8. Harper
HARPER
Ididn’t ask you to stay behind to talk about Sophia.
Those words are still doing laps in my head when Killian moves to the chair across from mine and sits down and folds his hands on the table and looks at me, and I mean really looks at me, for what feels like the first time since I walked in this morning.
Not the restrained, carefully managed not-looking he’s been doing during the presentation.
Actually looks at me, directly, and it’s significantly worse.
I keep my hands in my lap and my expression neutral and I wait.
“What is this summer for you?” he asks.
I blink. “I’m sorry?”
“Is this a vacation? Are you taking a break from your life?” He says it without inflection, a genuine question without an agenda attached, or at least that’s what it sounds like.
“The college roommate who taught my daughter how to balance a checkbook doesn’t strike me as the type who takes holidays on someone else’s dime just because she was invited. So what is it?”
I open my mouth and close it again.
He just described me with more accuracy than most people manage after knowing me for years, based on a detail his daughter mentioned in passing, and he’s sitting there like that’s a completely ordinary thing to have done.
I decide to be honest. Mostly.
“My previous employer was downsizing,” I say. “I was laid off a few weeks ago. Severance package, good references, clean exit. It was fine, just… sudden. I was in the middle of figuring out my next move when Sophia offered me the trip.”
He nods once. Nothing on his face tells me whether he believes this or not, which is deeply uncomfortable.
“And before that you were living in New York.”
“Yes.”
“So what made you move to Tampa? Sophia’s apartment.” He pauses, and something shifts at the corner of his mouth. Just barely. “Who do you think her landlord is?”
I stare at him.
He raises an eyebrow.
“You—” I stop. Process. “Sophia didn’t mention that.”
“Sophia mentioned you. She told me you weren’t the type to look for a free ride and that you wouldn’t cause any trouble.
I took her word for it.” He watches me with that patient, assessing stillness and I have the distinct sensation of being very accurately read by someone who does this for a living. “So. New York.”
This is the part where I need to sound like a person making a reasonable life choice and not like someone whose parents imploded her career and sent her fleeing south with her dignity in a tote bag.
“I was never that attached to New York, honestly,” I say.
“The city is great if you love that kind of pace but I… I felt like it was a good time to try something different. Step back from the grind, reassess, see what else is out there. And then Sophia said she had a room and it seemed like the right move.”
There is a silence.
Killian looks at me the way you look at a financial projection that has one number that doesn’t add up, not hostile, just patient, like he’s decided to wait for the correct figure to surface on its own.
I don’t even believe what I just said. I am a terrible liar and I have always been a terrible liar and that was perhaps the most unconvincing thirty seconds of speech I’ve produced since I tried to tell my fourth-grade teacher that my hamster ate my book report.
Asher, who has been sitting quietly at the other end of the table in the way that Asher occupies space, which is to say substantially but without announcement, clears his throat.
“So you’re exploring,” he says. Not challenging, just offering it back gently, like a door being held open. “Trying to figure out what comes next. There’s nothing wrong with that. We’ve all been there.” He glances at Killian. “Right?”
Killian holds my gaze for one beat. Two. Then he looks at Asher and nods. “Right.”
I could kiss Asher. Platonically. In a deeply grateful, entirely appropriate way. I could absolutely kiss him.
Killian turns back to me and the slight tilt of his head tells me the conversation is shifting.
“I have a proposal,” he says. “We have an opening summer event this weekend. My director of events, Mallory Summers, is running it. I’d like you to shadow her through the lead-up.
Learn the operation, provide input where you see fit, contribute where it’s useful.
Consider it orientation.” He pauses. “The midsummer event is where Sophia’s boutique launches.
That one’s yours to run. Full coordination, soup to nuts.
Mallory will support you, but you’ll be in the lead. ”
I absorb that. The opening event is this weekend. Shadow first, then take point. It’s a smart handoff structure and he built it in about twenty seconds from scratch, which tells me exactly what kind of operational mind I’m dealing with.
“I’ll also pull a few of the active vineyard projects and have you take point on those while you’re here,” he continues. “You’d be compensated properly. Not a favor. A contract.” He looks at me. “You’d be working instead of pretending to relax, which I suspect suits you better.”
“I can relax,” I say.
From somewhere to my left, Maddox makes a sound.
“Sweetheart,” he says, in the tone of a man making a very reasonable observation, “you don’t strike me as the type who can sit still for five minutes.”
I turn to look at him. “How would you know what type I am?”
He leans forward.
It’s a small movement. Just his elbows coming to the table, his weight shifting forward, his eyes finding mine and staying there with the kind of focus that makes the temperature in the room do something it wasn’t doing a second ago.
“You like being told what to do,” he says. “Nothing wrong with that, baby.”
The room is very quiet.
Asher shakes his head slowly at the table in front of him.
“Not everyone likes having as much free time as you do, Maddox,” he says.
“You’d be surprised,” Maddox says, and he has not looked away from me, not even slightly. “Being bound in place can be fun. Don’t you think, Harper?”
Is it hot in here?
Did someone close all the windows? Did someone seal this building?
Did someone replace the climate control system with a single lit match because I am suddenly and acutely aware of every nerve ending I have and several I didn’t know about and there is something happening between my legs that is categorically not sweat and I need everyone in this room to stop looking at me immediately.
I clear my throat and look at Killian.
Killian, who is watching me with an expression I can’t fully read, but that has something underneath it, something controlled and still and very focused.
I decide that Killian is the safest place to put my eyes right now; I will be reconsidering that assessment later, but for now I’m committing to it.
“As much as I’d like to disagree with Maddox,” I say, and I’m proud of how level my voice comes out, “I would be genuinely grateful for something to do. Your vineyard is beautiful and I can already see a significant amount of potential in the hospitality programming and the event presentation. I just need to understand your goals so I can map out how to bring them to fruition.”
Killian is quiet for a moment.
Then he sits back in his chair.
And he smiles.
Not the controlled, minimal acknowledgment I’ve seen him produce in the direction of other people. An actual smile, unhurried, and it rearranges his entire face into something that makes me briefly forget what country I’m in.
“You’re hired.” He pulls out his phone. “Airdrop me your contact details. Now.”
He says it the way people say things when they’re used to saying them and having them happen immediately, which is a quality I usually find obnoxious and am currently finding unreasonably attractive, and I reach for my phone and pull up AirDrop and send him my contact card before I’ve fully processed that I’m doing it.
His phone chimes. He taps something and my phone buzzes in my hand.
“That’s mine,” he says, already typing again. “Asher handles all three restaurants on the grounds and catering for events. You’ll want his as well.”
I look at Asher. Asher nods once and accepts the incoming share from Killian’s phone without ceremony, then looks at me.
“Send it over,” he says.
I do. Another buzz. Another contact saved.
I now have Killian Thorne’s personal number in my phone. And Asher Beckett’s. For entirely professional reasons. Because I work here now, technically, which makes this completely normal and not at all something I’m going to think about later in the dark.
Killian is still typing. “My director of operations is Phillip Hayes. I’m forwarding your contact to him now.
He’ll get a contract drafted and to you today.
” He pauses, eyes on his screen. “Mallory will be cc’d on the documents.
” Another pause. A nod at whatever came back.
“She says she’ll meet you in the main tasting room tomorrow morning. Nine a.m.”
“I’ll be there.”
He looks up from his phone.
“Good.” He stands, which means we’re done, and I stand too and pick up my tablet and my bag and remind my legs how walking works. “Welcome to Thorne Estates, Harper.”
Something about the way he says it. The weight of it, like it means something adjacent to but not quite the same as what the words are.
“Thank you,” I say. “For the opportunity. I won’t waste it.”
He holds my gaze for one second longer than necessary. “I know.”
I turn and walk to the door and open it and step into the hallway and pull it shut behind me.
I stand there.
I have Killian Thorne’s personal number in my phone.
And Asher’s.
Which makes sense. Obviously. I’m working here.
This is a professional arrangement. Of course, I have their contact information.
This is how employment works. I would have the contact details of anyone I was professionally coordinating with and that’s all this is, a professional coordination situation, and I need to stop staring at my phone like it’s done something remarkable.
I open my messages to text Sophia that the celebration is officially on.
There’s a notification already sitting at the top of my screen.
Unknown number. One message.
I tap it.
Maddox St. James: For emergencies
I stare at it and my face goes warm in a way that starts at my cheekbones and travels down to places it has absolutely no business traveling.
Well, okay then.