CHAPTER 43
Harper
I can’t even reply. In a blur, like I’m watching myself outside of my body, my boss dismisses me, I take off my apron and follow Aiden out front, where he grabs my hand and starts walking along the boardwalk. I look up at him, tanned and rugged and freaking beautiful. And smirking.
I pull my hand away.
“You bought her cafe? I don’t understand.”
“I bought the building. Buildings, plural. The tenant was a failing cafe. No theme, no warmth, no kitsch, you know?” No, I don’t know!
He goes on, like he’s making any sense at all, “So, I bought the building, closed that shop, hired a GM with a vision for a new shop—Coffee Cabana next to a surf shack is brilliant, isn’t it?
—and told her to post wanted ads for a good baker. ”
“A baker…I…how did you know I’d be here? I didn’t know I’d be here,” I start to pace.
“Right, yes, well, I bought quite a lot of buildings,” He says, his smug mask skipping just slightly.
I stare, waiting, and he goes on with pink cheeks, “Once you were traveling up the east coast I figured you’d end up at a coffee shop or bakery or maybe a restaurant with a pastry chef.
It was like any other deal, I looked at the options and played the odds.
You’re an amazing chef, Harper. I knew you’d end up somewhere on the coast, making amazing things. ”
“But I thought about Myrtle Beach, I—”
“And the Keys. Yes, bought a few spots there.”
I put my hands on my hips, “You just bought a bunch of buildings?”
He steps closer to me, “You are so beautiful, especially here. It’s like this whole town, this whole beach was made just for you to walk up and down it.”
“I…” my eyes sting but I turn away and blink hard to clear my head. “Aiden!”
“Yes. Yes, Sweetheart I bought a whole gaggle of buildings! After the first few weeks I went a bit mad, honestly. I’m glad I heard you weren’t in California anymore because the prices there are astronomical.
In some towns, I just bought the business inside the building.
Most places though I bought the whole pot of land and the buildings therein. ”
“For me?” I squeak.
“Yes, but all of them were sound investments. All my risks are well-calculated, you know that.”
“Did you make her hire me? Did I even get this—”
“No! No. You got the job on your own. I just told them, each time, to hire a baker, or chef, who made the best black coffee they’d ever had in their life. That’s all I said.”
“First of all, that was a huge risk, asuuming that I’d have some beans from home with me—”
“So it is in the beans then! What? What’s in the beans?”
“Aiden!”
“Sorry, sorry. You did this on your own, Harper. I merely made sure the door was there should you want to walk through it.
“But…why?” I say, still having trouble processing.
“Because I wanted to help you get whatever you wanted. If you’d changed course and decided you were going to, I don’t know, become a florist, which you very well could, by the way, I suppose I’d learn that market and start buying those shops up as well.”
“To help me,” I repeat back to him. He moves an inch closer and stares down at me with sad, pleading eyes. I whisper, “Why?”
“Because Stuart loves you,” he whispers back.
“He’s stupid, silly, over the moon in love with you, I’m afraid.
” I frown but he puts his large firm hands up to hold my head.
“Harper. I am in love with you. I want to take you to lunch. After that, I want to take you to dinner. After that, I’d like to see your new apartment.
After that, I’d like to show you my new house here. ”
“Your house?”
“Yes, of course I moved here, I can’t convince you to fall back in love with me and marry me and live happily ever after if we live in separate cities.
” He rubs his thumb along my cheekbone to catch a tear that is apparently leaking from my eyes.
“Then tomorrow I’d like to come in early for coffee and catch up.
Then I want to take you to dinner again.
And to a movie maybe. You know, boring, normal dates where you aren’t planning a whole parade or trying to save a town.
” I let out a little laugh, a bubble of shock and relief and… longing. I want that. Badly.
He goes on, “And then after a few dates I’ll have to convince you to marry me and we’ll need to talk about what exactly you meant in the past when you said ‘lots of babies.’ Is that two children? Three?”
“Ch-children?” I choke on the word.
He smiles, “Yes, a loved one of mine, a brilliant one, recently told me to seek a good deal of therapy, which I did. My therapist and I have talked through how even though I’ve had shit parents, I’m actually a natural caregiver, can you believe that?”
“Yes,” I say but it comes out like a question.
Because what, exactly, is happening right now?
“You just…guessed what I would want and which towns and just, what, waited to see if you were right? Do you have like, Renaldo in the bushes watching each location?”
Aiden laughs, big and happy and free and my breath catches at the sound. I start coughing which prompts him to wrap his arms around me, kiss my head and rub firm strokes up and down my back. It feels so amazing I might never stop coughing.
“I just asked Benedict to let me know when Janie said you were…okay. When you were settled and starting over, either somewhere new or back in town.”
I look up at him, “You’re not staying in Juniper Falls anymore?”
“I am usually there once a week to check on everyone but…you’re not there so I don’t want to be there.
” I must ask with my face ‘where do you want to be?’ because he pulls away to answer me, taking both of my hands in his.
“I want to be wherever you are, Harper Brown. I want to wake up at the arsecrack of the day and go to bed next to you at nine. I cut my responsibilities to travel just once a quarter, maybe twice, and I want you with me on the plane. I want to take you everywhere. But I want to just be here, too. I want to walk Stuart along the beach with you. I want to track you on my phone when you ride that bloody bicycle around. I want to watch you cook and listen to you hum The Beach Boys while you arrange flowers. I want you. Full stop. And that’s really my only condition.
” He sniffs, watching me, then says, “So, now you know my terms. What say you?”
I suppress a sob and ask, “Then why did you go?”
“Shhh, don’t cry, Harper, Sweetheart, listen to me,” He tucks a hair behind my ear and holds my face again. “I was sure about you. I was sure about you ever since the water pitcher. Hell, maybe from the first time you called me a jerk hole.”
“I meant jerk off,” I say.
He chuckles, “I was a jerk off. I was an asshole too. So I need you to be sure about me. You’ll remember for weeks you turned me down.
Said that we could only ever be friends.
So I didn’t want you to be confused or feeling guilty or stuck in another commitment.
I wanted you to just be free and then after you got away from it all, I hoped, I hope, you can know for sure? ”
I laugh. I laugh for a long while.
“Harper?”
“You…” I snort. I don’t even care that I’m a smudgy, snotty mess. “You wanted me to be free, so you bought the building. So you could be my boss’s boss? That’s letting me be free?”
“Well…” his mouth opens, shuts, opens and shuts again. He watches me continue to laugh deliriously until he eventually says, “Shit.”
“Yeah! Shit!” I say, still not done laughing.
“Listen, I’ve changed a good deal but I’m still a Vanderwell. I wanted you to have the job you were dreaming of, on a beach somewhere, so I tried to make it happen. I…I make no apologies about that.”
“Did you tell your therapist about this?” I ask him.
“I, uh, did not,” he says, blushing so badly even his ears are red.
“Because you knew he’d tell you you are insane!” I yell at him. The nearby seagulls scuttle back a few feet from us.
Aiden just shrugs, “Love makes us crazy.”
“I can’t believe this,” I say, pacing again. “You broke my heart and made us live in agony for two months! And for what!”
“Well, I bloody hope it was for you! For us!” He paces too.
“So you could get away from everyone—including me—and just think, just be, and that now that you have, you’ll say yes, that you’re sure now, and yes, that I can take you to lunch and yes, to dinner, and yes, to coming home with me every night for the foreseeable future! ”
I cross my arms. “I’m still mad at you for leaving.”
“Understandable,” he says, planting himself across from me in the sand.
I roll my eyes and shake my head, “I can’t believe I’m saying this but…I’m willing to negotiate.”
At that, he beams, so I quickly add, “I’m only agreeing to lunch! It’s not my fault you bought a house here.”
“Lunch and dinner and I can stop by the cafe in the morning.”
“Lunch and dinner today only. And you have to sell the Coffee Cabana. Or, the building or whatever. You can’t be my boss’s boss.”
“Done, what else,” he says slowly working his way closer and closer to me.
“You stop being a smug know-it-all.”
He wraps his arms around me slowly, looks away like he’s considering it, then back at me, “I’ll…try.”
“You can’t just come in every day like a neanderthal and say ‘go to dinner with me,’” I add, grasping at anything now. His perfect, smirking mouth is drawing closer to mine and I can’t stop him. I don’t want to stop him.
“I’ll ask nicely, every time,” he says, whispering the words. And then, right as I lift my chin and start to close my eyes, he adds, “I’ve one more condition.”
“What! Ugh!” I grow and start to pull away but he holds me to him and laughs, “Tell me you still you’re sure about me.”
My turn to laugh, “Absolutely not! You bought a bunch of buildings along the coast! You’re pushy and bossy and ridiculous.”
“All true,” he says in cracked, almost scared voice that kills me. “So, tell me you’ll give me another chance?”
“I’m giving you lunch and dinner and that’s it,” I say, but the fight’s left me now. His eyes are pleading, warm, sweet, even. “Lunch and dinner and a kiss,” he says into my lips, barely.
“Oka—”
Yes.
He takes hold of me before I can finish the word, one hand holding my head, the other around my back.
I whimper with relief and he shifts us at the sound, deepening the kiss.
His tongue owns me, with long disparate strokes I can feel in my soul.
Like he’s been dying of thirst the last two months and I’m his fountain in the desert.
He groans and I shift into him right as his hand dips lower.
“Bloody hell, I want to lay you down right here in the sand and show you just how much I’ve missed you.”
“Aiden!” I laugh his name. He kisses me again, hard.
“Score another one for me not doing exactly what I want, exactly when I want it,” he says as he shifts away to lead me by the hand again.
“I think that might have at least something to do with being arrested,” I say.
He waves me off, “Coppers can be paid off.”
“Once again, you! Are! Insane!”
“Yes, but you love that about me.”
“I never said love, you said love.”
He pulls my hand up and kisses it, “And I’ll say it again and again, as long as you’ll let me.”
I don’t respond, I can’t. Because I’ll probably start sobbing tears of joy right here on the boardwalk not far from my new job. Love.
Aiden Vanderwell loves me.
And, annoying as it is, as usual, he’s right.
I love him too.