CHAPTER 20
Aiden
“Heard you were at Harper’s house in the middle of the night.”
WHACK!
“Oomf!” I let out the noise involuntarily. “You waited to say that just to get a hit in.”
“Worked, didn’t it?” Ben wags his eyebrows at me across the ring. “So…have a nice time?”
I scoff, “Covered in vomit and blood? No.”
“Huh?” He pauses and I get a nice jab into his rib. “Ow!”
“She screamed, I went to help, that’s all,” I explain.
“Wait, hold on,” he holds up a gloved hand. “Harper was bleeding?”
“Her father fell. He has Parkinson’s, I’ve since learned. He cut his hand and foot. Harper saw the blood and screamed. I heard the scream and rushed next door. She was woozy, I helped. The nurse came, I left.”
I also wanted to hold her and carry her away from it all. And with those skimpy shorts and tank top she had on, it was a good thing there was so much refuse flying everywhere or else I would’ve been so distracted I’d have been no help at all.
“You are good in a crisis,” he concedes. “Still, running to help a stranger is not exactly your M.O.”
“She’s not a stranger,” I snap, too defensive. He catches on immediately. Damn my honest mouth.
“Ah, so, she’s your…?”
“Friend,” I try the word on for size. Doesn’t fit.
“Okay,” he studies me, “So you’re not trying to date her?”
“No.” Maybe? No. Probably not…
He nods, “Good, Janie hasn’t said anything other than that she’s off limits.”
“Off limits?”
He points with his big red glove, “To you. Off limits to you, specifically.”
“Bloody hell, why does your wife hate me?”
He tries to scratch behind his ear with the glove on. Idiot. He answers me, “Could be the tearing down her hometown bit. Don’t think so, though.”
“What, then?”
He winces, “Your cheery disposition?”
I roll my eyes and shift in the center of the ring. I jut my chin at him and say, “I’m your best friend. I was rude to her when she broke your heart. Now, she loves you, so she should trust your judgment.”
He raises his hands to fight again, like we’re almost done with this, “True. Which is why I think, if you did want to date Harper, you could try to…you know, woo her.”
“Woo her? Have we transported back to the early 1900’s?”
He relaxes his stance and looks at the ceiling, “Come on, mate, you know what I mean. Be less…grouchy.” I ponder this.
He goes on, “Maybe, try to show her how she should be treated. She obviously needs taking care of. I heard you drive her around so she doesn’t have to bike. That’s good, more of that. Except…”
“Except what?” I ask, suddenly on the edge of my metaphorical seat.
“Except you shouldn’t. Date her,” he says.
My face must twist in annoyance so he quickly explains, “I don’t know a lot but I know Janie feels guilty that they were best friends and then she up and left to go to New York.
Harper has an older sister, she also left Harp behind. I think there was a boyfriend—”
“Two, actually,” I cut in.
“Right so, like, being left behind is her trauma, mate. You’re obviously leaving Juniper Falls the second your resort is open. What’s the point?”
“I don’t know, maybe, fun? I’m not professing love or marriage. I just would like to…I don’t know, she works herself to the bone it’d be nice to just give her a break, dote on her, take her out to a nice dinner, that’s all.”
“Dinner! You just said you didn’t want to date her!”
“Well, I lied!”
“You never lie!”
“I…” Shit, he’s right. “I was…lying to myself, I guess.”
For a beat we just stand in the ring in shocked silence. We’re both panting with our gloves on our hips, just thinking.
“I stand by what I said,” he finally relaxes and starts shifting his feet. “Don’t do it.”
“Fine,” I raise my hands to resume our session, “I won’t.”
“Good,” he says, raising his hands. We circle each other for a beat and he says, “You’re going to do it, aren’t you.”
“Probably,” I say.
We both smile.
Then he punches me in the stomach.
_____
This is all Ben’s fault, really. He made me think about this.
Made me seal the deal in my mind. I want to take Harper out.
This is now all I can think about. Thoughts of seeing her laugh across the table, letting her hair down, both literally and figuratively.
Maybe we walk around leisurely, maybe we throw the ball around with Stuart…
maybe I get to kiss the shit out of her at her door.
I’m not myself. I’m a man obsessed.
Ben got two more good hits in yesterday.
I walked into her shop this morning but Janie was there eyeing me, so I mumbled my order—a Vanderwell, mumbling?
!—and fled. My general contractor has been asking me questions all day that I barely hear.
Mildred called concerned because I haven’t been answering her emails “as promptly as usual.”
I’m distracted and also irked that now I have to wait until tomorrow morning to ask her to dinner.
I tried to run into her by chance while she rode her bike home but, despite circling around for an hour, I missed her.
I could go to her house but she only gets a few hours between work and sleep and I suspect they’re filled with care-taking.
I had Mildred run me a full report on Parkinson’s.
I almost wish I hadn’t. Again, I’ve been taken aback by Harper’s strength.
Her dream shop is dying, her father is dying, her dog is a menace, her friends have all but left her to rot in this Christmas town and yet, on she goes.
Each day, all day. Smiling, humming, serving.
I answer emails and heat up an early dinner, one of the meals my Manhattan chef sent to this fridge. I try to focus on work for another couple hours. I pull out my phone and stare at it, willing Harper to need me for some reason. She does not.
At one point it does occur to me, that I could just text her first. But I know myself and I am direct to a fault. I’d get right to the point which would mean asking her to go out with me over text.
Absolutely not.
So I work out in the garage, door open and one earbud out, should Stuart so much as sniff in my general direction. Any excuse to drop everything and find Harper.
But no excuse comes.
Eventually, 9pm comes and goes.
I peer across the street, happy to see all the lights are off. I both hope Stuart stays in and hope he escapes. But he doesn’t. Eventually I get in bed.
Fine. Tomorrow morning then.
_____
“Morning, all,” I say, my voice flat. I’d hoped to beat the gaggle of townies into the shop.
I did not. A chorus of greetings and questions rings out around me but I barely hear them.
I watch the counter, searching. After a few seconds she comes through from the back kitchen with a tray of muffins.
A halo of steam surrounds her and with her white bakery shirt, white bandanna (with tiny ocean waves on it, I think) she… well, damn. She looks like an angel.
Her green eyes pop up from the tray to me. And, like most mornings lately, she blushes just slightly. There’s a tiny smile too. Today though, she frowns.
Oh. I’m just standing, frozen in the middle of the store like a right twat.
She’s already made my usual, while I was standing gobsmacked, I guess. Her brows raise, asking me what the gang at the site wants for breakfast.
I feel all the locals watching us and…decide to improvise.
“I’ll just have a chocolate eclair today.”
She tilts her head slightly, “Just one?”
“For here,” I say, pointing over my shoulder. “I thought I’d sit and work from here for a bit.”
“Oh,” she says, sounding disappointed. Oh right, the money. Think, you fool.
I turn to the room, “But, Steven?”
“Present!” Steven is, as usual, eager to help.
“Could you take a box of eclairs to the site for me? And Croissants,” I study the display case. “And a box of donuts, too.”
Harper is fighting a smile, I think. It’s a big order. To her. It’s pennies to me. Plus, those men will eat all of it. I should’ve been ordering double every day. Idiot!
I pay and take a seat with a view—of the counter and kitchen, not the windows—and Steven takes my order. Everyone else…stays. I wait for the crowd to thin, for a quiet moment where employees and locals and actual customers stop ding ding dinging at the door but the moment never comes.
My stomach growls at exactly the moment Harper puts a quiche down in front of me.
“I didn’t—”
She holds up a hand, “You bought out almost all of my pastries earlier, I can sport you a quiche.” Spot, she means. I don’t correct her. “Spot!” She closes her eyes tight. “Spot you a quiche.”
“I knew what you meant,” I say softly.
Do people give her a hard time about that? Is that why she’s so quiet? I don’t have a chance to ask because she’s already gone back to work.
And work she does. I do too, sort of. Halfheartedly.
I happen to look up and see her talking to DJ with her bag on her shoulder. Shit, she’s leaving. I get up and walk to the counter.
“Harper, can I, uh, ask you something?” I ask, sounding…nervous? Get a grip, man! It’s just dinner!
“Uh, sure,” she says tentatively.
She’s been skittish with me since that night with her dad. Earlier that day, of course, she’d told me basically to screw off and die. She can be as mad as she wants, I won’t change my plans. I cannot.
I’ve had my eye on this prize for almost a decade. Even the slightest change in plans could shift the numbers. I want the title. I’m getting it. In order to do so, I need this Juniper Falls project. And I need it exactly as my designers laid it out, parking lot and all.
Still, I understand her disappointment.
Then before we’d even had a chance to talk it through, before I could tell her I’m sorry her shop is on the wrong side of the street, I saw her at a very low point. It doesn’t get much more vulnerable than that. Blows away my embarrassing little bout of claustrophobia.
I also helped Betty clean up the mess. I think that angered Harper even more. I suppose I can understand that as well. Thus, even though I’ve showed up for coffee as usual, she’s kept me at a distance. Then Ben called me on my BS and here we are.
“I’ll walk you out?” I look down at the partition in the counter.
She considers this, then leans forward and lifts it so I can come through.
A surge of adrenaline runs through me, which is ridiculous.
It’s just access to her back kitchen, not a portal to another universe.
My chest can’t seem to tell the difference.
I follow her through the front of the store, the kitchen, past the ovens, dish washing station, storage, fridge and small office.
Finally, we’re out back.
“Oh,” I say when I see her bike. “Carl still hasn’t fixed your car? I thought he had.”
She shrugs, “He’s busy.”
“It’s hot, Harper, let me drive you.”
“Not today, I have some things to do,” she doesn’t make eye contact. So she’s lying. But she adds, “But thank you.”
“Is this because I saw you throw up quite a bit the other night?” Her mouth falls open and her face scrunches. Okay, so, that was the wrong thing to say. “It was fine, you…you were cute.”
She grimaces, “Cute while I was throwing up?”
“No, not that bit, shit, I—”
Harper cuts me off and crosses her arms, “What did you want to ask me?”
Good show, Aiden, you can’t bloody well ask her now!
“Just about the Derby thing,” I say. She doesn’t move or soften or…is she even blinking? “Can I help?” I try. Nothing. “Please?”
Her posture relaxes, just barely. She sighs, “Okay, we can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I really do have some things to go do. And no,” she emphasizes the word just as I open my mouth, “you can’t drive me to do them.”
I roll my lips between my teeth to keep myself from saying anything. I nod and step back, watching as she climbs over the bicycle, balances her huge bag on one side and then…
“What’s that?” I ask.
“A potted plant,” she responds like I’m daft. Maybe I am. But it hardly fits in the bike’s tiny basket. She’s going to topple over and hurt herself. “For Betty,” she adds, going shy again.
So, unable to help myself, I ask, “Where’s my plant?” Her mouth falls open adorably, just as I knew it would. I put my hands up, “Only joking!”
“You were not!”
“I was!”
She huffs, “You weren’t,” she says as she begins pedaling off, wobbling terribly, “and you’re not getting a plant! You’d just dump out the flowers, flatten the dirt and pour cement on top!”
“You’re still not over that, then?” I call out after her hoping and…there it is. She lifts her dainty, flour-covered hand and gives me the bird.
This is irrational, this reaction. I should not be pleased that the woman I want to start seeing is flipping me off. But it’s real. It’s a glimpse of her. And I guess at this point, I’ll take what I can see.
And tomorrow I’ll grow a pair of actual testicles and ask to see much more of her.
Hopefully.