“No one will know it’s you. I changed the hair color to black—see?”
“But it still looks like me! Me with a witchy Halloween wig on. God, everyone will know we’re still”—she flicked a hand at the canvas—“that there’s still something going on between us. And there’s not.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yes.” No, not one bit. She turned to him, and her bad-girl side revved, threatening mutiny against the sensible-girl side insisting she’d be going home alone tonight. Orgasm-free.
Harley dragged a hand through his hair. “Want to give me a head’s up on why you’re here then? Other than the coconut ice.”
Bree dipped her chin then jerked it to the side when her gaze locked on the slight tent of arousal in the front of his shorts.
“I miss Carter,” she said. “And I thought talking with you, someone who misses him, too, might make being alone tonight a little easier.”
She risked a quick glance at Harley’s face, and her heart sank at his guarded look. She’d been presumptuous, stating that Harley missed his son when she had no idea if he’d considered continuing a relationship with him. Oh, yeah, she’d heard his promise to attend the cricket game next month, but that didn’t mean anything.
“You don’t miss him, do you?” Bree huffed out a pain-loaded sigh. “My bad.”
Harley snatched up a shirt from the end of his bed and slipped it on. He buttoned the top button, his eyes as cool as frosted glass. “Trust me, you don’t want me involved with him any more than I am now. It’s better if I quietly fade into the background.”
“You’ll just check out of Carter’s life while your parents and even Ford and Holly make plans to spend time with him? Why would you pull away when it’s obvious you care at least a little about him, too?”
Harley’s face was a slammed and bolted iron door. “I care. Just not in the way you want me to. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? Not about Carter but about you and me. About you imagining a happily ever-after for the three of us.” He shook his head. “I don’t share that dream.”
“Neither do I.” She’d squashed that dream many, many years ago. “I’m not that naïve eighteen-year-old girl any more, Harley. A woman’s hope of a lasting relationship with you would be ground beneath your boots as you run for the nearest exit.”
For a moment, they stared at each other across the room, frozen both in time and space, a ghostly reflection of another argument held long ago.
“I’m sorry.” Blood beat inside her head like the persistent throb of a toothache, and a weariness leached into her bones. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“You’re hurting and feeling alone.” His voice softened. “I don’t want to fight with you, Queenie.” He stroked a hand up her arm, brushed his fingertips along her collarbone. “But the only thing I can offer you tonight is something you claim not to want. Me.”
The touch of his hand penetrated her skin. It fizzed through her veins like acid. Eating away at her resistance, until she craved his mouth on hers, needed above all else to take him up on his offer.
But wait, there’s more, the sound of a sleazy TV advertisement host’s voice suddenly piped up in Bree’s mind. Call within the next five minutes, and get a free set of scouring pads to scrub away the last of your self-worth, plus a bonus wood chipper to toss in that stupid beating thing in your chest, because after one more night with this man, it’ll never be the same again!
From years of practice, Bree kept her outward expression neutral. “My father didn’t teach Amy and me much about business,” she said through numbed lips. “He was old fashioned in a lot of respects and thought a man should provide for his family. But the one thing he did say over and over to us girls was that everyone’s got an agenda, and if a deal sounds too good to be true, then it likely is.”
She crossed to the sliding door and stepped out into the cool night air. “You were always too good to be true, Harley. Goodnight.”
He didn’t try to stop her as she walked away. Why would he? He wanted her, but for men like Harley, another deal, another blonde with a better offer and less conditional terms, was just around the corner.
So as much as Bree yearned for the oblivion found with Harley in his messy bed, she’d return home alone.
No deal.
Chapter 9
It wasn’t exactly lying, per se, to text Erin the next morning to beg off the girls’ monthly breakfast. Bree kinda, sorta did have a headache. She definitely didn’t feel up to convincing five, possibly up to seven of the girls who could decide to show, that she was hunky-freaking-dory.
Erin had replied twenty minutes ago, bossily ordering Bree to drink a cup of ginger or camomile tea. Yeah, she’d get right on that.
Bree rolled onto her side, staring at Carter’s latest marker and colored pencil picture of one of the Samurai Dawn characters he’d drawn and helped frame while he was here. Not for the first time in the last two weeks, her heart crumpled into a little ball. Reaching over, Bree turned the picture face down. Her child was happy and loved, but that knowledge was a flimsy Band-Aid over the gaping, Carter-sized hole in her life.
Thumping on the door downstairs jump-started Bree out of her I’m gonna lie here until I die blues. Her crumpled heart blew up with an explosion of rapid, thundering beats.
Harley?
She pulled the comforter up to her nose and sent off a prayer of thanksgiving her living quarters weren’t on the ground floor. Unless Harley developed Spider-Man skills overnight, he wouldn’t be scaling the outside wall to peek in her bedroom window.
The thumping stopped. Momentarily.
“Dammit, Bree, I’m about to wet myself here.” Piper’s voice floated into the silence. “Will you drag your sorry ass downstairs, and open up so I can stop kicking your door?”
Bree slid out of bed and tugged on a robe. She ran barefoot down the stairs to the door and opened it a crack—just in case Harley was looming behind Piper. If he was, she’d slam the door and risk her friend’s wrath.
“About time,” Piper grumbled and then, “Open the door wider, you skinny cow. How am I supposed to maneuver the bomb shelter that is my stomach through that gap?”
Piper’s complaining such a welcome relief to Bree’s feared alternative, she swung open the door and got out of the way.
“Here.” A to-go coffee cup was shoved into Bree’s hand. “From Erin. Ginger tea because she knows you’ll be too stubborn to make it yourself. And here.” A weighty plastic carry bag transferred into Bree’s other hand. “From Me. A to-go double order of sausage, scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes, hashbrowns and ‘shrooms.”
Bree stared down at her hands. “I can’t eat all of that.”
Piper gave an epic eye roll and pushed past Bree. “You’re not meant to, dumbass. I’m having half.”
“Oh, but I’m…” Bree said.
Piper hauled herself up the first three stairs. She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes ninety-percent cop, ten-percent woman who’d somehow become one of Bree’s best friends. “Headachy? Yeah. Don’t believe that for a minute. Not when Harley came upstairs last night with an uneaten container of pink coconut ice and a burr up his ass about something.” Her eyebrows rose. “My best guess is that something’s you.”
Bree gave a noncommittal, “mmmmph” and tried to ignore the breakfast-y, slightly greasy aroma wafting out of the carry bag. Food was the last thing she wanted. Scratch that; being grilled like the takeout tomatoes was the last thing she wanted.
“I’m not really hungry,” she said. “You should’ve stayed at the café to eat.”
Any other day, she’d tell Piper to take a hike with her stinky, fried breakfast, but this morning, a weak protest was the best she could dredge up.
Selective hearing switched on, Piper continued to climb. With a resigned breath, Bree followed, keeping an eagle eye on Piper’s puffy ankles as she trudged upward.
“You’ll need a stair lift to get you up and down soon.”
“Bite me.” Piper let out a moan as she mastered the top step, bracing a hand on her lower back.
“Or an upgrade to a crane they use to shift the morbidly obese.” Easier to resort to the snark that was the foundation of their friendship than to admit the flutter of nerves gathering in her stomach. How much had Piper read into the coconut ice? And more importantly, had Harley spoken to her about Bree?
“Hah. I’ll need it once I’ve eaten Erin’s breakfast.” Piper strolled down the hallway to the kitchen and settled herself at the dining table.
Bree dumped the takeout bag on the table beside her. “Make yourself at home.”
“Harley’s not the only one who has a burr up the backside, I see.” Piper sent Bree a sunny smile and pointed into the kitchen. “Plates, cutlery and don’t forget the ketchup.”
“You know I don’t keep that stuff in the house.”
“You had a nine-year-old house guest. You would’ve bought some for him.”
Piper had Bree there. She shuttled back and forth from the kitchen with plates, flatware, place mats, paper napkins and yes, a nearly empty bottle of ketchup. She hadn’t gotten around to tossing the rest of it. She set the table, sliding a trivet under the still-hot plastic container of food.
Helping herself to a giant spoonful of scrambled eggs, Piper said, “Choose your category for five points. Harley and his relationship with Carter. Or Harley, are-you-boinking-him-again-yet?”
Bree’s fingers twisted around the tie of her robe. “What makes you think I’d tell you?”
Piper dumped a sausage onto her plate. “Because out of all the women you call friends, you know I’m the one least likely to shove optimistic bullshit down your throat and then tell you everything’s gonna turn up roses.”
“Says the married woman who is about to unload ten pounds of baby Westlake.”
“I got lucky. Not everyone does.” Another sausage went onto Piper’s plate. “So? How long has this thing between the two of you been going on?”
“Long enough to produce a nine-year-old house guest.”
“Touché.”
Tiny spikes of ice thrust one after another down her spine, fusing her backbone into a rigid line. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand the reasons why I did what I did.”
Piper paused in her methodical transfer of food to plate, her gaze steady. “Believe it or not, I do understand, because I understand you. You think I don’t know why we clashed so much as kids?”
“Because I was a stuck-up city girl with a rich daddy who nobody liked?”
“Aside from that. And we did like you, you were just a little…prickly. Like a baby hedgehog.” Piper waved a dismissive hand then picked up a fork. “The reason we clashed, you and me, was because we were a lot more alike than we were different.”
Bree’s nose crinkled. “We were nothing alike. You were the popular tomboy, best friends with Erin, with a little sister and her friend who thought you were a mashup of Ellen Ripley and Katniss Everdeen. You and I butted heads all the way through school and then until you left the island.”
“Opinionated. Independent. Proud.” Piper held out three fingers and then a forth. “Both got our hearts broken at eighteen by men we’d grown up with.” She slid a forkful of eggs into her mouth and chewed.
“I never said Harley broke my heart.”
She hadn’t even told Amy of the depression she’d sunk into after Harley had left. Growing up, Bree had always protected her sister’s more sensitive disposition by reassuring her that everything would be okay, that they were both strong enough to be okay. When Amy went through chemo, Bree would call in the morning of each treatment, repeating the mantra, “Amy, you will beat this. Amy, you will win,” even on days when Bree hadn’t believed her sister would conquer the vicious cancer. Yet when it was her turn to be weak and powerless in the face of uncertainty, Bree had still tried to hide the depth of her suffering, in an effort to protect Amy.
“Didn’t have to,” Piper said. “I used my awesome powers of deduction to figure it out. Harley leaving for New York, you unaware you were knocked up, plus him taking your virginity—”
“Piper!” Her skin hot and shrink-wrapped to her cheekbones, Bree gripped her fork until the stainless steel dug into her palm.
“Well, he did, didn’t he?” Piper pulled her mouth down into a you’re really going to deny it frown.
“Well, yes.”
“And it was okay? He didn’t hurt you?”
“It was better than okay.” The admission was proof Bree had made some personal progress on the friendship-front in the last couple of years. Used to only having herself to confide in, the whole girlfriends-thing she’d found on returning to Oban still felt odd some days. “And no, physically, he didn’t hurt me.”
“Just smooshed your heart, huh?”
“Steam-rolled right over it.” Bree dumped eggs, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, and the remaining sausage onto her plate. “Like West did to you.”
Piper nodded, shovelling in more food. The woman really was eating for two. Bree’s gaze zipped down to the ball of her friend’s belly, smiled at a tiny movement beneath the snug-fitting top Piper wore. Baby Westlake didn’t want to hear the two of them talking smack about his or her daddy.
“Eighteen-to-twenty-four year-old males”—Piper held up her empty fork and gave it a little stab in Bree’s direction—“I dealt with them a lot as a cop, and they are all, without a doubt, mildly brain-damaged until they hit twenty-five. Scientific fact, I kid you not. Their brains are still developing, and they do dumbass things. So don’t judge Harley too harshly. He likely couldn’t help being a colossal tool.”
“I’m not judging him,” Bree said. “He told me before I ever slept with him that he wasn’t looking for anything permanent with a woman—any woman. I just stupidly thought I was different.”
“You are different. Seen the way he looks at you, ya know.” Piper smirked. “And now I understand why you were so regularly absent when Harley came home over the years. Yet here you both are again, exchanging long, I wanna bang you senseless glances when you think no one’s watching. He’s your unfinished business, and you should totally tap that.”
Bree preferred to think of him as a sickness. A debilitating mental illness she’d managed to overcome and enter into remission from, for nine long years. Until he’d shown up at her door this time around and infected her again. After her weakness last night, she obviously needed a Harley immunity booster shot.
“I’m not tapping that,” she said. “As if Mrs. T. and the rest of the gossips haven’t got enough to go on. Can we change the topic?”
“Sure,” said Piper. “What are you going to do about the gallery?”
Bree groaned and leaned back in her chair. She really had zero appetite. “My life is in the toilet; thanks for reminding me.”
“You didn’t ask Harley for a loan?”
“No, but I did have an idea I’d thought about running by him.” Though now, she’d rather tidy her bikini line with a blow torch than ask him for a favor.
“Do tell.” Piper’s smile turned sly. “Hot sex in exchange for a shitload of cash?”
“There’s a name for that—it’s called prostitution.”
“You’re no fun. Tell me what this idea is then.”
“I’m organizing an art show next month, and if I can convince Harley to let me sell one of his paintings—and to make an appearance at the show—the commission added to my savings might be a big enough down deposit to satisfy Christine until I can figure out how to raise the rest.”
“Which painting are you thinking of?” Piper said. “The blue swirly one or the one of the naked chick who is a younger you in a not-so-disguising disguise?”
Cue saggy jaw and bulging eyes. “You saw that painting?”
“Who do you think strips his bed linen on wash day?”
“You do Harley’s laundry? Jeez, Piper—pregnancy hormones really knocked you out of shape.”
“True.” Piper waved her fork airily. “But I can tell you now, the man has some seriously sexy boxer shorts. The clingy, expensive kind.”
“You wash his boxers?” Bree’s voice climbed an octave before Piper’s original admission slapped her upside the head and got her mind off Harley’s underwear. “Never mind,” she said. “God. You saw the painting and knew it was me?”
“Yep. Actually, no. But you just confirmed it.” Piper rested her arms on her stomach. “Seriously, though. That’s the painting you should hound him for. It’s so out there from anything else he’s done; collectors will be bitch-slapping each other for it.”
“What do you think the odds are he’ll let me exhibit it?”
Piper grinned at her. “About the same as the odds that you two will have smoking-hot, make-up sex in the near future.”
Bree narrowed her eyes. “So no chance in hell then?”
“Not fooling anyone, Queen Bee,” said Piper. “You know you can’t resist him for much longer. Komeke’s your Kryptonite.”
Ain’t that the truth.
“Now eat your breakfast,” Piper bossed. “You’ll need your strength.”
Bree scooped up a forkful of eggs. Piper was right. Bree needed strength in order to swallow her pride and ask Harley for a favor. But she also needed strength—way more than what she’d get from egg protein—to shore up her crumbling willpower.
Smoking-hot sex with a six-foot-tall hunk of ripped Kryptonite was getting harder and harder to resist.
***
Harley’s art and the women he slept with didn’t mix. Ever.
He didn’t talk about his process with them, because that would reveal the red hot pit of lava in his belly that drove him. He didn’t allow them into his studio, because a lot of what he created on canvas was dredged from the rotten core of his soul, and he didn’t choose to show it to the world until he decided to. And he sure as hell didn’t create his art around them, because portraying an individual woman, as opposed to an imaginary ideal, indicated that that particular woman had way too much power over him.
So he was pissed—to put it mildly—to find himself sketching Bree’s face on the mural’s depiction of Paptuanuku. Don’t get him started on the stack of unfinished sketches of Bree stashed at West’s place, either. Anyone would think he was obsessed.
Drawing Me In: A New Zealand Secret Baby Second Chance Romance (Due South Series Book 7) Page 12