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HARPER
*
DRINKING WHISKEY HAD proved a mistake. I’d had a shot and a half in all, but it had been enough to give me a buzz, but not in a good way. I’d tried to combat its effects by drinking coffee. Too much coffee. It had taken me three tries to get my eyeliner on properly.
Now we were finally on our way to the ball and I was running on caffeine and stress fueled adrenaline. My thoughts kept ping-ponging from hope to despair, but despair was starting to win.
You like living in the present, right? I asked myself sarcastically. Then enjoy this moment, because your days are numbered.
Rowley glanced over at me. "You look good enough to eat."
He'd had the option of wearing his dress uniform or a suit and had opted for the suit. He looked like a very buff GQ model.
"Well, you can't eat me yet," I said with a wicked smile. I was drunk on love and sick with the knowledge that I was mere days from losing the only man I would ever feel that way about. "You'll mess up my hair."
Rowley took one of his hands off the steering wheel and slid it up my chiffon-silk clad thigh. "We could skip."
Was he trying to get out of it? Maybe he was worried I wouldn't fit in with all those conventional, solid, successful wives. Here he'd gotten himself a girl who was a college dropout, with a checkered work history, who moonlighted on the drums for a bottle of Jack Daniels. I knew I would get the inevitable question about what I did for a living.
"I know I don’t officially start until tomorrow, but I'm going to tell people I'm attending a culinary school."
He glanced over at me.
"It's probably better than saying I'm your obedient fuck doll."
His lips tipped up. "Frankly, you aren't all that obedient, baby."
I huffed, pretending to be insulted.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said suddenly. “Since when do classes start on a Sunday?”
“You really have a mental block about this,” I said. “I’m going to Vegas for a week, remember?”
“I told you, I wanted you to find a different course to fulfill those requirements,” he said.
“And I explained that it was too late to make course changes and that this trip is mandatory.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” he said.
I sighed with frustration, but I wasn’t going to argue with him now.
As we walked through the entrance hall, he had his hand on my back. He slid it down to give my bottom a quick squeeze just as we entered through the ballroom doors.
"Rowley," I said with a gasp.
He gave me a crooked, roguish smile and slowly moved his hand back up and curved it around my waist. Halfway through the crowded room his hand dropped away and I had a moment’s concern before he meshed his fingers with mine. He was making it clear, I belonged with him.
The burly guy who'd been showing off his new truck on the driveway pulled away from a group to greet us.
"You were a redhead last time I saw you," he said. "I'm Tony, by the way. Ford was too busy giving you grief about your new job to bother introducing us." He put his big mitt out to shake.
"Hi, Tony, I'm Harper."
He leaned in and whispered loudly, loud enough for Rowley to hear, but that was the point. "Thank God you put him out of his misery and married him. Pardon my language, but he'd been a real asshole to work with."
Rowley made a disgruntled sound.
Tony straightened and resumed speaking at a normal volume. "Still working at the restaurant?"
"No, he made me quit."
"Figured as much."
The doom that hung over me had obviously made me hyper aware because I sensed Kat's presence the second she stepped into the ballroom. I'd been overly optimistic, the end of my marriage was probably hours away, not days.
How had she managed to finagle an invite? Was she going to take me down right here at this event, in front of all Rowley's friends and co-workers? Of course, she was. This was the perfect moment she'd spoken of. Kat always opted for maximum humiliation.
She was on the arm of a guy about three inches shorter than she was, but then Rowley was probably one of the few guys she'd dated who actually topped her statuesque height by many inches.
Her current date was wearing a sleek tux and his hair was oiled back. Judging by the way she barely looked at him, I had no illusions that she'd found someone new to obsess over and would leave Rowley and me alone.
Her gaze scanned the crowd and when it landed on Rowley she looked no further. I swallowed against the lump in my throat as Kat made a beeline through the crowd, tugging on the man's arm, almost dragging him across the room.
"Hey, that's that prick city councilman who wants to hold off on new gear for the next five years," Tony said to Rowley as the mismatched couple bore down on us.
Rowley glanced in the direction Tony was looking and seemed to notice Kat for the first time.
"Hi, Rowley." Kat had arrived with a swing of her glass-smooth brunette bob. Her scarlet lips pulled into a smile. "I heard you got married. Oh, my! She's adorable." It sounded rehearsed. "And here I always thought you liked them tall," she said with a laugh.
I wrapped my hand around Rowley's big index finger like a child looking for comfort. I could sense his surprise and felt his gaze light on me for a moment.
"Kat, this is Harper."
"You're Matthew's little sister, aren't you? My you've changed." Nobody but my mother and Matthew knew of our history. Of the cruel prank she'd pulled. How she'd destroyed my confidence, and separated me from the one person who had always made me feel safe and cared for. I tightened my grip on Rowley's finger.
"This is Councilman Clark Langford," she said, placing emphasis on his elected title.
The councilman didn't seem to have a problem with that pompous introduction. He showed a mouthful of pearly whites and stuck his hand out to shake. Neither Tony nor Rowley reciprocated. The man reddened under his tanned skin, his hand still hanging awkwardly in the air.
"You do realize this is a function for firefighters?" Rowley asked. The man finally dropped his hand. "You just introduced legislation that would cut off funding for necessary equipment."
Tony was grinning.
"This is not the place for this discussion," Langford said clearly flustered.
"Strikes me as exactly the place," Rowley said.
The councilman took a step away, but Kat stood firm. He shot her an annoyed look then removed her hand from his arm and strode off alone.
"I've been trying to talk him out of his stance the entire way here," Kat said, having no qualms about throwing her date under the bus if it would win her points with Rowley.
"To think it was only last year that you won that award for valor." She placed her perfectly manicured hand with its crimson nails dusted with silver glitter over her heart. "I was so honored that you shared that evening with me."
I felt like I was going to throw-up right on her expensive shoes.
I glanced up at Rowley. "Matt was there to see you get the award," I said. Why was I telling him that? He knew Matt had been there. Kat's threats had me acting loopy.
He peered down at me with raised eyebrows, as if to say, “Why are you bringing that up?”
"He was kind of live-streaming the events as they were happening. Sending me pictures,” I continued nervously. “That's the night I decided to—" I bit down on my last words and waved my hand as if to magically erase all I had said. I’d just realized that I’d been wanting to reveal this information for a long time, but this was not the place for it.
"Decided to what?" Rowley asked.
"Nothing. It's not important."
I knew Rowley was still studying me because Kat spoke loudly trying to direct his attention back to her. I relaxed a bit as his scrutiny lifted and he replied to one of her questions. She peppered him with more questions, her voice unnaturally high. She may have rehearsed this meeting but she was coming off a tad desperate. Her facial expressions were exaggerated. She didn’t just smile, she grinned. When Rowley said something she thought required a serious face, then she furrowed her brow in concern.
I could only listen with half an ear, my head was buzzing with the fact that the person who was going to destroy my life was standing here making innocent small talk.
A group of men were signaling Rowley from the far side of the room. Kat obviously caught the movement too and glanced across the room and then back at Rowley. She batted her false eyelashes at him. "I won't keep you," she said all sweetness and light.
"Nice seeing you again," he said to Kat. He leaned over and brushed my cheek with his lips. "Back in a second, babe." I released my grip on his hand.
I went off in search of the restroom. I heard Kat's heels clicking behind me. There were women lined up at the mirror adjusting their makeup and hair. I felt relatively safe. Kat wouldn't try anything in front of all these women. Wrong. She caught the stall door as I entered and crowded inside with me and locked the door.
Her towering presence was as overpowering as her perfume.
She didn't say a word just stuck her phone in my face, then she swiped through a series of pictures of me at the concert speaking to Finn in the alcove, making it look like a cozy tête-à-tête. She had more ammunition than just the image of us embracing.
I had a fight or flight response trapped in that stall. "I wonder what Rowley will think when I tell him you've been stalking and blackmailing me." I squeezed around her and fumbled with the door lock.
"I hardly think you will be in the position to blacken my reputation once he sees these pics." Her bright red lips curled. "Sent anonymously, of course," she added.
The latch finally gave and I spilled out of the stall. A woman who was freshening her face powder in the mirror watched us with eyebrows lifted.
"I did warn you," Kat called after me in a sickly, sing-songy voice as I headed out of the bathroom on wobbly legs.