by Box Set
“I’m trying to get a job, if Harper here will hire me.” Jake finished off a sleeve and extended his hand. “Looks like you need help.”
Oh God.
“Dad, no,” Harper said. “He doesn’t need to—”
“You have any experience?” her dad asked.
“Dad!” Harper exclaimed.
He pointed at the lobby. “You have fifty kids ready to order. Don’t be picky.” He turned back to Jake as Harper’s stomach tied in a knot. “Although you seem too polished to be searching out a coffee shop job.”
“Just looking for a sideline,” Jake said. “I may not know the drink recipes, but I can slap orders together and be the runner.”
“Sold.” her dad said, reaching around the back wall for a large apron. “Honey, quit glaring at me and go take these kids’ orders. Give them to—”
“Jake,” he said.
“Give them to Jake,” her dad continued. “I’ll man the coffee, Christian, you do food, and Jake, be all you can be. When this rush is done, somebody clean up this mess.”
“Yes sir,” Jake said, looking at Harper as he tied his apron on.
She felt anger begin to twitch in her eyes. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t here, standing in front of her, cockily weaseling into a job in her shop after leaving her with no explanation all those years ago. After she’d done what she’d done…and said what she’d said.
“Fine,” she whispered through her teeth, turning unseeing to the first kid in line. “Can I help you?” Kid’s eyes widened, and Harper shook her head. Way to go. Scare the customers. “I’m sorry.” She forced a smile to cover the acid in her mouth. “Welcome to The Steaming Mug. What can I make for you?”
Chapter 3
What the living hell was he thinking?
Frankie’s glare from the other side of the counter asked the same question, and honestly, Jake had no answer. His feet had him around that counter before his brain could shut his mouth.
“Mind if I borrow him for one second before you get him all busy?” Frankie asked Harper, thumbing in Jake’s direction.
“I’m already busy,” Jake said grabbing trays.
“He’s already busy,” Mr. Haley echoed, prepping a machine, his back to everyone. “Come back later or get to work, Frankie.”
“Feel free, really,” Harper said, refusing to look Jake’s way.
Frankie rounded the counter’s corner at record speed, turning his back to Harper and his putting his face close to Jake’s, challenging him. Something Jake Jericho didn’t tolerate, but in that second—hell, ever since they’d walked in the coffee shop—he hadn’t been Jake Jericho.
“A moment?” Frankie asked.
Jake blew out a breath and set down his stack of trays, pushing Frankie a few inches in the process, and then backing out of earshot.
“Frankie—”
“What are you doing?” Frankie whispered.
“I know.” Jake held up a palm. “I just—” He just what? Got sidetracked by blue eyes and an old kick to the chest?
“Look, Mr. Jericho,” Frankie began, his eyes going hard. “This has been entertaining, but it’s time to get real again. These people have a shitload of crap dumped on them right now.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Frankie said. “Did you hear that Harper’s losing her apartment, too? These are my friends. I may lose my job for saying this, sir, but these are livelihoods going down the drain. Money doesn’t make everything okay, people like Harper’ll need to find other jobs. Other places to live. They don’t need a Jericho playing more games with them.”
Bam.
Jake dialed back his gut reaction. No one spoke to him like that. But he wasn’t that person right now. Why not? He had no fucking idea.
He didn’t know why he was wearing a fake leather apron and arranging coffee and pastries on trays. He didn’t know why he was involving himself in something he had no business interfering with. His dad’s company was doing this to them, not him. Not Jake. Or not this Jake.
The Jake who left Harper Haley behind over a decade ago like only a jack-ass would.
“I’m not messing with anyone,” Jake said. “I’m trying to help.”
“By lying to them?” Frankie asked. “To her? And what’s the deal with you and Harper?”
“There’s—” Jake looked over his shoulder as she rang up and marked a cup for a teenage girl. “There’s no deal,” he said. “We just met a long time ago.”
“As Jake Smith? The guy that broke her heart?”
“Something like that.” And he had to fix it.
That thought stopped his words, cold. Why did he need to fix anything? He’d left hundreds of women in his wake. Why was Harper different? Why had she knocked his feet out from under him the second she’d turned around?
“Look, let me do this, okay?” Jake said. “Go—do whatever you were going to do today. Come back for me later?”
“Yes sir.”
“Not—shit.” Jake raked fingers through his short hair. Things were getting too confusing. “Not like that.”
Frankie nodded and headed back around toward the crowd. “But it is like that,” he said softly, the words melting into the noise.
***
“Jake, there are some CO2 canisters downstairs,” Mr. Haley said. “Go grab me one, and another box of to-go bags.”
Jake breathed a sigh of relief, relishing thirty seconds to himself and possibly a sneak sit on a chair. He’d been slapping orders together, sweeping, cleaning, doing whatever anyone told him to do non-stop for the past three hours. His back ached, his feet hurt, and he’d kill for one of those ugly bran muffins the girl named Christian kept trying to pawn off on people. Harper, on the other hand, did it all without missing a beat. Never stopped to stretch or roll a stiff neck. Her smile never wavered. Not even when their hands kept brushing.
“Harper, go with him,” Mr. Haley continued. “Show him where everything is.”
Until then.
That perfect smile faltered as her eyes darted around the kitchen, looking for an escape.
“Christian can take him,” she said. “I’m—”
She was nothing. The customer barrage had stopped. There was nothing left to do besides maybe wipe something down. But Harper glanced at the ceiling as if there was something vital she could do up there rather than go downstairs with him.
“Christian is elbow deep in strawberry filling,” Christian called from the back. “You know, that comfort food crap you like?”
“It’s all good.” Jake wiped his hands on a towel. Harper’s gaze met his as he spoke, and a flush lit up her chest. Oh, the tell-tale sign. When she was nervous—or turned on—he remembered that. “I can take myself. I’ll find it.”
“No, you’ll—” Harper yanked off her apron and tossed it aside. “You’ll mess things up. Follow me.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, pulling off his apron and hanging it on a hook.
She tossed a look over her shoulder that Jake would have taken as a challenge in any other woman. On Harper, it looked like she might have a noose waiting downstairs.
He followed her through the kitchen and down the hall to a stairway on the right that headed down into darkness. Her blonde hair swung at her shoulders, shorter than it once was. The sway of her hips and her small purposeful movements hadn’t changed though. He could still watch her move for hours.
The sight of her heading down the dark stairwell was like old times. Suddenly, images of every stolen moment they’d shared in places like that hit him. The heated kisses in hideaway closets at the soup kitchen, hands hungry as they slid under clothing, needing skin. Needing more. The first time he’d made her moan with his fingers. And the first time—
Light burst around him as she hit a light switch halfway down, jolting him back to the present.
“All the paper goods are down here,” Harper said loudly, continuing down. “As well as storage for—” Reaching the bottom, she whirled around. �
��Why are you doing this?” she hissed.
As taken aback as Jake was with the sudden vitriol, the fire in those dark blue eyes sparked something else. Something he’d missed.
“So you do remember me,” Jake said slowly, crossing his arms as he stepped off the last step.
Harper backed up as he moved into her space, crossing her own arms. Her eyelids fluttered.
“You didn’t answer me,” she said, lifting her chin.
“You could have just said hi,” Jake said. “You didn’t have to pretend. Hey Jake, how’s it going, been a long time would have been appropriate.”
“Really?” Harper broke into a laugh that hit him somewhere he hadn’t felt in a very long time. He wasn’t fond of the sensation. “That’s funny.”
Jake tilted his head, the sexy huskiness of her laugh and the feistiness in her body language cranking him higher.
“Is it?”
“Oh absolutely,” she said, her pupils going large and dark. “Because I thought about leading with Hey, Jake, nice fuck-em-and-run plan, but you know. I held back.”
Pow.
The cockiness drained right out of him.
“Harper, it wasn’t like that,” he said.
She laughed again, and even its sexiness couldn’t erase the darts she was throwing.
“I know?” she said, eyebrows raising. “I know nothing when it comes to you. I didn’t then, and I sure as hell don’t now, so back to my question. Why are you here all up in my grill, pretending to need a job?”
Jake took another step forward, not breaking eye contact, silently applauding the glaze-over her eyes took on as she refused to back up again. He’d seen her happy, emotional, and even sad once, but he’d never seen her angry. It was magnificent.
“I never said I needed a job,” Jake said. “I said I was here to help.”
“I don’t want your help,” she said, her words clipped.
She was right. He knew she was right, and so was Frankie. He had no business coming in there and stirring up shit long since put away. Messing with her head. Hell, messing with his. He needed to return to his own life.
Whatever that was.
Jake held out his hands in front of him. “Fine,” he said. “I won’t come back tomorrow.”
Something passed through her eyes. Something that said she didn’t actually like that, and it was oddly satisfying. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Good.”
“But I can’t just walk out that back door,” Jake said, pointing at one of the arched bricked doorways.
“No, you can’t, since it’s a closet.”
Jake cut her a sideways look, pushing past her. “And this one?” he asked, gesturing to an identical one a foot over.
“Leads to the building next door.”
He frowned back at her. “Seriously?”
“That one too,” she said, pointing to a third. “Although Dad boarded them up inside years ago because I kept playing in them. Or he probably thought someone would rob us.”
“What were they for?” Jake asked, his nerdy old building curiosity resurrecting.
“The tunnels?” she said. “A lot of these old waterfront buildings have them.” She nodded to what was now a closet. “This one used to go right out to the bay, with steps up to the boardwalk.”
“For?”
Harper shrugged, and for the moment her armor dropped.
“Smuggling? Prohibition? Who knows?” She ran a finger along one of the bricks. “They’re numbered,” she said. “See? It’s chipped out. One here. Two lines there.”
Jake ran his fingers along the three subtle grooves in the closest bricked entry, the cold stone speaking to him. This was what old structures were about. History. What they’d seen. The people that passed through them. He could feel the life that had lived there. The buzz. The energy. This was what he loved so much about old structures over new. New ones had no ghosts.
“There’s no telling what these were used for,” Jake said in awe. “If that one went out to the bay, they could have smuggled anything.”
Harper’s lack of a response made him turn to look, and the expression on her face stopped him. Retrospection. Tinted with the narrow-eyed gaze of disgust.
“What?” he asked.
She shook her head and turned toward an opposite wall full of built in stone shelves.
“Let’s just get what we came for.” She grabbed a tall stepstool. “The CO2 canisters are on that bottom shelf,” she pointed with her elbow as she climbed. “The to-go bags aren’t used as much so they’re up here.” She stepped off the highest point of the stool onto a shelf itself and began scaling the wall.
“What are you—Harper, you’re gonna fall.”
“Done this my whole life,” she said. “I’m good.”
The front of one shelf crumbled dust onto Jake’s face, and he had to blink away.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You organized this.”
“Yes.”
“Why would you put things where you have to climb the wall?” he asked. “Please get down before you break something. Let me get them.”
“Excuse me, you’re heavier.” She balanced on one foot to stretch overhead. “Who would be breaking something?”
“Excuse me, I’m taller,” he said. “I don’t have to climb like a monkey.”
“Whatever, I’ve been doing this since—”
The sound of cracking stone was accompanied by a loud yelp as the foot Harper had all her weight on gave way in a shower of rocks and crumbled mortar. And to-go bags. Jake leapt forward as it rained down over his head and face, a big chunk bouncing off his shoulder while he groped the air to catch her.
Her leg went straight through his grasp and his right hand slid right up into her crotch as the rest of her body landed awkwardly on his head with an oomph of expelled breath, knocking him up against the wall.
“Shit!” she cried.
“Are you okay?” he grunted, his face in her belly, bracing himself on the wall so he didn’t drop her. He tried really hard to think about life and death and broken necks—not where his hand was.
“Yes, just can you—get your hand out of my hoo-hah?”
A chuckle escaped his throat as he shifted her weight and lowered her, moving his hand around to join the other one. On her ass.
“Your hoo-hah probably saved you from a broken skull,” Jake said.
“Okay, point taken,” she said. “Please put me—” Her words faltered as her breasts slid down over his face, and their eyes met as his mouth was cresting one of them.
He couldn’t blame her. He was a little speechless right then, too. When they were nose-to-nose, his grip on her tightened, holding her. He couldn’t help himself. Suddenly they were somewhere else. Pressed together in a heated embrace in another room. Another time. Another circumstance.
Her breathing quickened. He felt it on his face. And in that one second, nothing made sense. Something old and achingly familiar slammed into him like a wrecking ball and everything went upside down. Nothing in his world was where it should be. And the multitude of emotions that ran through her eyes didn’t help clear things up.
“Everything okay down here?” came a yell from the top of the stairs, breaking the moment and loosening his grip.
Harper sucked in a breath as she slid the rest of the way down his body and pushed back, raking fingers through her hair and fidgeting with her clothes as if they’d been caught doing the wild thing.
“Good,” she called back. “All good.”
“I heard a yell,” her dad said, heavy footsteps landing on the steps.
Shit.
Jesus. What was he doing, holding her like that? Thinking like that? Like he wasn’t the man behind the giant threatening to topple her world.
Her dad landed on the next-to-bottom step, his eyes knowing more than Jake wanted him to as he looked back and forth between them. The fact that Harper was brushing her clothes off didn’t help.
“You okay?” he
asked her, narrowing his gaze back on Jake as if he’d defiled her.
“I’m fine, I just fell.” Harper nodded upward at the piece of stone shelf missing and gestured at the crumbled remains on the floor. “Jake caught me.”
Her dad’s expression softened to something less murderous.
“You were climbing the wall again, weren’t you?” he said. “We have a taller ladder in the closet, sweetheart, why do you insist on giving me a heart attack? You aren’t eight years old anymore.”
“Are you saying I’m heavy?” she asked, one hand on her hip and looking good enough to—no. No she didn’t.
Get the CO2 and get the hell out of this room.
“I’m saying you keep breaking the shelves, we won’t have any left,” her dad said. “You could have gotten hurt. Good thing Jake was there to catch you.”
“Yeah.” She bent down to pick up the scattered to-go bags. “Good thing.”
Jake thought of his hand up between her legs, his grip on her ass, and her soft breasts pressing against his face.
“She was telling me about the old tunnels,” Jake said, ducking down to snatch a CO2 canister from a bottom shelf. Anything to distract himself. Frankie had been right. All of this was a bad idea.
“Yeah, a lot of history here in these old buildings,” her dad said. “Imagine the secrets these walls hold. Hundreds of years worth.”
Jake turned. “Did you say hundreds?”
“Sure. Our landlord told me once that these three—” He pointed to either side. “They’re the originals to the waterfront. Built in 1800-something. You can see from the outside, the brick’s different. Bigger. And these tunnels—you know they’ve seen some crazy things.”
“All I saw in them were crawling things,” Harper said.
“Gonna be sad to see these old beauties come down,” he said.
Jake wasn’t listening anymore. “Do you mind if I take this up there and then take a break?” He held up the canister. “I need to make a phone call.”
“Go ahead,” Mr. Haley said.
Jake was halfway up the stairs before the second word was out of the older man’s mouth. By the time he made it out the front door, he had Marco on the line.