by Marina Adair
Nora crossed her arms, then made a big show of playing it cool. “Deal. But if I’m paying half the rental fee, then I want all the space for half the time. I’ll take the second day.”
“But Sunday is the bigge—” Ida whipped her head around. “That’s my bunion!”
“And this is a community affair,” Peggy reminded everyone. “And as the tenant of booth nine, I would love to share my space too. For both days.”
“That’s nice of you, Peggy,” Harper said and gave Adam a wink.
The older woman waved a self-conscious hand, the impact of Harper’s attention and words making her flush. Adam understood the affliction well. “I’m showing kids how to make organic dog bones at home,” Peggy said, “and selling some critter couture, so I won’t need all of the table.”
Ida’s lips went into a thin line, before offering Nora a tight smile. “Sunday at a different booth sounds lovely,” Ida said, her face folding in on itself as if she’d eaten a lemon.
“Great,” Adam said, his eyes locked on Harper’s. “And if anyone else would like to share or swap, just let McGuire here know. He will be filing all the papers and handing out booth numbers.”
Adam looked at McGuire, who stepped forward. “After you get your number, Seth here will show you where your tent is located on the map, and where you can load and unload your stuff tomorrow morning.”
“Any questions?” Adam asked.
“Yeah, you going to be putting up that big ladder tomorrow?” Nora asked. “If so, I’ll bring my camera so I can get a picture for the ladies in my extreme couponing club. A snap of your backside is worth three triple-points coupons.”
Blaming the warm weather for the heat climbing up his neck, Adam looked back at his guys, and he knew what he had to do, finally understanding the right way to lead. “This year we’re switching it up a little too. McGuire and Seth will be running the ladder demo and have the honor of picking out our little firefighters. So make sure you come by, and have your cameras ready.”
He watched as his guys took control and started doling out booth numbers. It didn’t take long for the one vendor he’d been waiting to talk with to make her way forward, and when she did it was as if the air suddenly turned electric. And his pulse picked up a few notches, because seeing her in that pretty summer dress with her hair piled high in some fancy knot on top of her head had him thanking God that today was his last day at the station. Come tomorrow, he’d have the next three off. Granted, he’d be working Beat the Heat, but he’d be working it with Harper. Exploring more of those benefits they seemed to be enjoying so much.
“That was a very lieutenantly thing you just did,” Harper said sweetly, handing him her registration form and one hell of a punch to the gut. Because her dress wasn’t just pretty, it was incredible. Tight where it should be tight, flowy enough to have his mind wandering, and the same color as her eyes. Electric blue.
And don’t even get him started on the heels. Black and high and designed to make men think about sex. The woman, though? She was designed to make men think about other things. Things that made his chest feel warm and full.
Over the past few weeks she’d somewhat muffled her quirky side to make room for her sexy and flirty one. The funny thing was, he liked both sides. Hell, he liked pretty much everything about Harper.
“Working with the kids had a big impact on me. I figure it might have the same on them,” he said, wanting to kiss her. He could tell she was open to the idea because her eyes were dilated and he could see her pulse beat at the base of her neck. So he did.
Right there in front of jury and witness. And Nora Kincaid, who had her camera phone aimed on them snapping away. So he kept it PG, okay maybe PG-13 since it lingered long enough to leave a mark—and elicit a handful of hoots and catcalls.
“What was that for?” Harper breathed when he pulled back.
“For walking in like a ray of sunshine and making my day brighter,” he said, and had this been any other guy with any other woman, Adam would have gagged. But this was Harper, and he meant every word of it.
“Thanks to you it’s an amazing day, so I thought I’d share the excitement,” she said, looking up at him with hero worship in her eyes. He tried to harden himself against the way it felt to be looked at like that by a woman like her. But one blink of those big doe eyes and a different part altogether hardened. “Chantel called yesterday.”
“And?” He didn’t have to ask what was said—he could see the genuine pride in her eyes, and good for her. She deserved to be recognized. She was smart, talented, and one hell of a special woman.
“And she loved the photos so much that she’s bringing her boss here to see the shop on Monday. To meet me and you. And hopefully sign a contract.”
“Harper”—he pulled her in for a hug—“that’s great. And well deserved.”
She looked up. “Then you’ll come on Monday? To the shop?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.” In fact, if they stuck to the agreed-upon plan, it would be their last day together as a couple. Something that should have instilled relief, not more confusion. “We should celebrate tonight.”
She looked at his uniform. “Aren’t you working?”
Adam gripped the back of his neck and groaned. This was one of the reasons he didn’t do relationships. He’d seen too many guys try to balance the job and family, missing anniversaries, first steps, all the important stuff in order to handle all the life-and-death stuff. The other reason, if he was being honest, was fear of failing.
Not himself, but others.
Adam knew that everyone experienced failure. It was a part of life. Only Adam never failed the small stuff. It was the moments that really mattered, the times someone was counting on him to pull through, the big shit that he always managed to drop the proverbial ball.
He’d done it with his family, with his team . . . with Trent. Even with every warning sign waving clear as fucking day, he’d still managed to make the wrong call.
Trent was as hotheaded and gung ho as Adam, but Adam should have used more caution. He shouldn’t have said they had this fire locked down when he was in no position to make such a claim, and he shouldn’t have spoken up without thinking through the consequences. The regret cut deep.
A warm hand slid into his and Harper gave him a little squeeze. “That’s okay, you can buy me a chocolate-dipped banana at the festival. Tonight, I’m helping Emerson with the food for tomorrow, which means I get to stuff my face with really yummy food that I didn’t have to cook. Then Shay is stopping by to help organize the decorations and help me brush up on my face-painting techniques.”
“Which means they get to drink wine while you bust out the Halloween paints?”
“Pretty much.”
Adam smiled. “Have I told you thank you for saving my ass?”
“Several times,” she said. “But you can tell me again, Saturday at the fair. When you let me paint your face.”
“Like unicorns and bunnies on my cheek?”
“Or a super manly mask. Like Robocop or the Black Flame. Anything but a zombie or skeleton, which the older boys ask for. Last year a group of them snuck into the girls’ dance team tent and scared them so bad that they couldn’t perform. So as the newbie running the face-painting booth, I was asked to come up with new ideas this year,” she said. “If the older boys see you going superhero and not villain, they might do it too.”
“First off Robocop is a cop, and that’s lame. Black Flame? A super villain. And a girl.” Harper gave a little shrug as if she knew that and was teasing him. “How do I know you’re not just saying you’ll paint something super manly, then paint a bunny on my cheek? Because I’ve only ever seen bunnies at these things.”
“Because I’ve never done the face-painting booth. But now that I am, there’s going to be some new manly designs to choose from. In fact, if you wanted, I could paint your face so that you’d look like Hephaestus, because I’m that good.”
“The god of fire?”
he asked, impressed he remembered. “What, did you go to face-painting school at the National Academy of Arts?”
“Better.”
He looked down and found their hands swinging. The Five-Alarm Casanova was standing in the park, with his girlfriend, swinging hands—and liking it.
Wasn’t that unexpected?
“I got my training in body painting”—Harper leaned in, good and close, until he could feel her dress brush his thighs, her lips skate over the ridge of his ear—“from a legend in the field. And, yes, bunnies were my specialty, but not the fuzzy kind that hop on all fours. I painted on the bodies of Hugh Hefner’s Bunnies.”
Adam swallowed. “You worked at the Playboy Mansion?”
“How do you think I know so much about lingerie?”
With a final squeeze to his hand that said she was dead serious, Harper took her booth number off the table and walked toward the Fashion Flower, proving with that practiced sway that she was all about the unexpected.
That night Harper and Shay sat in Emerson’s apartment, picking out face-painting masks while testing a nice selection of the following day’s menu items. They had an even better selection of wine.
“How about I make you a fairy?” Harper asked, dipping her brush into the aqua glitter paint.
“Do you want dessert?” Emerson asked, snatching the tray of her famous baklava right before Harper could grab a piece. “Because if I see one fairy option then you will never get another one of these again. And never is a long-ass time.”
Harper raised a paintbrush in surrender. “No fairies, got it.”
Emerson’s six-year-old sister, Violet, had, up until recently, believed that fairies were real, that she was a fairy, and, therefore, would only answer to Pixie Girl. It had taken Emerson two years to get Violet out of her wings and into normal clothes, so Harper could see how it was still a sore subject.
Harper looked back to her paints, the emerald green and gold glitter catching her eye. “How about an Egyptian princess?”
Shay thought about that for a moment, while taking a long sip of wine. Her eyes went wide. “I want to be an Egyptian queen,” Shay clarified, her expression turning mischievous. “Cleopatra. She had cats, and Jonah would make a handsome Mark Antony.” She leaned back in the chair and sighed. “I can just see him feeding me grapes in one of those loincloths. Maybe I should text him to make sure we have grapes.”
Shay picked up her phone and started swiping, while Harper went about picking out the colors.
Shay’s phone pinged. “Jonah says he’s stopping by the store on his way to get me, so Cleopatra it is!” Her phone buzzed again. Three times. “He’s leaving right now. Oh, he says he’s using the sirens.” Shay looked up. “We’d better hurry.”
“Seriously?” Emerson set the tray on the coffee table and plopped onto the couch. “This is supposed to be girls’ night. Something both of you made clear. So against my better judgment, I agreed, and even hosted it so I could kick you out if it got all emotional.”
“I can tell you about how sweet Jonah was the other day when the herd of baby chinchillas I rescued got scared, so he cuddled them.”
“You shouldn’t tell anyone that story. Ever,” Emerson said. “And the only two rules of girls’ nights are no guys allowed and no one leaves until the bottles are empty. Those were your rules, Shay.”
With a shrug, Shay picked up one of the bottles and drained the remaining bit. There were still two half-empty ones left.
“That’s okay,” Harper said. “You guys cut off hours of prep work for me tonight by helping out with the decorations. All that’s left is getting everything to the park, and displaying my Sprouting Picassos’ artwork, which I can finish tomorrow.” She took a sip from her glass.
“If you guys help me prep the petting zoo pen early, we can set up the art show together,” Shay said.
“Perfect.” Harper dipped the brush into glittery emerald-green paint and lifted it to her friend’s forehead. “Close your eyes.”
Shay did as told, while Harper outlined the whimsical design she created in her mind. Working off a design was usually her MO, but sometimes it was fun to design while she was creating.
“What are you going to pick, Em?” Harper asked. “Make it something that will surprise Dax.”
“You should be a queen too,” Shay mumbled through still lips. “Then you can boss him around when he gets here.”
“Nah, I already do that.” Emerson picked up the binder of ideas and flipped through it. “Camo is Dax’s favorite color. You got anything camo themed?”
“Oh, how about GI Jane?” Shay asked. Harper didn’t hear the response. She was too lost in the creative process to pay attention. Mixing colors, enhancing people’s best features, creating a portal into make-believe—she’d forgotten how much she enjoyed this.
“How about you?” Emerson asked. “Harper?”
Harper took onyx paint and followed the natural curve of Shay’s eyes, making them bigger, more catlike, and exotic. “Oh, well, Adam likes bright colors, so maybe a mermaid,” she said, then remembered their earlier conversation and felt her belly warm. “Or a bunny.”
The room fell silent. Harper finished the last touches on Shay’s other eye and looked up—to find her friends looking back. Confusion and something akin to suspicion etched their faces.
“What?”
“I was asking if you wanted more wine,” Emerson said, holding up the bottle. “Seriously, a bunny? That’s about as sexy as your cat sweaters.”
Harper didn’t bother to point out that Adam had a magic touch when it came to kitties, because talking about his sexual prowess would lead to talking about sex. With him. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about that with her friends. Not until she understood it herself, because there was more going on than just sex.
“Ah hell.” Emerson plopped down on the couch and leaned her head back. “I should have known something was up when you started wearing your pageant hair.”
Harper patted down her hair, which was silky and smooth and had taken her an hour to straighten. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“It looks like something off Miss America, or that nightly newscaster on the local evening news. No curls, no pencil holding it together, and way too sculpted to be anything good.” Emerson zeroed in on Harper until she was sweating. “He charmed you.”
“Adam is very charming,” Harper said, busying herself with cleaning the brushes off in the water, neither confirming nor denying the accusation. “And what does my hair have to do with anything?”
Emerson sat forward, her eyes going serious. “Rodney Fletcher. Seventh grade. He asked to borrow your history notes, the next day you came to school with highlights, only they were more hydrogen-peroxide orange than platinum. Rodney didn’t notice because he had a thing for Laura Fuller, who needed a history tutor.”
“Laura Fuller,” Harper said, smiling. “Rodney ended up running into her after college and they got married. Talk about destiny.”
Emerson was not impressed by the information. “Curtis Kemp, senior year. He asked to sit next to you on the bus to Disneyland. You showed up with your ends burnt from the iron you used to straighten your hair. He did notice because he was gay.”
“I still can’t believe he played it off so well.”
“He didn’t. I knew, the school knew. His parents knew. Everyone knew.” Emerson wasn’t done. “Jessie Long. You went red, he went to Columbia the next week for college. Lance Miller liked Posh Spice so you cut your hair off, and he cut eighteen months off his sentence by returning the rats he stole to the lab.”
“They were doing animal testing on them and he was sensitive to the cause,” Harper defended. “And he’s an animal-rights lawyer now.”
Emerson rolled her eyes. “I don’t even want to know how you know that.”
“Because we’re friends,” Harper said. “Just because it didn’t work out how I dreamed doesn’t mean I don’t want them in my life.”
Harper wanted to argue the point, because Emerson was making it sound like she did it on purpose. That she invested her heart into relationships she knew had no real potential of going anywhere, which wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.
Because there was nothing more that Harper wanted than to have a family of her own. A husband and kids and that safe haven that she saw others find so easily.
But facts were facts and if what Emerson was saying was false, then how did Harper manage to get over Clay, the guy she’d invested nearly a year of her life in, in a matter of days?
A question she didn’t want to ponder sober, much less after a few glasses of wine. Because the answer might break her heart. “Yes, Adam charmed me—he is sweet and fun and makes me feel sexy. But just because I don’t want him as my ex yet doesn’t mean I want to make him mine either.”
Shay placed a hand on Harper’s knee. “What if you did?”
“You guys are the ones who told he wasn’t looking to be collected.”
“That was before he invited you to dinner. At the station,” Emerson said. “Then brought you dessert.”
Harper closed her eyes on a sigh, partly thinking about that dessert, but mostly thinking about how they had three days left in their deal. “He only invited me because I cornered him into being my boyfriend. He had to make it look real,” she admitted, feeling ridiculous and terrified about the whole situation. Ridiculous that she had to corner a guy into agreeing to be her boyfriend, and terrified that she wanted it to be true.
Shay laughed. “I may not have lived here my whole life, but in the two years I’ve been around I’ve learned a lot about those Baudouin men. First, no one can corner them, unless they are looking to be caught.”
Another fact, but her lie had also put Adam in a professional corner. One that might have cost him the promotion. Harper knew he cared about her, the same way he cared about everyone in his life. His brothers, his crew, the town. Adam had a big heart, and he was offering her a small piece. But the whole thing?