Chapter 14
London isn’t asleep, not yet, but it’s starting to snooze. It’s almost 3 a.m., and the streets are scattered with a variety of people you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Drunk tourists. Partygoers. A random group of cyclists dressed in sports gear and racing down the street.
Harper is walking beside me, step in step. Her energy is high. Has been since we left the movie theater.
“What are we going to do?” she asks. “Are you hungry? Oh, we could go to one of those chicken shops. Or maybe that’s not your thing?”
“And why not?”
“You’re in a tux.”
I glance down at my clothes. “Yeah. So what?”
Harper giggles. The sound is heartwarming and washes over me like a gentle wave. “I didn’t think you’d be this… chill.”
“Mm-hmm. Because I always seemed uptight?”
“No, no, you never have.” She shrugs lightly. Her dress falls around her form, the glittery fabric catching the streetlights in subtle play. “It’s just that I always saw you as slightly above things like this.”
“It’s not making any more sense the second time.”
“Okay. Remember the time you came to… to Dean’s thirty-fifth birthday party?”
Of course, I do.
He rented out an Asian Fusion restaurant on the forty-second floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan, filled it with people he knew and plenty he didn’t. Harper had been wearing a gold dress and a smokey eye shadow, and her curls were piled high atop her head.
One wrong move, I’d realized that night, and I might blow this whole thing. Blow my cover, reveal too much, and be cut off from them both forever.
One wrong move, and my attraction to her would be blatant, to both of them.
“What about it?”
“Nate,” she says meaningfully. “You arrived by helicopter.”
That makes me chuckle. “Yeah. I think that makes me pretty chill.”
“No, that’s insane! Normal people don’t do that.”
“And I normally don’t. That was a special occasion.” Besides, I’d been forced to, or I wouldn’t have made it on time. The chopper dropped me off and continued on with my brother inside. Basically a rideshare.
“Have you been in a helicopter?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. I’m afraid of heights.”
“Really?”
“Deathly. It’s my one flaw. The only chink in my armor.”
“That explains why there’s nothing on your list about bungee jumping, skydiving, or any of the usual bucket list items.”
She blows out a breath. “That’s because I do want to make it to thirty and beyond.”
I chuckle again. “Helicopters are safe.”
“There’s ample evidence to the contrary.”
“How did you fly here?”
“Planes are different.”
I look up at the sky. “Make it make sense.”
She giggles and nudges my shoulder with hers. It brings us back into close contact, and damn it, I shouldn’t like that she does that so casually now, so effortlessly, but I do.
I really do.
“That’s different. I always grab an aisle seat and don’t look out the window. When I get a bit anxious, I distract myself. Watch bad movies or read a book.”
“Mm-hmm.” We stop at a red light. Across the intersection is the edge of Hyde Park, and beyond it, Green Park. Wellington Arch towers over everything. Trees, pedestrians, cars. “This is excellent information.”
“Why?” she asks. “And where are we going? Oh, can we go into the park at night?” Then, her excited voice turns suspicious, and she nudges me again. “You’re not trying to murder me or anything, are you?”
“I am, actually, thanks for asking. Any final words?”
“Yes. Um… just give me a few minutes to think about them.”
I nod. “Take your time. I’m not in a rush. Look over there?”
She follows my pointing finger to a building rising in the distance. “We’re close to Buckingham Palace,” she says slowly. “Right?”
“Yes. Thought we’d walk by.”
“I’ve never been here at night before.” Her steps speed up, and I smile at how her curls bounce. Harper smothers a yawn with the back of her hand, but she’s not slowing down. “This is so cool. There are almost no cars out.”
“We should go for walks more often at… three-twenty.”
We make it to the palace and stand outside the wrought iron fence that keeps the public out. The giant, rectangular building dominates the background. The ornate facade is illuminated by soft lighting.
“I only see a few guards patrolling,” she says quietly. “That’s all?”
“I’m willing to bet there are cameras, infrared sensors, and plenty of heavily armed soldiers within those side buildings, ready to pounce if we so much as put our hand through the fence.”
She grins at me. “Wanna try?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and pull her away from the fence. “No, I very much do not. We’re here on visas.”
Harper chuckles. “I thought you were the wild one. I’ve heard stories about you, you know. From college.”
I roll my eyes. “Much exaggerated, no doubt.”
“Really? I seem to remember one about an unplanned road trip in your dad’s Rolls-Royce, where you and Dean wound up in New Mexico, with your wallets stolen, and apparently, with a case of bad?—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—rashes.”
I groan. Run a hand over my face. But I can’t look away from the teasing smile on her lips. “Not my proudest moment. In my defense, I was nineteen.”
“Oh, of course. I also did that when I was nineteen,” she says in a deadpan voice. “What did your dad say? Dean never told that part of the story.”
He’d been furious.
But he’d been furious in a disappointed kind of way. Like he didn’t expect anything else from me, and as if it was all an excuse to get out of the finals.
And then he’d made me buy him a brand new Rolls-Royce with money taken from my trust fund. Which, in hindsight, was absolutely the right call. If someone dented my vintage Aston Martin, I don’t know what I would?—
“Nate,” Harper prompts.
I meet her curious gaze. “He wasn’t particularly pleased with me.”
She smiles. “I imagine not.”
“That was a long time ago. I was…”
“Young?”
“An idiot,” I say. “For a large part of my early twenties, that’s exactly what I was. You, on the other hand, are very impressive.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m twenty-eight.”
“But you were twenty-four when I first met you, and you were certainly not accidentally setting fire to books in the college library or having all-night benders.”
My mind is still thinking about what else Dean might have told her. How much of her impression of me is filtered through his words.
“How would you know that?” she asks with a wide smile. “Those are assumptions.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh, I know you were wild in other ways. You always have been. But not in stupid ways.”
“I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”
“There is.” I glance down at my watch, and away from her too bright eyes. They draw me in like nothing else. “Come on. We have a ways to go still and only forty minutes to make it.”
“Where are we heading?”
“You chose the movie,” I say. “Let me choose this. I’m willing to bet you’ll enjoy it.”
“Lead the way, then. As long as I don’t end up in New Mexico in a stolen Rolls-Royce…”
I laugh. “Not this time, Harper.”
We walk down to the river and cross it into Battersea. The city grows increasingly quiet around us, the stillness punctuated only by the occasional car or a rowdy yell. More than one taxi stops beside us, but I decline them all.
Harper’s earlier energetic, wine-assisted chattiness has settled into something more mellow. She tells me about her coworker and that coworker’s friend, and about the new exhibition the gallery is planning, and mentions the restaurant a block from her work that she wants to try.
And then she asks me the same types of things.
If I like my coworkers, which of my cars is my favorite, and what I do at the office.
“Just explain what you did today. Like, step-by-step, from when you arrived at work. What were the actual tasks?”
I hide my smile with the back of my hand. But I do what she’s asked, and she listens like she actually cares.
Like she honestly wants to know.
So I detail how I led the regional team meeting, sat in the two meetings with key clients, double-checked my financial team’s reports before forwarding the files to New York, and had a strategy session with my brother about our future growth opportunities.
She listens to all of it. Asks follow-up questions.
“It’s interesting,” she finally says.
I smirk. “You don’t have to lie.”
“No, it is. I mean, I don’t understand everything you said, at least not yet, but I think I’m getting there.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, and look at the maps app on my phone. It says we’ve arrived. “We’re here.”
Harper looks at the unassuming metal building in front of us.
“And this is…?”
I reach for the door and pray that I’ve done my research correctly. “Come on, Harp. Get inside.”
“Harp,” she repeats and walks toward me. “I’ve always wondered why you call me that. Like the instrument.”
“What nicknames do people usually call you?”
“I’ve never had a nickname. My name doesn’t really— oh. Wow.”
I follow her inside, and the cool, thickly scented air is the first thing that hits me. Describing it as floral would be an understatement. It smells of plants—cut stems and leaves, and blooming flowers.
Vendors have set up their stalls, with bunches upon bunches of cut flowers displayed in the large hall. It’s a mélange of bright colors and deep greens, creating a beautiful tapestry.
“Oh my God,” Harper breathes. “A flower market?”
“Yes. They open at 4 a.m.”
I glance down at her. She appears stunned, and I can’t help but wonder what her expression means. Good idea?
Her face slowly breaks into a wide smile, and she walks forward in awe; hydrangeas in various colors on either side of her. “This is incredible. I didn’t know this existed!”
“It’s a wholesale market, I believe. Selling primarily to other retailers, to hotels, movie sets, that sort of thing.” I follow her and notice the curious eyes of a few vendors. Right.
I am in a tux.
Harper stops at the stall selling giant palms and runs her hand over the glossy green fronds. “I want them all,” she says.
I slowly undo my bowtie, leaving it hanging around my neck. Unfasten the top two buttons of my shirt. “Then, we’ll get all of them.”
She giggles and moves on to a large fern. “Your house is big, Connovan, but not that big. Oh, look!”
She moves on to a stall with tulips in every possible shade. I trail her through the market. When she’s distracted by a large selection of hydrangeas, I approach a vendor who sells peonies.
“Give me the largest bunch you have,” I say.
“How many hours till you get them into some water?”
Shit. I glance at my watch. “At least four.”
He nods and wraps the flowers up tightly. Glances behind me at Harper and smiles at me. “Good job, mate. Taking your girl to a flower market after a night out.”
I glance back at Harper. She’s out of earshot, talking animatedly to a woman running another stall. She looks happy.
My girl.
“Thanks,” I tell the vendor. I don’t correct him, even if pretending like she’s mine is the sweetest form of torture.
Harper’s eyes widen when I hand her the bouquet. Her gaze darts from the flowers to me and back again in rapid succession.
“Really?”
“Really,” I say. Run a hand through my hair and look away, like this is nothing at all.
She takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent. Her sparkling eyes meet mine. “These are my favorite flowers.”
“I know,” I say. The words escape, revealing far more than I’d planned. But they are there. Hanging in the fragrant air between us.
She glances back down at the bouquet. “You do?”
I swallow. “You mentioned it once. At Josh’s wedding.”
“Oh. That’s right.”
She’d been on Dean’s arm at our college buddy’s wedding three years ago. It was shortly after she moved in with Dean, and she looked at him like he was her entire world. Like it would be the two of them standing next at that altar.
I saw them hold hands during the ceremony, saw Harper brush away the tears from her eyes. And that’s when I decided to start pushing my brother. Whenever I could, I told him over and over that we needed a person we could trust in London. And then I conveniently volunteered for the position.
But she doesn’t know any of that.
“They’re just flowers,” I say gruffly. But we’re still standing too close, her hands tight around the stems, and her eyes on mine.
“Nate,” she murmurs. “I feel like I have to?—”
The vendor beside us shouts at another, breaking the moment, and we both take a step back. She clears her throat. “Thank you. For all of this.”
I give her a broad smile, the one that gets me past lines at venues and events and charms our clients. “Anytime, Harp.”
She smiles back, but there’s a thoughtfulness in her eyes that makes me wonder if she’s disappointed somehow. Like my response was the wrong one.
But still, she clutches the peonies tight for the rest of our visit.