Chapter Sixteen #2
“Thanks for choosing this place, Mom. It’s been a while since I came here.
” Knowing him well, his parents had taken them to his favorite Cuban restaurant, Versailles, in Little Havana, the proud center of the Cuban community.
Once you got past the ornately mirrored walls and row of large chandeliers, it was a pretty cool place.
Just about every politician with ambition had drunk the rich café and kissed babies here.
Bush, Thompson, Cain, they’d all sipped their coffees for the perfect photo op.
If you wanted the Cuban vote, you started the campaign at Versailles.
“Hey,” Harper exclaimed as he speared one of her shrimp with his fork, smiling at her as he put it in his mouth.
“You can have some of mine,” he mumbled over the tasty shrimp. He loaded his fork with his ropa vieja, the shredded beef threatening to topple. “Open.”
“Mmm. That’s so good. We’ll have to come back so I can try everything.”
Yeah, he wanted to bring her back here. Take to her to some of the best restaurants in the area.
And travel with her. She hadn’t been on vacation in nearly five years, hadn’t even ventured outside of Miami since moving here, and it was about time someone corrected that.
The show, if it worked out, would certainly help him be the one to do it.
Their lifestyle would change exponentially if it happened.
But he wasn’t going to get her hopes up only to disappoint her. That path was a painful one.
Harper leaned over and whispered in his ear. “What’s got you looking so serious over there?” The warmth of her breath and her lips on his neck felt way better than she’d likely intended.
He turned and kissed her gently behind her ear. “There’s a full moon tonight and I’m wondering if I can get you to let me make love to you on the balcony.”
He felt like a heel as she blushed and laughed at him. Lying didn’t come naturally to him, and it felt particularly unsettling to be lying to Harper.
There was a very real chance he wouldn’t get the show once the producers realized he had no experience even remotely close to what they were looking for.
And it wasn’t like the world really needed to know he’d failed at something if he didn’t get it.
He had firsthand experience of seeing that look of disappointment on the face of someone he’d loved, and he wasn’t ready to see it there again.
“Any chance Drea might be able to cover some of your shifts before I go so we could spend some more time together?”
He watched her text her friend, doing his best to ignore the whisper that told him lying to her was a really bad idea.
* * *
“Remember, put the strongest body part you have available into the weakest part of them you can find. Let’s go again.
” Harper memorized every word. Trent had said Frankie was an incredible fighter, had even shown her some of Frankie’s fighting footage online, but learning from him was worth the pain.
Harper flinched as Frankie grabbed her right arm slightly above her wrist. She rotated her arm at the elbow in a clockwise direction, forcing his hand to break his grasp. Raising her left hand, she aimed for his eyes with her fingers.
“Great, Harper. That was much better.” Harper took a deep breath.
The amount of body contact she was experiencing was jolting but not quite panic-worthy.
Frankie passed Harper her water bottle and she gratefully downed a few large gulps.
She was sweating from places she didn’t know were capable of sweating.
“Ready to go again?” They’d been at it for nearly forty-five minutes, and it was as tough as any workout Harper had ever done.
“Sure thing, coach,” she groaned.
“You want to try an approach from behind to end the session?” Frankie scrutinized her face, watching for her reaction.
“Not really, but I have to get past this, right?”
“You need to remember that you are worth defending. You need to have courage, in the moment of attack, to take action. You might not like those actions. Hurting someone else doesn’t come naturally to most of us.
But in that moment, you need to remember that you have a God-given right to defend yourself and do it unflinchingly. ”
“When you put it like that.” Harper gave him a weak smile. “Let’s try it.”
“For starters, I’ll let you know when my arms are coming. You just have to get out of the hold. We’ll save the surprise grab for next week.”
Strong, muscular arms came around her shoulders and folded across her chest, palms holding tight to opposite wrists. Harper’s blood pressure spiked, her heart beating fast. They’re not his arms, they’re not his arms, she repeated to herself over and over.
Her feet were free, and her hands could do something to the lower part of his body. Think, Harper, think.
“Come on, Harper. If this was for real, you’d be running out of time.” The feel of Frankie’s breath on her neck made her shudder.
She bent forward fast, taking him with her, and pinched the insides of both his thighs before lifting her foot and stamping down hard on his arch.
Frankie released her immediately, cursing and holding his foot.
“Holy shit, Frankie. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“Are you kidding me? That was the best I’ve seen out of you all night. That’s what you need to get out of a dangerous situation, but we’ll work on it coming from a place of control rather than a place of panic, okay?”
The showers in Frankie’s gym were utilitarian, but the water ran hot for much longer than the tiny tank in her apartment, so Harper indulged before heading home.
With the towel wrapped securely around her, Harper walked over to the lockers and grabbed her phone. She sat down on a bench that had been pushed up against the wall.
Can’t eat this without thinking of you! Trent had snapped an éclair with a bite taken out.
Harper laughed. Miss you, too!
She closed the message and saw the unsolved anagram. Father wrongdoer cheek abasement. It couldn’t be normal for her heart to beat that fast. The panic she had wrestled into submission earlier flooded through her.
For some reason, this anagram seemed harder to solve than the others. Harper had tried at various points in the day to solve it but appeared to be getting nowhere.
There were only eleven vowels so there couldn’t be more than five or six words. Unless someone had used goateed to throw off the averages. There was no P or Y so neither Taylor nor Harper was in this one. Which didn’t feel like a relief.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the clinical white tiles of the steamy shower room. No I, so no is, in, or it. Missing letters were as big a clue as included letters.
If she could just prove the message was clearly from Nathan through the choice of words.
Or find some kind of irrefutable proof that would show she wasn’t imagining things.
Trent would believe her—of that, Harper was certain—but nobody else would.
That still wasn’t a good enough reason to drag him into her mess.
She opened her eyes and reached into her purse, pulling out her waitressing notepad.
Carefully, she transposed the letters into a single alphagram, one long list of alphabetical letters.
Hmm … the letter E appeared six times, meaning it would likely be in every word, maybe twice.
And it increased the likelihood that the article used was the.
She struck through the three letters T, H, and E. Each letter appeared twice. Heart … the heart. Home is where the heart is—no F in it. A loving heart is the truest wisdom … thank you Charles Dickens … again with the F.
Harper tightened the towel around her chest and looked up at the ceiling. Heart quotes.
A terrifying realization washed over her. She sat up suddenly, crossing letters off the list furiously until there were none left.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’ll be seeing you soon.
Shit.