Chapter 21
T hey found it was easier to get used to two dogs than the first one.
Max scampered seamlessly into their home life.
He followed Luke around like a shadow and barked like a dog three times his size.
In the mornings, Luke ran with Lola while Harper took Max for a few laps around the block.
At night, he slept curled in a tight ball against Lola.
And every time Harper walked in the door, they both greeted her as if it had been decades since they last saw her.
Lola would charge down the hallway with her deep boof while Max pranced and yipped around her. The second the front door opened, they lavished Harper—or Luke, or the mail lady—with excited attention. It felt good to be welcomed home by adoring fans.
Just a few weeks ago, she couldn’t have imagined her life changing so drastically.
She had a man she adored, a comfortable home, great friends, and two dogs who thought she was better than bacon treats.
Even though it was all temporary. She tried not to think about what would happen in a matter of days.
Luke would be gone from her life, she would be gone from Benevolence, and it would be someone else opening Garrison Construction’s massive piles of mail.
Harper opened the envelope with an efficient slash of the letter opener.
Only Luke would let office mail go unopened for weeks.
She had worked her way down to the bottom of the pile he had carelessly stashed on the shelf in his office.
She found a handful of checks from clients buried in the pile.
After a lecture from her on the importance of timely response, Luke agreed to let her handle all mail from now on.
As soon as she was done with this stack, she was going to run to the bank and make a deposit.
A check fluttered out of the opened envelope onto her desk. She picked it up and glanced at it. This was one made out directly to Luke in the amount of…
A strangled gasp made its way past her lips. Harper’s knees buckled, and she flopped down into her chair.
She had never seen an amount that high on a check before, and there were three more envelopes just like this one. She opened them all and lined up the checks.
Pay to the order of Lucas Garrison.
She knew she was gaping at the surface of her desk but couldn’t help it. There was just over half a million dollars sitting on it. What was it for? Was it legal?
Harper glanced into Luke’s office where he was on a conference call with a supplier.
He was kicked back in his chair, work boots propped up on the desk.
Not a care in the world. He wasn’t concerned that he had gone and forced her to fall hard for him, only to kick her in the teeth with the reminder that he couldn’t even be honest with her about anything.
That withholding, sexy bastard was a millionaire.
She thought of her guilt-laden reaction to his furniture shopping. He could have furnished a dozen houses with the checks in her hand. What the hell was his problem? Why did he expect her to open up about long buried secrets when he couldn’t even say, “By the way, I’m rich.”
Riding the wave of anger, she grabbed the checks and stormed over to his closed door. She smacked her palm holding the checks against the glass. “What the hell?” she mouthed.
Luke took his feet off his desk and had the good grace to look embarrassed. He shrugged and held up a finger signaling her to wait.
But she was done waiting. Harper dropped the checks on the counter outside his office and grabbed her purse. She would take an early, long lunch, and he would just have to deal with it. She didn’t owe him an explanation.
Luke found her at the diner counter staring into the depths of her coffee mug. He took the stool next to her and swiveled to face her. He figured he could calm her down in a few minutes and maybe even grab a quick lunch. Time was becoming more precious as the days ticked down to deployment.
“Why are you so pissed off about a couple of checks?”
Harper turned to him and shot him a look. “Is that what you think this is about? Did you hit your head today?”
“It sounds like you’re questioning my intelligence,” he ventured, signaling the waitress for a coffee.
“It sounds like you’re trying to play dumb,” Harper snapped. “This isn’t about the checks. This is about what they represent.”
“Money?”
“I will knock your perfect ass off that stool.”
She might actually try it. “Me not telling you about money that you found going through my mail?”
“Really? That’s how you want to play this? Accusing me of snooping when I opened a stack of mail that you gave me to open? Try again.”
She had him there. He sighed. “Harper, there is nothing in our arrangement that says we have to tell each other everything.”
“Why are you like that? What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just share things? It’s not sexy-mysterious anymore. It’s hurtful.”
“Why is it hurtful? I didn’t purposely keep anything from you. The money is from a patent that Aldo and I hold on an engineered joist system. It’s not a big deal.”
“What’s a big deal to me is that I open up to you about all the sordid details of my past and you can’t even share good things with me. Why the hell is that? ”
“I told you before, I’m not a hearts and flowers kind of guy.”
“We’re not talking about hearts and flowers. We’re talking about intimacy. And you can’t just expect me to share things with you when you have no intention of opening up to me.”
“That isn’t who I am, Harper.” Luke shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Those checks aren’t even on my radar. Not when I have less than two weeks before I leave my home and my family for six months.”
“That’s another thing you won’t talk about.”
“What? Deployment? What is there to talk about?” He let some of his frustration seep into his tone. “I’m leaving. End of story.”
“That is not ‘end of story,’ and you know it.”
He spun her around sideways on the stool to face him and kept his hands on her thighs.
“Look. You want something that I can’t give you.
I think you’re getting in too deep here.
You’re trying to establish a relationship where there can’t be one.
I don’t share. I don’t open up and talk about my feelings or what I’m thinking.
And even if I did, I’m leaving. For six months.
There isn’t going to be an ‘us’ when I come back.
And I’m starting to think that maybe there shouldn’t be an us now. ”
“Do you want me to leave?” She leveled a look at him, daring him to say what he didn’t mean.
He sighed. “No, I don’t want you to leave.” There. How was that for honesty? “I like having you around. I even like having the dogs around. I think our working relationship is great. But maybe it’s time we back off the more… intimate area.”
“Sex?”
The waitress paused wide-eyed as she put the coffee mug down in front of him.
Luke waited until she wandered down the counter to the next patron.
“Yes. Sex,” he said quietly. “It’s starting to confuse the situation.
Let’s just go back to the way things were for the rest of the month.
Stick with the plan. You’re saving money and doing a job search.
Thanks to you, I’m getting caught up at the office and getting things organized for when I’m gone.
We can make this work, Harper. But not by complicating things. ”
“So I explain to you that it hurts me when you withhold things from me, and your solution is to further reduce our relationship to boss-employee?”
Why did women always make things so difficult? He was protecting her. Why couldn’t she see that?
“Harper, this is in your best interest.”
“So you’re saying you’re protecting me from my own feelings by taking sex off the table.”
She didn’t sound impressed, but Luke was committed. Maybe it wasn’t only her feelings he wanted to protect. There was something about the rawness between them that scared the crap out of him. He didn’t want it to go any farther. Any deeper.
“I’m saying we’re complicating a situation that doesn’t need to be complicated. Let’s just go back to the plan.”
“Fine.”
He gripped her legs. “Fine?” He had expected more of an argument.
“It’s your life. Your decision.”
Luke had the distinct feeling he was being played. “You’re fine with going back to the plan?”
“Yep.” She stared pointedly at his hands on her legs until he removed them. Harper turned her attention back to her menu. “I’ll see you back at work.”
“How about I buy you lunch?” he offered. The club special looked pretty good.
“No thanks. I’d rather eat by myself.” She snapped her menu shut. “But I’ll put your coffee on my tab. You can go.”
And just like that, Luke was dismissed.
He took the moratorium seriously and slept on the couch for two nights, thankful that it was a million times more comfortable than his grandmother’s. Yet it still paled in comparison to his bed and Harper.
What he thought was a move to simplify only turned out to be a complication. A rock hard one. The weekend turned into a two-day erection. Now that her body was off limits, he wanted it even more. Those sweet curves called to him, demanding his attention, his hands.
He started avoiding her like the drunk uncle no one wants to talk to at a reunion after he found her bent over the kitchen island reading a magazine in freaking boy shorts and a tank top. He turned around so fast he rammed straight into the refrigerator.
And damned if he didn’t see the smirk on her face before he hustled out of the room. She had to be playing him. It seemed like her skirts were getting shorter, her shirts tighter, and his dick harder.
He was pissed off all the time. A fact that Frank was currently pointing out.
“What the hell crawled up your ass today?”
“I’m just not in the mood to hear how another client pissed you off.”
Frank snorted and tossed the scrap wood in the back of his truck. “I was going to tell you that the doc called today about that addition she’s been talking about. She’s ready for the expansion. But since you’re being a whiny little bitch, I guess I’ll have Harper put the consult on the calendar.”
Luke slammed the lid of his truck toolbox. When someone like Frank called him out on it, he knew he had to be acting like an ass.
“Sorry, Frank. I’m just…” What was he? Hard, frustrated, agitated, distracted beyond belief by a certain curvy blonde who looked through him rather than at him in the kitchen this morning. “Stressed,” he finished lamely .
“Stressed? What the hell for? You’ve done this before. Your dad and I have everything covered.”
“It’s not work.” Luke used some water from his thermos to scrub the drywall dust off his hands.
“Would it have something to do with a certain female office manager who looks like she wants to jump you one minute and strangle you the next?”
“So it’s not just my imagination?”
Frank sighed and leaned against the truck.
“Son, let me tell you something about women. Don’t piss them off under any circumstances.
It’s not worth it. You’re risking life and limb over something that probably doesn’t matter in the first place.
My advice? If you pissed her off, apologize before she turns your life into a living hell. ”
It was Luke’s turn to sigh. “Should I really be taking advice from a man who’s never been married?”
“Don’t have to jump off the cliff to know you die at the bottom.”