“I told you,” he adds. “We’re together now.”
“You said that before you left.” I pull back and look at him. “You did leave. I’m so very thankful that you came back and not just because of that warehouse. You heard the voicemails. You know what state I was in before the warehouse went dark. I was destroyed when you left and I don’t even know what to do with that. No other human being has ever had that power over me.”
“I was no better.” He shuts his eyes and seems to struggle before he looks at me. “I had things pounding at my mind.”
“Things? Numbers?”
“Yes. Yes, Harper. No one does that to me anymore, and I have to want you really damn badly to let you know you can do that to me. It’s a weakness. I don’t like weaknesses.”
“I’m a weakness?” That cuts and I try to pull away.
He holds onto me. “Caring about someone is a weakness,” he says, echoing my thoughts from moments before. “It opens you up to pain and hurt. We just choose to make it worth the risk. And you are.”
I understand what he’s saying. Losing my dad tore me to pieces. Fear for my mother drives me daily, but there is more to the confessions now between us. “I wish I didn’t know that I could trigger the savant in a bad way. I don’t want to be a trigger like that. I want to be someone who calms you. I want—”
He leans in and kisses me, a deep slide of tongue before he says, “You can be. In time, you can be that for me. With trust, there are many things we can be together, Harper.”
It’s then that I know I have to tell him what I’ve held back. I have to tell him all the shitty ways this family has tried to hurt him, and be done with it. At least then, despite the pain it will cause, it won’t be pain I caused, and I now think that’s a critical part of us moving forward. “Eric—”
The messages on the MacBook explode with back-to-back beeps and he kisses me. “Hold that thought. I need to see what the hell is going on.” He turns away to read the messages and I’m suddenly alarmed. We’re in the air. My mother is on the ground. What if something goes wrong?
“What’s happening?” I ask, scooting closer and trying to see over his shoulder. “Is everyone safe?”
“Yes,” he says, typing a reply before he glances at me. “My father and Isaac showed up at the warehouse and apparently had a blow up in front of the building.”
“Because I’m still alive? Or because your father found out Isaac tried to kill me and went nuts?”
He stops mid-sentence of whatever he’s typing and turns to me. “Maybe the latter. I don’t know.” His expression says nothing more but it’s there, in the air.
“What do you and Blake think?”
“Undecided. On one side, I don’t like the way they tried to get me out of the picture before tonight happened. That seems like they wanted to end you, and they knew I wouldn’t let that happen. On the other side, if you ended up dead, they had to believe that I’d come back for revenge. Then again, I let them get away with hurting my mother.” He cuts his stare.
“You were a teenager.” I grab his arm. “You were a kid and you followed her wishes.”
He looks at me. “What are your wishes, Harper?”
It feels like a test. Like his need to hear that my loyalty is to him, not them. I don’t know how he can question this, but I get it. I’m still the princess until I prove I’m right here with him, all the way until the end. “I don’t want to take any shit from them ever again. Hurt them if they deserve it.”
“They deserved it before I ever met you.”
“Don’t hold back for me. Ever.”
His eyes glint with something I don’t quite understand. “Are you sure about that?” he asks softly.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Then now is the time when I ask you a question before I assume the answer. I ask. You answer. Tell me the truth.”
Unease slides through me. I don’t know what this is about. I don’t know at all, but I dive head first into the uncharted waters. “I will. Ask. Whatever it is, I’ll answer honestly.”
“Why did Kingston wire large sums of money into an account in your name that you later closed?”
Suddenly, I feel as if the floor of the plane is opening up and sucking me into the turbulence.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Harper
My hand is at my throat as I turn away from Eric, trying to calm down. A bank account in my name, with wire transfers, which is now closed. I’m still trying to recover from this fact when Eric pushes forward. “Talk to me, Harper,” Eric says. “Be honest, no matter how bad it is.”
My gaze rockets to his. “I have two accounts. Checking and savings. I’ve had the savings since I was ten. I’ve had the checking since I moved to Denver years ago. I don’t have, nor have I ever had any account that received wires. I also haven’t closed an account.”
He studies me, his expression impassive, unreadable, his blue eyes steely, his jaw hard.
“I promise you, Eric. I promise on my mother’s life. I swear to God above. I’m telling you the truth.”
He turns away from me, keys into the MacBook and then stares at the screen for a few beats before turning it for me to look at what appears to be my bank account. I grab the MacBook and study the account, and my God. It looks like it’s mine. I check the data, all that I can see online, and it’s a terrifying match for me. I then scan the wires and the sum of money that came into this account and what’s left is six figures many times over. My stomach rolls.
“I need a bathroom,” I say, sliding out of the booth and hurrying down the small walkway toward what I think is my destination. When I find the small alcove, I grab the door there and enter a space that is as compact as most airlines, despite this being a private plane. I shut the door and I do what anyone would in here. I go to the bathroom. I wash my hands. I act like normal activity will make this go away right up until the point that the normal activity is over. Now I’m just standing in a tiny space, staring at myself in the mirror. How have I given this much of myself to this family to end up here?
Eric knocks on the door. “Harper. Open up.”
Open up and say what?
To him, I’m a liar. Again. Anger surges in me and I yank the door open to find him big and intimidatingly male, filling the doorway and the entire exterior space. It doesn’t make me back down. “I thought you wanted to talk about the miscarriage, but obviously, you didn’t get me up here, trapped in a cage, to talk about a baby that meant nothing to you. You brought me up here to corner me about a bank account that isn’t even mine. You don’t want to trust me. You want to prove I’m the damn princess you can hate. You wanted me to be her so badly that you carved her name on your body.” I shove against him. “Move. I need to get out of here.”
He shackles my wrists and in a quick second, I’m against the wall next to the door, and he’s all but suffocating me with muscle and man. “Don’t bully me. I don’t like it.”
“You think the baby we lost means nothing to me? Are you fucking serious?”
“Yes, I am. You never said it mattered to you.”
“Again I ask, are you fucking serious?”
“Did it?”
“Yes. It did.” He cuts his gaze, turbulence flooding off of him before his jaw sets harder and he pins me in an arrow of a stare. “You’re deflecting.”
“Like you did with the baby?”
“You’re pushing me in ways you don’t want to push me, Harper.”
“Or what? What are you going to do? Kill me for them?”
His eyes glint hard, anger burning deep and dark before he releases me and starts walking away.
Shocked, I sink down against the wall and I swear my knees go weak. Right when I feel as if the floor of the plane is opening up to suck me out again, Eric is back, pulling me to him. “I would have wanted to know and father our child. I would have loved our child. You matter to me. Everything you said in those messages matte
rs to me, but I want us to talk about those things when we land because I want us to be on the same page when we get to New York. Me and you against the world. Meet me halfway, Harper.”
“It’s not my account. I swear, Eric, it’s not mine.” My fingers curl around his shirt. “It’s not mine, but how are you going to believe me? How can you ever believe me?”
He studies me all of two seconds. “I believe you.”
I blanch. “What?”
“I’d know if you were lying. I’d see it in your eyes.” He leans in and brushes his lips over mine, a soft, lingering touch before he whispers, “I’d taste it on your lips.” He pulls back. “We’ll handle this. Together.”
“How do we handle it? How does this even happen? How can anyone open an account in my name?”
“There are hackers like Blake Walker who have the skills to do it.” The messages on his MacBook beep in rapid succession and he kisses my hand. “Come on. Let’s sit and make sure we end this.”
I don’t know what that means, but he’s already walking and taking me with him. We settle back into the booth and he is immediately exchanging messages with whoever is on iMessage. “A Walker team member followed one of the men from the warehouse. He’s tailing him now. No word on who he is yet.” He sends another message, followed by another and then turns to me. “Blake is going to make the bank account history disappear. By the time we’re on the ground, it won’t exist.”
“Just like that?”
“He’s one of the best hackers on planet earth,” he says. “So no, not just like that. Just like Blake. We’re damn lucky to have him working with us.”
“Do you know what those wires were used for?”
“Not yet. Blake’s going to have us go to their facility when we arrive and we’re going to talk all of this through, which is why we’re going to need to get some sleep.” He shuts his MacBook and when he would stand up again, I catch his arm.
“I’m being framed, right?”
“Or just used. We can’t know for sure. That’s what we’ll work with Blake and his team to figure out.” He kisses me. “Come on. Let’s lie down. We need to be alert when we land and we only have about three hours to sleep.” He moves away and stands. I let him help me to my feet, but I’m not naïve. He’s trying to avoid something but even before we talk about what I feel it might be, I need to say something else to him.
He guides us to two side by side lounge recliners and we sit down. I turn to him. “I’m sorry. I was all over the place by the bathroom and—”
He kisses me with his hand on my head, his tongue stroking deep, the taste of him drugging before he says, “It’s been an emotional night that will eventually end with you in my bed. I’ll deal with everything in between to get you there.” He caresses my cheek and hits a button that starts to lower my seat before doing the same of his.
A minute later, we’re on our sides, facing each other, the intimacy between us a bubble of warmth I want to live inside, get lost inside, but I can’t yet. Not until I process the implications of that bank account that keep hitting me from all sides. “If they framed me with that bank account, and who knows what else, maybe when you showed up they got spooked. Maybe that’s why those men came at me. Maybe I was a get out of jail free card. If I died and I was framed for whatever this is, this ends.” Another thought hits me and I sit up straight. “Oh God.” I turn to Eric. “Oh God.” I raise my seat and he follows. I stand up because I can’t sit. I can’t stand the idea in my head.
Eric follows me to the aisle and turns me to face him. “What is it?”
“What if Gigi sent me to get you so she could frame you for my murder in some way?”
CHAPTER NINE
Eric
What if Gigi used her to set me up and frame me for her murder?
The plane starts to quake around us again. Harper and I still stand in the middle of the aisle, almost as if the damn universe is answering her fears, telling us that yes, Gigi plotted Harper’s murder, and in turn, my blame for her death.
Death.
Harper’s murder.
Just the idea of finding her to lose her again guts me.
“Eric?” Harper presses when I haven’t replied. “You aren’t saying anything. You think I’m right, don’t you?”
The plane quakes again, this time violently. I catch the ceiling, and mold Harper close, holding onto her, the way I plan to hold onto her from this point forward. I can’t explain how she’s become that important to me, but she has. I think she’s been a part of me since I met her, I just didn’t want to admit it. Not when, in my mind, she was one of them.
“Let’s sit back down,” I say. “We need to buckle up.”
“Do you think Gigi—”
The plane drops and I have to grab the damn seat to keep us from tumbling. The minute I have stable ground, if you can call anything about where we’re at right now stable, I rotate us and plant Harper in her seat. Another rumbling of the plane beneath my feet has my hands planting on the arms of her chair. “Eric,” she breathes out, grabbing my shirt as if she’s trying to protect me, not steady herself. Like she could hold onto me and keep me from flying if we jolted much more. “I won’t let them use me to get to you.”
She says those words with such passion and emotion that I wonder how I ever doubted her, but I know. They are why I doubted her. I let them get into my head and I judged her the same way they judged me: by where she came from. “They don’t get to use either of us anymore, Harper. No more.” The plane calms for a moment and I buckle her seatbelt. “We’ll win. I promise you.” I sit down and secure myself in my seat.
She turns to me and gives me a turbulent look. “Do you think Gigi—” she begins again, but I cut her off.
“All I can confirm, and all I know right now, is that I wouldn’t be surprised if Gigi popped champagne when my mother killed herself.”
“You really think they were trying to kill me tonight, don’t you?”
I stroke her hair. “Sweetheart, I’ve got you. I will protect you.”
“That’s a yes.”
“That’s a ‘we won’t rule out any possibility.’”
“What happens when they come for me in New York City?”
“They won’t be that foolish,” I assure her, and I believe that to be true. “They know I’ll be waiting. They know I’ll be ready, especially after tonight.”
“If they believe I’m the way to cover up whatever you’re about to discover, they might be desperate.”
“That bank account was wiped out,” I remind her. “They can’t pin anything on you.”
“We have no idea what else they might have on me, what else they framed me for.”
“We knew about the bank account,” I counter. “And anything else digital Blake has found.”
“There could be paper trails, things I did that I didn’t know I was doing. Eric, that meeting with the union I was supposed to have—it felt weird. It felt like a set-up. I actually thought that when I found out about it.”
“What kind of set-up?”
“At the time, I thought they were going to make it look like I screwed things up with the union to fire me. A way to get rid of me for bringing you here. Now, I’m not so sure, Eric. Maybe it was something more nefarious. Who knows what kind of ways they’ve been setting me up to be a fall guy. After tonight, I’m afraid I’ve been blind and stupid.”
“No,” I say. “You’re not blind. You’re not stupid. You had a gut feeling about the union meeting. When we get to New York City, we’ll sit down and tune into any instinct you had that might guide us. Sleep now. We only have a couple of hours until we land and we’ll plan this out.”
“How can I sleep? The plane. This damn family. My mother back there with them.”
“Your mother is safe.”
“Can we warn Walker Security that Gigi might be involved? What if me leaving has them turn on her?”
“You know Wa
lker is already watching her. They’re damn good. They’ve thought of everything we’ve thought of.”
“How can you be sure? If this was your mother—”
“You’re right,” I say. “You’re absolutely right.” The plane is calm enough, for the moment at least, that I unbuckle and walk to the table where I left the MacBook in a compartment under the wooden top. I grab it, hold on as we shake a good thirty seconds and then make my way back to my seat. Once I’m secure again, I pull up the MacBook and try to connect but this time it’s a no-go. I show Harper the message I’m getting. “Sorry, sweetheart. It’s just not going to happen.” I shove the Mac into a pocket by my chair and turn to Harper. “Adam’s in charge in Denver and he’s damn good. He’ll protect your mother with his life. I promise you this. Rest, princess.”
“Princess?”
“I like that name for you,” I say, my voice rasping with about ten emotions I can’t name. “You’re my princess, not theirs. Not ever again. They don’t get to define us, remember?”
“But you—”
I lean in and kiss her. “Want you like I have never wanted in my life. Now rest. You won’t get to rest when you’re in my bed. Not the first night. Hell, maybe not the first month.”
A faint smile touches her lips but doesn’t quite reach her eyes. I want it to reach her eyes and that means ending the Kingston hell she’s in. Fuck. I should have ended the Kingstons when I wanted to end them. When I was five seconds from doing it, and doing it with proverbial dynamite. I lean her seat back and stand up to grab the blanket and pull it over her. I then crank my seat back as well and face her.
I cup her face and my thumb strokes her cheek. “Shut your eyes and think of something that makes you happy.”
“Ending this would make me happy.”
“Then I’ll end it, just to make you happy.”
She gives me another half smile. “Just to make me happy?”
The Princess Page 4