Chapter 27 - Dante
DANTE
I’d thought a few days without Harper would drive me insane. After two months without another word from her, my life had no meaning. Work held no joy. My penthouse meant nothing to me without the hope of hearing her laughter trickle through the walls.
Every fucking day, the pain of her absence grew worse. We all felt it. Julian had practically stopped eating and sleeping.
Alexander spoke in grunts and growls, barely managing to keep a civil tongue in his head during meetings. The weight of holding us together fell on my shoulders, and I was slowly crumbling beneath the onslaught.
There was no moving forward. We’d been given the opportunity and love of a lifetime, and we’d managed to screw it up.
We hadn’t discussed how to find Harper in almost a week.
That first month without her, we were animals possessed with catching up with her.
If we could just find her and talk to her in person…
but that wasn’t what she wanted. Harper didn’t want to be pursued.
She wanted to be left alone. We’d promised to obey her wishes and respect her distance.
We’d tried. We made it all of three hours before Alexander set every search engine available to him to hunting for Harper.
Julian called Lila obsessively and without luck.
Day by day, our hope waned. Soon, there would be nothing left of us except the thin thread of friendship we managed to grip as our only lifeline.
I’d even gone back to Harper and Lila’s little house and tried to talk to her in person.
I’d thought I might learn more about Harper’s whereabouts if we stood face to face.
If Lila knew where Harper hid out, she managed to keep it locked away.
I had to give her credit, Lila was a locked vault of secrets when it came to Harper.
I wouldn’t mind that in any other situation.
It was honorable. And I’d damn near been tempted to strangle her for it.
I wrenched my eyes away from the window and forced my gaze back to the laptop screen where our monthly earnings report blinked in long rows of numbers. Elevate was doing well. One thing we didn’t have to worry about, at least.
I ran a hand through my hair and gripped the back of my neck.
My door opened with a soft swish of wood over the carpet. Bethany stood in the doorway, the slightest hesitation framing her in light from the hallway. She wore a short skirt with a tight top that barely covered her midriff. Every day this week, her outfits had grown shorter and more scandalous.
I was not in the mood for this bullshit today.
“I have your messages.” Even her voice had changed, taking on a sultry note that I’d never heard her use. Her hips swayed as she walked forward on ridiculously high heels, a sheaf of papers tucked in her arm.
“You can leave them on the desk.” I pointed at the spot on the corner where she always put them and continued to stare at the computer screen. Things had grown complicated enough since Harper’s absence. The last thing I needed was Bethany getting the wrong idea.
She walked right up to the edge of the desk and leaned over.
Who the fuck needed to lean over to drop messages on a desk?
No one. Which meant she was doing it deliberately to push her cleavage to the top of the shirt.
The sight of her brazen attempts to flash me fueled a rush of anger so deep it pulsated in my gut.
“Here?” She set the papers down, then slid them toward me with one finger. Her smile stretched wide and I was sure she thought herself beautiful.
She was, in a classic kind of way, but it did nothing for me.
I wanted Harper. No one else.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I brought you something else.” She straightened and pushed her chest out before perching on the edge of the desk.
“Please refrain from sitting on my desk. It is a work station, not a chair.”
She hopped up like she’d been jabbed with a hot poker. “Oh, of course. I never meant any disrespect.”
I arched a brow and picked up my messages, flipping through them while ignoring her suggestive posture. “You said you brought me something else? Is there a problem?”
If she meant to be cute and flirty, it wasn’t working.
“No. No, sir. No problem.” A slight pout puckered her lips. “I wanted to let you know, there’s a party at the bar down the street tonight. I thought you might like to come. You know, blow off some steam?” Her gaze traveled down my body.
Again with the innuendo. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I was too old to resort to such teenage dramatics. But damn if I didn’t want to shove her out of my office and tell her never to come back.
“No.” My response barked out in a harsh sound that rolled up from the pit of anger I’d stewed in for months.
“Oh.” Her smile fell. “Well. You know, if there’s ever anything I can do for you…” She tipped her head to one side, letting her hair fall over her shoulder. “I’m always available.”
“I appreciate you being a part of our business. You’ve been a loyal employee and you work hard.” I bared my teeth in a mockery of a smile. “If that is becoming too much of a problem for you, or if the lines between employee and employer are becoming blurred, I can set them straight for you.”
She gulped, her eyes going wide. “I would never jeopardize my position here. I only meant to be polite.” She made the one-eighty amusing to watch, and I let her splutter around for a while.
“It might help with the rumors, you know? The other employees, they’re used to seeing you more often.
You’ve been…absent from many of the meetings you used to attend. ”
“Thank you for that insightful recommendation on how I should run my company.” I bit out the polite response, but the idea of playing nice any longer than necessary ended. “You’re free to go. If there’s anything I need, I can take care of it myself.” Let her take that however she wanted.
The bubbly smile fell completely as she turned on her heel and stormed out with a huff. Her disappointment had turned into anger so fast I almost missed it. She’d thought she’d come in looking like a porno film and expected me to take the bait like a good little boy who couldn’t control his urges.
Now that almost made me smile. I had more self-control than any man she’d probably ever been with, and I was not in the mood to have her shaking her tits and thinking that’s all it took to have me ripping off her clothes.
Harper was the only person in the world who’d ever threatened my self-control. She gave as good as she got, and she drove me wild with the need to pleasure her. Being in the same room with her lit up my life in ways I had no explanation for.
I would do anything for her. Except leave her alone. That had proven harder than I ever expected. I groaned at the growing well of unease that clamped onto the back of my neck.
Bethany wasn’t the only one to dance around the idea of an inter-office romance. She’d been the most subtle, but I’d had at least three propositions a week since the rumor mill started up around Harper.
Her sudden disappearance had helped put the gossip to sleep as far as the tabloids were concerned, but inside Elevate the gossip continued hot and heavy. Everyone thought they had a chance.
I’d even had one woman tell me I didn’t have to suffer through sex with a woman like Harper when I could have someone like her. Like Harper was beneath us. I’d asked her who the fuck thought they had the right to judge who anyone else slept with.
She’d gone bone white, and even though I’d basically confirmed the rumors, it had shut her down cold and she was one of the few who hadn’t dared approach me a second time.
The messages were nothing but a bunch of gibberish.
Only one was real, a message from one of our suppliers that the coffee order we’d requested had been delayed.
I’d pass that one on to Julian. He preferred to handle the coffee after he’d discovered Harper had been drinking mediocre slop in the coffee corner.
I tried again to focus on the earnings reports.
They swam in and out of focus. The harder I tried to concentrate, the more my thoughts ran back to Harper.
What was she doing? Where was she? All of our searches turned up nothing. Not even a hint of her location.
The door burst open, and my head snapped up, an angry retort on the tip of my tongue, but it wasn’t Bethany back for a second attempt.
Julian rushed across the room, his hair and eyes wild. He’d stopped wearing a jacket and stopped covering his tattoos. He looked every inch the angry badboy billionaire who’d once been the talk of the town as one of New York’s most eligible bachelors.
I palmed the edge of the desk and stood. “What’s wrong? Harper?” My thoughts always ran straight to her. Nothing except Harper or one of us could put that wild look in his eyes, and I was fine, so it could only mean Harper or Alexander.
He nodded and ran a hand back and forth over his chest like his heart ached. If it felt anything like mine, he felt broken into a million shards that rubbed and poked with every breath. Nothing would be right in our world until we held Harper again.
“Lila called.” He choked and took a shuddering breath. “Harper’s in trouble.”