“So much for using a condom,” he says, his hands pressing on the counter on either side of me.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I probably can’t get pregnant again, but if I did—hey—we’d make beautiful babies together, remember?”
“Babies that inherit my family and my genes,” he reminds me.
“Beautiful and smart, like you.”
He arches a brow, amusement in his eyes. “Beautiful?”
“Yes.” I touch his cheek and then let my fingers trail over his jaguar tattoo. “And strong,” I say. “So very strong.”
He catches my hand and squeezes his eyes shut, shadows flickering over his handsome face before he pushes off the counter and walks away. I tug a towel around me, while he pulls on his pants and returns with my phone. He stands in front of me and replays the message on speaker:
Listen to me, Harper. I’m here in the city for you. If anything happens to you, your mother will never forgive me and I love her too much to see her suffer you as a loss. Eric is not a good person. He’s dangerous and anything you think you know about what’s going on, you don’t. Come to my hotel. The Ritz, room 1501. Find a way. I’ll be here for twenty-four hours. Come sooner than later. I worry for you every moment you’re with him.
A muscle in his jaw tics. “What did that message mean to you?”
“That he’s the bastard and I really don’t understand his endgame, unless he’s trying to get me to go back to Denver, where I’m exposed. What does it mean to you?”
He studies me several beats and then to my surprise, he turns away and exits the bathroom. I jump off the counter and ignore my present undress to follow him. I find him at the bedroom window, inky darkness enveloping the city before him, and only then do I realize that he has a mini Rubik’s cube in one hand that he’s moving around.
The cube that allows him to think, to process. To calm his mind.
Maybe he wants space, but I’m not sure that’s really what he needs right now. I walk to my bags, grab a black silk robe, and pull it around me. Once I’m back, I sit on the chair next to Eric and give him his space without allowing him to feel alone. I’m telling him I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.
A good five minutes pass, and then he sits down next to me, dropping the cube to the floor. He’s done with it. He’s found his answers. “What did your father’s message mean to you, Eric?”
“Ten things,” he says. “Twenty. Nothing.”
I notice the ways he speaks in numbers and I wonder if this will be a pattern. If it tells me his state of mind, but right now, I don’t just don’t know.
He looks at me, his eyes troubled, flecks of fire in their depths, but it’s not fire like he has for me. It’s fire like the flames of hell, burning him alive. “If I’m such a damn genius, the man who solves all puzzles, who sees what others don’t, why the hell can’t I figure out what the hell my father has planned?”
I glance down at his arm, at one of the only words written out in letters, not numbers: Honesty. It resonates with me and this moment. Because in this moment, I understand Eric more than I think even Eric understands himself. I know what he thought I’d never figure out, what he doesn’t want me to realize. “You can,” I say. “You just don’t want to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Harper
Eric digests my words without movement. We remain on that chair in his bedroom, his eyes probing mine, a sea of blackness outside the window that we ignore. A sea of darkness etched in his heart thanks to this family and his father.
Eric is the one who looks away first, his attention shifting to the window that holds no answers, but then, it doesn’t have to offer answers. His mind is where the puzzle of his father’s intent is solved. His mind is the genius that can take him, and us, there, if he so chooses. At least that’s my belief, that’s my gut feeling. Seconds tick by and turn into minutes before his hands come down on my legs and he looks at me, the turbulence of minutes before banked, if not gone.
“Let’s eat,” he says. “You have to be hungry. I know I am.” And with that, he stands up and starts walking.
I don’t move. He just shut down our conversation and shut out his father, and maybe me with him. I’m not offended. I assume that he must need time to process his thoughts and I don’t know what that means for a savant. I don’t know the best way to support that part of him, but it seems that letting his actions guide me until I can have a real conversation with him about it seems smart.
“You coming?”
I twist around to find him standing at the door, peeking back into the room from the hallway. I stand up and face him. “You want me to come?”
“Get your pretty little ass over here, woman. Of course, I want you to come.”
Apparently, he doesn’t need space, and I round the chair, his hot stare watching my every move, pausing at the store bags to grab the pair of black slippers to match my robe that I remember spying when I grabbed it. Eric doesn’t move. He waits for me to close the space between us, lets his gaze slide down my body, and settle on my fluffy feet. I don’t know why he makes staring at slippers so damn sexy, but I’m wet again.
It’s ridiculous.
He’s ridiculously addictive.
He drags me to him and kisses me, heat pooling low in my belly, as he murmurs, “Maybe I’ll just eat you again.”
I’m officially tingling all over but for once with this man, I have willpower. “Not until you feed me and you. And we talk.”
“Hmmm well, we have plenty of time to talk, but food gives me more energy to do all the things I want to do to you.” He kisses my hand. “Come on. I’ll give you the grand tour, starting with the kitchen.”
My stomach growls and we both laugh. “I think starting with the kitchen is a good idea. What time is it anyway?”
He glances at his watch. “Early morning, which means we’ll be scavenging food from my fridge and pantry.”
“Morning. Wow. How did that happen? And thank God we slept some on the plane though I think I’m running on adrenaline, too.”
“We both are. We need to eat and get some sleep.”
“Any in TV dinners in the freezer? Because I’m not feeling breakfast food right now and that’s what I know how to cook.”
“TV dinners, huh?” He laughs as we cross his gorgeous open living area to enter the connected kitchen area. “Well, the good news is that I don’t have any TV dinners to torture you with.”
I stop at the living room side of the island while he rounds it and faces me. “What’s wrong with TV dinners?” I ask. “They make healthy, fast meals for one and that works for me. I am, after all, a single, working lady. All I need is a cat to make it perfect.”
He presses his hands to the counter, leaning in closer to me, his eyes warm, the turbulence I’d seen in them earlier, thankfully absent, at least for now. “You’re not single anymore,” he says. “You’ll figure that out soon.” His gaze lowers to my mouth, a naughty thought playing across his face before he gives me a wink. “I’d better feed you now.” He pushes off the island. “How about mac n cheese?”
“Mac n cheese? Yes, please. You have mac n cheese?”
“I always have a good ol’ box of Kraft handy.” He opens a cabinet and pulls out a box. “Though my mother wouldn’t approve. She, unlike me, was a cook and a baker. We lived on Walmart groceries, but she made them taste like Ritz Carlton room service.”
“Do you still have any of her recipes?” I ask, warmed by the way his eyes light when he talks about his mother.
“She kept them all in her head.” He cuts his stare and returns it. “Perhaps she had a little savant in her, herself.”
I feel his mood darkening with her memory, perhaps because that memory is tainted by his father, so I swiftly change the topic. “Well, Mr. Savant, you might know numbers, but can you follow a recipe? We need milk for the mac n cheese. Do you have any?”
“Do I have milk?” he asks incred
ulously and opens another cabinet with a collection of cereal boxes. “How can you even suggest otherwise? How else would I eat my breakfast that is often also my dinner?”
My gaze traces all his rippling muscles, inked to sexy perfection and I decide that his body is too hot for him to eat mac n cheese and cereal all the time, but I don’t say that. I’ll just show my appreciation later. “Well then,” I volunteer, “let me pretend to have cooking skills and boil the water.”
He laughs and it’s an easy, masculine laugh that slides under my skin, and seems to settle right there in a portion of my heart, just like the man. I like this side of him, the one that laughs and I think this is what he meant back in Denver when he talked about how different he is here. I see a glimpse of that part of him now. I think he needs the disconnect from the Kingstons right now.
I eagerly join him on the other side of the island to start my pot of water. Once the burner is on, he leans on the counter next to me, his blue eyes filled with mischief. “And you said you don’t cook.”
I laugh and he kisses me, his mood sobering as he says, “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me, too,” I whisper, my hand settling on his cheek as he rotates me to face him.
“Harper—”
His cellphone rings from his pants pocket where it’s apparently managed to land and he grimaces. “I’ll finish that sentence after we eat.” He snatches his phone and glances at the number. “Blake.” He answer the call, gives a brief greeting, and then starts walking, crossing the living room to stand at the window, which is far enough away to dilute any sound I might hear.
A hint of unease at what could be distrust on his part rumbles through me, but I squash it. He knows he can trust me. I didn’t give his father even a moment of credibility when he spoke against Eric. The water boils and I pour in the macaroni, and then the idea that my mother might call has me running upstairs to grab my own phone where it’s still sitting on the bathroom cabinet. There are no further messages and I wonder if my mother even knows that I’m gone.
I return to the kitchen and stir the pot, setting my phone on the island. Eric joins me again and I can’t seem to look at him or ask a question. He walked away for a reason. He didn’t want me to hear that conversation. Eric grabs me and pulls me to him, cupping my face and forcing my gaze to his. “Blake asked me to run a sequence of numbers through my head to see if they matched the messages we were left. Unfortunately, they didn’t.”
“What numbers?”
“He had the idea that the message tied to union case numbers, but he couldn’t make them connect and like I said, I couldn’t either.”
“Blake’s working on that now, this late?”
“He’s obsessed with the message and its meaning.” He strokes my face. “I needed to step away to do that. I wasn’t hiding anything from you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I wanted you to know.” His voice softens, eyes warming. “I know how loyal you were to me when my father called. It matters, Harper. You matter to me. And just to be clear, I’m falling in love with you, too, and I have no doubt that began the minute I saw you by that pool six years ago. You and that black dress have haunted me ever since.”
He’s falling in love with me.
I’ve haunted him, like he’s haunted me.
I want to revel in these confessions—I do revel in them—but there’s something in his eyes, a dark certainty I can’t explain, or understand. And I know that this darkness I sense in him, matters, too, and more than I want it to. It’s the Kingston part of him that I told him doesn’t exist and now that he’s opened the door to it, they will own him and divide us if I let them.
I won’t.
The Kingstons will not win.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Eric
The past…
Only half an hour after my father pulls me out of that social worker’s office, I’m at the Kingston mansion. He parks in the garage and calls over his shoulder. “Get out.”
I want to punch the window. I want to scream. I want to hit him. I don’t get out of the car. Meanwhile, my “father” is already walking into the house. I want to turn and leave. Instead, like the puppy dog I am tonight, I relent, and get out of he car. I have no choice. I have nowhere else to go. I close my hand around my mother’s note, and glance around the garage, suddenly aware of the collection of three sports cars and several motorcycles, all more expensive, I’m certain, than the trailer I’ve called home these recent years.
I hate this place already.
“Get in here!” my father grumbles, leaning out into the garage door from inside the house.
I hate him.
He probably thinks I’m planning to steal one of the cars.
I don’t want anything from this man.
I cross the garage and enter what turns out to be a stairwell. My father disappears out some door at the top as I start climbing. Once I’m at the door he’d departed, I exit to a foyer and he’s not even there. A plump older woman wearing an apron greets me.
“Hello, Eric,” she says. “I’m Delia, the housekeeper. I’ll show you to your new room.” There is grief in her—sadness for me. She knows about my mother.
“Thank you,” I say tightly, wondering if the rest of the world feels pity for me. I don’t want pity. My mother didn’t accept it when she was sick. She’d be ashamed if I accepted it now.
Delia heads up a winding wood-railed stairwell, but she doesn’t leave me behind like my father. She waits on me. When I join her, she gives me a warm look. “You can do this. I know you can.”
I don’t want to ask what she means. I see it in her eyes. She’s telling me I can survive because I believe she did at one point as well. Survive what, I don’t know, but she survived. I suddenly like this woman and I’m happy to know her.
At the top of the stairs, we turn right and enter a doorway that leads up again. It’s a loft room, a place where I’m here, but not a part of this house. This works for me. I have to be here, but I don’t want to be a part of this house.
“I’m going to get you some clothes,” Delia says as I sit on the plaid-covered bed, with the low part of the ceiling above me. “Are you hungry?”
“No. I’m not.”
“I’ll bring you food anyway.” She turns and leaves, a part of me smiles inside at her stubbornness that reminds me of my mother. I decide right then that my mother sent me Delia. Somehow, someway, from heaven above, my mother is watching me through her. And I believe in heaven, because I can’t mathematically prove it doesn’t exist, and because she believed in it. Right now, I need her to be there, not in the ground, dead and gone.
Once the door shuts, I pull out the note in my pocket and read a line and another and another: No matter how hard it is for you, and I know you, it will be monstrously hard, turn your cheek to the insults and attacks. Don’t let anyone make you fight. That’s not control. Losing your temper because someone else can bait you is weak. You are not weak. Dream big and live big. Use your gifts, don’t let them use you anymore than you let anyone bait you into throwing them away.
Be the man I know you can be.
Not for me.
For you.
I look up and Delia is in the room, and I don’t remember her entering. She’s hugging me and my cheeks are wet, my heart cold. It’s ice that is brittle and breaking.
***
Harper
The present…
The macaroni starts boiling over as Eric kisses me, both of us laughing as we race to attend to the stove. “So much for my impressive cooking skills,” I joke. “Now you know why I microwave TV dinners all the time.”
He grabs a strainer and takes over, dumping the water. “A little boiled over water never hurt anyone unless it gets thrown at you.” He sets the pan back on the stove. “Believe me, I know.” He walks to the fridge and returns with butter and milk. “Now we just need salt and pepper.”
“Believe me, I know?” I ask, ignoring the food, certain this ties back to his Navy SEAL days, which might be sensitive, but he opened the door for a reason.
He flips his arm over and takes my hand, running it over what feels like welts his tattoos cover. My eyes go wide at what I realize is a scar hidden beneath his ink and my gaze meets his. “Torture?”
“That’s pretty much what every day near Isaac was,” he says.
I suck in air. “Isaac did this?”
“Yes. Isaac did this.”
“How? When? Why?”
“He hated me. We had words while he was boiling water, and you get the idea.” He scoots me over and takes the packet of cheese from me. “I got this.”
“He threw the hot water on you?” I’m outraged. “Tell me I’m misunderstanding.”
“You aren’t.” He mixes everything in the pan. “Bowls are by the stove to the left. Can you grab them?”
“Eric—”
“Let’s eat, princess. We’ll talk over the gourmet mac n cheese. I’m about to hollow out here.”
Hollow out.
For some reason, I get the feeling those words mean more to him than hunger. They mean a lifetime of pain. They mean survival. Eager to talk to him, to understand him, I grab the bowls and a few minutes later, we’re upstairs on the chair we were on earlier, the dark night now etched with a hue of orange as the sun rises; almost as if the night has shifted with his mood, because despite his story, despite what his father did to him tonight, he’s in a better place right now, and I don’t understand it.
“Gourmet,” he says, scooping up a bite. “You and me make a good team.”
He’s right. We do. I set my mac n cheese on a table next to us and turn to face him. “How bad was the burn?”
He takes another bite. “Bad.”
“What did you do in return?”
“Screamed bloody murder while our housekeeper Delia called an ambulance.”
“How old were you?”
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