Where We Go From Here (Phoenix Falls Series Book 3)
Where We Go From Here: Chapter 12

At six-fifty-nine I’m on Harper’s doorstep, fist raised to the wood and giving it three quick poundings. It’s fall so it’s dark out, the sky the same shade of navy as my on-site uniform, and hazy white moonlight streams in from behind. It flashes right off Harper’s Head Office plaque. My abdomen clenches tight.

When I hear movement from behind the wood I stand a little straighter, tucking my hands into the front belt-loops of my jeans and swallowing hard as I wait for her to open the door. I already brought the truck up through the Nature Trail so that she wouldn’t have to walk down the valley in order to reach our make-shift site car park, and I glance over to where it’s sat, safe and sturdy on the gravel. Then the door clicks open and my attention is immediately drawn to Harper.

As soon as I get a look at her my pupils are dilating, my jaw’s turning slack, and I’m running a hand down the back of my neck as my mind turns blank, speechless. I grip at my belt with my other hand, the pace of my breathing suddenly increased.

“Harper, you look…”

My voice comes out in a bass rumble, pulsing need fogging up every square-inch of my brain. I drag my eyes up those denim jeans, locking in for a couple seconds on that tight section at the apex of her thighs, and then forcing my gaze to travel further, over the sweet curve of her waist and then right on those perky little tits. She’s wearing a high-neck top, completely covering her chest, but it doesn’t stop me from imagining ripping it clean off her body, then finally getting to work on her.

Her left hand moves to her waist and she cocks out her hip. My eyes flash up to hers and I’m met with a self-assured smile, kind of smug and sexy as hell.

“I look…?” she prompts me, her eyebrows raised in a mocking arch. She wafts her other hand in the air as if to teasingly say get on with it.

I swipe my tongue over my bottom lip, nod, and take a step backwards. I’m used to seeing her in her sweat-tops and little shorts, so this slightly more formal version of her, dressed up for my benefit, is really doing it for me.

“You look beautiful,” I manage to rasp, nodding my head over to the truck and taking another step backwards as she joins me outside, her body turning around so that she can lock up.

I can’t help it. My eyes drop straight to her ass. Suddenly my jaw is hardening, my muscles are swelling, and my head’s getting heavy with all of those pre-sex chemicals.

I must have moved a little closer to her, my body drawn to hers like a magnet, because the second that she moves back around to face me she’s knocking right into my chest, a surprised gasp leaving her throat as her breasts brush my abs, and her hands quickly grip at my pecs in an attempt to steady herself.

My hands swoop down to her lower back, stabilising her, and then as soon as she’s rebalanced I release her. It would be damn tempting to keep her locked in my arms and see where this moment could go, my pheromones pouring all over her and her bedroom only ten steps away, but she needs to know more about me before I can start breaching her physical territory.

She drops her hands from my chest, interlacing them behind her back and giving me another little smile. I run my gaze over her face and a pleasurable burn ripples through my abdomen – she’s excited, I can tell, so I take another step back and gesture for her to walk on in front of me as we make our way down the narrow gravel path towards my truck.

“You ever been to this bar before?” Harper asks, turning her head so that she can look at me over her shoulder. The soft light from the moon lands on the pillow of her bottom lip, catching on the sparkly balm that she’s got on, and making my head go blank for a couple of seconds. Then I remember that she just asked me a question and I shake my head to say no.

Because no, I haven’t been to the country bar in the town up the road from Pine Hills, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t scope it out quickly on my cell, making sure that we’ll be there early enough to leave before the two-stepping starts.

Yeah I want to give her the small town experience, but that definitely is not about to involve her getting propositioned by every man in town who wants to get his hands on her.

I walk to the passenger side with her and before she can get her fingers on the handle I reach around her shoulder and click open the door. She looks back at me, surprised, and then silently dips into her seat. When her legs are tucked in I shut the door gently, and then I make my way to the driver’s side, ducking in, strapping up, and then punching the truck to life.

I can feel her eyes hot on my face so I glance over at her before I get the vehicle moving, sensing that she wants to say something.

She wets her lips, making me shift on my seat, and then she says, “I love that shirt on you. That shade of dusty blue… it really brings out your eyes.”

Now it’s my turn to be surprised. I look down at my torso, covered in a simple long-sleeved top. It’s a big size so I didn’t expect it to be so fitted, but I didn’t try it on before I bought it. Hell, I’m so used to wearing the same shit most days that I hadn’t actually tried it on before this evening. I bought it in town when I was psyching myself up to ask Harper out and I only just ripped off the tags.

This is its first outing.

“Thanks,” I grunt, and then I tear my eyes off of her so that I can actually get us to town without ending this date prematurely, by pulling her up onto my lap and showing her all of the things that you can do inside a truck.

We crawl cautiously down the Nature Trail, all the way until we’re out onto the main spread of blacktop, and then it’s a steady cruise upland to the town, the truck’s headlights the only source of brightness before the road reaches the more populated centre. I drive slow and keep my boot gentle on the pedal, hoping to hit some red lights so that I can divert my attention back to the beautiful woman beside me, but we get green lights the whole damned way. The thick border of pine trees disappears into spaced out suburban housing, which leads directly to the town square, the buildings short and squat, with signage straight out of the silver-screen era. A couple dry cleaners, a cinema, and that godforsaken country bar.

I park up right in front of the restaurant that I wanted to take her to – the restaurant that I decided to still make a reservation at, in the hopes that Harper would see its romantic potential and suddenly change her mind – but the pull of the neon cowboy signpost and the subterranean hum of soft country music lures her right towards the bar. She’s out of the truck before I’ve even disentangled myself from my seatbelt.

I slap my door shut, lock up, and then jog a couple of paces to catch up to her, a jacket slung over my arm in case she wants to put it on when we leave.

I guess we’ll save the restaurant for another time.

She smiles up at me when I reach her and my heart skips a beat in my chest.

“Are we going to see some dancing?” she asks me hopefully, one hand twiddling with the end of a blown-out curl.

I take a glimpse through the large windows facing out onto the square and I can see that there are already couples milling about on the square patch designated for swaying. I grimace as I look back down at her and she laughs at my expression. My face reads: not if I have anything to do with it.

“Didn’t you have to learn this stuff in cowboy ethics or something?” she asks, her voice teasing, but I can see that twinkle of curiosity hiding behind her eyes.

I breathe a laugh and nod because, yeah, I’m not a cowboy but these parts are so rural that we actually did do cowboy ethics when I was in high school. Which was a long-ass time ago. And which I have no intentions of reminding her about.

“Yeah, we were taught fundamentals. Theoretical fundamentals,” I hasten to add as we step up the curb and I reach for the door. The second I pull it open I’m met with the sex-me-up twanging of country strings.

Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

“Are you not much of a… uh, a mover?” she asks, eyeing me up a little more shyly because I know what she’s implying.

I look down at her as we head up to the counter and her eyes are trailing over the swollen peaks of my pecs. I almost laugh. Don’t mind me, baby.

“Sure, I’m a mover,” I say, regaining her attention. “But I don’t do it in front of other people, and I don’t do it with strangers. If I have a partner I don’t want her jiving with any other guy on the floor – and I definitely don’t want my hands on any other woman.”

I look over to the dancers again and I pull a disgruntled face, absolutely steadfast that Harper is not going over there. The thought of other guys putting their hands on her waist? Not on my fucking watch.

When I look back down at her she’s watching me curiously so I give her a shrug and say, “It just doesn’t sit right with me.”

She blinks up at me, a little dazed, and then she nods in understanding. I pull a menu from beside the cash machine and hand it over to her.

“Are we eating?” she asks, splitting her concentration between watching my face and scanning the laminated card in her hands.

Eating out was my initial intention, hence the restaurant, but I’m not about to force her to eat diner style food in a place where cowboy hats are the literal wall décor.

“Whatever you want, Harper,” I say, and I scope out the room, checking for a vacant booth. I clock the one in the corner parallel to the end of the counter, and I’m instantly manoeuvring us over to it before it gets snapped up. My palms encase her exposed shoulders and she stifles a gasp, shivering.

She slides onto the pleather and then looks nervously up at me, wondering where I’m going to choose to sit. If I sit next to her then I’ll be able to touch her, but if I sit across from her then I’ll be able to look at her. Damn it, I want to do both. I opt to sit next to her whilst she picks what she wants, and then when I get back from paying I’ll move to the seat in front of her.

That was the plan at least. It turns out that I take up most of the bench, and I let out an embarrassed laugh when I’m forced to keep one thigh sticking out of the booth, my lap spread wide unlike Harper’s daintily crossed-legged position. She leans one arm on the table, resting her chin on her palm, and she looks up at me with something like amused omnipotence as my face gets hot. Like she just knew that I was a fucking dork.

I drop my coat over onto the bench-seat opposite and then I hold up the menu in front of us, Harper tipping her head to the side as she begins to browse it with me. I take the reprieve from her scrutiny to let my eyes trail down her throat, long tendons poking out beneath the surface and her skin a soft golden colour. Then when I realise that she’s suddenly flushing I turn my attention over to the menu, scanning for what’s caught her eye.

I replace it between the chillis and the grits, written in bold cursive as if it didn’t have enough emphasis on its own. I fight back a smile, looking down at that sweet scandalised expression on her face. Her eyes re-read the phrase “Doggie Deluxe” over and over again.

“It’s just a hotdog, Harper,” I tell her quietly as she begins gnawing on her lip. She glances up at me and then returns her eyes back to the menu, a concerned crease in her brow. “We can just get drinks if you prefer. Or we could go to that restaurant–”

“Okay, just drinks for now,” she agrees, moving her body so that she’s sat with her back straight up against the chair, her fingers twiddling in her lap. When she sees that I’m still watching her she admits in a rush, “I haven’t done this in a while is all. I’m a little nervous.”

I hate that she feels nervous but I love the fact that she’s crossed her leg so that it’s almost wrapped around my calf, ensuring me that she wants to be here and that her nerves aren’t to do with my presence. I pull my wallet out of my jeans and slip a card out of the leather, before pushing the wallet back inside my pocket so that Harper doesn’t see what else I’ve got in there.

“What do you want to drink?” I ask her, absentmindedly drumming the edge of the card against the tabletop. Then a thought comes to me and I almost smile, leaning a little closer to her so that I can murmur, “I don’t think that they do champagne here.”

A startled laugh leaves her chest and she quickly scrunches up her nose and knocks her thigh against mine. “You must think that I’m such a princess,” she says sadly, shaking her head.

I return the thigh press, gratified when her breathing catches in her throat. “Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing? I do think that, and I like it. I like the fact that you’re into girly stuff.”

“So you won’t judge me if I say that I don’t want to drink anything alcoholic, and that I’d rather get a milkshake?” she asks, avoiding my eyes as her cheeks burn brighter.

I wrap my left arm around the back of her seat and reply, “All I’d say to that is: what flavour, baby?”

She ducks her head away from me, hiding her cute dimples as she laughs.

After a moment she looks up at me, eyes bright, and says, “Okay, um, maybe a… a strawberry milkshake for now, please.” Then she takes a shaky breath, leans up towards my ear, and whispers, “But maybe we can try the Doggie Deluxe later.”

I grunt and spread my thighs wider as my muscles suddenly flex, my hand dropping the card to the table so that I can squeeze a tight fist. She pulls away from me to watch for my reaction and I look down at her with a warning in my eyes.

Is she trying to kill me? We haven’t been in here for two minutes and she’s already trying to get me excited?

She uncrosses her legs and my gaze automatically falls into her lap, my body tensing as I imagine how warm and ready she is down there.

Jesus fucking Christ. I practically throw myself out of the booth, snatching up my card and the menu before pinning her back with a piercing stare. She doesn’t look too nervous now that she knows how insanely badly I want what she just suggested. I roll back my shoulders, trying to burn off a bit of adrenaline, and she bites back a smile as she watches me struggle.

“Behave,” I tell her, and then I turn away, storming over to the counter.

My head is practically in my hands as I wait for the guy behind the counter to whip up a milkshake and get me a non-alcoholic beer. I keep my eyes completely averted from the booth over to my right, refusing to look at Harper before I’ve managed to fully cool down.

So she wants me as much as I want her – I’m pretty confident of that now, considering the fact that from the few words we’ve shared this evening they’ve all been fairly suggestive. Over the month or so that I’ve known her she’s given me a hell of a lot of whiplash, but now I’m thinking that that has less to do with me and more to do with whatever she came to Pine Hills to get away from in the first place.

I tap my card above the reader as the server rings up the till, and then I slot it between my teeth, taking the milkshake in one hand and the “beer” in the other.

Harper eyes the bottle in my fist with an apprehensive frown as I set down her milkshake and slide onto the bench in front of her, her fingers shoving a red and white striped straw straight through the mountain of whipped cream. She slides the cold glass closer to her body and then after locking her lips around the straw she takes a quick suck. She narrows her eyes on me as I watch her, like I’m suddenly the world’s biggest jackass.

I pick up the brown bottle in front of me and face the label her way so that she can read it.

“It’s non-alcoholic, Harper,” I tell her, and her expression instantly softens.

“Oh,” she says with an embarrassed smile as she slips the straw from between her lips. “Sorry, I just… assumed. Thank you for, uh, for not drinking whilst I’m your passenger.”

I shake my head to tell her that it’s no worries and then I take a long pull on the bottle, bitter liquid coursing down my throat. About half of the contents has disappeared by the time that I place it back on the table.

“That’s the whole point of tonight,” I say to her, meeting her gaze with mine. “No more assumptions. Whatever you want to know, I’m happy to answer. And I’d love to hear every detail that you’re happy to share with me about yourself, too.”

She flutters her lashes as she holds my stare, eyes only dipping momentarily so that she can have another sip of her milkshake.

“What do you want to know?” she asks me, pulling out her straw and then stabbing it back into the cream.

“Everything.”

She pulls a face. “Like career stuff? Family stuff?” she asks.

I shrug, picking at the label on the bottle in front of me. “Yeah, that sounds like a good start. You said you were a writer, I know that much.”

Her eyebrows rise in shock, but she smothers it quickly.

“You remembered?” she asks, blinking fast as she surveys me. She’s trying to play it cool but her irises are molten under the warm string-lights.

“I remember everything you say to me.”

Why the hell would she think that I wouldn’t remember?

Heat climbs up her neck and she glances over to the dance floor. I gather that she doesn’t want to talk about herself and that she’d much rather be getting her sway on, so I try to give her a little comforting encouragement. With my thighs spread wide beneath the table I move my boots further forwards and then cross my ankles behind her feet. Her eyes fly to mine before she takes a quick peek under the table, her cheeks glowing pink as she lets me subtly envelop her. We’re like two kids in a classroom behind the teacher’s back.

She tucks her hair behind her ears with flustered fingers and then drops them into her lap, beginning her incessant twiddle.

“Okay, fine. I guess you know some of the details since you’re employed by Ray Corp, but I’ll give you the brief Wikipedia summary. I was born and raised in LA. I don’t mind it there but I haven’t exactly missed it much since coming out here. There are things that I’d love to do there – like camping in the nature valleys and stuff – but I mainly just miss the orange trees. They look so cute when they get those tiny oranges,” she laughs, but then she shakes her head as if she’s trying to get herself back on track. “My mom’s the CEO of Ray Corp, my dad’s the head of the books. She met him when she was scouting for an in-house accountant and I guess he fit the bill. She’s…”

Harper’s eyes flick back to mine, assessing me for a moment, unsure about whether she should go on. I feel like she’s getting to the meat of it but she’s clamming up, so I gently rub the back of my calf up against hers, telling her it’s safe to continue. I get another flutter of those pretty lashes and then she’s sitting on her hands, eyes on the table.

“My mom’s the breadwinner, so I always knew that I’d have big shoes to fill. After high school she put me through college, and then from the age of twenty-one to twenty-eight I worked pretty much non-stop as a screenwriter – and by that I mean that I worked hard enough to be able to pay my mom back for my tuition fees after my second year as a working woman.”

Jesus, she’s impressive. I give her another rub and she goes on.

“It was slow at the start because I wrote a movie for a friend from college. She was doing her directorial debut but, regardless, it kind of went viral. In an instant cult classic kind of way. And there was a lot of negativity from the… how do I put this nicely? Um, the lower intellectual echelons. But then the right people found it – big production houses, insane producers – and they loved it. And then the negativity that had happened didn’t seem to matter so much. Because then I compared the lovers to the haters and I was like, well shit – not only are the lovers so much nicer to listen to, they’re also the powerhouses that literally run the whole industry. One thing led to another and then I was signing a three movie deal with this huge production company, and from then on it’s just been…” She shakes her head, eyes far away. “Writing, and writing, and writing. Nonstop. And it was literally like heroin for me, until…”

The straw goes back between her lips, putting a full-stop on her suspended sentence.

“Until?” I ask, prompting her.

She looks up at me, her soft blonde curls framing her vulnerable expression. I sit back against the bench and roll my shirt up my forearms. Then I rest them down on the table between us and rub my thumb around the base of her glass.

“Sounds to me like your mom raised you real good. You’re smart, accomplished. Unthinkably beautiful.”

Her lips part and a little gasp leaves her throat.

Why is she always so surprised when I give her a compliment?

I know that she’s got a confident streak in her – you’ve got to when you’re working in a cut-throat industry. But is all of that confidence coming solely from within?

Has there never been anyone to tell her how amazing she is?

An even worse thought crosses my mind. Has there been someone in her life actively suppressing her flame?

I narrow my eyes on her, trying to get to what she isn’t telling me.

“So here’s what I’m wondering,” I tell her, crossing my legs a little tighter behind her calves. “Why did such a gorgeous young successful woman set up camp in the middle of a construction site, in one of the coldest parts of the country, right bang centre in the middle of the holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas,” I tick them off on my fingers. “We’ve passed October, so that one’s already gone. And from what I’m gathering, you have no intentions of leaving before the Pine Hills job is completed. You don’t sound mad at your parents, so I can’t imagine that you’re avoiding them. Which leaves me with about three possible conclusions.

“One, you have some other family members that you aren’t telling me about, and maybe they’re jealous of your success or something. But then I’m thinking that I’m not sure that that’s a strong enough reason to keep someone as determined as you out of the city that you were born and raised in. Two, you’re having a creative block, but that one doesn’t really sound right either, because you’re always writing in that notebook of yours.”

I take a deep breath and watch her eyes widen in shock. I’m about to hit the nail on the head. We can both feel it.

Might as well get this over with.

“So that leaves me with option number three. There’s a guy. The guy who you claimed to be irrelevant, but who has done something so bad that it’s worth you fleeing your home, your job, and your family in exchange for a solo cabin retreat in the middle of a winter reno.”

She watches me in total silence, her body stock-still.

“Don’t think that I haven’t noticed the way you can’t leave your fingers alone for five minutes. You had a ring, didn’t you?” I ask her, my jaw a little tense because that thought didn’t seem real until I finally said it out loud.

Goddamn it. Some bastard really managed to make this woman his fiancée and then he blew it before he got her down the aisle?

His fucking loss.

Then a horrible thought crosses my mind and the words are out before I can stop myself. The blood pounding in my ears is roaring louder than any country song ever could.

“Is that why you keep saying sexual stuff to me? Is that why you wouldn’t let me take you to a restaurant?”

My brow furrows hard and I see her throat gently bob as she swallows.

“Are you trying to make me a rebound?” I ask her finally, the hurt in my voice betraying my stoic expression.

It’s about a minute before she speaks up, her beautiful lips quivering, her eyes wide with shock. Then she removes her fingers from under her ass and tentatively puts them on top of mine.

Somehow, even after sitting on them, her skin is still so much colder than my own.

“You really want to know?” she asks me quietly.

My hands are tingling, the feel of her touching me, consoling me, spreading through my veins like a drug. Fuck alcohol – give me this every night and I’ll be high for the rest of my life.

I grunt. “Yeah, I wanna know.”

“It’s confusing,” she warns me.

“Confuse me,” I tell her.

“I was seeing someone for two years. We got engaged last year and we broke up last month. I met him through work – I was the screenwriter, he was the actor. I knew him for a while before he finally asked me out, and he was always friendly so I thought it would be a good call.

“The last movie that I wrote… it was my favourite. It was a romance, so who better for me to base the lead guy on than my boyfriend at the time, right? Obviously, the second that the production house and the director looked at the script they wanted Evan for the part, because it was him, or it was at least all the best parts of him.”

She swallows and looks away. I’m not sure who’s more uncomfortable right now. All I know for certain is that now the name Evan is at the top of my kill list.

“The issue came when we were casting the female lead. That detail that I omitted from my life story? It’s that I have a sister, Holly. Ridiculously cute name, right? LA born and raised, the same as me obviously, only she wanted to be in front of the camera instead of behind it. Do you see where this is going?” she asks me, the delicate pulse in her neck hammering double-time.

I’m not sure that I do. All that I know is that her hands are still on mine and I don’t want her to ever let go.

“She wanted the part,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut, “even though I told her that it would be really fucked up. It’s bad enough having your boyfriend-turned-fiancé kissing any other woman on-screen, but having him kiss your sister? That’s just weird. Bottom line, I put my foot down, got in touch with casting, and I didn’t let her get the part. Not that she would’ve gotten it anyway, but I expressed my reluctance about having her involved with this role in this project. In turn, she decided to do me one better. She suddenly became Evan’s best buddy. All through our engagement she was just… there. She wouldn’t let it go. And then at the end of September, after we’d finished filming and we got the Christmas release date that we were after, Evan comes to my place one evening and tells me, ‘Hey babe, I heard the movie’s gonna be huge, so thanks for the role of a lifetime. Oh, and by the way, that weird friendship that I have going on with your sister? It’s more than a friendship. We’re fucking. Bye!’”

My jaw practically hits the table. Harper’s eyes are back on the couples, her fingers stilled on mine.

“That’s why I’m here,” she admits, a curl dropping loose from behind her ear. “Because I found out that the guy I gave a big break to decided to give me a big break of my own.”

She laughs dryly and shakes her head.

“We have our release week and press tour all through December and he’s going to be there for the whole damned thing. So I’m not going. I’m hiding away from the billboards and the paparazzi until this movie blows over, and then, after that, I’ll see if I can continue writing about idiots in love.”

“Harper–” I start, but she cuts me off with a look.

“Enough about me,” she says, scrunching up her nose to try and hide the fact that she’s got tears in her eyes. “I want to hear about you. Unless you realise now why I’ve been such a neurotic nightmare and you’d rather not get involved – which I totally understand. I can walk back to Pine Hills if you want.”

I stand up, reluctantly letting her hands drop from mine, and I move around to her side of the booth in three large steps. Then I sit my body down on the pleather, wrapping one arm around the small of her back and using the other one to take her hands, both delicate enough to sit perfectly in my palm.

“They didn’t deserve you,” I say to her, looking straight into her eyes and hoping that she can see how deeply I mean it. “You gave them a chance and they fucked it up – it’s their loss, Harper. They’ll never deserve you.”

Her brow arches in the middle and she re-crosses her legs so that she can drape a toned calf over one of my thighs. I let go of her hands so that I can run a palm up the outer side of her jeans, right up to her hip, and my fingers gently press, squeezing her ass.

Fuck. I hadn’t even intended to do that, but then she lets out a little mewl and grips her fingers around my belt loops. I quickly glance over my shoulder, checking that no-one’s watching, and then I turn back to her, shielding us with my shoulders. Keeping her body out of any peeping creep’s eye-line.

Like I told her, I don’t do stuff with an audience.

“Do we have to keep talking?” she asks me breathlessly, her eyes lingering on my mouth.

I can’t help but smirk at that one. “You aren’t gonna ask me any questions in turn?” I ask. “Makes me feel like you just want me for my body or something.”

She wets her bottom lip and suddenly I don’t care if she only wants me for my body. I don’t even care if I’m her rebound. For Harper, she can use me any way that she wants.

“You have, like, one minute to fill me in,” she says, hands sliding dangerously low in my lap.

I grunt, trying not to imagine filling her in as I attempt to recall any details about my life before the past fifteen seconds.

“I’m a joiner,” I tell her simply. “I started my own company a while back after working for other guys my whole life. My old boss retired so I decided to build something on my own. Already had the tools, the skills, the clients. My brother Jason has a construction company so we’re often working different bits of the same gigs. Entered the workforce straight out of high school because–”

I stop myself short, unsure about how Harper will react to this particular piece of information. She doesn’t notice my pause, too distracted by my hand that’s now rhythmically kneading her ass.

I swallow hard and say a prayer that this won’t change how she feels.

“I have a kid,” I say gruffly, pausing my hand in case this is a deal breaker for her. “When I was in high school I was…” I shake my head, hating how cliché this is going to sound. “I was a jock. The stoic silent one who no-one dared get in a fight with.”

I look away from her and breathe out a laugh. I don’t usually travel down memory lane so this is weird as shit for me.

“Basically, I was a teenage kid with needs like any other, but I wasn’t the type to fuck around. That wasn’t my scene. I was close with this cheerleader – Pam – and we decided to just…” I pull my hands off of Harper because it feels inappropriate to touch her when I’m discussing another woman. A surge of relief courses through me when she keeps her leg crossed over mine. “It was essentially friends-with-benefits before the phrase friends-with-benefits existed. We were just two friends, experimenting, but I guess we experimented a little too well. I loved the idea of having a kid and Pam did too, but she wasn’t interested in a serious relationship. Didn’t matter – I knew what I needed to do anyway. I finished up high school and got a job straight away. I wanted to be the best dad ever – make sure that Tate and his mom had loads of money – but I didn’t get to see him the most during his earlier years. So I filled my time away from him with nothing but work, until I finally started my own company and, when he was old enough, he chose to live with me. Now we work together – you’ll have probably seen him at the site.”

I think for a moment and then say, “That pumpkin that got delivered to my house last month? It was from his fiancée. She has a…” I search for the right words to describe River. “An interesting sense of humour.”

I roll my lips into my mouth and rub my hands over both of my knees as I wait for Harper’s reaction. After ten silent anxious seconds I reach across the table and take another swig of the fake beer.

At last she says in a wispy voice, “Experimented too well.”

I almost snort my drink out of my nose, smirking as I turn to face her. “That’s the bit you’re honing in on?”

She shrugs, looking kind of shy. “I don’t mind that you have a son,” she says quietly. “And I guess a lot of kids don’t know about protection when they’re in high school.”

I shake my head, looking down at her as I take another drink. “We used protection,” I say, as I set the bottle back on the table.

She sputters on her milkshake. Blinks rapidly up at me. “I’m sorry, what?”

“We used protection,” I repeat.

“You used protection… and she still got pregnant?”

I shrug my shoulders and nod. “Yeah. That’s how it goes.”

She looks like she’s glitching, little pink and blue sparks flickering around her temples. “That is not how it goes,” she hisses, eyes flashing around the bar behind me as if she’s suddenly learned dangerous information. “If you use protection you’re not supposed to get pregnant. What the hell kind of protection were you using?”

I’m trying not to smile now as I gauge her expression, a nice combination of mortified and impressed. “She was on the pill,” I admit.

Harper’s brain erupts. “Isn’t that the safest type of contraception?” she asks, horrified.

“Not for me.”

I can see what’s happening behind her eyes. She’s thinking if I let this man bed me, am I sure-fire going to get pregnant?

I try to ease her concern, my voice low and quiet to keep this conversation private. “If I bag it, it should be fine. And, you know, trying to avoid your ovulation period might be beneficial too.”

Harper looks like she’s ten seconds from passing out. “Mitchell,” she says, like she’s not so sure.

I take this as my cue to get my hands back on her body, one massaging her ribs and the other reclaiming its place on her behind. “Does it bother you?” I ask her, dipping a little closer.

“Which part? The part about you making a baby with another woman, or the fact that you’re so virile you defy scientific intervention?”

I breathe out a laugh, pressing my forehead against hers. “Both,” I reply.

She swallows, her hands hesitantly replaceing their way up to my abs. Her fingers rest there for a nervous moment and then they begin roaming up across my chest.

I bite back a smile. I love how hot she is for my pecs.

“I’m scared that if I let you near me you’re going to knock me up,” she admits in a whisper.

“I’ll bag it, every time,” I whisper back, moving my hand around her ribcage a little higher, just enough so that I can get my hands on those–

“We should head back to the bungalows,” she says quietly, her intentions crystal clear in the pretty facets of her eyes.

I give her ass a little squeeze and she makes a sound that has my abs clenching tight. “Not tonight,” I tell her. “I need to wine and dine you first. We need at least, I don’t know, five dates under the belt before we get to that point.”

She throws her head back and lets out a little howl. I laugh and dip my mouth to her throat, pressing a kiss right on the curve.

She tastes milkshake-sweet. I kiss her a little harder.

Her hands replace my hair, her body arches into mine, and suddenly I’m not laughing anymore.

Yeah, she’s right. We should head back to the bungalows.