Your mother gets respect by treating people with respect. There wasn’t a person in that room – outside of perhaps my mother – who had an unkind word to say. I’ll tell you something: Your mother made the right call on the Eisler presidency. I don’t know the woman she hired but I can tell you that my mother did not deserve a promotion. She might be good at her job but she is not an effective leader. I can tell you that she is not an effective mother, either.”

Phil glanced slightly to his right. If Hailey had heard some of the things Beth had said about her after learning the details of Hailey’s orientation transgression the young woman wouldn’t want to spend a second with his mother, let alone the entire summer.

“I can ask,” Phil said.

“Where are you interning?” Hailey asked. “Are you going to be in the city this summer?”

“I’m going to Waterford & Waterford,” Phil said. “It’s pretty low-level, I think, but it’s the best I could do.”

“Your mom couldn’t get you in somewhere?” Hailey asked. “I mean, I know she probably doesn’t like to use her influence but I would have thought she might make some calls.”

Phil shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“I asked her if she would,” Phil admitted. “Everything she came back with was borderline manual labor. She said she could get me in at Griffen cleaning oil from beneath the machines. Working in the mailroom at Waterford & Waterford was a huge step up.”

“She could have got you in as chief stable mucker at Herring Farms,” Hailey said brightly. “Seriously, would you ask her for me? I understand if she wants nothing to do with me. I could tell from her change in demeanor that she figured out what I did.”

“I could tell from your change in demeanor that you’d figured it out, too,” Phil pointed out.

Hailey’s face turned red.

“I can’t figure why I put it out of my mind,” Hailey replied. “I could probably say that I was embarrassed and I knew I was wrong but I’m not sure that’s it. I reacted as I was told – as I was trained. I saw an opportunity to raise my profile by destroying you and I took it. That’s the same reason I went out with the quarterback from the football team. That’s the same reason I let Dean Stevens look at my twat. I can tell you that I regret it – not just because the quarterback has a dick the size of a thimble or the dean has grandchildren my age but because I can finally see that I deprived you of having a happy college life. If I hadn’t been a bitch about things, you’d be surrounded by the same type of friends I saw you with Friday night and last night. I am sorry about that, Phil. I would do anything if I could take it back.”

“You can’t,” Phil pointed out.

“No,” Hailey said. “I’m beginning to understand one of the first pieces of advice your mother gave me. She told me that it’s important to assess the implications of your actions before you act – not afterward.”

Phil dropped Hailey off at her dorm and helped her with her suitcases. She pulled him down and kissed him on the cheek and whispered her thanks.

Phil headed to his lonely apartment and called his parents to let them know that he’d made it back safely. He didn’t broach the subject of an internship with his mother. He would watch Hailey around campus – she was impossible to miss – before walking that minefield.

He was sitting in the cafeteria following day, finishing a cheeseburger, when a shadow fell across him. He glanced up and saw Hailey standing in front of him.

“May I join you?” she asked.

Phil blinked and stared at her. She wasn’t wearing her usual attire of designer jeans, an expensive blouse and a leather jacket. Instead she had on sweatpants, a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap. Her blonde ponytail hung out the back of the cap. She wore no makeup and no jewelry.

“Going incognito?” Phil asked as he used a foot to push out a chair.

“I’ve wanted to dress this way since I was about 10 years old,” Hailey said, smiling at him. “Christ, I bet I’ve missed a thousand hours of sleep in the past eight years. I used to get up at five a.m. so I could do my hair and slap on my war paint and make sure that my clothes were just so. Then I’d get home and it would take me another hour to get all the shit off of my face. Sometimes it might take me an hour to get the jeans over my freakin’ hips. I think one of the happiest days of my life was when knee-high boots went out of fashion. I worried like hell that skin-tight leather was going to show up on the high-end shelves one year. That would have sucked even more.”

Phil found himself laughing. He had never put much stock in his appearance. He rarely wore a baseball cap and he always showered of the morning. But he generally just pulled whatever he could find out of his closet, and that was what he wore that day.

“I thought you probably didn’t want to be seen talking to me,” Phil told her.

“No, no,” Hailey said. “That’s not it at all.”

“I’m joking,” Phil replied, although he wasn’t really certain.

“What classes do you have this afternoon?” Hailey asked.

Phil told of her his afternoon schedule and Hailey shook her head.

“One of the bitchy things I don’t regret was getting my schedule set the way I wanted,” Hailey said with a laugh. “I have a pretty heavy schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays but my Mondays and Fridays are relatively light. I have one afternoon class and a Wednesday night class. It’s a fine arts requirement so I don’t have to put forth much effort – not that I put forth much effort anyway. I do my work study for the dean on Monday afternoons. I thought he should get a look at the new me.”

“I can see your underwear through your sweats,” Phil said. “That might be enough to give the old bastard wood.”

Hailey twisted in her seat to look at her ass and didn’t see anything. She turned back to see Phil smiling broadly.

“You bastard!” she said. “You got me. It took me a minute to remember I’m not wearing panties at all.”

Hailey broke into a giggles when Phil’s eyes widened.

“I am not my mother!” Hailey said. “I wear panties at all appropriate times. I’ll have you know I have on my finest granny panties. I usually wear them on the first day of my period.”

“TMI!” Phil said, using the acronym for “Too Much Information.”

“You started it,” Hailey said, laughing again.

“I need to get going,” Phil told her. “Have fun tormenting the dean.”

“Oh, I will,” Hailey said. “I’ll look for you later. Will you eat dinner here?”

“No, I do that at my apartment,” Phil replied. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow. If not, it looks like we have similar schedules on Wednesdays.”

Hailey watching him walk away and wondered if he hadn’t gotten her hint or if he just didn’t want to spend time with her.

Gordon Stevens, dean of the school of business at Heilman College, stopped in his tracks when he saw Hailey sitting at her desk in his outer office. He had gotten used to seeing her in ever-shrinking clothing – and he hoped for the skin-tight red tube dress she’d worn earlier in the semester. The dress was so short that he could get a clear view up it when she turned the right way. She had on a matching thong that day, he was certain. The dress was too tight across her butt for it to be anything else. He was almost positive he could make out the wispy blonde pubic hairs pushing their way under the elastic that framed her pussy.

He had told her the previous week that he thought she was a shoo-in for the school’s most prestigious internship for freshmen students and he expected to be rewarded. He had burned several bridges with the others on the selection committee when he had overruled their recommendation. Now the girl not only sat looking like a frump, she had shifted her chair so she wouldn’t even be visible from his desk.

“Are you feeling all right, Miss Warren?” the dean asked.

“Never better,” Hailey said brightly. “I had a very enlightening weekend. Why do you ask?”

“Uh, your attire is not up to the professional standards I had come to expect from you,” Stevens said.

“Oh, I called the provost, there is no dress code for this job since you changed your office hours,” Hailey said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Uh, well, yes, I suppose you’re right,” Stevens stammered.

“Did you know that Barton Holdings’ chairman has a son here?” she asked, ignoring the frown that had etched itself on the dean’s face. “He’s a freshman in the business college.”

Stevens’ frown deepened further. He had looked at all the freshmen admissions and didn’t see the name Barton. That name would have jumped out at him instantly.

“I’m not positive that you’re correct,” he answered.

“I rode home with him Friday!” Hailey said. “His last name isn’t Barton. It’s Warner, Philip Warner. I stayed over at Beth and David’s – that’s Elizabeth Barton-Warner and her husband, David Warner – on Friday night. They are the most amazing people. I’m not surprised Philip didn’t advertise his relationship to her. The whole family is so unassuming.”

Gordon Stevens blinked hard. Philip Warner was heir to Barton Holdings and he had just scuttled his internship because he wanted to see Hailey Warren dancing in a little black thong, thigh-high stockings, platform pumps – and nothing else. That was still a major goal for the dean but that had to take a backseat to something more important to him.

Although being the dean of the college of business at Heilman carried a certain amount of prestige and a fairly high salary with minimal work, he would prefer to become a highly compensated “consultant” for a company such as Barton Holdings. That would allow him to sit in his plush corner office and claim credit for any ideas his subordinates brought forth. The pay would be three times higher than what he made at Heilman – and he wouldn’t have to deal with little prick-teases like the bitch that sat looking up at him with a smirk.

“Well, I suppose this is as good a time as any to inform you,” Stevens said. “The committee insisted that we rescore both portions of the internship essay. I’m afraid that when that was done, you wound up in second place.”

“Yeah, big shock there,” Hailey said, still smirking. “I knew as soon as I told you who Phil was that you’d shoot yourself in the dick. It doesn’t matter. I decided to look for an internship elsewhere for the summer. If I don’t find one, I guess I’ll flip burgers or something. I mean, seriously, the only place I rank ahead of Phil is in the underwear department. I know you like to look at my tits and up my skirt. I wanted the internship so I let you do it. Well, I don’t want the internship any longer so that’s done with. I’ll still do any reasonable task you assign and I only require that you evaluate me on my work.”

Chapter 6 »