“Noted.”
Unfortunately, I couldn’t argue with her logic. After all, it was the same reasoning that had led me to tackle the human-trafficking doctor alone.
“What about Mae?” I asked. She might be a lot older, but she was also a lot more experienced with guns and a host of other useful things.
“Mom’s an even worse option. You know that. She’d pretend it was no big deal, then redouble her efforts to background check and keep tabs on every man I ever pass within ten feet of. I can’t cope with any more.”
Harper was exaggerating, but I could see her point.
She parked the car outside a basic bungalow-style home with a front yard that was more concrete than grass. It seemed the man we were going to see spent his time and money on his car and not much else.
“It’ll be fine. Teddy probably won’t even be here. But grab your Taser just in case.”
“Teddy?” I muttered, rummaging through my bag for the Taser and tucking it into my waistband.
I thought wistfully of the Fox or the library, then climbed out of the car still grumbling. It wasn’t fair that I got all the blame for being a danger magnet when half the time I was dragged unwillingly into it by the likes of Etta and now Harper. Somehow they managed to never get hurt though.
We walked up the concrete driveway. Weeds growing through the cracks had been sprayed but not removed, and the timber front steps were in need of replacing. Harper nimbly skipped the third one and rang the doorbell.
A well-built man opened the door, and I amended my assessment to thinking he spent all his time and money on his car and his muscles. His petulant expression as he addressed Harper seemed at odds with his physique.
“I hope you’re here to fix my car. It’s been acting funny since last night.”
“Oh? Maybe it objects to violence against women,” Harper said, shoving past him into the house.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
While he was distracted by her brazen move, I snuck inside too.
Harper was speeding toward a door on the other side of the living room.
Teddy trailed after her, looking more bewildered than angry so far. “Hey, you can’t just barge in here and waltz around my house.”
“It really seems like I can since I just did,” Harper pointed out. She opened the door she’d reached and stepped inside what seemed to be the laundry. “Hey, Iz, can you help me carry some things?”
I skirted around Teddy, keeping as much distance as possible, and joined Harper where she was digging through a pile of washing. She wasn’t being neat about it either. Jocks and socks were flying everywhere.
“Ah, there you are,” she said happily to a pair of blue overalls she’d uncovered from the pile.
“Seriously?” I hissed at her. “We’re doing this for overalls?”
She threw them at me and kept digging. “Do you know how hard it is to find overalls that fit me? No one likes a saggy-crotched mechanic.”
Thankfully, Teddy was keeping his distance. For now. Harper thrust a few more pairs of overalls at me and then grabbed a toolbox off the bench. I held out my hand resignedly to take it from her and almost dropped the darn thing when she released its weight. The blue metal box must’ve been lined with lead and filled with rocks, but she’d picked it up as if it weighed nothing.
Teddy scowled at the new state of his laundry room. “You better be cleaning up that mess you made.”
“I’m a mechanic, not a cleaner, remember?” Harper said sweetly. She brushed past him and into another room.
I followed after her, trying to appear cool and confident and like the toolbox was a handy weapon rather than something I was worried about dropping on my toes. How was I supposed to get to my Taser carrying all this stuff?
Harper had led us into a bedroom this time.
Teddy didn’t look happy about it. “What the hell do you want in here?”
She didn’t bother to answer. Just slid open a drawer on the nightstand, pulled out a book, and plonked it on top of the armful of overalls I was holding. The title read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Harper saw me eyeing it. “If you want a book about Zen or motorcycles, don’t read that one.”
Huh?
She went to the kitchen next and opened the fridge.
Teddy was looking pissed now, his jaw set as he tracked Harper’s movements, but I thought it was a positive sign he had his arms crossed. Not the posture you’d choose if you were considering taking a swing at someone.
Harper was either oblivious or superb at pretending to be. I was betting on the latter. She grasped a jar of jalapeños and held them up with a flourish. Grilled cheese and jalapeño sandwiches was a Stiles family favorite, and it was an effort not to think about the times I’d made them for Connor and myself late at night.
“Right,” said Harper. “I think that’s all my stuff. Thanks for your cooperation, Teddy. Let’s hope our paths never cross again.”
Teddy moved to block the front door, his arms still folded but his posture threatening. “You’re not leaving until you fix my car. That’s your job, isn’t it? And you owe me something for all those dinners.”
Harper added the jalapeños to my teetering armload with a nose wrinkle of apology, then marched over to face him. “You really want to trust me with your keys just now? You go right ahead and give them to me, honey.”
“I’ll supervise,” he sneered.
“You sure about that? Because I’m just as good at sabotaging cars as I am at fixing them.”
Teddy’s cheeks went pink.
“You’ll have to find someone else to service your parts now, dickhead. Think about that before you lay your hands on anyone in anger again.”
I held my breath, releasing it only when Teddy shuffled aside, his face mulish.
Harper waited for me to exit first, then shut the door with a bang.
“That went well,” she said cheerfully.
I supposed her assessment was accurate enough. At least no one had gotten physically aggressive.
But her grin was a little too victorious to be explained by that alone. “Lucky for us he’s too stupid to have connected the dots between his temper tantrum, his mechanic ex-girlfriend, and his car acting funny.”
I gaped at her. She might have mentioned she’d sabotaged his car in revenge before dragging me in there.
Harper misread the reason for my disbelief. “I know, it hurt me to tamper with that beautiful Lexus, but he was such a jackass of a man I couldn’t help myself. Besides, it’ll be going to waste without me around. I swear a woman pushing a stroller overtook us once while he was driving.”
“You don’t need to justify it to me,” I said. At least not the tampering with his car part. Since we’d gotten out alive, I decided to let the other part go as well. “But would you mind carrying this toolbox?” The whole left side of my body was starting to ache.
“Oh, sorry.” She took it from me like it weighed nothing at all. “Guess I should’ve grabbed that last.”
We loaded Harper’s things into her borrowed Mustang, and she offered to take me out to dinner by way of thanks.
I was hungry but in no state to be out in public, so I requested takeout instead.
“What kind of takeout?” Harper asked.
I spotted a lurid red KFC sign up ahead. “That’ll do.”
She snagged a single drumstick for herself and handed me the delicious-smelling paper bag. “When I offered to buy your dinner, deep-fried chicken wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I don’t suppose it’ll be enough to buy your silence about the whole Teddy thing, will it?”
To not say anything to Connor or Mae, she meant.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Hiding my plans from Connor had caused a lot of trouble, but then this was in a very different league and wasn’t my story to tell. Nor was there likely to be any further danger as a result of it.
“My silence comes cheap,” I told Harper. “So long as you promise yo
u won’t go near him again. And will call me straight away if he puts two and two together about his car problems and threatens you.”
She sighed at my final stipulation. “I suppose that’s better than what either of my family members would’ve demanded from me. You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“And you’ve got yourself some crotch-fitting overalls.”
She grinned. “Good point. I should be thanking you. Thank you.”
I pulled out the box of assorted deep-fried chicken and saluted her with it. “Glad to help.”
Harper waited until I’d bitten into a delectable, crispy wing before speaking again. “On that subject, are you sure I can’t be of help with you and Connor stuff? I know him pretty well, in all his frustrating glory.”
My disastrous conversation with him came rushing back, and my bribery chicken suddenly seemed less delectable.
Since I didn’t lose my appetite easily, I was forced to consider her offer. I needed to keep my cover intact given there was a high chance Mae or Etta would tell Harper about my supposed relationship with Richard Knightley at some point. But maybe I could ask my questions in such a way that it seemed as if I was trying to understand what had happened between Connor and I—rather than trying to win him back less than twenty-four hours after my “boyfriend” died. I’d been surprised today by the strength of his reaction, the depth of his pain. Perhaps if I understood more of what he’d been through, I could work out a better way to help him past it.
I nibbled half-heartedly at the chicken wing to keep up appearances, then asked, “Can you tell me more about the whole Sophia thing? I mean, not the details of her death but what Connor went through.”
Harper blew out a breath. “Crap. I guess I did offer.” She squared her shoulders. “It was horrible. He was devastated over it and almost destroyed himself and his company trying to hunt down her killer. He stopped sleeping, Maria could barely convince him to eat, and he pulled so much of his security team off their normal duties to help him search that he lost a bunch of big clients.”
“Oh.” It was hard to imagine the strong, self-assured, and seemingly invincible man I knew broken. I felt like an insensitive oaf, and my heart ached all over again for him.
“After watching him spiral for months, me, Mom, Maria, and a few guys from his company held an intervention. Amazingly, he pulled himself together. Started looking after himself. Got his company up and running again. And stopped searching… I think he had to quit cold turkey, or he wouldn’t have been able to quit at all.”
I let out a shuddery breath, not unlike Harper’s a moment ago. “Wow.”
Harper’s next words flipped my world on its axis again. “After that, his already overprotective nature got even more over the top, and he hasn’t really dated anyone since, until you.”
Until me.
He’d taken a chance on me. The same way I’d chosen to risk my heart with him after a long dry period following my divorce. Mae had told me the first time I met her that he hadn’t brought a girl home in ages, but I’d figured she was mostly jesting. I’d had no idea what a big deal it was. Sure, I’d been honored he’d opened up to me, dropped some of his walls, but not even that had I understood the significance of.
My chicken lay forgotten. The grease congealing against the cardboard. I no longer had it in me to keep up appearances.
It was all I could do to keep from crying.
“Look,” Harper said, “I don’t know the details of your falling out, and he’s frustratingly controlling and overprotective as a brother, so I can hardly imagine how annoying he must be as a boyfriend. But… if you could work it out, well, I think you’re good for him. And underneath the annoying, I think he’s a pretty amazing person. The best kind.”
“Thank you.” I managed to squeeze the words past the lump in my throat. It meant a lot that she thought I was good for him. For all their differences, she knew her brother well. And loved him deeply.
Like I did.
I had some serious contemplation to do.
Harper grabbed my hand and pressed it in her callused palm. “No problem.”
We drove without speaking for a while. Was it selfish to pursue Connor? To force him to face the scars left behind by that tragedy? I didn’t know. I was pretty sure part of him wished I would slink out of his life, never to be seen again. But that was his fear talking. Fear of something that would probably never happen. Surely that wasn’t a good reason to throw away our relationship?
Harper seemed to want me to push. To help him through it. If I could. So had Mae until I’d told her about Rick. And they’d both witnessed every stage of the Sophia ordeal.
I spoke without thinking. “You don’t happen to have a photo of her, do you?”
Harper looked at me with pity in her eyes. “Yeah… You don’t want to see that.”
Oh. Right then.
She kindly changed the subject. “So, there might be one positive side to this whole Teddy fiasco. I’m ready to admit I need to rethink my dating strategy.”
“Are you serious? That’s great.”
“Yeah, I figure maybe I’ll look for a nice guy with good qualities irrespective of the car he drives, and I’ll start buying lottery tickets in the hopes I might be able to afford my own cool car someday.”
“Sounds sensible.” Well, not so much the lottery ticket part, but it was a big step in the right direction.
She screwed up her face in mock exasperation. “Ugh, you’re such a spoilsport. I don’t want to be sensible. I just want to find someone nice. So I was wondering, do you think you could set me up with that doctor friend of yours?”
She was talking about Levi, a Taste Society doctor and friend of mine she’d glimpsed when he’d come to give antidotes to six human-trafficking victims I’d been fighting to save. Harper had been there to save me, a feat she’d accomplished very handily with the help of a giant wrench.
I studied her. “You know he drives a medical van, right?”
Her shoulders wilted a little. “I know.”
“Okay. I’ll scope him out for you.”
Despite the risks involved in dealing with Harper’s violent ex and her scary driving, she dropped me back to my apartment in one piece, and I finally had some time to myself.
The problem was, I no longer wanted it. I wanted to be with Connor.
But as enlightening as my conversation with Harper had been about what Connor had gone through, it hadn’t given me any bright ideas on how to persuade him I was worth the risk of going through that again. So rather than do anything about my own love life, I texted Levi and arranged to meet up the next day, then went to bed to catch up on some sleep.
Connor
I spent a few hours at the office before noticing my presence was putting everyone on edge. My team knew me well enough to sense my bad mood whether I showed it or not.
Seeing as team morale was critical to efficiency, and none of them were responsible for my ill temper, I left for the seclusion of my home office. I had enough reports to review to swallow all my time between now and next week, so it was better to have fewer interruptions anyway.
When I’d first started dating Izzy, a number of my employees had commented good-naturedly on my improved mood. Since the breakup, only Nick had been bold enough to ask if something was wrong.
Yes. Best to be alone right now.
The dog, who still didn’t have a name, raced up to me, nails slipping and sliding and scratching against the timber floorboards. She wriggled with enthusiasm, pressing herself against my legs and leaving a fresh coating of fur all over them. At this rate, I’d never be free of fur again. Even after I’d rehomed her.
Mom was in the kitchen, and I could tell she wanted to talk as soon as I saw her face. She was about to be disappointed.
She set aside whatever she’d been heating on the stove. “I’ve been thinking about why you and Izzy broke up.”
“Then please stop.”
She crossed her arms. “No. This
is serious. And you will hear me out, Connor Emmett Stiles.”
Every now and then Mom channeled the authority of a drill sergeant. This was one of those times.
I leaned against the counter in resignation.
“You know how important it is to me that you don’t let your life be adversely shaped by your father’s passing, and I know what happened with Sophia was incredibly painful, but I think you’re making a mistake. One you may deeply regret.”
“Mom—”
“I’m not finished. Now I’m sure you haven’t told me the full story, but it seems to me that you broke up with Izzy for some of the same qualities you admired her for in the first place. Because she’s good-hearted, selfless, and prepared to stand up for what’s right. Those are excellent qualities to have in a partner. You know that as well as I do. And if you reject her because of the risk those qualities bring, where does that leave you? Are you going to marry someone who’s too self-centered or weak-minded to put themselves in danger? We both know that would be a terrible match for you, and you’ve never been attracted to that sort of person anyway. I’m worried if you can’t move past this, if you allow your fear to make this decision, you’re going to end up alone.”
“Then I’ll end up alone,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work that needs doing.”
I strode to my home office and shut the door with enough finality to ensure Mom didn’t follow. Then noticed the dog had snuck in with me. If I opened the door to kick her out, Mom might take it as an invitation to continue her lecture.
I sank into my ergonomic chair and turned on the computer. The dog settled down on my feet—something she’d taken to doing whenever I was home.
Oh well, my pants were already covered in fur anyway.
I stared at the login screen for much longer than it warranted. Damn Mom and her unwanted wisdom.
The monitor went to sleep.
Instead of waking it up, I pulled out the ziplock bag Izzy had given me and passed one of the smelly treats to the dog.
8
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