Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HARMONY
Harmony hadn’t seen Preston for four days, so when he texted just before she was supposed to pick him up to check out a wine and cheese truck at the farmer’s market, she was sure he was going to cancel.
Something came up.
Yup. The coward. Harmony threw her mascara back in her makeup bag beside the sink and grabbed her reddest lipstick. She traced it over her mouth as if she could erase the memory of Preston’s kiss—purposeful and thrilling and right. Until it wasn’t.
It was the white lie that did it. Preston was always so direct, irritatingly so at times, and only fished out polite, meaningless small talk and false smiles for other people, she’d noticed. Adults at the library and chatty waitresses at the restaurants they’d tried together, people he didn’t really care about.
Her phone buzzing again on the counter almost made her hand wobble over her lower lip.
I have to go to the library.
Sure, he suddenly had to work, the man whose schedule was planned a week in advance down to the minute. Bullshit. Just like his excuse for ending that kiss, laying the blame on his sister. Who did he think he was conning?
She stared at herself in the mirror. Her set shoulders sank forward. Wasn’t she doing the exact same thing with her dad? Excusing all the lies she was telling Preston, because of her duty there, even when the time they’d been spending together made that feel kind of shitty?
That kiss hadn’t been a lie.
Mirror-Harmony’s perfectly drawn eyebrows rippled. Even if Preston showed up here right now looking for another, she didn’t know how to resolve the fake Harmony she projected, who was always calm and confident and rolled with anything, and the real Harmony who was actually quite upset for some reason. Who couldn’t stop thinking of her mouth on Preston, the taste and texture of him, sweet and creamy and rough stubble. The sudden warm press of his kiss.
It couldn’t be that Preston hadn’t enjoyed it. Harmony was a spectacular kisser. So it must be her. When she wasn’t trying to bamboozle someone, when she was just being herself, and seeing where things went, for once, it turned out he didn’t want anything more.
Maybe there was nothing more to her. Just sparkle and lies and skimming the surface. Nothing that would hold up to longer scrutiny. Certainly not Preston’s keen gaze. Maybe that was the real reason why she always got in and got out.
Harmony jammed the cap back on her lipstick. This was what she got for acting like Alice. She knew better. The one time Harmony had mixed personal and professional before, it had ended with Zach serving a six-month prison sentence.
She’d worked with Zach on previous jobs, run by someone else, and so when he’d contacted her looking for work, she knew he was good at what he did. He’d seemed like he’d be good at a lot of things, so she’d broken her rule about keeping work and sex separate. But soon it grew obvious he didn’t get that this was Harmony’s show now. He didn’t follow directions. Tried to take money off anyone he could in the course of the con. Didn’t want his take reduced by Harmony paying back innocents caught up in her scheme against the main target. He got pushy about it—literally. Others had tried to shove Harmony around before, growing up how she did, living on her own so young, and she knew by now to bail out before it got bad—so she didn’t warn Zach when the cops were closing in. Now he was in county jail in San Bruno, his probation date highlighted on her calendar app.
She did not feel guilty about that. Because she didn’t look back.
So why did she keep replaying in her mind the way Preston had wound his arm around her, wound his fingers into her hair, like she was worth hanging on to?
The buzz of her phone snapped her out of remembering Preston’s lips on hers.
Can you meet me there instead?
Harmony’s eyes flicked to her reflection and away. Actually, Preston had been very up-front about his busy schedule and was clearly extremely into her. Poor thing. He’d probably been dying for his next chance to get together.
She tucked her lipstick into her purse and grabbed her keys.
It was Saturday, and the library was bustling, as much as a place where you had to whisper could be. Someone whispered for Harmony, as she wandered through looking for Preston. “Ms. Hale!” Jordan and Nina peeked over the screen of the laptop they were huddled near, chairs drawn close together.
Once Harmony had gotten the festival approved at town hall, she’d been in touch with Jordan and made the internships official (even if the corporation they were interning with wasn’t technically real). Now the girls showed her what they’ve accomplished already.
“Two big LGBTQ+ groups out of San Francisco committed to coming,” Nina said, pointing to the color-coded spreadsheet on her screen. “The outreach to our area is going to be super important for a lot of people.”
Jordan was resting her hand on the back of Nina’s chair, listening with a proud gleam in her eye. “And we’re still making a list of local organizations,” she told Harmony. “Even smaller ones who might share booth space. If that sounds okay?”
“Great idea.”
“Oh, pop tarts ,” Nina swore adorably. “I forgot to add the voter registration group.” She toggled between her email and spreadsheet, typing furiously.
Harmony straightened. “This is really cool.” Or it would be, if it was actually going to happen. If this weren’t just another example of her jerking people around with her charade. Like all the businesses she’d already signed up. Auditions for the local youth stage were in a week. Both Jordan and Nina had insisted on helping to organize that too. They’d really taken this job—which Harmony had mostly invented to get Jordan out of hot water with Travis—and run with it. Harmony suddenly wasn’t so sure she was as immune to guilt as she always thought.
She couldn’t even pay them, with the work counting for Jordan’s volunteer hours. At least they were getting to spend a lot of time together. Jordan was playing with a strand of Nina’s hair now, which definitely didn’t make Harmony’s chest ache remembering someone running his hand through her own hair—before pulling away. “Have you seen Preston?”
“Mr. Jones?” Nina pointed toward the main nonfiction section. “I think he was heading for the back stairs?”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll send what we have along to you once it’s ready for official approval.”
Harmony nodded and cut through the bookcases. The set of stairs over here was roped off, with a STAFF ONLY sign attached. Harmony stepped over it and wound her way up to the second floor.
Piles of books were stacked against the walls of the hallway. A box of shiny hardbacks waited at the top of the stairs, a sticky note on top reading “Crossover Book Club” in Preston’s scrawl. Harmony picked her way through to the rows of bookshelves crammed with volumes.
Eventually she heard Preston talking under his breath somewhere farther into whatever forgotten corner of the library this was. “That’ll be good for the library sale … You can go right in the discard pile, you outdated, racist relic.” Harmony followed his voice and rounded a back aisle where he was crouching and pulling books from the lowest shelf and moving them to piles on the floor.
“Oh, good,” she whispered. “Is this where you keep all those dirty books I keep hearing about?”
“ Fuck .” Preston jumped and steadied himself, hands gripping the shelf. His voice dropped to a library-appropriate murmur. “Sorry. Overactive startle reflex.” He shoved himself up to standing. “Autism thing.”
“To be fair, it is kinda creepy up here.”
“Didn’t you see the—” He stopped and shook his head, lips twisting away either a smile or a scowl. “Never mind. Old building. Not ADA compliant, so we just use this for storage. Hope they didn’t hear me at the study carrels on the other side of that wall.” He wiped his palms on his jeans, looking around at the stacks of books. “Katherine let it get kind of out of hand the last few … decades. I’ve been trying to work my way through it, weed stuff out when I can. Got distracted.” His gaze returned to Harmony—or just past her shoulder, maybe. “Why didn’t you text me you were here?”
Because she was worried if she gave him the chance he’d beg off. “Can you still make it? Farmer’s market?”
“Yeah, of course. I just needed to bring something down. Heidi called out last second, and the new book club’s first meeting is today. The books I pulled were up here, and Katherine can’t manage the stairs anymore with her knees, so she asked if I could do them a favor and set up the conference room real fast.” He finally stopped and took a breath. Their low voices made this seem like a more intimate conversation than it was. Was it going to be like this between them now? Awkwardly filling every moment with harmless words to avoid talking about what had happened?
Screw that. Harmony could be irritatingly direct too. Wanna make out up here instead? she would say, and watch that ruddy color blush over his insufferably handsome face. Then see what he did about it.
Except all that came out was “Do you want to hang out for the meeting a bit before heading over to the market?” Who was the coward now?
But that was good too. It might give Operation: Win People Over a chance to progress. The book club was real, it could actually help kids like Jordan and Nina, and she’d helped make it happen. Like a little bit of the good Preston was always doing. After all the work the kids had taken on, making sure she left them better off seemed important.
“No.” Preston blinked. “Why would I do that.”
Harmony shrugged. “It’s for people who like books. You’re a person, you like books.”
“Maybe too much.” You would hardly know it, the way he was picking at the ragged spine of a book on the nearest shelf, where he’d turned his stare away. “Anything I like, I like too much. So I have rules, two comments, then stop.”
“Preston, that sounds exhausting.” And lonely. As lonely as the way her chatterbox habit of smoothing her path to anything she needed sometimes felt. Like a wall of talk between her and everyone else, everyone she was using.
“It is.” He ran a hand over his hair. “But it’s better than people wandering away in the middle of you speaking to them. I don’t want to screw things up with those people, not after you worked to turn things around with them.” His gaze shifted but never quite landed on her, which was another thing she’d noticed him doing with the random people they encountered, people Harmony would lavish with attention and lock eyes with to better steer them into giving her whatever she wanted.
She took a step into the aisle. Daring Preston to look at her. “You don’t stop at two comments with me.” He’d practically retold an entire book about two grad students fighting over some scholarship or something, while they waited at the fancy doughnut food truck last week. (If the festival were real, Harmony would spend the entire weekend cramming Dough for It ’s marshmallow and crème br?lée offerings in her face.)
“Well.” His fingers stilled. “You’re so over the top yourself, I guess I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Now their low-pitched voices did sound like they were sharing secrets. “You’re right.” She stepped farther along the aisle. “I always want more.” At least when it came to him, it seemed. The rare person who could hold his own with her.
He still didn’t meet her gaze. One hand pulled into a fist resting on the bookshelf. She was sure Preston was two seconds from telling her she was actually too over the top for him, that the kiss had been a mistake.
She cast about for anything to say to cut him off and noticed a battered copy of Howl’s Moving Castle beside the book he’d been murdering. “Oh, I loved this as a kid.” She drew it off the shelf and flipped it open to a familiar title page and rich vanilla scent. “We moved around so much, with my dad—you know, the turbulent music industry. But if I opened a favorite book, it was like I was back in the same spot, with the same friends.” Way to make herself sound like a total loser. But as outgoing as she’d always been with others, she hadn’t been able to bring any classmates home, when they’d had a home, not when people judged her dad for needing her help so much around their messy apartment, for sleeping it off on the couch, for saying whatever was on his mind no matter if it seemed strange to them. And you could still read by the glow of the streetlights even when the power was cut off again.
Preston watched her hands turning pages. “That must have been hard.” There was a softness to his words, like he was finally focused on her rather than evasive.
“Yeah, it can get old, flitting from place to place.” But at least you left before people realized they didn’t really want you around. She shrugged. “I get to experience a lot of different things.”
His lips made a wry twist. “’Tis better to have Dough For It and lost than never had marshmallow doughnuts at all?”
She snorted. “If this place is haunted, I think Tennyson’s ghost is gonna come for you.”
His breath sort of caught before rushing out in a huff of a laugh. Then his smile buckled under a tensed expression. Like he was weighing a decision. “Guess it’s good you’re escaping back to L.A. before too long.” But any playfulness had washed out of his voice.
What the hell did that mean? Why bring up L.A. when they were supposed to be going to the Brookville farmer’s market right now, except he was here helping people on his day off, obviously to make her feel especially like a scoundrel—and to avoid her, it was feeling more and more like. Preston did so much real good for everyone but himself, he didn’t deserve her messing up his already complicated life, and here she was ruining his rare chance to do something fun, chasing him back to work.
She shot the book back into place with a thunk, and he gave an automatic little shh .
“Let’s just go,” she almost hissed. Fucking fine, she’d drag him out of here, make him spend an hour or two relaxing and eating artisanal whatever they were supposed to be trying today, because she’d learned early she had to grab what she wanted when she could. “You take care of everyone,” she told him, seizing hold of his wrist to lead him toward the stairs. “But sometimes you gotta take what you want.”
He twisted under her grip, mouth set as if he’d made his choice, and she thought he was going to pull away—but he spun her around by the hand and pinned it against the shelf suddenly at her back. “What I want?” His voice had dropped an octave, almost strangled by need, and his eyes were on her now, so near and laden with electric desire. “Too much.”
“Good.” She crashed her lips against his.
His hand cradled her head, drawing the kiss deeper at once. She was drowning in it, under Preston’s hot, unyielding mouth. Her free hand splayed against his chest, wanting to feel him there, the solidness of him, not another daydream.
His hungry kiss wrote itself over her jaw, her neck, the softness under her ear. She shivered so hard she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to stand without the bookcase supporting her, without Preston holding on to her.
She almost laughed with the joy of it. “Isn’t this against library rules?”
He drew a long shuddering breath, breaking the seal of his mouth from the curve where her neck met her shoulder. His voice sounded as if it’d been dredged up through an ocean of temptation, as he grazed his nose along her jawline. “Is that you asking to stop?”
In answer, she lashed an arm around him and kissed his cheek, his neck, and he wasn’t wearing a tie today but his shirt collar was in the way so instead she drew his earlobe between her teeth and flicked it with her tongue.
Preston punctuated his ragged inhalation with a “ Thank fuck ” and drove his mouth back over her skin, slower this time. Intentional. He muttered against her shoulder, “It would be, if I was working.” His fingers twined through her hair, gently angling her head back so he could follow the curve of her collarbone. “I’m not working, I’m providing a favor.”
He sure as hell was. His tongue flirted closer to her neckline and the swell of her breast. When she gasped again, louder, throatier, he lifted his kiss to her mouth, quelling it. “We have to be quiet, though.” He tugged her lip between his teeth, and he had her utterly—pinned here at her mouth, her hair at her nape, her hand under his against the books. All her anxiety about him putting distance between them evaporated beneath the burn of his gaze as he released her lip and let his hand drop to clutch her hip’s curve. His fingers ran down where her skirt parted into a long slit, then traced back up, slowly, slowly, playing over her skin. His palm opened and seared heat up her thigh. A desperate sigh broke from her throat. Preston bent his head, mouth brushing her ear. “ Shh . Or I have to stop.”
That would be a tragedy. A catastrophe. A disaster of such magnitude not seen in this state since the great earthquake of aught six. So she kept her voice low, tucked between the close shelves with soft sunlight brushing through them from a distant window. “Don’t you dare.”
His warm huff of a smothered laugh only ratcheted up the rising temperature of her blood. His hand shifted almost imperceptibly higher. “This all right?”
“Yes.” Their words lived on a shared breath as he kissed her and cupped her ass. He held her as if he couldn’t get enough—of her, not some nameless bar hookup, not a persona she’d crafted with some still-promised prize to entice—and she kissed him back hard, silently declaring that she might have been a thief, but all she wanted was this stolen moment with him.
He released her hand, but she hung on to the bookshelf for dear life, since he’d only done that because apparently he really couldn’t get enough of her. His hand spread wide and scorching over her ribcage, fingertips prickling so close to where she wanted his touch.
“Okay?” he whispered.
She fought to answer, to get him to keep going, to not shout the word and make him take his hands off her. “Yes,” she rasped.
He slid his hand over her breast, and his breath stuttered. He crushed his mouth again to the side of her neck, stifling whatever sound clawed in his throat like a wild animal. His fingers kneaded gently over the fabric of her dress. His thumb caught across her tightening nipple.
She sucked a breath, and god, she had been so right about Preston, nothing escaped his notice, because he did it again, experimentally, steering his thumb around in little circles until finding the teasing pressure that set her panting. She tugged at Preston’s shirt and planted kisses down his neck, stirred her tongue over the muscles joining it to his shoulder. His fingers flexed everywhere on her.
His hair was falling forward, his glasses foggy, but the undiluted longing in his eyes was plain and the best thing Harmony had ever seen. “You still want more?” he asked.
“ Yes .”
His fingers trailed like meteors across her thigh. “I fucking love this dress.” Up, up, his hand traveled over the softest inner part of her leg to her trembling center.
He groaned her name against her throat, a hushed, aching “ Harmony ” that lit her up inside even as his voice rumbled through her, setting off a darker urge deep within. And he stoked it, fingertips brushing over thin silk, that touch more than enough as his attention focused on her every shiver and swallowed moan became a relentless chase to something she was sure you were not supposed to do in the library, employed there or not. He braced himself against the bookcase and returned his mouth to where he’d made her shudder, at her neck. The heel of his hand pressed hard against her pelvic bone, and she ground herself on him, rubbing his hand into her clit.
His talented fingers stole under the damp fabric as he bent toward her breast, scraped his teeth over dress and nipple, and that was all it took—one slide sent the sparks inside her shooting into fireworks, blazing through her core, along her skin, down to her toes. His kiss swallowed her cry.
They were both drawing harsh breaths like the scrape of turning pages when he dropped his forehead to hers. His hand retreated, and he was kissing her again, long slow swipes of his mouth upon her throat, as if trying to drink even more of her in.
She hooked her fingers into his belt loops. “Preston.”
“ Shhh—iiiit .” His hushing turned to a half-grunted oath as she towed him against her. His firm chest to her breasts, his hips fitting against her belly. His hardness there ignited something different in her, something hungry to know that this, between them, was real. Preston swallowed, throat bobbing. He murmured, a bit hoarse, “There’s only so much we can get away with, I think.”
She nodded and nipped at his jaw. “You’d really better prep that book club meeting. Or someone might come looking for you up here. And that’s my move.”
“It’s a good move. I like your moves.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “And I do really want to go out with you. To the market. For work.” He seemed to catch himself starting to ramble.
It was endearing, really, how he didn’t immediately suggest taking this to her hotel. She was willing to stick to the schedule with him, now she knew how much that kind of thing mattered to Preston. She smudged away the lipstick on his cheek with her thumb. “I think we can call this a date, at this point.” Not just a hookup, not for a job, which was admittedly unfamiliar territory for Harmony. But what with the evidence of how they’d both put pleasure before business all over Preston’s hand that he was wiping on his jeans. He looked debauched, with more of her kisses smeared on his mangled collar, hair tousled, glasses a little askew.
“Right.” He smiled, a flash of wonder in his eyes, though some of that tension from before was back around his mouth. That might only have been the other situation going on with the front of his jeans. He straightened his glasses. “Just—give me a minute, to, um, calm down. I’ll find you once the club’s set to go.”
Harmony nodded again, fixing his shirt to hide the remaining traces of her lipstick, already planning when she could take care of him properly. Something had flared inside her ribcage at that last tender kiss. Preston took such care. She ran her fingers through her hair and adjusted her dress before heading down.
That was a tough act to follow, but the rest of their afternoon together was nearly as fun. The cheese and wine tasted incredible under the sunshine. She kept catching Preston’s intense gaze on her, and every time she’d stick out her tongue or stuff a morsel in her mouth and chew obnoxiously until he rolled his eyes. When he pulled a face at the mess she made of some local honey drizzled over her Parmesan and prosciutto, she licked it off her fingers and enjoyed the blush, almost as red as his wine, that swept up his face. “You’re shameless.”
“And you’re one to talk.”
The blush deepened.
Preston suggested she come with him to pick up Lacey so they could stay a little longer, and they wandered through the market, tasting free samples of tangerines and the first fresh strawberries and talking, somehow getting into a competition to see who could name the most books with a fruit in the title. Preston had an advantage, knowing so many children’s books.
“ Blueberries for Sal .”
“ The Grapes of Wrath .”
“ James and the Giant Peach .”
“ The House on Mango Street .”
“ Where the Watermelons Grow .”
“ Huckleberry Finn .”
“That’s cheating.”
“ Olive Kitteridge .”
“Harmony.”
“Well, that’s not even a fruit.” She smirked. “I win.”
A local folk band was set up at the front of the food stalls, and Harmony started dancing along, earning a scowl from Preston—standing in the back of the gathered crowd, because of course he was polite about his height—that she knew now to read as a suppressed smile, another secret between them like the one they’d shared among the bookcases.
One-night stands had their advantages, but it was nice to wonder, as Preston bought a box of those strawberries for Lacey, when Harmony might get him alone again. Because she’d only gotten a taste, and damn, forget the piano, the guy was talented at plenty. His hands . His long, strong fingers. She wanted to know how they’d feel inside her; she wanted all of him. She wanted to give him his too much and more, once she got him somewhere they didn’t have to worry about being noisy or interrupted.
But otherwise she couldn’t really ask for more, for a more perfect day—outside of the one when she finally brought Travis Weaver to his knees. They picked up Lacey, loading her bike in Furiosa’s trunk with Preston’s and putting the top up so it wouldn’t be too loud or windy for her. And Harmony didn’t mind at all driving away alone at the end of it, back to her hotel under the sharp golden slant of the late afternoon sun.