18. Harper
HARPER
It’s been a week.
Seven days since I slipped out of Killian’s suite before the sun came up and walked back to my room in the previous night’s dress and decided, very firmly, that I was not going to spend the summer being weird about this.
I’m not chasing anyone. That’s the position I’ve arrived at and I’m standing on it.
Three grown men who between them own multiple businesses, several properties across three continents, and at least one private security company based on something Maddox said once that I probably wasn’t supposed to hear, are perfectly capable of picking up a phone.
If they want me they know where I am. If they don’t, then I had a spectacular night and I’ll survive the embarrassment of having feelings about it in the privacy of my own suite like a functional adult.
I’m not playing the first-contact game. I refuse. We’re all too old for it.
I’ve been keeping busy.
The boutique space sits on the east side of the estate, tucked between the tasting room and the vineyard’s private event corridor, with three sets of tall windows that look out over the rows.
It’s beautiful and it’s been sitting empty for two years and Sophia has been mentally decorating it since the moment her dad said yes.
This morning she’s got her tablet, a printed floor plan, and approximately one thousand opinions about traffic flow and display hierarchy and whether the fitting room should go in the back left corner or the back right corner.
I have a measuring tape and a pencil and the patience of a woman who has planned more events in spaces like this than she can count, which makes me useful.
We’ve been at it for two hours and I think we’ve moved the fitting room four times.
“Left corner,” I say.
“Right corner gives better sightlines from the entrance.”
“Left corner gives you more wall space for the editorial displays and puts the fitting room behind the service desk which means your staff controls the flow naturally without having to direct it.”
Sophia looks at the floor plan. Looks at the space. “Left corner,” she says, like she thought of it.
I make the note.
The main door opens and Lorenzo comes through backward, holding one end of a clothing rack, Raphael on the other end.
They’ve got two more racks visible behind them through the door and what appears to be a flatpack table situation that I’m going to need to supervise very carefully if it’s going to end up level.
“Calm down ladies, the men are here,” Raphael announces, “and we have sacrificed our Sunday morning for you.”
“You were playing video games,” Sophia says.
“I was winning at video games. There’s a difference.” He grins at me over the rack. “Harper. You look significantly more awake than I feel.”
“I had coffee.”
“That’s the secret. I knew there was a secret.”
Lorenzo sets down his end of the rack and goes straight to Sophia, kissing her temple and looking over her shoulder at the floor plan with the attentive interest of a man who has learned that taking Sophia’s projects seriously is both the right thing to do and significantly better for his personal life.
She immediately starts explaining the fitting room decision and he listens with his chin resting on top of her head and honestly they’re so disgustingly cute about it that I have to physically look away before I say something sentimental.
Raphael appears beside me. “If we left right now,” he says, very quietly, “they wouldn’t notice for at least forty minutes.”
I press my lips together. “We’re not leaving. This is too important for Sophia and Lorenzo.”
“I’m just saying the option exists.”
“Stop being lazy and go get the tables.”
He sighs profoundly and goes to get the tables.
We spend the next hour building things. The racks go up faster than expected because Raphael is surprisingly competent with assembly instructions, which he tells me is because he spent two years touring and setting up his own equipment and learned that nobody else is going to do it right.
The tables are flatpack and I was correct to be suspicious of them, but between the two of us we get them level and stable and positioned where Sophia wants them, which is in three different places before she settles on the first one.
Lorenzo and Sophia drift into their own world at some point, standing in the center of the space talking about something with their heads close together, and Raphael and I end up at the far wall wrestling with a display unit that has opinions about being assembled.
“Hold this side,” I tell him.
He holds it. I tighten the bracket. He’s quiet for a moment in the particular way he gets when he’s noticed something and is deciding whether to say it.
“You seem off,” he says.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said ‘I’m fine’ like four times today. Surely, you’re aware that ‘fine’ isn’t an emotion or a level on the pain level meter.”
“Those have smiley faces on them,” I argue.
“Okay, well, which face is ‘fine’?”
“The, uh, straight-lipped one.”
“So you’re in moderate pain?”
I look up at him. He’s watching me with the straightforward, non-judgmental attention of someone who is genuinely asking rather than fishing for something to say. That’s the thing about Raphael. He doesn’t have an angle.
I look back at the bracket. “Can you keep a secret?”
He considers this with more sincerity than the question probably requires. “Depends.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“From you? Yeah, probably.”
I take a breath. “I just… I can’t really talk to Soph about it because of who it involves and I’ve been carrying it around for a week and I think I need to say it out loud to another human being before I lose my mind.”
Raph goes still in a way that tells me his brain has already started running candidates. I watch him get there. I watch his expression do the thing where someone is trying very hard not to react while they’re very clearly reacting.
“You didn’t,” he says. Very carefully. Trying not to smile.
I nod. Fast. Several times.
He loses the battle immediately. The laugh comes out of him loud and sudden and completely uncontrolled and I slap both hands over his mouth before it can get across the room.
It doesn’t entirely work.
Sophia’s head comes up from across the space. “Stop watching us, you pervs.”
“Doing the shelving” I call back, voice impressively steady.
She goes back to Lorenzo. I grab Raphael by the sleeve and pull him around the corner of the half-built display unit, putting a rack of empty hangers between us and the rest of the room, and he gets himself under control with visible effort, shoulders still shaking.
“All of them,” he says. A statement, not a question.
I look at the ceiling.
“Harper.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“How would you like me to say it?” He’s grinning so hard it looks like it hurts. “How? How did this happen?”
“The opening summer event and a lot of wine and apparently a complete absence of my better judgment.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. Radio silence. It’s been a week and they’ve all gone perfectly professional on me and I’m sitting here deciding whether I’m devastated or relieved and I genuinely cannot tell which.
” I pick at the edge of the display bracket.
“Killian only talks to me about the midsummer event. Maddox was flirting with some investor at the tasting on Thursday like I wasn’t standing eight feet away.
Asher texts me asking if I’ve eaten like someone told him he’s only allowed to communicate via food recommendations. ”
Raphael is nodding slowly. “So they backed off.”
“Completely.”
“Maybe they’re giving you space.”
“Then they could have said that. I know what space is, I know how to ask for it. Nobody asked me if I wanted it, they just…” I gesture vaguely. “Retreated.”
Raph leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with the thoughtful expression he gets when he’s working something out. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “none of them look like men who’ve lost interest.”
I look at him.
“Raphael.”
“I’m being objective. I see them every day. There’s a difference between a man who’s moved on and a man who’s trying very hard to look like he hasn’t moved anywhere.” He raises an eyebrow. “Trust me. I know what the second one looks like.”
I don’t ask how he knows. I have some idea.
“I’m not chasing them,” I say.
“Good. Don’t.”
“I’m not playing games either.”
“Also good.” He picks up one of the loose shelf pieces and hands it to me. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re good at your job, you’re good with Sophia, you’re here. That’s enough.” He pauses. “Also if any of this gets back to my brother I’m blaming you.”
I laugh despite myself. “Fair.”
Sophia’s voice floats over from the center of the room. “Harper, what do you think about the lighting situation over the cash desk?”
“Warm bulbs, not cool,” I call back. “You want people to feel like they’re somewhere beautiful, not a dentist’s office.”
“Harper Brooks I love you,” Sophia announces to the room generally.
Raphael looks at me with a deeply entertained expression. “She has no idea.”
“Well, sort of, maybe? I mean she made a joke about me being her new mom but I didn’t elaborate. And I wouldn’t be her new anything would I?”
“This is incredible.”
“Raphael.”
“I’m done. I’m done.” He picks up the drill. “Shelving.”
We finish the staging mid-afternoon. The space looks real now, the bones of what it’s going to be, and Sophia stands in the middle of it with her hands on her hips and the expression of a woman watching something she built become actual.
Lorenzo has his arm around her shoulders and I take a picture for her because she asks and because the look on her face is the kind of thing worth capturing.
Raph and I do the heavy lifting of the remaining flatpack pieces.
By the time we’re done it’s past two and I’m hungry and my arms hurt and I feel better than I have in several days for reasons that have nothing to do with furniture assembly and everything to do with having said something out loud that I’ve been carrying alone.
I eat a late lunch with Raph at the outdoor tables near the tasting room and he doesn’t bring up what we talked about again and neither do I, because there’s nothing more to say about it and the company is easy and I don’t have to perform anything and that’s what I needed.
I head back to my suite around four, shower, change, open my laptop, and settle in for the event files I still need to get through before tomorrow’s briefing with Mallory.
The knock comes around seven.
I open the door expecting Sophia.
It’s a Vine server with a covered tray. He sets it on the table, lifts the cover with a quiet “Good evening, Ms. Brooks,” and leaves before I can ask who sent it.
I stand over the tray.
Short rib. Roasted root vegetables. Fresh bread with something herbed in the butter. A small card sits folded against the bread basket. I open it.
Blank.
No name. No note. Nothing.
I close the card. I look at the food. I look at the door.
I sit down and eat every bite.