I pull up to the site on Friday just after six a.m., knowing that Tate’s going to be doing an early-start early-finish so that he can head off to spend a long weekend at River’s dorm. He parks up right beside me and when I glance at him through my driver’s side window he points up at the sky. It’s a dark gloomy blue, yesterday’s storm apparently only the start. It isn’t drizzling right now but it looks like it will soon, so today is probably going to be an indoors kind of day, working on re-tiling and re-flooring the cabins, rather than filing down the furniture in the make-shift workshop space we erected a few weeks ago.
I get out of the truck as he locks up his Ford.
“It’s grim as shit,” I grumble and he breathes out a laugh. “I’m seriously thinking that the rest of the big pieces are gonna have to be made over at my place.”
We both squint up at the sky and he nods his head in agreement. I’ve occasionally used the garage at my house to store my truck or, in the wintertime, Tate’s motorbike, but more often than not I use it solely as a workshop.
“We’ll make them, haul them in the back of the truck, cover them with the tarp, and then bring them up here as and when they’re finished.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Easy.”
Then we’re walking over to the office to get the keys to unlock the cabins. As I unlock the door to the portacabin my eyes stray up the sloped valley, over to Harper’s bungalow.
Usually by now her curtains would be open. Did she get a cab yesterday after I saw her in the store? Surely she wouldn’t have walked back here in the rain.
I bite at my bottom lip as I push open the door, Tate waiting on the steps as I go to grab the keys.
Did she come back at all last night? I mean, how the hell would I know?
The only thing that I do know is the fact that she definitely didn’t call me.
I should be happy about that, because that means that there were no problems, but I feel a tight twist in my gut. I wish that she’d open the curtains so I could just know that she got back safe.
And alone.
The thought of her pulling open those curtains and then seeing a guy cosying up right behind her is enough to make me slam the door harder than I usually would as I leave the office. Tate flashes me a look and I shake my head apologetically.
“Feeling a little rough,” I tell him, as if he won’t see right through me.
He gives me a prolonged look and then says, “Sure. But just know that you can… if you want to, you can talk to me about it.”
I can’t stop the chuckle that rumbles through my chest. When your kid tries to sort out your problems? That is singlehandedly the cutest thing ever.
“Tate,” I say, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’s nothing, I promise.”
Although, all things considered, out of the two of us he is the one with a long-term girlfriend-turned-fiancée. Three years apart and he still managed to get his chick back, and now he’s got a rock on her finger blinding every dude who lays his eyes on her. Maybe I should ask him for advice.
I decide that that’s a bad idea as I unlock the cabin that we’re focusing on this morning. Tate’s intentions are pure but I don’t want to be inappropriate. Instead I pull out my phone and shoot a text off to my brother, telling him that I might need to give him a dial in a bit.
The crew all arrive and we settle back into the grind but my mind remains distracted at how quiet it is up at those bungalows.
During her first week here Harper was a little nightmare, ‘overseeing’ the site like a spoiled princess. But now that we’ve sort of… gotten used to each other, sometimes I get a smile, sometimes I get a wave. One morning she even opened the window and offered me breakfast.
But if I step foot in that bungalow there’s only one thing that I’m gonna be eating.
I wipe my hand down my jaw. Fuck it. I need to see that she’s alright.
I’m five paces out of the cabin door when I feel my cell vibrate in my pocket. Clenching my jaw to hold back a groan, I pull the phone out of my cargos and hit the answer button.
“Yeah, it’s Coleson,” I say curtly, eyes trained up on Harper’s unmoved curtains. What is happening inside that bungalow?
I hear a snicker in the speaker. “Stole my line, man.”
I shift the cell from one ear to another, suddenly apprehensive about this call with my brother. I need him to keep me on the straight and narrow, to prevent me from doing anything unprofessional.
I take a deep breath and bite the bullet.
“We need to talk about the chick.”
“Fucking finally,” he agrees.
I wait him out, hoping for a little advice. Then I realise that he’s also waiting me out, thinking that he’s about to get an update.
“Oh Jesus,” he grumbles. I can almost see him rolling his eyes. “Don’t tell me that you’ve been pining for three weeks without making a move.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, and that’s exactly what I need to keep doing. I’m calling you so that you can punch some sense into me. Get my mind off of…” The thought of her soft thighs locking tight around my hips, her back arching high off of the mattress. Her nails scoring red lines down my skin and those perky curves bouncing fast with every thrust.
My silence doesn’t go unnoticed. He breathes out an exasperated exhalation and half-scolds me, “Are you messing with me right now? The second that I saw that woman I knew that you were gonna be all over that. Get your head out of your ass and put yourself out there. What’s the worst that can happen? Her saying ‘no’?”
“What about getting charged with sexual harassment in a workplace?”
“A workplace that she doesn’t have the paperwork to legally be at,” he interjects.
Wait, what? I try to think back to when I gave her that first briefing in my office. Did she say that she had the docs to be here? I can’t fucking remember. The only coherent memories I have of that morning involve red lace tangled over my digits and her panties poking out above the waistband of her jeans.
I shake my head. Get back on track.
“Or losing my job because I was hired by her mom.” I grip a fist in my hair. “Jesus Christ. She’s almost young enough to be my kid.”
“Only if you had a kid at, like, eighteen,” he says consolingly.
I give him a long pause to think about what he just said. Then I grit out through my teeth, “Which I did.”
Okay, so she’s not actually young enough to be my kid. But an age gap over ten years seems steep to me. She’s twenty-eight. I’m pushing forty. Generationally we are worlds apart. I’m from the last group of guys that wants to court a woman before they bed her. Whereas she… God, just thinking about it makes a hot flame lap at the muscles swelling in my abdomen.
She’s from a new generation, the type where sex comes first and thoughts about whether or not they want a relationship comes after. And that is not an arrangement that would work with me.
If it got to the point where I had her moaning on my sheets I know for a fact that I wouldn’t ever be letting her go.
“This is what I think,” Jace says, after giving me the ten seconds that I needed to calm the hell down. “Is she on-site right now?” he asks.
“Yeah. She’s in her… bungalow.”
“Okay, perfect. Go over there, knock on her door, and then gauge how she seems when she opens it up. If she seems pleased to see you, come out with it straight. Tell her you wanna date her and see how she responds. On the flip side, if she doesn’t seem happy to see you just tell her how far along you are with the reno and get the hell out of there. Find someone else to fill up your evenings. Well, someone else to fill up in your evenings.”
“Watch it,” I warn him.
“How old is she, anyway?” he asks.
“Twenty-eight.”
He whistles. Then regrets it.
“That ain’t too bad, man. Besides,” he adds, “if you don’t date her someone else will.”
He’s right and we both know it. I disconnect the call and take a long hard look at Harper’s bungalow, promising myself that the second I finish up this evening I’m heading straight over there, consequences be damned.
*
I wait for the crew to drive off the site before I finally head up to Harper’s bungalow, raise my fist, and knock on the wood.
I rap it three times.
Nothing but silence.
I take a step back so that I can glance at her windows again. Curtains are still drawn but I swear I can see a little bit of lamp glow in there.
I give the door another light pounding.
This time, there’s movement.
I hear the bedroom door open and light steps stop on the other side of the wood. For the briefest of moments I think that she has knocked back, and I have to compose myself to fight off a smile.
Then I catch a tiny, “Who is it?”
Why’s she being so quiet today? I feel an ache grip at my chest.
“It’s me, Harper. It’s Mitch.” When the silence stretches on I say, “Noticed you stayed in today and I wanted to make sure that everything was alright.”
I’m about to apologise for overstepping a boundary and turn back around to leave when the lock clicks and the door opens a millimetre. At first my heart catches in my throat, but then my brow starts creasing when the picture pulls together more completely.
I’m met with big round eyes, staring up at me through long pretty lashes, whilst she twiddles incessantly with her slender fingers. Her hair is stacked into a messy bun, little golden curls brushing against her forehead, and she’s wearing an oversized white shirt and fuzzy pop socks. My first thought is imagine coming home to this every night. She’s beautiful. But then I start to see the finer details and the frown fully settles on my brow.
She looks really pale, and her eyes are underscored with dark purple bruises, like she hasn’t slept in the last twenty-four hours. There’s a glittering sheen of sweat on her brow and her exposed forearms are shivering. She opens the door a fraction wider and makes a woeful sound as she leans against the framework.
I want to get in there with her and pull her into my arms, but instead I grip my fingers around the doorframe and ask as gently as I can manage, “Harper, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I–” She stops abruptly, eyes going wide as her body jolts.
Holy shit, is she going to be sick?
I am literally desperate to get my feet over this threshold but I keep it together and ask her again, “What’s wrong, Harper? Tell me.”
She winces hard and clutches at her belly, her shoulder pressed tensely against the wood. “I think…” She swallows and another convulsion rolls through her. “I think that I might have food poisoning.”
My eyes fly straight over to the kitchen at the back, clocking an unwashed plate next to the sink as my mind flicks back to what she bought at the supermarket yesterday. Seafood. I mean, how could I fucking forget. She said that she was trying to eat more meat, implying that she’s not used to cooking it, which means that there’s every possibility that she didn’t know how to cook it.
Goddamn. I run a hand down my face and try to think of what to do.
The site’s empty which means that I could stay here to look after her tonight and no-one would know that I’ve essentially just shacked up with the boss’s daughter. But we’re going to need on-hand Dioralytes and sick buckets, none of which I’d bet she has stocked up in that small wooden cupboard.
She must sense what I’m doing because she shakes her head quickly before turning her back to me and making a little retching sound. When she faces me again cartoon birds are spinning around her curly bun.
“I’ll be fine,” she shivers. “I self-medicated.”
Huh? My frown intensifies. “With what?”
When she remains stoically silent I peer behind her again, checking for a glass of water that’s nowhere to be found. But you know what I do find?
“Is that a bottle of champagne?” I’m almost growling. Is she fucking serious?
Suddenly she’s heaving again and then she’s scampering like lightning into the bathroom. She leaves the door wide open in her haste and I watch her tremble and shiver over the sink.
Can I let myself in? This is a mitigating circumstance, right?
“Harper, I’m coming in,” I say, one boot lifting to breach that threshold.
“Don’t you dare,” she whimpers, looking up at me through the mirror in front of her. My eyes stray to the backs of her legs as her knees wobble and quiver.
I should be standing behind her right now, holding her hair back with one hand and stroking her belly with the other. Passing her a glass of water to keep her fluids up before cradling her against my chest and taking her back to bed.
“Food poisoning only lasts a couple days but it’ll go faster if you get the treatment that you need. Water, Dioralytes, rest.” I check them off on my fingers. “Let me take care of you.”
She gives me a sad pout. “Just let me die.”
“Ah shit,” I mutter, looking over my shoulder so that I can see my truck across the site. I hear her rinse out the sink and I turn my attention back to her. “You don’t have anyone nearby?” I ask, knowing damn well what her answer is going to be.
She shakes her head.
I take a deep breath. So this isn’t exactly what I expected to happen when I knocked on her door two minutes ago, especially after Jason gave me that pep-talk about asking her on a date. Actually, this is kind of the antithesis of a date. But I don’t mind. I want her to be safe and well and if I can give those things to her then so be it.
“I’m going to suggest something right now and you can say no if you think that it’s…” I roll my shoulders, looking for the right word. “Inappropriate, or unprofessional. But if you’d like, I can… I could bring you to my place, to look after you until this passes. Or I could even, uh, I could even stay next door.” I would camp out in the fucking woods if she asked me to. “I don’t want you choking on your vomit or anything. I just want you to get better.”
I swallow and straighten up, eyes locking in with hers. She’s leaning against the sink now, legs clenched together and her eyes blinking rapidly. Sweat soaking the neckline of her top. Cheeks glowing raspberry red.
“What do you think?” I ask her, steeling myself for an eye-roll and a door being slammed in my face.
But instead she quivers on the spot and then gives me a little nod. I almost growl with satisfaction.
“Is that a yes?” I ask. “You’re gonna let me look after you?”
Her brow is pinched in pain and she holds her hands tighter around the sink. “Yeah,” she whispers. “But can we please hurry? I think I’m gonna be sick again.”
“I’m going to grab my truck and haul it up here – save you from walking all the way down the valley, okay?” I ask.
She nods, eyes closed.
Fuck it, I’m coming in. I head for her bedroom and rip the quilt off the bed, but as I carry it to where she’s slowly sinking to the floor I realise that it’s soaked with sweat. Why didn’t she call me? I told her to come to me if she needed anything. I throw the quilt down and she crumples onto it facedown, scrunching the cotton under her belly in tight little fists. I notice that her toy bear was hurled during the upheaval so I pick it up, give it a scowl, and then toss it down next to her. One of her hands reaches out and she stashes it under her tits.
I tug my belt buckle as my shaft thickens in my boxers. I’m wanting, badly, but this sure as hell is not the time for it.
I tell the back of her head, “Give me two minutes, Harper,” and then I’m heading back down the incline, ready to get this girl taken care of.
