Harper
Eric presses his cheek to my cheek and whispers, “Do you know how badly I want to take you to the bathroom and fuck you right now?” Heat pools low in my belly as he pulls back to look at me and adds, “Or anywhere, for that matter?”
My body melts while my mind fights for reason. I can’t end up naked and confused again with this man and in no different a place than we are now. “Which would be fine if you could do it without hating me along with the rest of the family,” I say, my hand pressing to his chest, the other landing on his tattooed arm as I place more space between us. “I’m not them. Do it the Bennett way, not the Kingston way, and judge me for me.”
The waitress chooses that moment to reappear and say, “Okay. Just had to deliver another order. Are you two ready?”
Eric studies me several beats before he asks, “Do you know what you want?”
“Yes. Spaghetti and meatballs. You?”
“I do,” he says, glancing at the waitress. “The same for me.”
The waitress asks a few questions and then she’s gone. Eric’s attention is immediately riveted to me. “I want to know your story, Harper, not theirs.”
“Do you? Because you seem to think you already know it. I dreaded the idea of you thinking I thought because we’d slept together I could manipulate you in some way. You walked away from me without looking back. What power could I ever have over you?”
“You were the only one in this family that had a chance to get me here, and you knew that.”
“Because I’m not them. Not because we slept together. You have a file on me, but files don’t tell you the real story. Not about people.”
“Then you tell me.”
“Are you going to really listen?” I challenge.
“I assure you, sweetheart, no one has ever had my full attention more than you do now, for about ten different reasons. You tell me your story.” He rotates to fully face me.
I do the same of him. “And you’ll tell me yours?”
“I already started telling you my story. You know far more about me and my life choices than I do yours.”
A story of lies, secrets, and pain that I push aside. I focus on what matters right here and now. The part of my story that I hope he understands. “I was close to my father and his heart attack pretty much destroyed me, but my mother was such a mess that I somehow found a way to step up and be strong. I was close to my mother, too, until we joined this family. She was a young mother, seventeen when she had me, and instead of dividing us, it brought us closer together. But since she married your father, there’s been a slow divide.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I know why. It’s because I push back and fight for what I think is right in the company, more so this past year when I felt that there were things that didn’t add up. I felt that even before the recalls. That pushback has not been well received. My mother just wants me to appease your father and brother.”
He leans in closer. “What don’t I know?” he asks, those blue eye glinting with intelligence. “You said you needed time and privacy, but that there were things you hadn’t told me.”
“You already know I’m aligned with Gigi. That was the thing I dreaded telling you the most, but I told you. I knew I needed to tell you.”
“Aligned?” he asks, his entire mood darkening. “How fucking aligned?”
I reach out and grab his hand. “Not against you. I swear to you, Eric. I don’t believe Gigi is fully repenting for her sins. I believe she’s worried about losing the company. She doesn’t want her legacy to go down in flames.”
“You do know that I hate that woman enough to want to burn it to the ground, right?”
“You said you came for me, not her.”
“I did come for you, Harper.”
“Then please, I beg of you, don’t burn it to the ground. My father’s world was half that company.”
“Your father is gone. His legacy is you. You don’t need that place.”
“So you’re going to ruin Kingston?” I try to turn away and he pulls me back around.
“No,” he says. “I’m not going to ruin them. I don’t need to do that. I don’t need them at all.”
“But you thought you did. You told me that in the past.”
“I had a need for family after I lost my mother and the Navy filled that void. I came here to Denver the night I met you because I’d lost that connection. I thought I needed family but these people were never family.”
My gaze goes to one of the tattoos on his right arm, a black and gray skull with an anchor that I assume represents his years as a SEAL. My hand dares to settle over it, our eyes locking, warmth waving between us. “Harvard graduate. Genius IQ. Navy SEAL. Self-made billionaire. You are so many things that this family is not.”
“This family will kill you to get ahead. My fellow SEALs, and anyone with the Bennett name, that’s real family to me, the kind that would bleed to protect you.”
“Then you understand family, despite this family. You protected your mother. You understand why I stayed for mine. I know you do. You say you don’t, but you’re not seeing me and the real picture. The company is all I have left of my father and my mother—I love her. She might not be perfect, but she’s all I have.”
He inhales and cuts his stare before he looks at me again, his eyes turbulent, a story in their depths that I don’t understand but want to understand. “I understand why you were here. I don’t understand why you’re still here, though.”
“My mother—”
“Is my father abusing her? Is she in danger?”
“If there was negligence that was intentional, there’s criminal liability that she could get wrapped up inside. I could end up with that liability, too. You know Isaac will look for a fall guy. I’m terrified. I can’t leave now. I could end up the fall guy.”
“Have you done something to expose yourself?”
“No. Not that I know of, but who knows what fingerprint I could have on something I don’t understand. I don’t know what’s happening. I just know something is. The recalls. Weird money movement.”
“You need to be honest with me.”
“I am. I am being honest with you.”
“What don’t I know?” he presses, and I want to scream with the impossibility of this situation.
“I already answered that question. I can show you everything I have collected, the paperwork, the notes I’ve taken. The information Gigi gave me. I have it at my house.”
He tangles his fingers in my hair, and drags my mouth to his, obviously oblivious to anyone else around us. “If you burn me, Harper, you won’t like the results.”
“What can I do to make you trust me?”
“We need to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m here for you. I came for you. I want, and can, protect you but you aren’t being straight with me.”
“I am,” I whisper. “Stop saying that.”
“I say what I see, sweetheart, and clearly,” he adds, “the only way I’m getting everything from you is with your clothes off. I need to talk to you and I need to fuck you and I can’t do both here.”
Heat rushes over me. “You don’t have to get me naked for me to talk.”
“Let’s do it anyway. Any objection to that plan?”
“No,” I whisper. “No objection.”