Eric
I follow Harper up the stairs, and I don’t waste any time doing it. The last thing I want is for her to find more reasons to divide us and that’s what she just tried to do; divide us, pull back. Push back. I grab my bag and I’m behind her by the time she’s halfway up the stairs. With a few skipped steps, I’m at the door to her bedroom moments after she enters.
I pause in the doorway as she takes off her coat and tosses it onto one of two large gray chairs in front of a garden window, and I take in a room as masculine as her living room. The bed is king-sized with a slate gray headboard that matches the chairs. The floor is also gray. The only thing feminine about the space is Harper herself and the red pillows and red lampshades. Even the lamps are gray. Her décor now strikes me as a window into who she’s become. She’s living in a Kingston, male-dominated world, barely holding onto herself. I’m going to change that.
She steps to the side of the bed and sets her phone on the nightstand as if she just needs something to do with herself. I toss my bag on the chair next to her coat, remove my gun and stick it inside the bag, and then drop my own coat next to hers. We stand there, staring at each other, intimacy weaving between us. “I am glad you’re here. That’s all. I just want you to know that whatever else happens, I’m glad you’re here.” She cuts her gaze and tries to turn away.
I catch her arm and turn her to me. “Me, too, Harper. Me fucking, too. Why don’t you understand that? I didn’t come to help you. I came because I couldn’t fucking turn away. If I had my way, I’d take you and your mother the hell out of here, and we’d leave Isaac to burn in hell on his own.”
“She won’t leave. She won’t, Eric.”
“Get her to,” I say. “Convince her staying is dangerous.”
“Is it?”
“Dangerous enough to get your mother out of here and for me to get you out of here.”
“I can’t leave. I could have access to information we need.”
“Blake has everything you could have and more at his fingertips.”
“There’s value to an in-person, physical presence to investigate, especially when my mom’s on the line.”
“She’s not a strong person,” I say. “You are. Get her out,” I repeat.
“How? How do I do that? I have nothing but my suspicions to support her leaving, and that’s not enough. She’s afraid to be without your father.”
“But does she love him?”
“No. I don’t think so. No. I know she doesn’t. She doesn’t act at all with him like she did my with father.”
“Then she’ll leave him. Let’s find the motivation for her to get out.” I grab my briefcase and set it on the bed. “Let’s dig in.”
“My briefcase is still in the car,” she says. “I need to grab it.” She glances at the door and I don’t miss her unease. I’m driving home the theme of danger. It’s messing with her head.
“I’ll grab it. You get comfortable.” I head that direction and as I walk down the stairs, my phone buzzes with a text from Blake that reads: I hacked the HR files and looked at employee numbers and even union membership numbers for Kingston. No go. No matches. Still working. More when I know something.
I shove my phone back into my pocket and go grab Harper’s briefcase. Once I’m back upstairs in the bedroom, I find Harper barefoot on the bed, and it doesn’t matter that she’s in sweats and a tee. My cock throbs. I want to strip her naked. I want to fuck her. I want to make love to her. But I need her out of this Godforsaken city.
I cross to the bed and set her briefcase down. “Thank you,” she says, giving me this sweet, sexy look that almost changes my priorities to dirty play instead of my dirty brother.
I sit down next to Harper and we both unpack our computers. For me, that means my MacBook and a full-sized Rubik’s cube. Harper picks it up. “A Rubik’s cube?”
I study it in her hand, the woman that is now holding a piece of me, the way I control my mind, an explanation of which exposes weakness. I could say what I say to everyone and I do just that. “It helps me focus,” but unlike the rest of the world, she doesn’t stop there.
“You’re a savant,” she says. “I read up on it. Most savants have time when the data in their heads takes over, when it overwhelms them and comes too fast. I even read about a man who has seizures when that happens.”
She tried to pull back downstairs, to place a wall between us. I fight the urge to do the same now. I don’t want to pull back with Harper and so I tell her what only Grayson and a few doctors know. “I collapsed in a swell of numbers when my mother died. My father paid for expensive doctors and one of them actually helped me, but when I got pulled up to law school three years early, and with Isaac, he was angry. He tried to trigger my episodes, as someone started calling them, but it’s like the harder he tried, the stronger I got and the more desperate he became.”
“And when you could have ruined him, you didn’t,” she says, repeating what I’d told her earlier.
“That’s right. And joining the SEALs was good for me. They helped me hone my skills and turn them into assets, not detriments.”
Her cellphone buzzes with a message on my side of the bed and she climbs over the top of me and ends up straddling my lap. “I need my phone. You were in the way.”
I lean against the headboard, easing her body to mine. “Do you see me complaining?”
Her hand goes to my face, returning to our conversation. “Do you tell people you’re a savant?”
“No. Never.”
“Does it bother you that I know?”
“No, it doesn’t. I don’t announce what I am, but I own it.”
“When was the last time you had an episode?”
I cover her hand with mine, tension sliding down my spine. “Why, Harper?”
“You don’t have to tell me. Sorry.” She tries to get off of me and I hold onto her.
“Why, Harper?” I ask again, intent on getting an answer from her.
“I just—if something happened, if you had one, if being here triggers one, I want to know how to help. I want to know what to do and what not to do.”
I’m aware on every level that this is information she could use to hurt me. But I can’t seem to home in on that part of the equation. No one has ever asked me what to do or not do besides my mother. “This,” I say, dragging her mouth a breath from mine. “Kiss me, and kiss me with all you are.”
She presses her lips to mine and her cellphone starts to ring this time. She groans and settles her forehead to mine, her hand on my jaw. “Twenty dollars of your billion says that will be my mother.”
I’m struck by her ability to talk about my money and have it not feel like a play for my money. That’s the thing about having money, I’ve learned. It comes with agendas, other people’s agendas.
“Talk to her,” I say, stroking her hair. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”
“Let me just make sure it’s her.” She leans to the nightstand and grabs her phone and almost falls. She yelps and I catch her, helping her settle back on top of me. “Yep,” she says. “It’s her. I think I need that wine we didn’t finish to survive her tonight.”
I roll her to her back. “I’ll get it.” I kiss her and stand up, walking toward the door as her phone stops ringing without her answering it.
I turn to find her staring at me. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Talk to your mom.”
“Not just about the interruption again. About how she acted earlier, Eric. You’re being really great about her and she doesn’t deserve it.”
“You already said all this.”
“I know. I just needed to say it again.”
I soften with her concern, and I wonder how anyone that thinks about everyone else the way she does, me especially, has made it this long in this family. “Talk to your mom,” I order playfully and head down the stairs.
Once I’m at the bottom of the stairs, I punch in a text to Adam, who I’ve had in my phonebook since a job Walker did for Bennett Enterprises a few months back: How do we look out there?
Like we’re both in Denver instead of New York City, he replies. In other words, he’s a smart ass and everything is clear. I walk into the living room, snag our wine glasses and the bottle and head back upstairs, ready to dig into the data Blake sent me before grabbing a few hours of sleep.
I re-enter the bedroom to find Harper missing and the bathroom door shut. I walk to the bed, set down our glasses and fill them before I sit down myself to wait on her, keying my MacBook to life. It’s just about ready for use when Harper’s phone buzzes on the bed next to me. My gaze lifts instinctively and lands on a flashing text message from Gigi that says: Do not tell him.