by Law, Kim
“As far as I know,” Nick answered. He nodded toward the house. “Let’s find the key.”
They headed inside, and while Nate rummaged through the kitchen drawers looking for the spare key, Nick called their sister. He confirmed with her that the apartment was empty, and while he was at it, he let her know that Jenna could stand to see her friend.
“We might cut our trip shorter than planned,” Dani told him. “I’m not sure by how much, but we’re all missing home.”
“Just make Jenna priority number one when you get here, if you can. She’s different.”
“She okay?”
“Yes. Quieter mostly. Sadder. But strangely”—he kicked Nate to get his attention, and when he knew both brother and sister were listening, and their oldest sibling was somewhere upstairs, he continued—“Gabe seems different, too. Standing up to Michelle more. And she isn’t taking it well. In fact, it feels like World War III is about to erupt.”
“That would be another reason to come on back,” Dani mused. “I’ll talk to Ben.”
They hung up, and Nick watched as Nate assembled a mammoth-size sandwich.
“So he’s tired of her shit?” Nate asked. He shoved a fourth of the sandwich into his mouth.
“Seems to be.” Nick eyed the food. “Hungry?”
“Starved. Red-eye last night. I’ve barely slept and had nothing but airline food all day.”
Nick tried his best not to look at his watch as they stood there. He wanted to hang with his brother, but he also didn’t want to miss the invite to actually go to Harper’s house. That had been big for her.
“Go,” Nate mumbled around another bite. “I’m going to finish this, then head upstairs to hand in my man card.”
“Every guy needs to play with dolls now and then,” Nick said dryly. “Makes you tough.”
“I’m not sure about the tough part.” Nate pulled a drink from the fridge. “But the kid needs a buddy. Even I know that. I’ll go up and win her over like I did with Haley. Make sure I’m her favorite uncle, too.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
Nate guzzled half the soda. “I want to ride over with you tomorrow.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That okay?”
“Sure.” Nick glanced at the back door. “And it’s really okay if I go?”
“Could I stop you if I wanted to?”
Nick’s smile returned. Nate could stop him, but Nick would put up one heck of a fight before he gave in.
“I can’t believe you’re still seeing her,” Nate said around another bite. “You going to let me get a look at her?”
“She’ll be there tomorrow night.”
Another bite disappeared. “And what if I don’t want to wait that long?”
“Then that’s too damned bad.” Nick snagged the final bite of the sandwich from his brother, and grinned at Nate’s shout of protest. He tossed a wave over his head as he turned for the door, shoving the food in his mouth as he went. He had a woman to get to. A woman he wanted to keep all to himself for as long as he possibly could.
And he’d already delayed too long in getting to her.
Chapter Nineteen
Jitters filled Harper as she stood at the front windows and waited for Nick. Nerves had been swirling since the evening before, when she’d extended the invitation. What was she doing? She didn’t have people over to her house. Her own family rarely even visited.
Yet, the words had slipped out with little thought. She felt safe inviting Nick here.
Though still nervous.
His truck turned in at the base of the driveway, and she held her breath in anticipation. As he pulled to a stop, she stepped out onto the porch, unable to wait. And as she quickly noted, a side benefit of coming outside to greet him was the fact it allowed her to enjoy the nice scenery he presented as he climbed from his vehicle. Tonight he wore his standard jeans and cowboy boots, but he’d foregone any of his many championship buckles, as well as the hat. However, the tight black T-shirt tucked snugly into his jeans said that he was as bad as his swagger.
“Hey,” he greeted her first. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, beer in one hand, pizza in the other, and smiled up at her.
“Hey.” She smiled back. It had been only twenty-four hours since she’d seen him, yet it felt like so much longer. “How’s your family?” she asked.
“As crazy as ever. Nate showed up today, too.”
“Your twin?”
“Yep. Right before I left.” He remained at the base of the stairs, as if waiting for her to invite him up. His eyes never left hers. “He’s at the house playing Barbies with Jenna.”
“And you didn’t need to stay home with him?”
He shook his head. “He can play Barbies without me.”
Her hands began to shake. “Want to come in, then?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” He took the steps two at a time, and when he reached the top, he didn’t pause. He backed her to the house—his hands still full of pizza and beer—and trapped her against the stucco. Then he kissed her.
She melted into the moment.
“I missed you,” he said when he released her mouth. His warm blue eyes roamed over her face as if mapping her. “How are you?”
“Good.” She licked her lips. “Better now.”
“Good.” He kissed her once more.
When they parted that time, she laughed breathlessly and shoved at his chest. He stepped back, and she took the beer from him. “You’re bad for me, Wilde.”
She turned to the door.
“Wrong. I’m good for you.” The tail end of his words whispered hotly over the back of her neck as he moved in closer, and goose bumps raced over her body. She paused before opening the door because she wanted to back into him. To let his hard muscles mold to hers.
She wanted that bad.
Forcing herself to ignore both his taunts and her wants, she pushed open the wooden door. She didn’t immediately enter, instead sidestepping and motioning for Nick to go in first. And as he stepped slowly inside, she swallowed her nerves and followed him in. He stopped in the middle of the front room, and she let him take a minute to adjust. There was a view from here to the kitchen, dining room, and main living area. And all that white hitting at once was a bit much.
In fact, while she’d been here by herself the night before, she’d had the urge to do something about it. It was time to redecorate. Again. Only, she’d had no inspiration as to what to do. Nothing felt right.
“That’s a lot of white.” Nick finally spoke.
His words made her snicker. “A lot of white.”
She moved ahead of him and led him to the kitchen. “It’s kind of funny when you think about it,” she said as she went. “In a sad way. I did this because I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing what Thomas and I had put so much time into planning and picking out. Yet this”—she turned and spread her arms wide—“is insane.”
Nick shook his head. “It strikes me as more therapeutic than crazy. You needed calmness around you to offset everything going on in your head.”
“Well . . .” She took the pizza and set both food and drink on the oversize island. “It didn’t work.” She twisted her hands together in front of her. “I’ve sat here and stared at it all for months. In the same mental place the entire time. Nothing worked.”
“Until me,” he said.
She stood before him, unmoving, her heart pounding in her throat, until he pulled her hands free and wrapped his fingers around hers. He squeezed her hands and tugged her closer.
“Until you,” she whispered. The words put a lump in her throat, but they were true. He’d pushed her out of her comfort zone, and she could no longer go back. Nor sit still.
“Show me the house?” he asked.
She nodded and he laced his fingers through hers. They roamed through the first floor together, and as they took in the additional spaces and the many rooms, she forced herself to see it through his eyes. And stra
ngely, the impersonal nature of the spaces wasn’t what stood out to her the most. It was the overabundance. What would she and Thomas have ever needed with this much square footage?
Yet he’d been insistent. They’d needed this house, this way.
Then one day he’d let it slip that it was a hundred square feet larger than his parents’ home, and a chill had slid down her spine. They’d been competing with the two people who’d refused to be in their lives? She hadn’t understood it at the time, yet she could see now that it had been his way of throwing their money back in their faces. Of letting them know that he didn’t need them. Even though he’d desperately wanted them.
It had been his way of allowing himself to be angry with them. Kind of like the reason she’d turned everything white. Because Thomas would have hated it.
She showed Nick the guest bedroom on the main floor—also white—then led him to the other side of the house to the master suite. She’d thought about whether she wanted to bring him into this room or not, but in the end, she’d decided yes. It wasn’t Thomas’s room with her anymore. It hadn’t been in a long time.
It was barely even her room.
They crossed the threshold, and she released his hand and stayed by the door. He went first to the lone picture sitting on top of her dresser. It was the only photograph in the house.
As he studied it, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He might want her, and want to be with her, but he’d never once shown jealousy at the fact that she sometimes needed to talk about Thomas. That she still loved him.
Maybe that was only because this thing between her and Nick was casual, but she didn’t think so. She thought it was more about his nature as a man. He was respectful. Even when he’d had a much different kind of role model as a young boy. It said a lot about him as a person, to be able to overcome the way he’d been raised.
“I’m not sure if I ever really expressed my thanks for pushing me to talk about Thomas,” she said now. “But thank you.”
Nick looked across the room at her, the picture of her and Thomas still in his hands. “And thank you for pushing me back. I needed to forgive and forget. Holding on to anger over my childhood has provided no positives in my life, and though I’d thought I’d overcome all of that a long time ago, I’d been lying to myself. You helped me to see it.”
She nodded, unable to say anything else.
Nick set the photo back on the dresser.
“That was after our first search and rescue mission,” she told him. She moved to his side. “The two hikers were found safe, with practically no injuries, and though we didn’t personally locate the actual rescue, our hearts were full from the fact that we’d been out there that day.”
“In honor of his brother.”
The lump reappeared in her throat. “It was as if Harry had been with us.”
She picked up the picture. Thomas’s smile was so wide. “He’d wanted so badly to save his brother. Every time we went on a search, I swear he was looking for him, too. As if the years hadn’t gone by and his brother was still out there somewhere.” She held the frame to her chest and looked at Nick. “Thomas had the helicopter equipped with lights so we could fly at night, did I tell you that? Harry wasn’t found until the morning after, because they’d had to call off the search after dark. Flying at night still isn’t exactly safe, even with the lights, but with night-vision goggles, it allows us . . . me . . . to keep searching.”
She didn’t comment on the fact that she no longer searched, even in the daylight.
“That must come in handy.”
“Yes,” she said softly. She put the picture back and moved to the connected en suite. There was more house to show him.
She pushed open the double doors to display the embarrassingly large space, and Nick walked to the middle of the room—once again, all white—and rotated in a circle. He stopped, facing the two-person shower with the multiple jets positioned both overhead and along the wall, and caught her gaze in the mirror.
“Nice,” he murmured.
She blushed. That shower had seen some activity in the past.
She left the bathroom, suddenly feeling more than she was ready to feel in this room.
“Where’s the other door lead?” Nick asked, and when she looked back at him, he had his hand on the handle of the unopened door.
“Don’t—” She cut off her words, one hand lifted slightly in the air.
Nick didn’t open the door, but he waited, hand still at the ready. And she could practically hear his thoughts. He wanted her to tell him what was running through her mind. To let him help.
She didn’t want to need help.
But she nodded and lowered her hand. And Nick slowly pushed open the door. The room would have been the nursery. Nick stepped inside, and Harper crossed her arms over her chest and went in behind him. Her breathing grew heavier.
“Not white in here?” he asked.
She shook her head. The walls were a pale green.
There was no flooring, though. Only a subfloor, and a single rocking chair sat in the middle of it. She didn’t open the closet and show him the small box by itself on the top shelf.
“We bought the chair two weeks before Thomas died,” she said, her words barely making it out of her throat. “We’d decided to start a family, so we went shopping and picked out the chair we wanted to rock our first child in.”
She turned and left the room, and Nick followed. He closed the door behind him, and when she stopped at the foot of her bed, she let herself be wrapped in his arms.
“I’m so sorry things didn’t turn out as you’d planned,” he whispered into her hair. His hands and warm touch comforted her.
“And I’m so sorry you had a witch for a mother,” she mumbled into his chest.
Her words made him chuckle, and he pulled back and peered down at her. “You okay?” he asked. He tilted her face up so he could scrutinize it in the overhead light, and she nodded.
“It’s just hard sometimes,” she told him. “But yeah. I’m good.”
Nick nodded. He pressed his lips to the spot between her eyes. “Want to show me the second floor now or should we stop?”
He was always so intuitive.
“Is it okay if we stop? I promise to finish the tour later. The media room is up there. It’ll be perfect for watching a horror movie after we stuff ourselves on pizza.”
“Horror movie?” He groaned and led them out of the room. “Why did I assume we’re be watching a chick flick of some sort?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Especially since the first time we had sex it was with a bad slasher film playing in the background.”
They reached the kitchen island and she grabbed the beers while he scooped up the pizza.
“You’re an odd one, Harper Stone.”
She blew him a kiss and a wink. “But you like it, Nicholas Wilde.”
He grinned. “That I do. A lot.”
And strangely, neither the words nor the intense way he focused on her as he said them made her nearly as nervous as they once would have. He liked her a lot. And she was okay with that.
She led the way to the patio, and as they ate, they laughed together over mundane things, pointed out mule deer that poked their heads in and out of the woods at the back of her property, and generally acted like they were any normal couple. It was comforting.
“I talked to one of the local tour companies today,” she said.
“Yeah?” Nick finished his beer and eyed another one.
She nudged another bottle over to him. “One of the things I do is custom tours, fit to customers’ needs. I take them wherever and whenever they want to go. But I’ve been thinking that I should mix things up. Take on more everyday work.”
“Finally ready to settle down and quit being so risky?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Hardly. And quit worrying about me, will you? It’s tiring.”
His jaw clenched at her words, but he didn’t comment. She also didn’t
tell him that, though they’d covered the fact that she’d been taking too many risks over the last year and a half, it didn’t mean her risk-taking days were over. That was a part of who she was. And if this whole trying-to-wake-up-out-of-her-fog thing was teaching her anything, it was to not give up who she was.
At least, not all of her.
“I talked to them,” she continued, “with the thought of having a steady paycheck coming in. Being more financially responsible.”
Nick shot a look at the house.
“It’s not my money,” she explained before he could ask.
“It’s not legally yours?”
“Well, yes. It is mine legally. All of it. The house, helicopter, vehicles, and a heck of a lot of green sitting in investments. But I don’t want it. I never did. And I’ve been sitting around relying on the fact that I have money if I need it. But what I need is to get back out there. I also spent a couple of hours today looking into local charities.” She shrugged. “Though I might get involved.”
Nick leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Good for you. That’s who you are.”
It’s who she’d once been. But she was trying. Or thinking about trying.
It was better than where she’d been two weeks ago, at least.
They both grew quiet once more, and darkness began to settle around them. The candle she’d brought out before he’d arrived was burning low, flickering in the night breeze, and the pizza was demolished. They both had healthy appetites.
“You looking forward to your dad getting back Sunday?” she asked.
Nick took her hand. “You asking if I’m looking forward to leaving? Or to not having to work on the farm?”
She leaned her head back against her seat. She wasn’t ready for him to leave. “Both.”
“I’ve enjoyed being home,” he said. “But I also—
The aviation radio squawked from inside the house, and Harper sat up. She kept it tuned to a station that monitored distress signals. She listened as details of a report of missing hikers was relayed, and for the first time in nearly nineteen months, she had the urge to help. It was dark. She could take her helicopter up.