Eric
Halfway to the car, Harper shivers, and I pull her close, under my arm and against my body. “I should grab a coat,” she murmurs.
“I’ll get it for you and lock up,” I say, wanting her inside the car where I can get her the hell out of here. I click the locks and open the passenger door. Obviously eager to get out of the cold, she slides into the seat. I kneel beside her, my hand settling on her leg, and when she looks at me, when this woman looks at me—and I mean every damn time—I want her. I want her in a bad way. Naked, yes, but it’s more than that, it’s deeper than that and I’m not even resisting.
I hand her my key. “Turn on the engine and the heat. There’s a seat warmer, too.”
“I know,” she says. “Because I’m a Jaguar expert.”
I arch a brow. “Are you now?”
“Of course I am. They’re the enemy and the competition.”
“But I’m not, sweetheart. Remember that. Where’s your coat?”
“Pretty sure it never made it out of the kitchen.”
“Got it. Lock the car door.”
“What? Why?”
“Lock it, sweetheart.” I don’t give her time to ask questions I’m not going to answer until I get some precautions in place. I stand up and shut her inside, waiting until she clicks the locks. Then and only then do I head toward the house, walk inside and retrieve my phone from my pocket to dial Blake. “I have thirty seconds,” I say when he answers. “I don’t want Harper to hear this conversation until I have time to explain myself.”
“I’m listening.”
I grab Harper’s coat and her keys from the counter and then step back into the doorway to keep an eye on the car. “There’s someone staking out Harper’s house in a black sedan. This, after my brother threatened me and Harper.”
“Gut feeling about who’s watching her?”
I step outside and pull the door shut. “I would if I had a damn gun and could yank the asshole in the car out and make him tell me. Hell, I might do it anyway.”
“You think it’s your brother’s hired hands?”
“Maybe,” I say, securing the lock, “but the look in Isaac’s eyes tonight tells me that he’s running scared. Really fucking scared. He’s in trouble, which means Harper is in the line of fire.”
“Always,” he says. “I’ll get you a weapon. Where are you headed and what’s your plan?”
“We’re about to leave for my hotel to grab my things, which is only three blocks away,” I say, walking toward the car with a slow pace meant to buy time to end this call.
“You’re staying with her then?” he asks.
“Damn straight I am. I came here for her. I’m keeping her safe and close.”
“I’ll leave a weapon outside her place and text you the location. And that data you needed is in the electronic folder I set-up for you along with my analysis. Text or call me when you look at it.” He disconnects.
I stop at the car door and unlock it before climbing inside the now-toasty interior. “We’re all set now,” I say, offering her the coat.
“Thank you,” she says. “I guess I really didn’t need this. The car is warm and we’re stopping right at the hotel door.”
“The wind is still cold,” I say. “Really cold. Is there a storm blowing in?”
“There's a winter storm warning,” she says. “I saw it on my phone earlier. And normally my mother would be the weather woman warning me.”
“She sent Isaac to warn you instead,” I say, shifting the car into reverse.
“You’re the bastard storm?”
“That’s not always a bad thing to be,” I say, backing us up and then placing us in drive, easing us down the path and eyeing the car that’s still parked in the same spot.
My cellphone rings and I grab it to find Julius returning my call. “I have to take this. There are problems with the NFL closing.”
“Of course,” she says. “Take it. Then you can tell me what you haven’t told me. No secrets, right?”
No secrets.
I can’t agree to that statement. I do have secrets. Secrets she won’t like. Secrets I don’t intend for her to find out. “We’ll talk,” I say instead and answer my call.
***
Harper
We’ll talk.
Not “no secrets.” I don’t miss that sidestep and if he thinks I will, he’s forgotten that I’ve survived the Kingstons for six long years. He, who is all about me not keeping anything from him, says “we’ll talk” to my request for no secrets. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like it.
“No,” he says, to whoever he’s talking to. “That’s not the deal.” He’s calm but hard, a sharp-edged quality to his seemingly nonchalant tone that I’m not sure is about me or his caller. “I don’t like being played with,” he adds. “We’ll replace you.” He disconnects the call and we pull up to the hotel and the valets are immediately upon us.
I slip on my coat even as I step outside. I round the vehicle as Eric palms the driver a large bill, a hundred, I think, which drives home his success, but more so, it shows a generous side of this self-made man. Someone I don’t believe has lost touch with where he came from, or he wouldn’t be so eager to dress down his success. Perhaps only his secrets. This idea sets me on edge again and I have to rein myself back in. Do I really want to go down this “no secrets” path? Do I really want to open that door? Haven’t I already? There are parts of me I don’t know if I can ever expose. Mistakes I’ve made. Things I know that would hurt him. I don’t want to hurt this man. I’m falling in love with him, and that very idea has me walking into the hotel rather than waiting on him, afraid he’ll see. Afraid I’ll scare him away and he won’t want to stay and help.
I push through the automatic revolving doors and suddenly Eric is behind me, taking the small moving space with me, his body pressed to mine, his hands on my waist. His mouth at my ear as he says, “You don’t mind if I join you, do you?”
“Depends,” I say and then I don’t know what I’m doing. I push the buttons I don’t want pushed back. “Are you going to tell me your secrets?” We clear the doors at that moment and he doesn’t reply. He simply pulls me under his arm and aligns our hips, casting the staff to our left and right random greetings before we cut left past the security desk and reach the elevator bank with two cars.
He punches the button and one of them opens, his fingers lacing with mine as he guides me inside and uses his card to key in his floor. The minute the doors shut, he pulls me to him, his fingers tangling in my hair, his thick erection throbbing against my belly. “My secrets would hurt you more than they’d help us.” And then he’s kissing me, drugging me with the rich, spicy taste of his tongue on my tongue, driving away my need to know what he means. Because there is more in this kiss, too. There is the taste of certain pain. He will hurt me. He will leave me. And this time he’ll take everything I am when he does, and I can’t even seem to care.