6. Elliot
ELLIOT
To say I was looking forward to tonight would be an understatement.
I hadn’t seen Harper since our not-so-accidental hallway run-in.
She had finally replied to my barrage of texts, which I immediately regretted sending.
That wasn’t me. I don’t lose my cool or vomit strings of digital desperation into a chat window…
I think I’ve been spending way too much time with Theo.
But since that embarrassing exchange, she’d gone radio silent.
I held back on the daily messages and gifts I wanted to send her, hoping to seal the deal tonight.
If all went well, I’d propose an arrangement where we both got what we wanted: she could pretend it was strictly professional, and I could hopefully fuck her out of my system and get back to the way things had been.
Or… I could follow Julian’s lead. The jury was still out on that one.
He approached Lucy the way a corporate raider approaches a hostile takeover, but Lucy wasn’t a corporate asset.
She was different from us, and she had rejected his emotionless proposal for marriage and reproduction.
Yet, somehow, he’d convinced her to show up tonight, another train wreck I was eager to watch.
I’d given my driver Harper’s address without a second thought, only to sit up straighter when I noticed where the car was turning. I tapped the glass partition, asking if we were in the right spot. The driver reassured me that we were minutes away.
Who the fuck is she fucking?
I’d read the file Rowan had on her, and nothing in it explained why she lived in the Gold Coast. The file was a little light, so he might have missed something, but that didn’t sound like Rowan….
We crossed into the Gold Coast, a neighbourhood built on old money, family legacy, and luxury.
The driver slowed, pulling into a section of historic townhouses on a quiet, tree-lined street.
We pulled up to a five-story, fully restored limestone townhouse with towering arched windows, black iron railings, and window boxes filled with white flowers.
What the...
My driver had my door open at the same time the front door of the townhouse swung wide. A man in his mid-to-late fifties stood waiting for me to approach. Shit. Is he the owner? What kind of arrangement do they have? Is this why she insists our relationship is strictly professional? Fuck...
But before I could say anything, I saw her.
She glided down the wide hallway, her cream silk gown billowing behind her as she walked. The older man assisted her into a matching wool coat as she grabbed her clutch and met me at the door. I stood frozen at the bottom of the stone steps, watching the way she moved.
Ice-blue eyes finally met mine, and she gave me a dazzling smile, her matte red lips pulling my focus.
“Mr. Vale,” she said smoothly as she stepped onto the front step.
Fuck. My last name from her mouth. I was beginning to think she knew exactly what that did to me and was using it as a weapon. Which, honestly, fair.
“Ms. Lane,” I replied, offering my hand.
She looked at it for a beat, as if she were deciding whether touching me was worth the risk. Then her fingers slid into mine, and I felt it, that same annoying, inconvenient pull low in my stomach.
The man at the door cleared his throat. “Enjoy your evening, Miss Harper.”
Miss Harper?
Not Ms. Lane. Not ma’am. Not even Harper.
Miss Harper. huh…
“Thank you, Thomas,” she said warmly, and there was something in her voice I hadn’t heard at Northwell. Something softer. Familiar.
I looked between them, trying to sort out what I was seeing. Thomas was well-dressed, but not wealthy. Staff, maybe. House manager. Butler? Did people still have butlers, or was that a term only used in movies and by men who wore velvet slippers unironically?
Harper released my hand and walked toward the car as if she hadn’t just stepped out of a fucking old-money fantasy designed to confuse me.
I moved beside her, placing my hand lightly on the small of her back as she stepped into the car. She didn’t react to my touch, and I realized that everything about her was controlled.
Which only made me want to ruin it.
When I slid in beside her, the car suddenly felt smaller than it had five minutes ago. Her perfume filled the space, something clean and expensive, not sweet or obnoxious. The kind of scent that didn’t ask to be noticed but made forgetting it impossible.
The door shut, locking us inside the quiet. I looked at her, and she looked out the window. I waited until I couldn’t any longer…
“Are we not going to talk about it?” I asked.
Her lips twitched, but her eyes remained out the window. “Talk about what?”
I laughed under my breath. “The townhouse. Thomas. The fact that you live in a neighborhood where people probably use the word ancestral lineage without irony.”
She turned her head slowly, and the streetlights caught in her eyes. “Do you have something against old houses?”
“No. I have something against mysteries.”
Her eyes twinkled when she said, “That must make your life very difficult.”
“You have no idea.”
She faced forward again, but I caught the hint of a smile.
I shifted toward her. “So?”
“So?” she parroted.
“Who is Thomas?” I don’t know why it was bothering me so much, but it was, and I didn’t like it.
Her brows rose. “You’re very curious tonight.”
“I am always curious.”
“No,” she said, glancing at me. “You’re usually invasive and charming enough that people mistake it for curiosity.”
I blinked and then laughed, because what the hell else could I do?
“Careful, Harper. You make it sound like you’ve been studying me.”
“I have. It’s my job,” she replied with a tight smile that I was beginning to hate.
“Right.” I leaned back, watching her. “And what has your professional assessment revealed?”
“That you are very good at being liked,” she answered quickly.
“That sounds like a compliment,” I said with my most charming grin.
“It wasn’t,” she said, eyes back outside.
I smiled. “You wound me.”
“I doubt that.”
There it was again, that measured, elegant dismissal that should have irritated me more than it turned me on. But somehow with her… it did both.
The car passed under a canopy of bare trees, the city glowing beyond the glass. Harper sat beside me as if she had been born for cars like this, gowns like that, nights like this. No wide-eyed appreciation or nervous fidgeting. She wasn’t impressed.
That should have bothered me. It didn’t. It made me want to know what would impress her.
“So,” I said, letting my gaze move over her. “You own several gowns?”
Her mouth curved. “That is what I said.”
“And this was just sitting in your closet?”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Where else would my dresses be?”
“Do all PR managers have emergency silk gowns?” I questioned.
“Only the good ones,” she replied, but I caught a hint of a smile.
I huffed a laugh and looked out the window before I did something stupid, like tell her she looked like my every dream come true. Which would be true, and too much… too honest.
The hotel came into view, lit from the outside in warm gold.
Cars lined the entrance, drivers and valets moving with practiced efficiency.
Flashes popped near the doors, not a true press line, but enough cameras that every arrival became a statement.
That was why we were here. Public image, and not because I wanted to walk into a ballroom with Harper Lane on my arm and see who noticed.
The car stopped, but before the driver could open the door, Harper turned toward me. “One thing.”
I glanced at her. “Already giving orders?”
“I’m serious,” she said.
“That’s becoming clear.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Tonight, I’m here in a professional capacity.”
“Of course.” I grinned.
“That means I need to observe the group. Not just stand beside you while you flirt with donors and make vague promises about corporate responsibility.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “Vague promises? I have been wounded twice now.”
“Elliot.”
My first name from her mouth was worse than my last. Less formal and way more dangerous.
I leaned closer. “Yes, Harper?”
Her gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second.
Got you.
Then she looked back into my eyes. “Don’t make my job harder.”
I smiled slowly. “I would never.”
She stared at me, and I widened my smile.
She sighed. “That is exactly the face of a man who is going to make my job harder.”
The door opened, saving me from saying something deeply inappropriate. I stepped out first, adjusted my jacket, and turned to offer her my hand. For a second, she only looked at it. Like we were back on her front steps. Like accepting my hand meant accepting more than assistance out of a car.
Then she placed her hand in mine, and the cameras reacted immediately. Harper emerged from the car in cream silk and cool composure, and the world did what it should have done.
It looked. Because who wouldn’t…
I had been photographed with enough women to know the difference between attention and interest. Most dates got a glance; a few got headlines. Harper got silence first. That tiny pause of awe before noise resumed, all recalibrating, asking one question…
Who is she?
A question I would love to know the answer to.
I tucked her hand into the crook of my arm and leaned down, my mouth near her ear. “You’re causing a scene.”
Her smile didn’t change. “I’m only walking.”
“Exactly.”
Her fingers tightened slightly against my arm, but she didn’t look at me. “Behave.”
Unlikely…
We moved through the entrance, past the cameras, past the watchful eyes, and into the hotel lobby where everything smelled like money, and floral arrangements no one was supposed to notice cost more than a mortgage payment.