by Hazel Jacobs
He also refuses to let Harper carry her own bag. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I let you do physical labor?” he asks as they make their way past the baggage claim—neither of them checked any luggage—toward the arrivals lounge. The airport is tiny, even by small town standards, and there are massive mosaics of windmills and tulip fields on the walls.
“Do Mikayla and Sersha let their boyfriends carry their bags?”
“Mikayla, yes,” Slate replies. “Sersha would claw Tommy’s eyes out if he tried to pull a stunt like that. She’s really independent.”
“And Mikayla isn’t?”
“Not at all,” Slate says. “The opposite, in fact. I think she’s been on her own for so long, it’s nice to let someone else pick up the slack.”
Harper nods, wondering if she’ll ever get the chance to meet these women. She thinks they’ll get along.
Don’t be stupid. You’re an escort. You’re not here to make friends with his friends. You’re here to trick his family into thinking he’s in a stable relationship, and hopefully, seduce him out of his pants and into yours.
Harper falls back a little so she can admire Slate’s backside in the tight jeans he’s wearing. Slate glances backward, notices her interest, and wiggles his butt at her. Harper laughs at him.
In the arrivals lounge, which is about the size of a middle-school classroom, a dozen-or-so people wait. They’re small-town people, clustered together in a large group and making conversation while they wait for their family members to get off the plane. As the passengers file out of the baggage claim area, people peel off from the crowd to hug and kiss them.
Slate pauses in the doorway, his face unreadable. Then, before Harper can ask, he plasters a grin on his face and saunters over to an older couple standing at the edge of the crowd. Harper only has to take one look at them to know that they’re his parents.
The woman who’s tall and willowy has Slate’s cheekbones and deep brown eyes. Her hair has been carefully dyed to look a natural blonde, though the shade is completely different to her son’s. When she sees him coming, her entire face lights up like she’s never seen anything that delighted her more.
“Slate!” she says, opening her arms. He drops his bag, releases Harper’s luggage handle, and pulls the woman into a hug, lifting her off of her feet and spinning her around.
Harper is surprised to hear her call him by his stage name. Surely the family would call him by the name he was born with? She’d been hoping to find out what his real name was, it wouldn’t help their deception if she came out and asked someone. But it seems that even Slate’s family is determined to keep it a secret.
Her eyes travel over Slate and the woman, still hugging, to the man waiting behind them. When Harper meets his gaze, she immediately feels as though a bucket of ice water has been poured over her. It’s not that he seems unfriendly. On the contrary. The moment he sees her, he steps forward with a congenial smile to shake her hand.
“You must be my son’s girlfriend,” he says. “I’m afraid he’s been keeping a bit mom about you. We don’t even know your name.”
“Harper Styles, sir,” she replies, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake.
He’s not unfriendly by a long shot. But his eyes—an icy blue and so unlike his son’s—seem to observe her like they can read every one of her secrets. She shudders, but she holds his gaze. There’s no such thing as a real mind reader, she tells herself. He looks her up and down like he’s cataloging everything he sees, making quick judgments, and filing them away for later.
“Styles?” he says. “You’re English?”
“My family’s from Omaha,” she replies.
“Oh, a country girl?” he asks. “And what do your parents do?”
If she hadn’t been warned by Slate that his family are into knowing where a person comes from, she would have thought that she was being interrogated. “My parents run the sports center there, sir.”
The man’s eyebrows raise in a tiny, impressed lift.
“Dad,” Slate says, finally letting go of his mother and settling her gently on the ground. “Don’t scare her off.” He comes around to stand at Harper’s side.
Around them, people are starting to leave. Families collect their loved-ones and their bags and head for the doors. Outside, the sun shines. The blonde woman from the plane follows her companion toward a man in a black suit holding a sign. She and Harper share a look as she goes. Harper nods to her. The woman nods back. And then, she’s gone.
“I’m just curious,” the man replies. “Not like you to bring a girl home, is all. I would have thought you’d be more interested in bringing one of your silly friends.”
“All my silly friends had to work,” Slate tells him. He seems to be relaxed and cheerful, but Harper can see a faint edge of tension around his mouth.
“Work, huh?” the man asks. “Ideas of work certainly have changed from my day.”
Slate’s mother’s smile has dropped, and she wrings her hands as she watches the pair of them. Slate just keeps smiling, but it seems to be hanging by a thread.
“Harper,” he says, reaching around to put an arm around her. Harper leans against his side as though she’s done it a hundred times, and if she reaches around to give his ass a quick grab, well, that’s no one’s business but hers and Slate’s. “Meet my parents, Martha and Peter. Mom, Dad… this is Harper.”
“She’s too pretty for you,” says Peter.
“Couldn’t agree more, Dad.”
“It’s nice to meet you, dear,” Martha says, coming forward to take Harper’s hands. Harper takes them gratefully. “My goodness, it is good to see Slate bringing a nice girl home. Did I hear you hail from Omaha? That’s a beautiful country.”
“It is,” Harper replies with a smile. “But I’m loving Iowa already.”
Slate grins at Harper and takes her bag, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. He slides over to her side and kisses her on the temple. Harper feels his lips—slightly damp and warm and probably as sweet as they are full—and she has to keep her face from showing that this is all new for her. As far as Slate’s parents are concerned, they do a lot more than kiss.
“Let’s get home,” Slate says. “You can meet Cooper, he’s the best dog in the world.”
“That’s a high bar to clear…” replies Harper, “…considering my dog is the best dog in the world.”
“Lies and hearsay!” Slate says dramatically. He links his free arm with his mother’s, who was watching their exchange with a soft smile on her lips. Martha takes her son’s arm and together, they walk toward the doors.
Peter offers his arm to Harper, and she takes it without question, though she wishes she could have stayed close by Slate’s side. Her temple still tingles from where he kissed her. Peter and Harper fall into step behind Slate and Martha, and the four of them head toward the sunlight outside.
Showtime, Harper thinks.
Cooper is a delightful, obese Labrador who covers Slate in slobbery kisses when they arrive. Harper is so busy admiring the house that it takes her a moment to realize that the car has stopped, much less that Slate has climbed out of the car and is greeting his family’s dog.
“Harper, dear,” Martha says, leaning down to look at her through the window of the backseat. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, of course,” Harper replies. She quickly scrambles to climb out of the car. “Sorry… your house is beautiful.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Beautiful doesn’t even cover it. Slate’s home is a two-storey, white building straight out of a dream. Looking up at the façade, Harper feels like she should be wearing a petticoat and taking the stage name Scarlet instead of Tiffany. The lawn is perfectly manicured and massive, beautifully green despite the heat, and the driveway is a good two-hundred feet long and filled in with expensive white gravel.
Slate is on his knees in the driveway, his arms around Cooper’s chest, grinning like a fool and clearly enjoying the dog
licking his face. Peter’s nose wrinkles when he sees that, but he doesn’t comment as he passes his son and heads for the house. Martha’s eyes go soft.
“Come on, boy… come meet Harper…” Slate pushes himself to his feet and tugs the dog over to her.
She only has a moment to brace herself before the dog leaps up to put his paws on her shoulders and snuffle her ear.
“Oh, hi Cooper!” she says, running her hands eagerly through the dog’s soft, golden coat. His wide back has loose skin which moves when she rubs it, and his snout has sugary white hairs that betray his age, but his smile is so wide and dopey that he seems like a puppy. “Aren’t you handsome?”
“It’s a curse of our family,” Slate tells her. He’s standing just to the side as though he’d planned to intervene when the dog jumped on her, but Harper has always adored dogs and considers the enthusiastic cuddles to be the highest compliment that one is capable of. “All of the men are more handsome than anyone has the right to be.”
“Oh, you don’t have to remind me,” Harper tells him with a raised eyebrow. She buries her nose in Cooper’s fur—it smells like lavender. “Someone’s had a bath recently.”
“We can’t have him smelling like a dog for the wedding,” Martha tells her. “Slate, darling, get the dog off of her before he ruins her clothes.”
“I don’t mind…” Harper gently guides Cooper down to the ground and ruffles his head as he pants and looks up at her with his gorgeous, dopey smile, “…you should meet my dog back home. Great Dane.”
Slate lets out a low whistle. “Big one?”
“Big enough for my cousins to ride him like a horse,” she says. “His name is Nibbles. I outgrew him years ago. But he still thinks he’s a lap dog.”
“All the best dogs are lap dogs,” Slate says sagely.
He gives Cooper one last head ruffle and pulls Harper into a half-hug, nestling her against his side and giving her the perfect opportunity to run her hand down his back and feel the strong, firm muscles there. She thinks that she might have put more work into his shoulders if she had him as a client. He’s a big guy, but there’s always room for more definition. Not too much bulk, though. Harper hates guys who are too bulky. Overkill isn’t sexy.
“Come in, come in,” Martha says, bustling down the driveway toward the house, apparently oblivious to the fact that Harper is feeling up her son. “I’ll give you a tour and you can wash up for lunch. Have you got your bags? Slate, darling, pick up the lady’s bags.”
“Already done, Mom.” Slate holds up Harper’s bag, his own backpack slung in his elbow. He’s not oblivious to Harper’s hand trailing over his back, but he’s being infuriatingly calm about it. “Come, Cooper.”
The dog follows eagerly as the three of them head toward the front door. Slate’s hand finds its way down to Harper’s butt, and he gives her a gentle pinch.
“Behave,” he mutters with a grin.
“I’m behaving,” Harper replies. “A girl can’t enjoy her boyfriend’s finer qualities?”
“My back muscles aren’t even in the top ten of my finer qualities.”
“Prove it.”
He smirks at her. The sound of the gravel crunching under their boots drowns out their voices so his mother can’t hear exactly what they’re saying. It makes it all seem… dirtier. More secret. Something infinitely sexier and more promising than if Harper were just an escort going through the motions. Considering she actually wants to sleep with Slate, the fact that she can flirt with him so easily is incredibly exciting. Over and over again, she is reminded of how much she had not been expecting this. How delightfully unexpected this man is, and how infuriating it is that he seems so easy and flirty, and yet so determined not to give in to their clear chemistry.
Peter left the door open. Cooper canters over the threshold with the careless energy of a well-trained house pet. Nibbles never used to be allowed inside the house, but he was apt to knocking over lamps and tables just by brushing against them.
Thinking of Nibbles makes Harper suddenly homesick.
When I get back to New York, I’ll have to Skype Mom and Dad. They’ll show me the dog through the screen. It’s better than nothing.
Inside the house, Harper feels her jaw dropping as she gazes around. Slate drops her bag on the ground in the foyer and reaches over to teasingly push her chin up and close her lips.
“Wow!” she says. “This place is gorgeous, Martha. Did you do it yourself?”
“Oh, it’s nothing… just some really good pieces, you know. It’s hard to make antiques look bad.”
It’s not just the antiques, though. It’s the sense of elegant, moneyed heritage in the house. The living room on the left of the entryway is decorated with understated sophistication, the couches and coffee tables are classy without being overbearing. Money can’t buy good taste, but it can buy everything a person needs to wind up on the front page of Pinterest. Martha is pretending not to be soaking in Harper’s reaction. So Harper plays it up, slowly turning so that she can see the full effect of the cream-colored walls, landscapes in antique wooden frames, and the massive mirror along one side of the hallway that gives the impression that the space is much bigger than it is. And it has the dubious benefit of reflecting Harper’s dumbfounded expression back at them. Harper’s only twenty-five percent playing it up.
Slate’s family home is like something out of a fairy-tale.
Peter has disappeared, probably to get the coffee started. Harper can hear a machine turning over. Peter hadn’t struck her as the kind of guy who lingers over guests. Especially not with a wife like Martha, who seems to be instinctively capable of picking up the slack.
Slate puts his hand in the small of Harper’s back and kisses her temple. “She’s used to the brownstone in New York,” he tells his mother, who’s watching Harper with a flattered expression, while Harper tries to school her features into something more dignified than shock and awe. “Poor thing isn’t used to seeing a place so done up.”
“Well, you know…” Martha says, looking embarrassed but pleased, “…with the wedding.”
“Are you having it here?” Harper asks.
Martha guides Harper and Slate through the hallway toward the stairs, which have thick white carpet on them, as she explains that the wedding will be held in the backyard because it’s ‘very popular right now.’
“Grayson’s family doesn’t have the space… you know… we’re expecting quite a large guest list.”
“Grayson is the groom?” Harper clarifies, wracking her brain for the information Slate had given her.
“My sister’s boy,” Martha says. “He’s a banker. Good job, very stable. Slate probably mentioned?”
“Of course.” He hadn’t. “I hear his fiancée is quite the beauty.”
“Slate, tell me you’re not fool enough to tell your girlfriend about how pretty other women are.”
“Harper knows she’s gorgeous, Mom.”
Martha rolls her eyes at her son and sends Harper a conspiratory, chagrined wink. “I apologize for my son. I’m sure he’s been a trying boyfriend.”
“No, ma’am,” Harper replies, reaching up to entangle her fingers in Slate’s. “You raised one wonderful man here.”
Martha’s smile is almost as dazzling as her son’s.
The upstairs is just as classy and elegant as the downstairs. There’s an open area at the top of the stairs which leads down another, spacious hallway decorated with portraits of men and women with brow bones like Slate’s and eyes like Peter’s. Harper makes a note to ask about them later. Martha leads them past doors, explaining that most of them are guest rooms. Apparently, most of the guests will be staying in inns downtown. Only the wedding party will be staying overnight on Saturday to ensure they can begin getting ready early on Sunday. That means that Harper will have one night with just Slate and his parents before she has the rest of his extended family to contend with.
Finally, at the very end of the hallway, Martha stops.
“I haven’t touched your room since you last came home, Slate… except to clean.”
“I know, Mom.”
She looks between Slate and Harper. Her hands are folded over her belly, and there’s a slightly strained smile as the silence between them grows just to the edge of awkward. “Well, I’ll be downstairs with your Dad. You two get yourselves settled and then come down when you’re ready.”
Slate shifts their bags in his hands. “Will do, Mom.”
Martha leaves them there, walking back down the hallway with her stockinged feet muffled by the creamy white carpet. Slate watches her go for a moment with a soft smile before turning to open the door.
“Welcome to Casa del Slate,” he says, dramatically flinging the door open in a way which makes Harper snort with laughter.
“You’re such a dork.”
“I’m delightful.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Slate’s bedroom is not what Harper expected. When she enters the room, she realizes that she’d been expecting something like the musicians’ bedrooms in movies. Stray instruments, black bed sheets, maybe a ratty poster or two and a record player. Slate’s bedroom looks an awful lot like Martha had decorated it. The bed sits pressed against the wall with a mahogany frame and deep burgundy sheets. The walls are painted the color of wine, and there are more landscapes which bring in some woody, green color as well. The windows are massive, the curtains are colored like whipped cream, and the throw rug on the floor is the same color. There are mahogany cupboards and a full-length mirror against the opposite wall, and a door which leads to what Harper assumes is the en-suite.
“Casa del Slate,” she repeats. There’s a question in her voice.
“Casa del Slate,” Slate nods.
Harper watches him carefully so she can see the way he deflates slightly as he gazes around.
“At least, the Slate who lived here before he moved to Jersey.”
“Okay.” Harper walks into the room properly, sits on the bed, and runs a hand through her hair. “Your mom seems nice.”
“My mom is an angel,” Slate replies. He comes over to join her on the bed. “You did well just now. She likes you, I can tell.”